Part 8 (2/2)
Among the prisoners there is some light-heartedness, much demoralization, with here and there, at rare intervals, a Madame Roland or an Andre Chenier, to keep high above degradation their minds and their characters. And every day comes the heartrending hour of the roll call for the Revolutionary Tribunal which with so many means death.
The Tribunal itself, loses more and more {210} any sense of legality it had at the outset. Its procedure still carries a semblance of legal method, but it is really an automatic machine for affixing a legal label on political murders. And the Tribunal, as it progresses in its career, becomes more and more insane in its hatred of the party it seeks to destroy, of the anti-revolutionist, of the aristocrat. Is it not recorded that it ordered the arrest of a little girl of 13, Mlle.
de Chabannes, suspect ”because she had sucked the aristocratic milk of her mother.” The Tribunal acquitted one person in every five; up to the fall of Danton it had sent about 1,000 persons to the guillotine; during the three months of Robespierre's domination it was to send another 1,600, increasing its activity by hysterical progression. When Thermidor was reached, about thirty individuals was the daily toll of the executioner.
Robespierre triumphant immediately revealed all his limitations; he was not a successful statesman; he was only a successful religionist. His first care, therefore, was to attend to the dogma of the French people.
He proposed that Decadi should be converted into a new Sabbath; he caused the dregs of the Hebertists, including Gobel, to be indicted for {211} atheism when their turn came for the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Robespierre sending a renegade Archbishop of Paris to the scaffold for atheism marks how very far the Revolution had moved since the days of the States-General at Versailles.
On the 7th of May, a month after Danton's death, Robespierre delivered a long speech before the Convention, a speech that marks his apogee.
It was a high-flown rhapsody on civic morality and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious att.i.tude, his universal church of nature. In that church, nature herself is the chief priest and there is no need of an infamous priesthood. Its ritual is virtue; its festivals the joy of a great people. Therefore let the Convention decree that the Cult of the Supreme Being be established, that the duty of every citizen is to practise virtue, to punish tyrants and traitors, to succour the unfortunate, to respect the weak, to defend the oppressed, to do good unto others. Let the Convention inst.i.tute compet.i.tions for hymns and songs to adorn the new cult; and let the Committee of {212} Public Safety,--that hara.s.sed and overburdened committee,--adjudicate, and reward the successful hymnologists.
The Convention listened in silence, disgust, silent rebellion,--but bowed its head. The new cult appealed to very few. Here and there an intellectual Rousseauist accepted it, but the ma.s.s did what mankind in all countries and ages has done, refused to reason out what was a religious and therefore an emotional question. To the vast majority of Frenchmen there was only one choice, Catholicism or non-catholicism, and the cult of the Supreme Being was just as much non-catholicism as that of Reason.
Robespierre, blind and satisfied, went on his way rejoicing. On the 8th of June, as President of the Convention, he took the chief part in a solemn inauguration of the new religion. There were statues, processions, bonfires, speeches, and Robespierre, beflowered, radiant in a new purple coat, pontificating over all. But beneath the surface all was not well. The Convention had not been led through the solemn farce without protest. Words of insult were hissed by more than one deputy as Robespierre pa.s.sed within earshot, and the Jacobin leader realized fully that behind the {213} docile votes and silent faces currents of rage and protest were stirring. For this, as for every ill, there was but one remedy, to sharpen the knife.
Two days later, on the 10th, new decrees were placed before the Convention for intensifying the operations of the Revolutionary Tribunal. New crimes were invented ”spreading discouragement, perverting public opinion”; the prisoner's defence was practically taken away from him; and, most important, members of the Convention lost their inviolability. The Convention voted the decree, but terror had now pushed it to the wall and self-defence automatically sprang up.
From that moment the Convention nerved itself to the inevitable struggle. Billaud, Collot and Barere, the _impures_ of the Committee of Public Safety, looked despairingly on all sides of the Convention for help to rid themselves of the monster, whose tentacles they already felt beginning to twine about them.
Just at this critical moment a trivial incident arose that pierced Robespierre's armour in its weakest joint, and that crystallized the fear of the Convention into ridicule,--ridicule that proved the precursor of revolt. Catherine Theot, a female spiritualist, or medium, as we {214} should call her at the present day, highly elated at the triumph of the Supreme Being over the unemotional G.o.ddess of Reason, had made Robespierre the hero of her half-insane inspirations.
She now announced to her credulous devotees that she was the mother of G.o.d, and that Robespierre was her son. It became the sensation of the day. Profiting by the temporary absence of St. Just with the army in the Netherlands, the Committee of Public Safety decided that Catherine Theot was a nuisance and a public danger, and must be arrested.
Robespierre, intensely susceptible to ridicule, not knowing what to do, pettishly withdrew from the Convention, confined himself to his house and the Jacobin Club, and left the Committee to carry out its intention. Every member of the Convention realized that this was a distinct move against Robespierre.
St. Just was with Jourdan's army in the north, and for the moment all eyes were fixed on that point. The campaign of 1794 might be decisive.
