The Psychology of Revolution Part 17

Beside the characteristics common to all a.s.semblies there are some created by influences of environment and circ.u.mstances, which give any particular a.s.sembly of men a special physiognomy. Most of the characteristics observable in the Const.i.tuent and Legislative a.s.semblies reappeared, in an exaggerated form, in the Convention.

This a.s.sembly comprised about seven hundred and fifty deputies, of whom rather more than a third had sat in the Const.i.tuent or the Legislative a.s.sembly. By terrorising the population the Jacobins contrived to triumph at the elections. The majority of the electors, six millions out of seven, preferred to abstain from voting.

As to the professions, the a.s.sembly contained a large number of lawyers, advocates, notaries, bailiffs, ex-magistrates, and a few literary men.

The mentality of the Convention was not h.o.m.ogeneous. Now, an a.s.sembly composed of individuals of widely different characters soon splits up into a number of groups. The Convention very early contained three-the Gironde, the Mountain, and the Plain. The const.i.tutional monarchists had almost disappeared.

The Gironde and the Mountain, extreme parties, consisted of about a hundred members apiece, who successively became leaders. In the Mountain were the most advanced members: Couthon, Herault de Sech.e.l.les, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Marat, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Barras, Saint-Just, Fouche, Tallien, Carrier, Robespierre, &c. In the Gironde were Brissot, Petion, Condorcet, Vergniaud, &c.

The five hundred other members of the a.s.sembly-that is, the great majority-const.i.tuted what was known as the Plain.

This latter formed a floating ma.s.s, silent, undecided, and timid; ready to follow every impulse and to be carried away by the excitement of the moment. It gave ear indifferently to the stronger of the two preceding groups. After obeying the Gironde for some time it allowed itself to be led away by the Mountain, when the latter triumphed over its enemy. This was a natural consequence of the law already stated, by which the weak invariably fall under the dominion of the stronger wills.

The influence of great manipulators of men was displayed in a high degree during the Convention. It was constantly led by a violent minority of narrow minds, whose intense convictions lent them great strength.

A brutal and audacious minority will always lead a fearful and irresolute majority. This explains the constant tendency toward extremes to be observed in all revolutionary a.s.semblies. The history of the Convention verifies once more the law of acceleration studied in another chapter.

The men of the Convention were thus bound to pa.s.s from moderation to greater and greater violence. Finally they decimated themselves. Of the 180 Girondists who at the outset led the Convention 140 were killed or fled, and finally the most fanatical of the Terrorists, Robespierre, reigned alone over a terrified crowd of servile representatives.

Yet it was among the five hundred members of the majority, uncertain and floating as it was, that the intelligence and experience were to be found. The technical committees to whom the useful work of the Convention was due were recruited from the Plain.

More or less indifferent to politics, the members of the Plain were chiefly anxious that no one should pay particular attention to them. Shut up in their committees, they showed themselves as little as possible in the a.s.sembly, which explains why the sessions of the Convention contained barely a third of the deputies.

Unhappily, as often happens, these intelligent and honest men were completely devoid of character, and the fear which always dominated them made them vote for the worst of the measures introduced by their dreaded masters.

The men of the Plain voted for everything they were ordered to vote for-the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror, &c. It was with their a.s.sistance that the Mountain crushed the Gironde, and Robespierre destroyed the Hebertists and Dantonists. Like all weak people, they followed the strong. The gentle philanthropists who composed the Plain, and const.i.tuted the majority of the a.s.sembly, contributed, by their pusillanimity, to bring about the frightful excesses of the Convention.

The psychological note always prevailing in the Convention was a horrible fear. It was more especially through fear that men cut off one another's heads, in the doubtful hope of keeping their own on their shoulders.

Such a fear was, of course, very comprehensible. The unhappy deputies deliberated amid the hootings and vociferations of the tribunes. At every moment veritable savages, armed with pikes, invaded the a.s.sembly, and the majority of the members no longer dared to attend the sessions. When by chance they did go it was only to vote in silence according to the orders of the Mountain, which was only a third as numerous.

