Part 8 (1/2)
It was at this moment that in Paris the guillotine, working more slowly but more steadily than Fouche's cannon and grape, was claiming some of its most ill.u.s.trious victims. From the 12th to the 15th of October, the Revolutionary Tribunal had to deal with the case of Marie Antoinette.
The Queen, who had been treated with increased severity since the execution of the King, supported the attacks of the pitiless public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, with firmness and dignity. The accusations against her were of the same general character as those against Louis, and require no special comment. But an incident of the trial brought out some of the most nauseous aspects of the Hebert regime.
The Commune had introduced men of the lowest type at {197} the Temple, had placed the Dauphin in the keeping of the infamous cobbler Simon, had attempted to manufacture filthy evidence against the Queen. Hebert went into the witness box to sling mud at her in person, and it was at that moment only, with a look and a word of reply that no instinct could mistake, that she forced a murmur of indignation or sympathy from the public. Robespierre was dining when he heard of the incident, and in his anger with Hebert broke his plate over the table.
The Queen went to the guillotine, driven in an open cart, on the 16th. A week later the Girondins went to trial, twenty-one deputies, among them Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne and Boyer Fonfrede. Their trial lasted five days, and among its auditors was Camille Desmoulins,--Desmoulins, whose pamphlets had helped place his unfortunate opponents where they stood, Desmoulins, whose heart, whose generosity was stirred, who already was revolting against terrorism, who was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of remorse when sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced against the men of the Gironde. It was the first revolt of opinion against the reign of terror, the first {198} perceptible movement of the conscience of France, and it was to send Desmoulins himself to the guillotine.
The Girondins went to the scaffold on the 31st of October. The Duc d'Orleans on the 6th of November; four days later Madame Roland, who met death perhaps a little pedantically but quite n.o.bly; then, on the 12th, Bailly. Of the Girondins who had escaped from Paris several committed suicide, Roland on receiving news of his wife's death; others within the next few months, Condorcet, Petion, Buzot.
In this same month of November 1793 was introduced the Revolutionary Calendar, of which more will be said in the last chapter.[1] The holy seventh day disappeared in favour of the anti-clerical tenth day, Decadi; Saints' days and Church festivals were wiped out. This new departure was a step forward in the religious question which, a few weeks later, brought about an acute crisis.
Between October and December the climax and the turn were reached in the Vendean war. After heavy fighting in October Henri de La Rochejacquelein had invaded Brittany, defeating the Republicans at Chateau Gontier {199} on the 25th. Rossignol now had under his orders the garrison of Mainz and two excellent subordinates in Kleber and Marceau, who succeeded, in spite of their commander, in wresting success at last. On the 13th of December a tremendous struggle took place at Le Mans in which the Vendeens were beaten after a loss of about 15,000 men. Kleber gave them no respite but a few days later cut up the remnants at Savenay. Although fighting continued long afterwards this proved the end of the Vendean grand army.
These victories were immediately followed by judicial repression. The _conventionnel_ Carrier organized a Revolutionary Tribunal at Nantes, and committed worse horrors than Fouche had at Lyons. Finding a rate of 200 executions a day insufficient he invented the noyade. River barges were taken, their bottoms were hinged so as to open conveniently, and prisoners, tied in pairs, naked and regardless of s.e.x, were taken out in them, and released into the water. At Nantes, like at Arras and several other points, the proceedings of the Revolutionary Tribunals and of the gangs who worked the prisons, were marked by gross immorality in dealing with the women prisoners. At Nantes, Carrier, {200} most thorough and most infamous of the Terrorists, is said to have caused the death of 15,000 persons in four months.
The fury of the Revolution, which turned to frenzy and dementia at Nantes, blazed into a marvellous flame of patriotic energy on the frontiers. Nearly half a million men were enrolled in the course of 1793. A new volunteer battalion was added to each battalion of the old army, the new unit being named a _demi-brigade_. Rankers were pushed up to high command, partly by political influence, partly for merit.
