History of the Girondists Part 29

The king, however, when the ministry was completed, wrote the a.s.sembly a letter, more resembling an abdication into the hands of opinion than the const.i.tutional act of a free power. Was this humiliating resignation an affectation of slavery, or a sign of restraint and degradation made from the throne to the armed powers, in order that they might comprehend that he was no longer free, and only see in him the crowned automaton of the Jacobins? The letter was in these terms:

"Profoundly touched by the disorders that afflict the French nation, and by the duty imposed on me by the const.i.tution of watching over the maintenance of order and public tranquillity, I have not ceased to employ every means that it places at my disposal to execute the laws. I had selected as my prime agents men recommended by the purity of their principles and their opinions. They have quitted the ministry; and I have felt it my duty to replace them by men who hold a high position in public favour. You have so often repeated that this measure was the only means of ensuring the re-establishment of order and the enforcement of the laws, that I have deemed it fitting to adopt it, that no pretext may be afforded for doubting my sincere desire to add to the prosperity and happiness of my country. I have appointed M. Claviere minister of the contributions, and M. Roland minister of the interior. The person whom I had chosen as the minister of justice has prayed me to make another choice: when I shall have again made it the a.s.sembly shall be duly informed. (Signed) Louis."

The a.s.sembly received this message with loud applause: for with the king once in its power, it could employ him in the works of regeneration. The most perfect harmony appeared to reign in the council. The king astonished his new ministers by his a.s.siduity and his apt.i.tude for business. He conversed with everyone on the subject that most interested him. He questioned Roland on his works, Dumouriez on his adventures, and Claviere on the finances, whilst he avoided the irritating topics of general policy. Madame Roland reproached her husband with these conversations, and besought him to make use of his time, to take abstracts of these conversations, and to keep an authentic register, which would one day cover his responsibility. The ministers appeared to dine four times a week together, in order to concert their acts and language in the king's presence. It was at these private meetings that Buzot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Geneveive and Brissot infused into the ministers the feelings of their party and reigned unseen over the a.s.sembly and the king. Dumouriez soon became an object of suspicion to them for his mind escaped their dominion by its greatness, and his character escaped fanaticism by its pliability. Madame Roland, seduced by his eloquence, yet experienced remorse for her admiration; she felt that the genius of this man was necessary to her party, but that genius without virtue would be fatal to the republic; and she infused distrust of Dumouriez into the mind of her allies. The king invariably adjourned the sanction which the Girondists demanded from him to the crimes against the priests and _emigres_. Foreseeing that they would be called upon, sooner or later, to give an account of their responsibility to the nation, Madame Roland wished to take precautionary measures. She persuaded her husband to write a confidential letter to the king, full of the most strict lessons of patriotism; to read it himself in council to loyal princes; and to keep a copy, which he would publish at the proper time as an accusation against Louis XVI. and a justification of himself. This treacherous precaution against the perfidy of the court was odious as a snare and cowardly a denunciation. Pa.s.sion only, which disturbs the sight of the soul, could blind a generous-minded woman as to the meaning of such an act; but party feeling supplies the place of generosity, justice, and even of virtue. This letter was a concealed weapon, with which Roland reserved to himself the power of mortally wounding the reputation of the king whilst he saved his own. This was his only crime, or rather the only error of his hate; and this was the only cause for remorse he felt at the foot of the scaffold.

XVI.

