The French Revolution Part 7

CHAPTER XII

THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE

The disappearance of Louis XVI from the scene left the Mountain and the Gironde face to face, to wage their faction fight, a fight to the knife; while France in her armies more n.o.bly maintained her greater struggle on the frontier. There for a while after Valmy all had prospered. Brunswick had fallen back to Coblenz. A French army under the Marquis de Custine had overrun all the Rhineland as far as Mainz.

Dumouriez, transferred from the Ardennes to the Belgian frontier, had invaded the Austrian Netherlands. On the 6th of November he won a considerable victory at Jemmappes, and towards the end of December, he controlled most of the province.

The Convention, elated at these successes, issued decrees proclaiming a crusade against the European tyrannies, and announcing the propaganda of the principles of liberty. But in practice the French invasion did not {171} generally produce very edifying results. Generals and troops plundered unmercifully, to make up for the disorganization of their own service and lack of pay, and even the French Government imposed the expenses of the war on the countries that had to support its horrors.

The close of the year 1792 marked a period of success. The opening of 1793, however, saw the pendulum swing back. New enemies gathered about France. Sardinia, whose province of Savoy had been invaded, now had a considerable army in the field. At short intervals after the execution of Louis, England, Holland, Spain, joined the coalition. And the Convention light-heartedly accepted this acc.u.mulation of war. To face the storm it appointed in January a committee of general defence of twenty-five members; but Danton alone would have done better than the twenty-five. While the trial of the King proceeded he was casting about for support in the a.s.sembly for a constructive policy. He stretched a hand to the Girondins; they refused it; and Danton turned back to the Mountain once more, compelled to choose between two factions the one that was for the moment willing to act with him.

{172} Through February and into March the military situation kept getting worse, and the Mountain made repeated attacks on the Gironde.

On the 5th of March news reached Paris that the Austrians had captured Aix-la-Chapelle, and that the French general Miranda had been compelled to abandon his guns and to retire from before Maestricht, which he was besieging. Danton, who was in the north, arranging the annexation of the Netherlands to France, started for Paris at once. On the 14th the capital heard, with amazement and alarm, that the Vendee had risen in arms for G.o.d and King Louis XVII.

The Vendee was a large district of France, a great part of the ancient province of Poitou, lying just to the south of the Loire and near the Atlantic Ocean. A great part of the country was cut up by tracts of forest and thick and numerous hedges. The peasants were fairly prosperous, and well-affected to the priests and seigneurs. The latter were mostly resident landlords, holders of small estates, living near and on kindly terms with their peasantry. The priests and n.o.bles had long viewed the Revolution with aversion, an aversion intensified by the proclamation of the Republic and the execution of the King. And {173} when, on the 26th of February, the Convention pa.s.sed an army ballot law and sent agents to press recruits among the villages of the Vendee, the peasants joined their natural leaders and rose in arms against the Government. The Vendeens were, in their own country, formidable opponents. They had born leaders, men who showed wonderful courage, dash, and loyalty. They prayed before charging an enemy, and on the march or in battle sang hymns, always the most irresistible of battle songs. Their badges were the white flag, the Bourbon lilies, and the cross. For awhile they swept everything before them.

Danton arrived in Paris on the 8th of March. He immediately attempted to reconcile the factions of the a.s.sembly, and to persuade its members to turn their wasted vigour into war measures. From neither side did he receive much encouragement. To his demands for new levies and volunteer regiments, Robespierre replied that the most urgent step was to purify the army of its anti-revolutionary elements. To his proposal that the executive should be strengthened by composing the ministry of members of the Convention, the Girondins opposed their implacable suspicion and hatred. But Paris had long been working up {174} its hostility to the Gironde; an insurrectional committee had just come into existence that aimed at dealing with them after the fashion in which it had dealt with Louis on the 10th of August; and the Girondins'

stand against Danton precipitated the outbreak.