The fear which dominated the latter, although less visible, was just as profound. Men destroyed their enemies, not only because they were shallow fanatics, but because they were convinced that their own existence was threatened. The judges of the revolutionary Tribunals trembled no less. They would have willingly acquitted Danton, and the widow of Camille Desmoulins, and many others. They dared not.

But it was above all when Robespierre became the sole master that the phantom of fear oppressed the a.s.sembly. It has truly been said that a glance from the master made his colleagues shrink with fear. On their faces one read "the pallor of fear and the abandon of despair."

All feared Robespierre and Robespierre feared all. It was because he feared conspiracies against him that he cut off men's heads, and it was also through fear that others allowed him to do so.

The memoirs of members of the Convention show plainly what a horrible memory they retained of this gloomy period. Questioned twenty years later, says Taine, on the true aim and the intimate thoughts of the Committee of Public Safety, Barrere replied:-

"We had only one feeling, that of self-preservation; only one desire, that of preserving our lives, which each of us believed to be threatened. You had your neighbour's head cut off so that your neighbour should not have you yourself guillotined."

The history of the Convention const.i.tutes one of the most striking examples that could be given of the influence of leaders and of fear upon an a.s.sembly.

CHAPTER IV

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CONVENTION

1. The activity of the Clubs and the Commune during the Convention.

During the whole of its existence the Convention was governed by the leaders of the clubs and of the Commune.

We have already seen what was their influence on the preceding a.s.semblies. It became overwhelming during the Convention. The history of this latter is in reality that of the clubs and the Commune which dominated it. They enslaved, not only the Convention, but also all France. Numerous little provincial clubs, directed by that of the capital, supervised magistrates, denounced suspects, and undertook the execution of all the revolutionary orders.

When the clubs or the Commune had decided upon certain measures they had them voted by the a.s.sembly then and there. If the a.s.sembly resisted, they sent their armed delegations thither- that is, armed bands recruited from the sc.u.m of the populace. They conveyed injunctions which were always slavishly obeyed. The Commune was so sure of its strength that it even demanded of the Convention the immediate expulsion of deputies who displeased it.

While the Convention was composed generally of educated men, the members of the Commune and the clubs comprised a majority of small shopkeepers, labourers, and artisans, incapable of personal opinions, and always guided by their leaders-Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Robespierre, &c.

Of the two powers, clubs and insurrectionary Commune, the latter exercised the greater influence in Paris, because it had made for itself a revolutionary army. It held under its orders forty- eight committees of National Guards, who asked nothing more than to kill, sack, and, above all, plunder.

The tyranny with which the Commune crushed Paris was frightful. For example, it delegated to a certain cobbler, Chalandon by name, the right of surveillance over a portion of the capital-a right implying the power to send to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and therefore to the guillotine, all those whom he suspected. Certain streets were thus almost depopulated by him.

The Convention struggled feebly against the Commune at the outset, but did not prolong its resistance. The culminating point of the conflict occurred when the Convention wished to arrest Hebert, the friend of the Commune, and the latter sent armed bands who threatened the a.s.sembly and demanded the expulsion of the Girondists who had provoked the measure. Upon the Convention refusing the Commune besieged it on June 2, 1798, by means of its revolutionary army, which was under the orders of Hanriot. Terrified, the a.s.sembly gave up twenty-seven of its members. The Commune immediately sent a delegation ironically to felicitate it upon its obedience.

After the fall of the Girondists the Convention submitted itself completely to the injunctions of the omnipotent Commune. The latter decreed the levy of a revolutionary army, to be accompanied by a tribunal and a guillotine, which was to traverse the whole of France in order to execute suspects.

Only towards the end of its existence, after the fall of Robespierre, did the Convention contrive to escape from the yoke of the Jacobins and the Commune. It closed the Jacobin club and guillotined its leading members.