"Sire," said Roland in this celebrated letter, "things cannot remain in their present state; it is a state of crises, and we must be extricated from it by some extreme measure (_une explosion quelconque_). France has given itself a const.i.tution; the minority are undermining, the majority are defending, it. There arises a fierce internal struggle in which no person remains neuter. You enjoyed supreme power, and could not have laid it down without regret. The enemies of the Revolution took into calculation the sentiments they presume you entertain. Your secret favour is their strength. Ought you now to ally yourself to the enemies or the friends of the const.i.tution? p.r.o.nounce once for all. Royalty, clergy, n.o.bility, aristocracy, must abhor these changes, which destroy them: on the other hand, the people see the triumph of their rights in the Revolution and will not allow themselves to be despoiled. The declaration of rights has become their new Gospel: liberty is henceforth the religion of the people. In this shock of opposing interests, all sentiments have become extreme--opinions have a.s.sumed the accent of enthusiasm. The country is no longer an abstraction, but a real being, to which we are attached by the happiness it promises to us, and the sacrifices we have made for it. To what point will this patriotism be exalted at the moment now imminent, when the enemies' forces without are about to combine with the intrigues within to a.s.sail it? The rage of the nation will be terrible if it have not confidence in you. But this confidence is not to be acquired by words, but by acts. Give unquestionable proofs of your sincerity. For instance, two important decrees have been pa.s.sed, both deeply important for the security of the state, and the delay of your sanction excites distrust. Be on your guard: distrust is not very wide from hatred, and hatred does not hesitate at crime. If you do not give satisfaction to the Revolution, it will be cemented by blood. Desperate measures, which you may be advised to adopt to intimidate Paris, to control the a.s.sembly, would only cause the development of that sullen energy, the mother of great devotions and great attempts (this was meant indirectly for Dumouriez, who had advised firm measures). You are deceived, Sire, when the nation is represented to you as hostile to the throne, and to yourself. Love, serve the Revolution, and the people will love it in you. Deposed priests are agitating the provinces: ratify the measures requisite to put down their fanaticism. Paris is uneasy as to its security: sanction the measures which summon a camp of citizens beneath its walls. Still more delays, and you will be considered as a conspirator and an accomplice. Just heaven! hast thou stricken kings with blindness? I know that the language of truth is rarely welcomed at the foot of thrones: I know, too, that it is the withholding the truth from the councils of kings which renders revolutions so often necessary. As a citizen, and as a minister, I owe the truth to the king, and nothing shall prevent my making it reach his ear. I demand that we should have here a secretary of council to register our deliberations. Responsible ministers should have a witness of their opinions. If this witness existed, I should not now address your majesty in writing."

The threat was no less evident than the treachery of this letter; and the last sentence indicated, in equivocal terms, the odious use which Roland meant one day to make of it. The magnanimity of Vergniaud was excited against this step of the powerful Girondist minister: Dumouriez's military loyalty was roused by it: the king listened to the reading of it with the calmness of a man accustomed to put up with insult. The Girondists were informed of it in the secret councils at Madame Roland's, and Roland kept a copy to cover himself at the hour of his fall.

XVII.

At this moment secret understandings, unknown to Roland himself, were formed by the three Girondist chiefs, Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne and the chateau, through Boze, the king's painter. A letter, intended for the monarch's perusal, was written by them. The iron chest guarded it for the day of accusation.

"You ask of us," runs this epistle, "what is our opinion as to the state of France, and the choice of measures fit to save the public weal.

Questioned by you concerning such important interests, we do not hesitate to reply. The conduct of the executive power is the cause of all the evil. The king is deceived by persuading him that it is the clubs and factions which foment public agitation. This is placing the cause of the evil in its symptoms. If the people was rea.s.sured of the loyalty of the king, it would grow tranquil, and factions die a natural death. But so long as conspiracies, internal and external, appear favoured by the king, troubles will perpetually spring up, and continually increase the mistrust of the citizens. The present tendency of things is evidently towards a crisis, all the chances of which are opposed to royalty. They are making of the chief of a free nation, the chief of a party. The opposite party ought to consider him, not as a king, but as an enemy. What is to be hoped from the success of manoeuvres carried on with foreigners, in order to restore the authority of the throne? They will give to the king the appearance of a violent usurpation of the rights of the nation. The same force which would have served this violent restoration would be necessary to maintain it. It would produce a permanent civil war. Attached as we are to the interests of the nation, from which we shall never separate those of the king, we think that the sole means by which he can alleviate the evils that threaten the empire and the throne, is to identify himself with the nation. Renewed protestations are useless; we must have deeds.

Let the king abandon every idea of increased power offered to him by the succour of foreigners. Let him obtain from cabinets hostile to the Revolution the withdrawal of the troops who press upon our frontiers. If that be impossible, let him arm the nation himself, and direct it against the enemies of the const.i.tution. Let him choose his ministers amongst the leading men of the Revolution. Let him offer the muskets and horses of his own guard. Let him publish the doc.u.ments connected with the civil list, and thus prove that the secret treasury is not the source of counter-revolutionary plots. Let him apply himself for a law respecting the education of the prince royal, and let him be brought up in the spirit of the const.i.tution. Finally, let him withdraw from M. de La Fayette the command of the army. If the king shall adopt these determinations, and persist in them with firmness, the const.i.tution is saved!"