On the 9th of March a premature and imperfectly organized insurrection occurred, directed against the Gironde. The demonstrators marched against the Convention, but were held in check by a few hundred well-affected provincial national guards. On the 10th it became known that Dumouriez was severely pressed by the Austrians and in danger of being cut off. Under the influence of this news, and with the Girondins showing little fight because of the event of the day before, the Convention pa.s.sed a measure of terrorism; it voted the establishment of a Revolutionary Tribunal to judge "traitors, conspirators, and anti-revolutionists." In vain Buzot and other Girondins pointed out that this meant establishing "a despotism worse than the old." Danton, unquenchably opportunist, supported the measure, and it was carried. Immediately after this he left Paris for the frontier once more. On the 18th of March Dumouriez was severely defeated at Neerwinden. And now not {175} only was the Vendee in arms, but Lyons, Ma.r.s.eilles, Normandy, appeared on the point of throwing off the yoke of Paris and of the Jacobins; the situation looked well-nigh desperate. A week later the papers published letters of Dumouriez which showed that ever since the trial of the King the Girondin general had been factious, that is, had been as much inclined to turn his arms against Paris as against the Austrians. Danton was now back from the frontier; he and Robespierre were at once elected to the committee of general defence; and that committee declared itself in continuous session.

Extraordinary measures were now pa.s.sed in quick succession which, added to the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, made up a formidable machinery of terrorism. Deputies of the Convention were sent out on mission to superintend the working of the armies and of the internal police. They were given the widest powers,--were virtually made pro-dictators. On the 1st of April was pa.s.sed a new law of suspects to reinforce the action of the representatives on mission and of the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the 6th of April was created the executive power that Danton urged the need of so pertinaciously; this was the Committee of {176} Public Safety, a body of nine members of the Convention, acting secretly, directing the ministers, and having general control of the executive functions. The Girondins had to submit to the measure, and their opponents secured control of the Committee. Among its first members were Danton, Cambon, and Barere.

Just as the Committee of Public Safety came into existence the situation on the frontier was getting even worse. On the 4th of April Dumouriez, fearing that the Convention would send him to the Revolutionary Tribunal, made an attempt to turn his army against the Government, and failing, rode over into the Austrian lines. At the same time, Custine was being driven out of Alsace by the Prussians, who, on the 14th of April, laid siege to Mainz.

With the Mountain immensely strengthened by the formation of the Committee of Public Safety, the attack on the Girondins increased in vigour. Robespierre accused them of complicity with Dumouriez in treasonable intentions against the Republic. The Gironde retaliated, and, on the 13th of April, succeeded in rallying a majority of the Convention in a second onslaught against Marat for his incendiary articles. It was decreed that the _Ami du peuple_ should be sent to the Revolutionary {177} Tribunal. It was the last success of the Girondins, and it did not carry them far. The Jacobins closed their ranks against this a.s.sault. They had the Commune and the Revolutionary Tribunal under their control. The former body sent a pet.i.tion to the Convention demanding the exclusion of twenty-two prominent Girondins as enemies of the Revolution; and a few days later the Tribunal absolved Marat of all his sins.

Incidentally to the bitter struggle between the two factions, great questions, social, political, economic, were being debated, though not with great results. They could really all be brought back to the one fundamental question which the course of the Revolution had brought to the surface. What was to be the position of the poor man, and especially of the poor man in the modern city and under industrial surroundings,--what was to be his position in the new form of social adjustment which the Revolution was bringing about? What about the price of food? the monopoly of capital? the private ownership of property? Such were some of the questions that underlay the debates of the Convention in the spring of 1793.

The food question was dealt with in various {178} ways. The famous law of the Maximum, pa.s.sed on the 3rd of May, attempted to regulate the prices of food by a sliding scale tariff. The measure was economically unsound, and in many ways worked injustice; it alarmed property holders and alienated them from the Government. On its own initiative the Commune made great efforts, and with some success, to maintain the food supply of the city, and to keep down the price of bread. Spending about 12,000 francs a day, less than half a sou per head, it succeeded for the most part in keeping bread down to about 3 sous per pound.

