THE  REIGN  OF  TERROR

THE SYSTEM OF THE TERROR

What, then, was the system that produced this later stage of the Terror ?  Historians, weary of striving to solve the problem, have declared that there was none, that the Terror happened inevitably, or that the Terrorists were mad, or that they killed for fear of being killed, or that, as Thiers expressed it, they went on killing because of “ the deplorable habit they had contracted.”  Such answers, however, are all unconvincing in view of the evident organization of the Terror and the character of the men by whom it was carried out.  The members of the Triumvirate—Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just—which had now become all-powerful, were men not of impulse but of cold calculation, and it is impossible to believe that they struck out aimlessly with no ultimate object in view.  What, then, was the motive that inspired them ?  Certain contemporaries, recognizing the indisputable fact that the movement had now turned not only against the people, but against many of the most ardent Republicans and the earlier champions of liberty, advanced the extraordinary theory that Robespierre was a Royalist agent employed by the emigrant princes to carry out their vengeances ;[145]  and indeed, if the Old Régime had entertained a desire for revenge, it could not have satisfied it more effectually than by the reign of Robespierre.  But that Robespierre, with his insatiable craving for power, should have wished to reinstate the Bourbons is impossible to believe.  Still more absurd was the once accepted theory that the Terror was organized as a desperate measure of defence against “ the coalition of kings,” or in order to stimulate the ardour of the Republican armies.[146]  What possible connection could there be between the massacring of peasant women in the extreme west of France and the success of French arms in Germany or Flanders ?  What ardour was likely to be stimulated in the soldiers of the Republic when they returned from the field of battle to find their mothers, wives, and children murdered, their homes burnt to the ground ?  Moreover, when the Terror broke out, the situation of the armies was in no way desperate ;  on the contrary, at the very moment that “ terror was made the order of the day ”—that is to say, on the 4th of September 1793—Robespierre at the Jacobin Club announced military successes everywhere :  “ the armies of the North . . . of the Rhine and the Moselle are in a brilliant situation.”[147]  The Terror, then, had nothing whatever to do with the question of national defence, but in its later as in its earlier stages was a measure of internal policy.

Now, although we may consult historians in vain for an explanation of this policy, we have only to study the writings of contemporaries who were behind the scenes in the Terror to discover a theory which, whether we accept it or not, provides the only clue to the mystery.  According to these authorities a very definite system was at work in the Comité de Salut Public, which organized the Terror ;  moreover, this system was the direct outcome of the political creed of its leading members.  In order to understand this we must refer back to the theories of government propounded by the organizers of the Terror during the earlier stages of the Revolution.  Amongst these we find the constantly recurring belief in the impossibility of transforming France into a Republic.  Thus as late as 1790 Marat had written :

“ In a large State the form of government must be monarchic, it is the only one that is suited to France ;  the extent of the kingdom, its position and the multiplicity of its connections necessitate it, and we ought to keep to this for many powerful reasons, even if the character of its people admitted of any other choice.”[148]

There is undoubtedly a good deal to be said for this theory.  Whether the old aphorism was right or not in stating that “ no democracy can hold an empire,” it must be admitted that the history of the world so far has proved that democracy works most harmoniously on a small scale—as in Marat’s native Switzerland—or in the thinly populated spaces of a colony.  For since the essence of democracy is rule by the will of the Sovereign People, that will must be, as far as possible, unanimous ;  the Sovereign must not be divided against itself if the system is not to lose its entire raison d’être.  And obviously, the larger and more varied the population the more difficult it becomes to obtain unanimity.

This conviction of the impossibility of establishing a democratic form of government in so large and thickly populated a country as France seems to have prevailed amongst the revolutionary leaders of all parties ;  hence, no doubt, Robespierre’s earlier belief in monarchy and his later desire for a dictatorship.[149]  As to the Girondins, although no definite evidence is forthcoming in support of Robespierre’s accusation that they wished to establish a federal Republic, they undoubtedly realized the almost insuperable difficulty of achieving a harmonious democracy on so large a scale by means of centralized government.  Thus Buzot himself wrote :  “ If there were a people of gods, says Rousseau, it would govern itself democratically. . . . As it is, men, who are not gods, must seek elsewhere the best form of government to suit them.”  And he went on to ask how, in a nation of 25,000,000, it would be possible to make sure that the wishes expressed by suffrage represented the real will of the nation.