This letter, conveyed to the king by Thierri, had not been sought by him. He was annoyed at the many plans of succour sent to him. "What do these men mean?" he inquired of Boze; "Have I not done all that they advise? Have I not chosen patriots for ministers? Have I not rejected succour from without? Have I not repudiated my brothers, and hindered, as far as in me lies, the coalition, and armed the frontiers? Have I not been, since my acceptance of the const.i.tution, more faithful than the malcontents themselves to my oath?"

The Girondist leaders, still undecided between the republic and the monarchy, thus felt the pulse of power--sometimes of the a.s.sembly, sometimes of the king; ready to seize it wherever they should find it; but discovering it on the side of the king, they judged that there was more certainty in sapping than in consolidating the throne, and they inclined more than ever to a factious policy.

XVIII.

Still, half-masters of the council through Roland, Claviere, and Servan, who had succeeded De Grave, they bore to a certain extent the responsibility of these three ministers. The Jacobins began to require from them an account of the acts of a ministry which was in their hands, and bore their name. Dumouriez, placed between the king and the Girondists, saw daily the increasing want of confidence between his colleagues and himself; they suspected his probity equally with his patriotism. He had profited by his popularity and ascendency over the Jacobins to demand of the a.s.sembly a sum of 6,000,000 (240,000_l._) of secret service money on his accession to the ministry. The apparent destination of this money was to bribe foreign cabinets, and to detach venal powers from the coalition, and to foment revolutionary symptoms in Belgium. Dumouriez alone knew the channels by which this money was to flow. His exhausted personal fortune, his costly tastes, his attachment to a seductive woman, Madame de Beauvert, sister to Rivarol; his intimacy with men of unprincipled character and irregular habits,--reports of extortion charged on his ministry, and falling, if not on him on those he trusted, tarnished his character in the eyes of Madame Roland and her husband. Probity is the virtue of democrats, for the people look first at the hands of those who govern them. The Girondists, pure as men of the ancient time, feared the shadow of a suspicion of this nature on their characters, and Dumouriez's carelessness on this point annoyed them. They complained. Gensonne and Brissot insinuated their feelings to him on this point at Roland's.

Roland himself, authorised by his age and austerity of manners, took upon himself to remind Dumouriez that a public man owes respect to decorum and revolutionary manners. The warrior turned the remonstrance into pleasantry, replied to Roland that he owed his blood to the nation, but neither owed it the sacrifice of his tastes nor his amours; that he understood patriotism as a hero, and not as a puritan. The bitterness of his language left venom behind, and they separated with mutual ill-feeling.

From this day forth he no longer visited at Roland's evening meetings.

Madame Roland, who understood the human heart by the superior instinct of her genius and her s.e.x, was not deceived by the general's tactics.

"The hour is come to destroy Dumouriez," she said boldly to her friends.

"I know very well," she added, addressing Roland, "that you are incapable of descending either to intrigue or revenge; but remember that Dumouriez must conspire in his heart against those who have wounded him.

When such daring remonstrances have been made to such a man, and uselessly made, it is necessary to strike the blow if we would not be struck ourselves." She felt truly, and spoke sagaciously. Dumouriez, whose rapid glance had seen behind the Girondists a party stronger and bolder than their own, began from this time to connect himself with the leaders of the Jacobins. He thought, and with reason, that party hatred would be more potent than patriotism, and that by flattering the rivalry of Robespierre and Danton against Brissot, Petion, and Roland, he should find in the Jacobins themselves a support for the government. He liked the king, pitied the queen, and all his prejudices were in favour of the monarchy. He would have been as proud to restore the throne as to save the republic. Skilful in handling men, every instrument was good that was available; to get rid of the Girondists, who, by oppressing the king menaced himself, and to go and seek further off and lower than these rhetoricians, that popularity which was necessary to him when opposed to them, was a master-stroke of genius: he tried it, and succeeded. From this epoch may be dated his connection with Camille Desmoulins and Danton.

Danton and Dumouriez came to an understanding the sooner, because in their vices, like their good qualities, they closely resembled each other. Danton, like Dumouriez, only wanted the impulse of the Revolution. Principles were trifles with him; what suited his energy and his ambition was that tumultuous turmoil which cast down and elevated men, from the throne to nothing, from nothing to fortune and power. The intoxication of movement was to Danton, as to Dumouriez, the continual need of their disposition: the Revolution was to them a battle field, whose whirl charmed and promoted them.