Jourdan, an old soldier, a shop-keeper, became general of the army of the north, and on the 15th of October defeated Coburg at Wattignies. The brilliant Hoche, ex-corporal of the French guards, was placed at the head of the army of the Moselle. Pichegru, the son of a peasant, took over the army of the Rhine. Under these citizen generals new tactics replaced the old. Pipe-clay and method gave way to Sans-culottism and dash. The greatest of the generals of the Revolution said: ”I had sooner see a soldier without his breeches than without his bayonet.” Rapidity, surprise, the charging column, the helter-skelter pursuit, were the innovations of {201} the new French generals. They translated into terms of tactics and strategy, Danton's famous apostrophe, ”Audacity, more audacity, yet more audacity!”
[1] See Chap. XVII.
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CHAPTER XIV
THERMIDOR
Danton had fallen fast in popularity and influence since the moment when, after the fall of the Gironde, he had appeared to dominate the situation. On the 12th of October, weary, sick at heart, disgusted at the triumph of the Hebertists, he had left Paris and, apparently retiring from politics, had gone back to his little country town of Arcis-sur-Aube. There a month later Robespierre sought him out, and invited him to joint action for pulling down Hebert. With Robespierre this meant no more than that Danton could help him, not that he would ever help Danton, and doubtless the latter realized it; but the bold course always drew him, and he accepted. Danton returned to Paris on the 21st of November.
Robespierre had been moved to this step by an alarming development of Hebertism. Anti-clericalism, hatred of the priest,--and among other things the priest stood behind the {203} Vendeen,--Voltairianism, materialism, all these elements had come to a head; and the clique who worked the Commune had determined that the triumph of the Revolution demanded the downfall of Catholicism, which was, as it seemed, equivalent to religion. A wave of atheism swept through Paris. To be atheistic became the mark of a good citizen. Gobel, the archbishop, and many priests, accepted it, and renounced the Church. Then a further step was taken. On the 10th of November the Cathedral of Notre Dame was dedicated to Reason, a handsome young woman from the opera personifying the G.o.ddess. Two weeks later, just as Danton reached Paris, the Commune closed all the churches of the city for the purpose of dedicating them to the cult of Reason.
Robespierre, like most of the men of the Revolution, was an enemy of the Church; but he was not an atheist. On the contrary he accepted in a very literal, dogmatic and zealous way the doctrines of Rousseau, his prophet not only in politics but in religion. To Robespierre the Hebertist cult of Reason was as gross blasphemy as it was to the most ardent Catholic, and the Jacobin leader had nerved himself for a struggle to destroy that cult. That was why he had appealed to Danton, {204} though he knew that if Danton joined him in the fight it would not be for conscience, for a religious motive, but solely to destroy Hebert and perhaps to regain control of the Committee of Public Safety.
This last possibility Robespierre risked.
The two allies immediately opened their campaign against Hebert. In the Convention Danton, with rather hollow rhetoric, declaimed in favour of popular festivals at which incense should be offered to the Supreme Being. Robespierre at the Jacobins, allowing his venom to master his logic, declared: ”Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a Supreme Being who guards injured innocence and who punishes triumphant crime is democratic. . . . If G.o.d did not exist we should have to invent Him.”
It was just at this moment, when Hebertism and terrorism appeared interchangeable terms, and when the two most powerful men of the a.s.sembly had simultaneously turned against Hebertism, that Desmoulins stepped forward as the champion of the cause of mercy, to pull down Hebert, and with Hebert the guillotine. Early in December he brought out a newspaper once more, _Le Vieux Cordelier_, and in that boldly attacked the gang of thieves and {205} murderers who were working the politics of the city of Paris. Public opinion awakened; voices were raised here and there; presently pet.i.tions began to flow in to the Convention. The tide was unloosened. How far would it go?
Robespierre, crafty, cunning, s.h.i.+fty, at first cautiously used Desmoulins for his purposes. But when Danton himself, the arch-terrorist, bravely accepted the doctrine of clemency, Robespierre began to draw back. At the end of December the return of Collot d'Herbois from his ma.s.sacres at Lyons stiffened Robespierre, and rallied the Committee of Public Safety more firmly to the policy of terror. For some weeks a desperate campaign of words was fought out inch by inch, Danton and Desmoulins las.h.i.+ng out desperately as the net closed slowly in on them; and it was not till the 20th of February 1794 that they received the death stroke. It was dealt by St. Just.