But by virtue of what theory of government were the poor ent.i.tled to this special protection? Was the Jacobin party prepared to advance towards a socialist or collectivist form of government? Of that there was no sign; and several years were yet to pa.s.s before Babeuf was to give weight to a collectivist theory of the State. There were special reasons of some force to explain why the Convention, however much it might be addicted to humanitarian theories, however anxious it might be to curry favour with the lowest cla.s.s, should keep a stiff att.i.tude on the question of collectivism and property. The whole financial system of the Revolution, endorsed by the {179} Convention as by its predecessors, was based on the private proprietorship of land and on increasing the number of small proprietors. Not only was the Convention bound to maintain the effect of the large sales of national lands that had already taken place, but the prejudices and temper of its members made in the same direction. Robespierre, trying to reconcile the narrow logic of a lawyer with the need of pleasing his ardent supporters, based his position on a charitable and not on a political motive: "Public a.s.sistance is a sacred debt of Society.

Society is under the obligation of securing a living for all its members, either by procuring work for them, or by securing the necessaries of existence to those who are past work."

Although the Convention maintained a conservative att.i.tude in regard to the question of real property, it was decidedly inclined towards a confiscatory policy in all that related to personal wealth. This did not, however, become well marked until after the conclusion of the great struggle between the Mountain and the Gironde, which entered its last phase in May.

On the 12th of that month the Convention voted the formation of an army of _sans-culottes_ for the defence of Paris, a measure of more {180} significance for the internal than for the external affairs of France.

On the 14th the Gironde made their reply by reading an address of the city of Bordeaux offering to march to Paris to help the Convention. On the 15th the Commune proceeded to appoint one of its nominees as provisional general of the national guard of Paris. And on the following day the Girondins, alarmed into an attempt at action, proposed to the a.s.sembly that the munic.i.p.al authorities of Paris should be removed from office and that the subst.i.tutes for the deputies to the Convention should be a.s.sembled at Bourges in case the Convention itself should be attacked and destroyed. This last proposal was highly characteristic of the Girondins, heroic as orators, but as members of a political party always timid of action.

The Committee of Public Safety, already tuned to its higher duties and viewing the faction fight of the a.s.sembly with some slight degree of detachment, steered a middle and politic course. Barere proposed a compromise, which the Girondins weakly accepted. But its enemies continued strenuous action, formed a new insurrectional committee, and set Hebert's infamous sheet, the _Pere d.u.c.h.esne_, {181} howling for their blood. This newspaper deserves a few lines.

Hebert, a man of the middle cla.s.s, after a stormy youth drifted into revolutionary journalism. With much verve, and a true Voltairian spirit, he at first took up a moderate att.i.tude, but being a time server soon discovered that his interest lay in another direction.

From the middle of 1792 he rose rapidly to great popularity by his loud defence of extreme courses. The _Pere d.u.c.h.esne_, copies of which are at this day among the greatest of bibliographical curiosities, was written for the people and in a jargon out-Heroding their own, a compound of oaths and obscenities. The _Pere d.u.c.h.esne_ was nearly always in a state of _grande joie_ or of _grande colere_, and at the epoch we have reached his anger is being continuously poured out, the filthiest stream of invective conceivable, against the Girondins.

With Marat and Hebert fanning the flames, the insurrectional committee drew up a new list of 32 suspect deputies. The Committee of Public Safety, appealed to by the Girondins, ordered the arrest of Hebert. On the following day, the 25th of May, the Commune demanded his release.

Isnard, one of the {182} Gironde, that day acting as president of the Convention, answered the deputation of the Commune with unbridled anger, and concluded by declaring that if Paris dared to lay one finger on a member of the Convention, the city would be destroyed. There was in this an unfortunate echo of the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto.

On the 26th Robespierre, at the Jacobin Club, gave his formal a.s.sent to the proposal that an insurrection should be organized against the Gironde. Two days later Hebert was released, and the Commune and the committees of the sections began organizing the movement. As a first step Hanriot, a sottish but very determined battalion leader, was placed in supreme command of the national guard.

The movement took place on the 31st of May. On that day the Convention was subjected to the organized pressure of a mob of about 30,000 men, the greater part national guards. The Convention was not invaded, however, nor was there any attempt, any desire, to suppress it as an inst.i.tution. For the leaders fully realized that it was by maintaining the Convention as a figurehead that they could continue the fiction that the Government {183} of France was not local, or Parisian, but national, or French. But while refraining from a direct attack on the Convention they subjected it to a pressure so strong and so long continued that they converted it, as they intended, into an organ of their will.