Yet any other revolution would have suited them as well; despotism or liberty, king or people. There are men whose atmosphere is the whirlwind of events--who only breathe easily in a storm of agitation. Moreover, if Dumouriez had the vices or levities of courts, Danton had the vices and licentiousness of the mob. These vices, how different soever in form, are the same at bottom; they understand each other, they are a point of contact between the weaknesses of the great and the corruption of the small. Dumouriez understood Danton at the first glance, and Danton allowed himself to be approached and tamed by Dumouriez. Their connection, often suspected of bribery on the one hand, and venality on the other, subsisted secretly or publicly until the exile of Dumouriez and the death of Danton. Camille Desmoulins, freed of Danton and Robespierre, attached himself also to Dumouriez, and brought his name constantly forward in his pamphlets. The Orleans party, who held on with the Jacobins by Sillery, Laclos, and Madame de Genlis, also sought the friendship of the new minister. As to Robespierre, whose policy was perpetual reserve with all parties, he affected neither liking nor dislike towards Dumouriez, but was secretly delighted at seeing him become a rival to his enemies. At least he never accused him. It is difficult long to hate the enemy of those whom we hate.

XIX.

The growing hatred of Robespierre and Brissot became daily more deadly.

The sittings of the Jacobins and the newspapers were the continual theatre of the struggles and reconciliations of these two men. Equal in strength in the nation--equal in talent in the tribune--it was evident that they were afraid of each other in their attacks. They affected mutual respect, even when most offensive; but this repressed animosity only corroded their hearts more deeply, and it burst forth occasionally beneath the politeness of their language, like death beneath the glance of steel.

All these fermentations of division, rivalry, and resentment, boiled over in the April sittings. They were like a general review of two great parties who were about to destroy the empire in disputing their own ascendency. The Feuillants or moderate const.i.tutionalists were the victims, that each of the two popular parties mutually immolated to the suspicions and rage of parties. Raederer, a moderate Jacobin, was accused of having dined with the Feuillants, friends of La Fayette. "I do not only inculpate Raederer," exclaimed Tallien, "I denounce Condorcet and Brissot. Let us drive from our society the ambitious and the Cromwellites."

"The moment for unmasking traitors will soon arrive," said Robespierre in his turn. "I do not desire to unmask them to-day. The blow when struck must be decisive. I wish that all France heard me now. I wish that the culpable chief of these factions, La Fayette, was here with all his army; I would say to his soldiers, whilst I presented my breast,--Strike! That moment would be the last of La Fayette and the _intrigants_" (this name had been invented by Robespierre for the Girondists). Fauchet excused himself for having said that Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonne, and Brissot might be, advantageously for the country, placed at the head of the government. The Girondists were accused of dreaming of a _protector_, the Jacobins a _tribune_ of the people.

At last, Brissot rose to reply. "I am here to defend myself," he said.

"What are my crimes? I am said to have made seven ministers--I keep up a connection with La Fayette--I desire to make a protector of him.

Certainly great power is thus a.s.signed to me by those who think that from my fourth story I have dictated laws to the Chateau of the Tuileries. But if it even were true that I had made ministers, how long has it been a crime to have confided the interests of the people to the hands of the people? This minister is about, it is said, to distribute all his favours to the Jacobins! Ah! would to heaven that all the places were filled by Jacobins!"

At these words Camille Desmoulins, Brissot's enemy, concealed in the chamber, bowing towards his neighbour, said aloud with a sneering laugh, "What a cunning rogue! Cicero and Demosthenes never uttered more eloquent insinuations." Cries of angry feeling burst from the ranks of Brissot's friends, who clamoured for Camille Desmoulins' expulsion. A censor of the chamber declared that the remarks of the pamphleteer were disgraceful, and order was restored. Brissot proceeded. "Denunciation is the weapon of the people: I do not complain of this. Do you know who are its bitterest enemies? Those who prost.i.tute denunciation. Yes; but where are the proofs? Treat with the deepest contempt him who denounces, but does not prove. How long have a protector or a protectorate been talked of? Do you know why? Is it to accustom the ear to the name of tribuneship and tribune. They do not see that a tribuneship can never exist. Who would dare to dethrone the const.i.tutional king? Who would dare to place the crown on his head? Who can imagine that the race of Brutus is extinct? And if there were no Brutus, where is the man who has ten times the ability of Cromwell? Do you believe that Cromwell himself would have succeeded in a revolution like ours? There were for him two easy roads to usurpation, which are to-day closed--ignorance and fanaticism. You think you see a Cromwell in a La Fayette. You neither know La Fayette nor your times. Cromwell had character--La Fayette has none. A man does not become protector without boldness and decision; and when he has both, this society comprises a crowd of friends of liberty, who would rather perish than support him. I first make the oath, that either equality shall reign, or I will die contending against protectors and tribunes. Tribunes! they are the worst enemies of the people. They flatter to enchain it. They spread suspicions of virtue, which will not debase itself. Remember who were Aristides and Phocion,--they did not always sit in the tribune."