But with the proclamation of the Republic the situation of which Marat had foreseen the danger had been brought about, and the whole country was thrown into confusion ;  differences of opinion sprang up on every side, and civil war was the inevitable result.

More than this, not only had France become a Republic, but, as we have seen, the further plan was evolved by Robespierre of transforming her into a Socialist State throughout which absolute equality and universal contentment should prevail.[150]

Under the influence of St. Just this plan had assumed definite proportions.  The colony of workmen’s dwellings, which might be said figuratively to represent Robespierre’s conception of an ideal State, was literally adopted by St. Just in the “ Institutions ” he drew up for the government of France.  The new Republic was to be founded on “ virtue, if not on terror ”;[151]  that is to say, when terror became no longer necessary, “ virtue ” was to be made the order of the day.  Every one was to be sober, austere, incorruptible, laborious, and, above all, public-spirited ;  for, according to the doctrine of the Illuminati, to whom Robespierre belonged, the only way to make men happy was to produce in them a “ just and steady morality ”—morality, that is to say, as interpreted by the Illuminati, which was simply civism.[152]

Now in the opinion of St. Just nothing tended so much both to happiness and morality as the profession of agriculture—“ a cottage, a field, and a plough “ [153]—these were to represent the summit of every man’s ambitions.  Accordingly France was to be turned into a vast agrarian settlement, in which there were to be no rich and no poor, no large properties and no cramped dwellings ;  nothing but endless model cottages and small allotments tended by hard-working and virtuous cultivators.  An admirable arrangement, no doubt, only unfortunately, in order to ensure its success, there was to be no personal liberty either.  It is doubtful, indeed, whether liberty and equality can exist together, for whilst liberty consists in allowing every man to live as he likes best, and to do as he will with his own, equality necessitates a perpetual system of repression in order to maintain things at the same dead level.  For this purpose, according to St. Just, every department of life must be placed under State control—perhaps the most inexorable form of tyranny it is possible to conceive.  For to an individual autocrat some appeal may be made, but against the doors of a system one may batter in vain.  Thus in St. Just’s Republic every human relationship was to be regulated by the State.  True, free love was to take the place of marriage, but the union thus contracted was to be dissolved at the end of seven years if no children were forthcoming, whether the contracting parties desired to separate or not.  Parents were to be forbidden either to strike or to caress their children, and the children were to be dressed all alike in cotton, to live on “ roots, vegetables, fruit, with bread and water,” and to sleep on mats upon the floor.  Boys were to belong to their parents only till the age of five ;  after that they were to become the property of the State until their death.  Every one was to be forced by law to form friendships, and “ to declare publicly once a year in the Temple who were his friends.”  Any infraction of these laws was to be punished by banishment.  Thus—

He who strikes a child is banished.
If a man commits a crime his friends are banished.
He who says he does not believe in friendship or who has no friends is banished.
He who being drunk shall have said or done evil is banished.
A man convicted of ingratitude is banished ;  etc.[154]

It was an attempt to realize the ideal of Rousseau—“ If there were a people of gods it would govern itself democratically.”  The French, so far, were not gods, but they were to be made so.

But could a nation of 25,000,000 be thus transformed ?  To the regenerators of France it seemed extremely doubtful ;  already the country was rent with dissensions, and any scheme for universal contentment seemed impossible of attainment.  Moreover, the plan of dividing things up into equal shares presented an insuperable difficulty, for it became evident that amongst a population of this size there was not enough money, not enough property, not enough employment, not even at this moment enough bread to go round ;  no one would be satisfied with his share, and instead of universal contentment, universal dissatisfaction would result.  What was to be done ?  The population was too large for the scheme of the leaders to be carried out successfully, therefore either the scheme must be abandoned or the population must be diminished.