For three days Hanriot and his men remained at the doors of the Convention, and for three days, with growing agitation, the members within wrestled with the problem thus insistently presented at the point of bayonets and at the mouth of cannon. Motions of all sorts, some logical, some contradictory, were presented. Robespierre moved the arrest of twenty of his colleagues. The Committee of Public Safety, anxious to retain supreme power, tried for some middle course that might satisfy the mob. Barere proposed that, to relieve the Convention from its difficulty, the Girondins should p.r.o.nounce their own exclusion from the a.s.sembly. The impetuous Isnard, one of the few attacked members present, accepted. This was on the 2d of June.

On the basis of the self-exclusion of the Girondin deputies the Committee of Public Safety now believed it could regain control of the situation, thereby demonstrating that it {184} had formed an inadequate estimate of Hanriot. It decided to proclaim the suppression of the insurrectional committee, and it announced this to Hanriot at the same time as the self-exclusion of the Girondins. But Hanriot, sitting his horse at the doors of the Convention, was resolute and tipsy, a man of the sword not to be moved by parliamentary eloquence. He declined to accept any compromise, and ordered his guns to be brought up and unlimbered. The Convention was immediately stampeded by this act of drunken courage. The members attempted to escape. But every avenue, every street was closed by Hanriot's national guard, and Marat, blandly triumphant, led the members back to the hall sacred to their deliberations. There, ashamed and exhausted, at eleven o'clock that night, the Convention mutilated itself, suspended twenty-two of its members, and ordered the arrest of twenty-nine others.

{185}

CHAPTER XIII

THE REIGN OF TERROR

For six weeks after the fall of the Gironde, until the 13th of July, the course of events in France, both in Paris and in the provinces, reflected the bitterness of the two factions, conqueror and conquered. In a minor way, it also revealed the fundamental difference of att.i.tude between the two wings of the successful party, between Danton, content to push the Girondins out of the way of the national policy, and Robespierre, rankling to destroy those who offended his puritanical and exclusive doctrine.

The Girondins had behind them a strong country backing; they had always been the advocates of the provinces against Paris; some of them had declared for federalism, for local republics, semi-independent states centring about Lyons, Ma.r.s.eilles, Bordeaux. Those who succeeded in escaping from Paris, made their way to where they might obtain support, and found, here and there, arms open to {186} receive them. Lyons had risen against the Government on the 29th of May, and had rid itself of the Jacobin committee headed by Chalier, that had so far held it under control. Ma.r.s.eilles followed the example of Lyons. Normandy, where a considerable group of the fugitive deputies sought refuge, began to make preparations for marching on the capital.

This was serious enough. But two other dangers, each greater, threatened Paris. The military situation on the northern frontier was still no better, while the Vendeens were advancing from success to success, were increasing the size, the confidence, the efficiency of their armies. In such a desperate situation Danton seemed the only possible saviour, and for a few weeks he had his way. New generals were appointed; Custine to the Netherlands, Beauharnais to the Rhine, Biron to the Vendee; and at the same time negotiations were opened with the powers. But fortune refused to smile on Danton. Ill success met him at every turn, and opened the way to power for Robespierre. On the 10th of June the Vendeens captured the town of Saumur on the Loire, giving them a good pa.s.sage for carrying operations to the northern side of the river. A council of war decided that an {187} advance should be made into Brittany and Normandy, both strongly disaffected to the Convention. In the latter province Brissot and Buzot were already actively forming troops for the projected march against Paris. But before advancing to the north the Vendeen generals decided that it was imperative they should capture the city of Nantes, which controls all the country about the mouth of the Loire. Preparations were made accordingly, and, as the Vendeens had no siege train, Cathelineau and Charette headed a desperate a.s.sault against the city on the 29th of June. Cathelineau was killed. Nantes defended itself bravely. The Vendeens were thrown back, and, as many writers have thought, their failure at that point and at that moment saved the Republic.

Apart from this one success, everything had been going ill with Danton's measures, and the Robespierrists were making corresponding headway. On the 10th of July the Committee of Public Safety was reconst.i.tuted, and Danton was not re-elected. Couthon and St. Just joined it, and Robespierre himself went on two weeks later; among the other members Barere for the moment followed Robespierre, while Carnot accepted every internal {188} measure, concentrating all his energy on the administration of the war department.