Despite such sanctions the leaders still continued to excite the populace and hurl it against the Convention. In Germinal and Prairial it underwent regular sieges. Armed delegations even succeeded in forcing the Convention to vote the re-establishment of the Commune and the convocation of a new a.s.sembly, a measure which the Convention hastened to annul the moment the insurgents had withdrawn. Ashamed of its fear, it sent for regiments which disarmed the faubourgs and made nearly ten thousand arrests. Twenty-six leaders of the movement were put to death, and six deputies who were concerned in the riot were guillotined.

But the Convention did not resist to any purpose. When it was no longer led by the clubs and the Commune it obeyed the Committee of Public Safety and voted its decrees without discussion.

"The Convention," writes H. Williams, "which spoke of nothing less than having all the princes and kings of Europe brought to its feet loaded with chains, was made prisoner in its own sanctuary by a handful of mercenaries."

2. The Government of France during the Convention-The Terror.

As soon as it a.s.sembled in 1792 the Convention began by decreeing the abolition of royalty, and in spite of the hesitation of a great number of its members, who knew that the provinces were royalist, it proclaimed the Republic.

Intimately persuaded that such a proclamation would transform the civilised world, it inst.i.tuted a new era and a new calendar. The year I. of this era marked the dawn of a world in which reason alone was to reign. It was inaugurated by the trial of Louis XVI., a measure which was ordered by the Commune, but which the majority of the Convention did not desire.

At its outset, in fact, the Convention was governed by its relatively moderate elements, the Girondists. The president and the secretaries had been chosen among the best known of this party. Robespierre, who was later to become the absolute master of the Convention, possessed so little influence at this time that he obtained only six votes for the presidency, while Petion received two hundred and thirty-five.

The Montagnards had at first only a very slight influence. Their power was of later growth. When they were in power there was no longer room in the Convention for moderate members.

Despite their minority the Montagnards found a way to force the a.s.sembly to bring Louis to trial. This was at once a victory over the Girondists, the condemnation of all kings, and a final divorce between the old order and the new.

To bring about the trial they manoeuvred very skilfully, bombarding the Convention with pet.i.tions from the provinces, and sending a deputation from the insurrectional Commune of Paris, which demanded a trial.

According to a characteristic common to the a.s.semblies of the Revolution, that of yielding to threats and always doing the contrary of what they wished, the men of the Convention dared not resist. The trial was decided upon.

The Girondists, who individually would not have wished for the death of the king, voted for it out of fear once they were a.s.sembled. Hoping to save his own head, the Duc d'Orleans, Louis' cousin, voted with them. If, on mounting the scaffold on January 21, 1793, Louis had had that vision of the future which we attribute to the G.o.ds, he would have seen following him, one by one, the greater number of the Girondists whose weakness had been unable to defend him.

Regarded only from the purely utilitarian point of view, the execution of the king was one of the mistakes of the Revolution. It engendered civil war and armed Europe against France. In the Convention itself his death gave rise to intestine struggles, which finally led to the triumph of the Montagnards and the expulsion of the Girondists.

The measures pa.s.sed under the influence of the Montagnards finally became so despotic that sixty departments, comprising the West and the South, revolted. The insurrection, which was headed by many of the expelled deputies, would perhaps have succeeded had not the compromising a.s.sistance of the royalists caused men to fear the return of the ancien regime. At Toulon, in fact, the insurgents acclaimed Louis XVII.

The civil war thus begun lasted during the greater part of the life of the Revolution. It was fought with the utmost savagery. Old men, women, children, all were ma.s.sacred, and villages and crops were burned. In the Vendee alone the number of the killed was reckoned at something between half a million and a million.

Civil war was soon followed by foreign war. The Jacobins thought to remedy all these ills by creating a new Const.i.tution. It was always a tradition with all the revolutionary a.s.semblies to believe in the magic virtues of formula. In France this conviction has never been affected by the failure of experiments.