To this conclusion the surgeons operating on the State had at last been brought.  In vain they had amputated the gangrened limb of the nobility and the clergy, had paralysed the brain by attacking the intellectual classes, had turned (as in Æsop’s fable) upon the stomach, that is to say, the industrial system, by which the whole body of the State was fed, and denied it sustenance—all these means to restore health to the State had failed, and they were now reduced to a last and desperate expedient :  the size of the whole body must be reduced.  In other words, a plan of systematic depopulation must be carried out all over France.

That this idea, worthy of a mad Procrustes, really existed it is impossible to doubt, since it has been revealed to us by innumerable revolutionaries who were behind the scenes during the Terror.  Thus Courtois, in his report on the papers seized at Robespierre’s house after Thermidor, wrote :  “ These men, in order to bring us to the happiness of Sparta, wished to annihilate twelve or fifteen millions of the French people, and hoped after this revolutionary transfiguration to distribute to each one a plough and some land to clear, so as to save us from the dangers of the happiness of Persepolis.”

Another intime of Robespierre, the Marquis d’Antonelle, a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, actually explained the whole scheme in print whilst the Terror was at its height.  Beaulieu, who met him in prison, where he was incarcerated by Robespierre for giving away the secret of the leaders, thus describes the system as revealed to him by D’Antonelle :  “ He thought, like the greater number of the revolutionary clubs, that, in order to institute the Republic on the ruins of the monarchy, it was necessary to exterminate all those who preferred the latter form of government, and that the former could only become democratic by the destruction of luxury and riches, which form the support of royalty ;  that equality would never be anything but a chimera as long as men did not all enjoy approximately equal properties ;  and finally, that such an order of things could never be established until a third of the population had been suppressed ;  this was the general idea of the fanatics of the Revolution.”[155]

About two years later, that is to say in 1795, the Socialist, Gracchus Babeuf, employed at the Commune, gave a more detailed account of the scheme in his brochure, “ Sur le Système de la Dépopulation, ou La Vie et les Crimes de Carrier.”  Of this system Babeuf declares that Robespierre was the principal author :  “ Maximilien and his council had calculated that a real regeneration of France could only be operated by means of a new distribution of territory and of the men who occupied it ”;  and he goes on to show the remorseless logic by which Robespierre reached his final conclusion :  “ He thought that, firstly, in the present state of things property had fallen into a few hands, and that the great majority of the French possessed nothing ;  secondly, that in allowing this state of things to continue, equality of rights would only be a vain word in spite of which the aristocracy of owners of property would always be real, the smaller number would always tyrannize over the great mass, the majority would always be the slave of the minority ... ;  thirdly, that in order to destroy this power of the owners of property, and to take the mass of citizens out of their dependence, there was no way but to place all property in the hands of the government ;  fourthly, that one could succeed without doubt only by immolating the great proprietors . . . ;  fifthly, that, besides this, depopulation was indispensable, because the calculation had been made that the French population was in excess of the resources of the soil and of the requirements of useful industry, that is to say, that, with us, men jostled each other too much for each to be able to live at ease ;  that hands were too numerous for the execution of all works of essential utility . . . ;  sixthly, finally—and this is the horrible conclusion—that since the superabundant population could only amount to so much . . . a portion of sans-culottes must be sacrificed, that this rubbish could be cleared away up to a certain quantity, and that means must be found for doing it.”

To this necessity Babeuf attributes not only the guillotinades, fusillades, and noyades in the provinces, but also the engineered famine to which he had drawn attention earlier, whilst the war, far from providing a reason for the Terror, was in reality part of the scheme of extermination.  “ What,” he asks, “ is this plan of eternal crusades, of repulsing peace, of universal conquest, of the conversion or subjugation of all kings and all peoples, if it is not the hidden intention to prevent any one coming back from amongst that important portion of the nation that armed itself so generously in order to chase the enemy from French territory ? ”