It was just at this instant, with the Vendeens for the moment checked, that Normandy made its effort. On the 13th of July its army under the Baron de Wimpffen, a const.i.tutional monarchist, was met by a Parisian army at Pacy, 30 miles from the capital. The Normans met with defeat, a defeat they were never able to retrieve.

On the same day a dramatic event was occurring at Paris,--the last despairing stroke of the Gironde against its detested opponents. From Caen, where Brissot and Buzot had been helping to organize Wimpffen's army, there had started for the capital a few days previously a young woman, Charlotte Corday. Full of enthusiasm, like Madame Roland, for the humanitarian ideals that blended so largely with the pa.s.sions of the Revolution, she represented in its n.o.blest, most fervent form that French provincial liberalism that looked to the Girondins for leadership. Like them she detested the three great figures who had led the Parisian democracy through ma.s.sacre to its triumph,--Danton, Robespierre, Marat.

And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination, Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims, always corrupting opinion with his sc.u.m of printer's ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it appeared that in this one individual all that was n.o.ble and beautiful in the Revolution was converted into all that was hideous and ign.o.ble; and she slowly began to perceive that even a feeble woman like herself could remove that blot from France, if only she could find the courage. . .

On the 13th of July, Charlotte Corday, accomplished her twofold sacrifice. She gained admission to Marat's house and stabbed him in his bath; she meekly but courageously accepted the consequences. After being nearly lynched by the mob, she was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and sent to the guillotine.

The Prussians captured Mainz on the 23rd of July, the Austrians Valenciennes on the 28th. These disasters enabled Robespierre and the Commune to impose their views as to the conduct of the military affairs of the Republic. Decrees were pa.s.sed for purifying the army. The aristocrat generals, Beauharnais, Biron, Custine, were removed, and, eventually, were all sent to the scaffold. _Sans-culottes_, some honest, some capable, many dishonest, many {190} incapable, replaced them.

Sans-culottism reigned supreme. Civic purity became the universal test; and on this shibboleth the Commune inaugurated a system of politics of which the Tammany organization in New York offers the most conspicuous example at the beginning of the 20th century. Hebert was the party boss; his nominees filled the offices; graft was placed on the order of the day. The ministry of war and its numerous contracts became the happy hunting ground of the Parisian politician,--Hebert himself, on one occasion, working off an edition of 600,000 copies of his _Pere d.u.c.h.esne_ through that ministry. And lastly one must add that the army of the interior, the army facing the Vendee fell into the hands of the politicians. An incapable drunkard, Rossignol, was placed in command instead of Biron who, after two victories over the Vendeens, was dismissed, imprisoned and sent to the guillotine.

It was perhaps necessary that a brave and dashing soldier of the old school like Biron should be removed from command, if the decrees of the Convention for prosecuting the war against the Vendee were to be carried out. One of those decrees ordered that "the forests shall be razed, the crops cut down, the cattle {191} seized. The Minister of War shall send combustible materials of all sorts to burn the woods, brush, and heath."

That was the spirit now entering the Revolution, the fury of destruction, the dementia of suspicion, the reign of terror.

The terrorists were of two sorts, the men of faction like Hebert; together with those who accepted terrorism reluctantly but daringly like Danton; with them terror was a political weapon. With Robespierre, however, and his Jacobin stalwarts, it was something more, a strangely compounded thing, a political weapon in a sense, but a weapon behind which stood a bigot, a fanatic, a temperament governed by jealous fears and by the morbid revengefulness of the man of feeble physique. It was Robespierre who always stood for the worst side of terrorism, for all that was most insidious and deep seated in it; and after its failure and the reaction in the summer of 1794, it was his name that was deservedly a.s.sociated with the reign of terror.