Brissot, as he darted this sarcasm, looked towards Robespierre, for whom he meant it. Robespierre turned pale, and raised his head suddenly.

"They did not always sit in the tribune," continued Brissot; "they were at their posts in the camp, or at the tribunals," (a sneering laugh came from the Girondist benches, accusing Robespierre of abandoning his post at the moment of danger). "They did not disdain any charge, however humble it might be, when it was a.s.signed them by the people: they spoke seldom; they did not flatter demagogues; they never denounced without proofs! The calumniators did not spare Phocion. He was the victim of an adulator of the people! Ah! this reminds me of the horrible calumny uttered against Condorcet! Who are you who dare to slander this great man? What have you done? What are your labours, your writings? Can you quote, as he can, so many a.s.saults during three years by himself with Voltaire and D'Alembert against the throne, superst.i.tion, prejudices, and the aristocracy? Where would you be, where this tribune, were it not for these gentlemen? They are your masters; and you insult those who gain you the voices of the people. You a.s.sail Condorcet, as though his life had not been a series of sacrifices! A philosopher, he became a politician; academician, he became a newspaper writer; a courtier, he became one of the people; n.o.ble, he became a Jacobin! Beware! you are following the concealed impulses of the court. Ah, I will not imitate my adversaries, I would not repeat those rumours which a.s.sert they are paid by the civil list." (There was a report that Robespierre had been gained over to oppose the war.) "I shall not say a word of a secret committee which they frequent, and in which are concerted the means of influencing this society; but I will say that they follow in the track of the promoters of civil war. I will say, that without meaning it, they do more harm to the patriots than the court. And at what moment do they throw division amongst us? At the moment when we have a foreign war, and when an intestine war threatens us. Let us put an end to these disputes, and let us go to the order of the day, leaving our contempt for odious and injurious denunciations."

XX.

At this, Robespierre and Guadet, equally provoked, wished to enter the tribune. "It is forty-eight hours," said Guadet, "that the desire of justifying myself has weighed upon my heart; it is only a few minutes that this want has affected Robespierre. I request to be heard." Leave was accorded, and he briefly exculpated himself. "Be especially on your guard," he said, as he concluded, and pointed to Robespierre, "against empirical orators, who have incessantly in their mouths the words of liberty, tyranny, conspiracy--always mixing up their own praises with the deceit they impose upon the people. Do justice to such men!"

"Order!" cried Freron, Robespierre's friend; "this is insult and sarcasm." The tribune resounded with applause and hooting. The chamber itself was divided into two camps, separated by a wide s.p.a.ce. Harsh names were exchanged, threatening gesticulations used, and hats were raised and shaken about on the tops of canes. "I am called a wretch,"

(_scelerat_) continued Guadet, "and yet I am not allowed to denounce a man who invariably thrusts his personal pride in advance of the public welfare. A man who, incessantly talking of patriotism, abandons the post to which he was called! Yes, I denounce to you a man who, either from ambition or misfortune, has become the idol of the people!" Here the tumult reached its height, and drowned the voice of Guadet.

Robespierre himself requested silence for his enemy. "Well," added Guadet, alarmed or softened by Robespierre's feigned generosity, "I denounce to you a man who, from love of the liberty of his country, ought perhaps to impose upon himself the law of ostracism; for to remove him from his own idolatry is to serve the people!" These words were smothered under peals of affected laughter. Robespierre ascended the steps of the tribune with studied calmness. His impa.s.sive brow involuntarily brightened at the smiles and applauses of the Jacobins.