The evidence of Babeuf is the more valuable since he declares himself to be heartily in agreement with the Socialistic schemes of Robespierre ;  it is only the means employed to realize them that he disapproves.  “ On the subject of extermination,” he naively concludes, “ I am a man of prejudices ;  it is not given to every one to rise to the heights of Maximilien Robespierre.”  But later on he came to see that Robespierre’s plan alone could ensure success, and that if absolute equality was to be achieved the Terror must be revived.  It was for the attempt to reinstate the régime of Robespierre that Babeuf finally met his end.  However preposterous the exposé of Babeuf may seem, we must admit that it is the only one that explains the Terror.  Moreover, that this was indeed the system on which it was founded does not rest on the authority of Courtois, Babeuf, and D’Antonelle alone, the very words “ plan of depopulation ” occur repeatedly in the writings and speeches of other contemporaries.  Thus Prudhomme, in describing the massacres of September, explains the enormous proportion of “ the people ” amongst the victims as the first evidence of this scheme :  “ The plan of butchery did not end with the destruction of priests and nobles . . . but from that date there existed a plan of depopulation conceived by Marat, Robespierre . . ., etc., and this is what the method of the Terror has proved.”[156]

Later on, at the trials of Fouquier Tinville and Carrier, several witnesses referred to the same scheme :  Grandpré of the police declared that the most powerful means employed by Robespierre was “ a vast system of depopulation ”;[157]  Ardenne, Deputy Public Accuser, said the plan was “ to clear out the prisons in order to depopulate France,” [158]  and in his summing up to the president and judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal stated that “ Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, and others, had expected to depopulate France, and above all to make genius, talents, honour, and industry to disappear ”;[159]  Trinchard, member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, ended his evidence with the words :  “ Such was the system of depopulation organized by the last tyrants, and in order to make sure of its execution they employed the most immoral men ”;[160]  indeed, Carrier himself admitted that “ this plan of destruction existed.”[161]  Carrier, Fouquier, Fréron, Lebon, and the other monsters were therefore only acting on orders from headquarters when they set out to decimate Paris and the provinces, and the terrible phrase of Carrier, “ Let us make a cemetery of France rather than not regenerate her after our manner,” [162] simply epitomized the philosophy of Robespierre on which the system of the Comité de Salut Public was founded.

It was in the hall of the committee at the Tuileries that the great scheme of depopulation was discussed, and orders were issued to the revolutionary agents in the different provinces.  Prudhomme has vividly described the scenes that took place nightly in the gorgeous salon at the end of a long dark corridor, where, amidst mirrors and bronzes, beneath gilded ceilings and glittering chandeliers, the “ Decemvirs ” took their ease on soft armchairs and luxurious sofas, whilst in the background sideboards laden with rare wines and delicate fare awaited them.[163]  Around the great oval table, covered with a green cloth, the members of the committee—Billaud, Collot, Couthon, Barère—gathered merrily, “ not precisely drunk, but spurred on by wine and good cheer, heated by liqueurs ”;  only when the bilious face of the Incorruptible appeared amongst them a chill fell over the party, and there was less laughter whilst districts were marked out for destruction and human heads were counted up like scores at cards.

“ It was at these times,” says Prudhomme, “ that they gave their secret orders to the chief scoundrels in their confidence.  It was there that General Rossignol went to receive the plan for setting La Vendée in a blaze.  It was there that Carrier organized the noyades of Nantes.  It is there that Couthon said, laughing, before he started for Lyon, ‘ I have only a head and a body ;  well, nevertheless, it is I who will give the first blow of the hammer to the second town in the empire of France, in order to destroy it.’  It is there that they organized the conspiracies in the prisons, and that they drew up that plan of depopulation carried out during fifteen months.  A map of France was spread out continually before the eyes of the Decemvirs as well as a table of the population of each Commune ;  there they decimated towns and villages—‘ we must have so many heads in such and such a department.’ . . . All the calamities of France, all the crimes of the Revolution, originated in the salon of the Comité de Salut Public.”[164]

The precise proportion of the population it would be necessary to suppress formed the subject of calm mathematical calculation amongst the leaders.  According to Larevelliere Lepeaux, it was Jean Bon St. André who first openly admitted the existence of the scheme, and at the time that the Revolutionary Tribunal was instituted—that is to say, in the spring of 1793—declared in the tribune of the Convention that “ in order to establish the Republic securely in France, the population must be reduced by more than half.” [165]  Beside this estimate D’Antonelle’s proposal to reduce by one-third only seems comparatively moderate.