Robespierre in the summer of 1793 was still logically maintaining his att.i.tude; while Danton fought the enemies of the Republic, he fought Danton's measures. He told the Jacobin Club that it was always the same {192} proposal they had to face, new levies, new battalions, to feed the great butchery. The plan of the enemies of the people,--he did not yet dare declare that Danton was one of them,--was to destroy the republic by civil and foreign war. In a ma.n.u.script note found after his death, he says "The interior danger comes from the bourgeois; to conquer them one must rally the people. The Convention must use the people and must spread insurrection. . . ." In August, carrying his thought a step further, he appeals to the Jacobin Club against the traitors whom he sees in everyone whose opinion diverges a hair's breadth from his own. There are traitors, he declares, even on the Committee of Public Safety, and all traitors must go to the guillotine.

At the moment this speech was delivered Admiral Lord Hood had just captured Toulon, while Ma.r.s.eilles was being attacked by Carteaux at the head of an army acting for the Convention. Coburg, commanding the Austrian forces in the Netherlands, was gaining a series of minor successes, and his cavalry was not much more than four days' march from Paris. Provisions were being gathered into the city by requisition, that is, by armed columns operating in the neighbouring departments. {193} Confiscatory measures pa.s.sed the Convention for raising a forced loan of 1,000,000,000 francs, for converting "superfluous" income to the use of the State,--a policy of poor man against rich.

Alongside of these measures terrorism was getting into full swing. The revolutionary tribunal had its staff quadrupled on the 5th of September; within a few days the sections were given increased police powers; and Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, the two strongest supporters of Hebert in the Convention were elected to the Committee of Public Safety.

On the 17th was pa.s.sed the famous _Loi des suspects_, the most drastic, if not the first, decree on that burning question. It provided that all partisans of federalism and tyranny, all enemies of liberty, all _ci-devant_ n.o.bles not known for their attachment to the new inst.i.tutions, must be arrested; and further that the section committees must draw up lists of suspects residing within their districts. All this meant a repet.i.tion on a larger and better organized plan of the ma.s.sacres of a year before. As Danton had said in the debates on the Revolutionary Tribunal: "This tribunal will take the place of that supreme tribunal, the vengeance of the people; let us be terrible so {194} as to dispense the people from being terrible." Judicial, organized terror was to replace popular, chaotic terror.

With terror now organized, the prisons filled, and the Revolutionary Tribunal sending victims to the guillotine daily, the internal struggle became one between two terrorist parties, of Hebert and of Robespierre, both committed to the policy of the day, but with certain differences.

Hebert viewed the system as one affording personal safety,--the executioner being safer than the victim,--and the best opportunity for graft. The man of means was singled out by his satellites for suspicion and arrest, and was then informed that a judicious payment in the right quarter would secure release. Beyond that, Hebert probably cared little enough one way or the other; he was merely concerned in extracting all the material satisfaction he could out of life. With Robespierre the case was different; it was a struggle for a cause, for a creed, a creed of which he was the only infallible prophet. Poor, neat, respectable, unswerving but jealous, he commanded wide admiration as the type of the incorruptible democrat; stiffly and self-consciously he was reproducing the popular pose of Benjamin Franklin. {195} Between him and Hebert there could be no real union. He was willing, while Hebert remained strong in his hold on the public, to act alongside of him, but that was all.

Under the pressure of the Commune and the Mountain, the Convention put the laws of terror in force against the defeated Gironde on the 3rd of October. Forty-three deputies, including Philippe _Egalite_, were sent to the tribunal, and about one hundred others were outlawed or ordered under arrest. The Convention, having thus washed its hands before the public, now felt able to make a stand against the increasing encroachments of the Commune, and on the 10th St. Just proposed that the Government should continue revolutionary till the peace, which meant that the Committee of Public Safety should govern and the const.i.tution remain suspended.

The Committee showed as much vigour in dealing with the provinces as it showed feebleness in dealing with Paris. Through August and September, rebellious Lyons had been besieged; early in October it fell. The Committee proposed a decree which the Convention accepted,--from June 1793 to July 1794 it accepted everything,--declaring that Lyons should be razed to the earth. Couthon was {196} sent to carry out this draconian edict, but proved too mild. At the end of October Collot d'Herbois, Fouche and 3,000 Parisian _sans-culottes_ were sent down, and for awhile all went well. Houses were demolished, and executions were got in hand with so much energy that cannon and grape shot had to be used to keep pace with the rapidity of the sentences. About three thousand persons in all probably perished.