"This speech meets all my wishes," said he, looking towards Brissot and his friends; "it includes in itself all the inculpations which the enemies by whom I am surrounded have brought against me. In replying to M. Guadet, I shall reply to all. I am invited to have recourse to ostracism; there would, no doubt, be some excess of vanity in my condemning myself--that is the punishment of great men, and it is only for M. Brissot to cla.s.s them. I am reproached for being so constantly in the tribune. Ah! let liberty be a.s.sured, let equality be confirmed; let the _Intrigants_ disappear, and you will see me as anxious to fly from this tribune, and even this place, as you now see me desirous to be in them. Thus, in effect, my dearest wishes will be accomplished. Happy in the public liberty, I shall pa.s.s my peaceful days in the delights of a sweet and obscure privacy."

Robespierre confined himself to these few words, frequently interrupted by the murmurs of fanatical enthusiasm, and then adjourned his answer to the following sittings, when Danton was seated in the arm-chair, and presided over this struggle between his enemies and his rival.

Robespierre began by elevating his own cause to the height of a national one. He defended himself for having first provoked his adversaries. He quoted the accusations made, and the injurious things uttered against him, by the Brissot party. "Chief of a party, agitator of the people, secret agent of the Austrian committee," he said, "these are the names thrown in my teeth, and to which they urge me to reply! I shall not make the answer of Scipio or La Fayette, who, when accused in the tribune of the crime of _leze-nation_, only replied by their silence. I shall reply by my life.

"A pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, his doctrines have inspired my soul for the people. The spectacles of the great a.s.semblies in the first days of our Revolution have filled me with hope. I soon understood the difference that exists between those limited a.s.semblies, composed of men of ambitious views, or egotists, and the nation itself. My voice was stifled there; but I preferred rather to excite the murmurs of the enemies of truth, than to obtain applauses that were disgraceful. I threw my glance beyond this limited circle, and my aim was to make myself heard by the nation and the whole human race. It is for this that I have so much frequented the tribune. I have done more than this--it was I who gave Brissot and Condorcet to France. These great philosophers have unquestionably ridiculed and opposed the priests; but they have not the less courted kings and grandees, out of whom they have made a pretty good thing. (Laughter). You do not forget with what eagerness they persecuted the genius of liberty in the person of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the only philosopher who, in my opinion, has deserved the public honours lavished for a long time on so many political charlatans and so many contemptible heroes. Brissot, at least, should feel well inclined towards me. Where was he when I was defending this society from the Jacobins against the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly itself? But for what I did at this epoch, you would not have insulted me in this tribune; for it would not have existed. I the corrupter, the agitator, the tribune of the people! I am none of these, I am the people myself. You reproach me for having quitted my place as public accuser. I did so when I saw that that place gave me no other right than that of accusing citizens for civil offences, and would deprive me of the right of accusing political enemies. And it is for this that the people love me; and yet you desire that I sentence myself to ostracism, in order to withdraw myself from its confidence. Exile! how can you dare to propose it to me? Whither would you have me retire? Amongst what people should I be received? Who is the tyrant who would give me asylum?--Ah! we may abandon a happy, free, and triumphant country; but a country threatened, rent by convulsions, oppressed; we do not flee from that, we save, or perish with it! Heaven, which gave me a soul impa.s.sioned for liberty, and gave me birth in a land trampled on by tyrants--Heaven, which placed my life in the midst of the reign of factions and crimes, perhaps calls me to trace with my blood the road to happiness, and the liberty of my fellow men! Do you require from me any other sacrifice? If you would have my good name, I surrender it to you; I only wish for reputation in order to do good to my fellow-creatures. If to preserve it, it be necessary to betray by a cowardly silence the cause of the truth and of the people, take it, sully it,--I will no longer defend it. Now that I have defended myself, I may attack you. I will not do it; I offer you peace. I forget your injuries; I put up with your insults; but on one condition, that is, you join me in opposing the factions which distract our country, and, the most dangerous of all, that of La Fayette: this pseudo-hero of the two worlds, who, after having been present at the revolution of the New World, has only exerted himself here in arresting the progress of liberty in the old hemisphere. You, Brissot, did not you agree with me that this chief was the executioner and a.s.sa.s.sin of the people, that the ma.s.sacre of the Champ-de-Mars had caused the Revolution to retrograde for twenty years? Is this man less redoubtable because he is at this time at the head of the army? No. Hasten then! Let the sword of the laws strike horizontally at the heads of great conspirators. The news which has arrived to us from the army is of threatening import. Already it sows division amongst the national guards and the troops of the line; already the blood of citizens has flowed at Metz; already the best patriots are incarcerated at Strasbourg. I tell you, you are accused of all these evils: wipe out these suspicions by uniting with us, and let us be reconciled; but let it be for the sake of saving our common country."