St. Just, a doctrinaire and puritan nearly as fanatical as his chief, possessed what Robespierre lacked,--decision, boldness, and a keen political sense. On his return from a mission to the armies he had found in Paris the situation already described, and decided immediately to strike hard, at once, and at all the {206} opponents of his party.
The first measures were aimed at Hebert and the Commune, for St. Just judged that they were ripe for the guillotine. A decree was pushed through the Convention whereby it was ordered that the property of all individuals sent to the scaffold under the _Loi des suspects_ should be distributed to the poor _sans-culottes_. This infamous enactment was intended to cut from under the feet of the Commune any popular support it still retained.
At St. Just's provocation the attacked party closed its ranks,--the Commune, the ministers, the Cordeliers, Hebert, Hanriot. Proclamations were issued for a new insurrection. But Paris was getting weary of insurrections, wearier still of the obvious blackguardism and peculation of the Hebertists, weariest of the perpetual drip of blood from the guillotine. No insurrection could be organized. For some days the opponents remained at arm's length. Finally on the 17th of March the Committee of Public Safety ordered the arrest of Hebert, Pache, Chaumette and a number of their prominent supporters, and was almost surprised to find that the arrest was carried out with virtually no opposition. Paris raised not a finger to defend them, and contentedly {207} watched them go to the guillotine a week later.
It was otherwise with Danton. St. Just gave him no time. With the Committee and the Convention well in hand he struck at once, less than a week after Hebert had been despatched. He read a long accusation against Danton to the Convention, and that body weakly voted his arrest. Danton, Desmoulins, and some of their chief supporters were hurried to prison; and from prison to the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the 2d, 3rd and 4th of April they were tried by the packed bench and packed jury of that expeditious inst.i.tution. But so uncertain was the temper of the vast throng that filled the streets outside, so violently did Danton struggle to burst his bonds, that for a moment it seemed as though the immense reverberations of his voice, heard, it is said, even across the Seine, might awaken the force of the people, as so often before, and overthrow the Jacobin rule. A hasty message to the Committee of Public Safety,--a hasty decree rushed through the Convention,--and Danton's voice was quelled, judgment delivered before the accused had finished his defence. On the next day Danton and Desmoulins went to the guillotine together,--Paris very hushed at the immensity and suddenness {208} of the catastrophe. Desmoulins was gone, the leader of the revolt against the monarchy in 1789, the generous defender of the cause of mercy in 1794; and Danton was gone, with all his sins, with all his venality, the most powerful figure of the Revolution, more nearly the Revolution itself than any man of his time.
Complete triumph! As Robespierre, St. Just and Couthon looked about them, the three apostles leading France down the narrow path of civic virtue, they saw nothing but prostrate enemies. The power of the Commune was gone, and in its stead the Committee of Public Safety virtually ruled Paris. Danton, the possible dictator, the impure man ready to adjust compromises with the enemies of liberty, lax in conscience and in action, Danton too was down. The solid phalanx of the Jacobin Club, the remnant of the Commune, the Revolutionary Tribunal, stood solidly arrayed behind Robespierre; and the Convention voted with perfect regularity and unanimity every decree it was asked for.
But this att.i.tude of the Convention only represented the momentary paralysis of fear. No one would venture on debate, leave alone opposition. Men like Sieyes attended punctiliously day after day, month after month, and {209} never opened their lips,--only their eyes, watching the corner of the Mountain, whence the reeking oracle was delivered. In the city it was the same. The cafes, so tumultuous and excited at the opening of the Revolution, are oppressively silent now.
A crowd gathers in the evening to hear the gazette read, but in that crowd few dare to venture a word, an opinion; occasional whispers are exchanged, the list of those sent to the guillotine is eagerly listened to, and then all disperse.
And the prisons are full,--of aristocrats, of suspects, of wealthy bourgeois. Those who have money occasionally buy themselves out, and generally succeed in living well; while outside the prison doors, angry, half-demented women revile the aristocrats who betray the people and who, even in prison, eat delicate food and drink expensive wines.