France and Austria had put great armies in the field. The latter now controlled the belt of frontier fortresses, and if, pus.h.i.+ng beyond these, she destroyed the French army, Paris and the Revolution might soon be at an end. As the campaign opened, {215} however, fortune took her place with the tricolour flag. Minor successes fell to Moreau, Souham, Macdonald, Vandamme. In June the campaign culminated. The armies met south of Brussels at Fleurus on the 25th of that month. For fifteen hours the battle raged, Kleber with the French right wing holding his ground, the centre and left slowly driven back. But at the close of the day the French, not to be denied, came again. Jourdan, with St. Just by his side, drove his troops to a last effort, regained the lost ground, and more. The Austrians gave way, turned to flight, and one of the great victories of the epoch had been won. In a few hours the glorious news had reached Paris, and in Paris it was interpreted as an evil portent for Robespierre.
For if there existed something that could possibly be described as a justification for terrorism, that something was national danger and national fear. Ever since the month of July 1789 there had been a perfect correspondence between military pressure on Paris and the consequent outbreak of violence. But this great victory, Fleurus, seemed to mark the complete triumph of the armies of the Republic; all danger had been swept away, so {216} why should terror and the guillotine continue? As the captured Austrian standards were paraded in the Tuileries gardens and presented to the Convention on a lovely June afternoon, every inclination, every instinct was for rejoicing and good will. The thought that the cart was still steadily, lugubriously, wending its way to the insatiable guillotine, appeared unbearable.
From this moment the fever of conspiracy against Robespierre coursed rapidly through the Convention. Some, like Sieyes, were statesmen, and judged that the turn of the tide had come. Others, like Tallien or Joseph Chenier, were touched in their family,--a brother, a wife, a sister, awaiting judgment and the guillotine. Others feared; others hoped; and yet others had vengeance to satisfy, especially the remnants of Danton's, of Brissot's and of Hebert's party. St. Just saw the danger of the situation and attempted to cow opposition. He spoke threateningly of the necessity for a dictators.h.i.+p and for a long list of proscriptions.
It was the most silent member of the Committee of Public Safety, Carnot, who brought on the crisis. Affecting an exclusive concern for the conduct of the war and perfunctorily {217} signing all that related to internal affairs, he was secretly restive and anxious to escape from the horrible situation. Prompted by some of his colleagues, he ordered, on the 24th of July, that the Paris national guard artillery should go to the front. This was taking the decisive arm out of the hands of Hanriot, for Hanriot had made his peace with Robespierre, had survived the fall of Hebert, and was still in command of the national guard.
There could be no mistaking the significance of Carnot's step. On the same night Couthon loudly denounced it at the Jacobins, and the club decided that it would pet.i.tion the Convention to take action against Robespierre's enemies. Next day Barere replied. He read a long speech to the Convention in which, without venturing names, he blamed citizens who were not heartened by the victories of the army and who meditated further proscriptions. On the 26th, the 8th of Thermidor, Robespierre reappeared in the a.s.sembly, and ascended the tribune to reply to Barere.
Robespierre felt that the tide was flowing against him; instinct, premonitions, warned him that perhaps his end was not far off. In this speech--it was to be his last before the Convention--the melancholy note prevailed. {218} There was no effort to conciliate, no attempt at being politic, only a slightly disheartened tone backed by the iteration which France already knew so well:--the remedy for the evil must be sought in purification; the Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, must be purged.
Under the accustomed spell the Convention listened to the end. The usual motions were put. Robespierre left the a.s.sembly. It was voted that his speech should be printed; and that it should be posted in all the communes of France. For a moment it looked as though the iron yoke were immovably fixed. Then Cambon went to the tribune, and ventured to discuss Robespierre's views. Billaud followed. And presently the Convention, hardly realizing what it had done, rescinded the second of its two votes. Robespierre's speech should be printed, but it should not be placarded on the walls.
At the Jacobin Club the rescinded vote of the Convention conveyed a meaning not to be mistaken. Robespierre repeated his Convention speech, which was greeted with acclamations. Billaud and Collot were received with hoots and groans, were driven out, and were erased from the list of members. Through the night {219} the Jacobins were beating up their supporters, threatening insurrection; and on their side the leaders of the revolt attempted to rally the members of the Convention to stand firmly by them.
The next day was the 9th of Thermidor. St. Just made a bold attempt to control the situation. Early in the morning he met his colleagues of the Committee of Public Safety and, making advances to them, promised to lay before them a scheme that would reconcile all the divergent interests of the Convention. While the Committee awaited his arrival he proceeded to the body of the Convention, obtained the tribune, and began a speech. Realizing how far the temper of the a.s.sembly was against him, he boldly opened by denouncing the personal ambitions of Robespierre, and by advocating moderate courses--but he had not gone far when the members of the Committee, discovering the truth, returned to the Convention, and set to work with the help of the revolted members, to disconcert him. St. Just had perhaps only one weakness, but it was fatal to him on the 9th of Thermidor, for it was a weakness of voice. He was silenced by interruptions that constantly grew stormier. Billaud followed him {220} and made an impa.s.sioned attack on the Jacobins. Robespierre attempted to reply. But Collot d'Herbois was presiding, and Collot declined to give Robespierre the tribune.
The din arose; shouts of ”Down with the tyrant, down with the dictator,” were raised. Tallien demanded a decree of accusation.
Members pressed around the Jacobin leader, who at this last extremity tried to force his way to the tribune. But the way was barred; he could only clutch the railings, and, asking for death, looking in despair at the public galleries that had so long shouted their Jacobin approval to him, he kept crying: ”La mort! la mort!” He had fallen.
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