BOOK XIV.

I.

Night was far advanced at the moment when Robespierre concluded his eloquent discourse in the midst of the enthusiasm of the Jacobins. The Jacobins and the Girondists then separated more exasperated than ever.

They hesitated before this important severance, which, by weakening the patriotic party, might deliver the army over to La Fayette, and the a.s.sembly to the Feuillants.[20] Petion, friend of Robespierre and Brissot, at the same time closely allied to the Jacobins and with Madame Roland, kept his popularity in equilibrium for fear of losing half of it if he decided positively for one side or the other. He tried next day to effect a general reconciliation. "On both sides," he said, with a tremulous voice, "I see my friends." There was an apparent truce; but Guadet and Brissot printed their speeches, with offensive additions, against Robespierre. They doggedly sapped his reputation by fresh calumnies. On the 30th of April another storm broke out.

It was proposed to interdict all denunciations unaccompanied by proofs.

"Reflect on what is proposed to you," said Robespierre: "the majority here belongs to a faction, which desires by this means to calumniate us freely, and stifle our accusations by silence. If you decree that I am prohibited from defending myself from the libellers who conspire against me, I shall quit this place, and will bury myself in retreat." "We will follow you, Robespierre," exclaimed the women in the tribunes. "They have profited by the discourse of Petion," he continued, "to disseminate infamous libels against me. Petion himself is insulted. His heart beats in sympathy with mine; he groans over the insults with which I am a.s.sailed. Read Brissot's journal, and you will there see that I am invited not always to be apostrophising the people in my discourses.

Yes, it is to be forbidden to p.r.o.nounce the name of the people under pain of pa.s.sing for a malcontent,--a tribune. I am compared to the Gracchi: they are right so to compare me. What may be perhaps common between us is their tragical end. That is little: they make me responsible for a writing of Marat, who points me out as a tribune by preaching blood and slaughter. Have I ever professed such principles? Am I guilty of the extravagance of such an excited writer as Marat?"

At these words, Lasource, the friend of Brissot, wished to speak, and was refused. Merlin demanded if the peace sworn yesterday ought to bind only one of two parties, and to authorise the other to spread calumnies against Robespierre? The a.s.sembly tumultuously insisted on the orators being silent. Legendre declared that the chamber was partial.

Robespierre quitted the tribune, approached the president, and addressed him with menacing gestures, and in language impossible to be heard in the noise of the chamber, and the taunts and sneers profusely scattered by the opposing factions.

"Why do we see this ferocity among the _intrigants_ against Robespierre?" exclaimed one of the partisans when tranquillity was re-established. "Because he is the only man capable of making head against their party, if they should succeed in forming it. Yes, in revolutions we require those men, who, full of self-denial, deliver themselves as voluntary victims to factions. The people should support them. You have found those men--Robespierre and Petion. Will you abandon them to their enemies?" "No! no!" exclaimed a thousand voices, and a motion, proposed by the president (Danton), declaring that Brissot had calumniated Robespierre, was carried in the affirmative.

II.

The journals took part, according to their politics, in these intestine wars of the patriots. "Robespierre," said the _Revolution de Paris_, "how is it that this man, whom the people bore in triumph to his house when he left the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, has now become a problem? For a long while you believed yourself the only column of French liberty. Your name was like the holy ark, no one could touch it without being struck with death. You sought to be the man of the people. You have neither the exterior of the orator, nor the genius which disposes of the will of men. You have stirred up the clubs with your language; the incense burnt in your honour has intoxicated you. The G.o.d of patriotism hath become a man. The apogee of your glory was on the 17th July, 1791. From that day your star declined. Robespierre, the patriots do not like that you should present such a spectacle to them. When the people press around the tribune to which you ascend, it is not to hear your self-eulogies, but to hear you enlighten popular opinion. You are incorruptible--true; but yet there are better citizens than you: there are those who are as good, and do not boast of it. Why have you not the simplicity which is ignorant of itself, and that right quality of the ancient times which you sometimes refer to as possessed by you?