Other leading revolutionaries considered, however, that far more drastic measures were necessary ;  thus Collot d’Herbois held that twelve to fifteen millions of the French must be destroyed,[166] Carrier declared that the nation must be reduced to six millions,[167] Guffroy in his journal expressed the opinion that only five million people should be allowed, to survive,[168] whilst Robespierre was reported to have said that a population of two millions would be more than enough.[169]  Pagès and Fantin Désodoards assert, however, that eight millions was the figure generally agreed on by the leaders.[170]

The plan of the Terrorists was not, therefore, as is popularly supposed, to sacrifice a small minority for the happiness of the great majority, but to annihilate an immense proportion of the nation in order to ensure a contented residuum.

Such, then, was the system of the Terror, and however atrocious it may appear we must admit that it was founded on a perfectly logical premise—the conviction that the smaller the population the better for democracy.

It is not, therefore, the theory of the Terrorists that must be regarded as monstrous, but its application.  For to admit that a certain end may be desirable of attainment is one thing ;  to believe that any means are justifiable in order to attain it is quite another matter.  The great criminals of history were not the people inspired by the worst motives, but the people for whom this distinction did not exist.  Catherine de Medici—to whom Robespierre bore a striking resemblance—undoubtedly thought it would be for the peace of France if the Huguenots ceased to exist, and therefore planned the Massacre of St. Barthélemy ;  Robespierre may have been actuated by precisely the same laudable intention in organizing the massacres of the Terror.  In both cases the attitude of mind that made this action possible can be traced to the same cause—the doctrine that has produced all the worst atrocities in the history of the civilized world—namely, that “ the end justifies the means.”  Whether it be under a Torquemada, a Medici, a Robespierre, or a Wilhelm II., the community or nation which accepts the belief that everything is justifiable—lying, duplicity, treachery, and murder—in order to benefit the cause it has embraced, sells its soul to the devil.  To hold this doctrine is not only to repudiate Christianity, but to strike at the very root of all morality.  It was therefore natural that the Terror, founded on this literally diabolical doctrine, should now enter on that hideous phase in its work of destruction—the desecration of the churches.

THE DECHRISTIANIZATION OF FRANCE

The leaders of the movement that was now directed against religion all over France belonged to a faction of the Cordeliers Club, led by Hébert.  Hébert himself, who figured on the cover of his journal, the Père Duchesne, as a rugged stove-merchant with a large pipe in his mouth and a heavy moustache, was in reality a dapper young man, clean shaven, well powdered, and sybaritic in his tastes.  The coarse language and oaths of the gutter that characterized his literary compositions were as foreign to his nature as the revolutionary frenzy he affected ;  for, although it was on Hébert that the mantle of Marat had descended when the Ami du Peuple ceased at the death of its author, Hébert had none of Marat’s sombre ferocity.  On the contrary, Hébert was filled with a riotous joie de vivre.  During the “ great angers ” he depicted in the Père Duchesne he was enjoying “ the sweetest and most peaceful of lives ”;[171]  his sanguinary tirades against the Queen, the Girondins, “ la Reine Roland,” were penned beside the cradle of his infant daughter.  Hébert was an Anarchist by temperament rather than by policy ;  the prototype of the modern Apache, he would gaily have set Paris in a blaze for the excitement of seeing it burning.  Revolutions inevitably bring these sort of characters to the surface—creatures endowed with the passion for destruction that human nature shares in common with the ape, who love to burn and spoil and desecrate without any ulterior motive.  It was for this reason that Hébert ended by incurring the animosity of Robespierre.  The Tiger Cat only desired a period of anarchy in order to establish his own domination, and naturally any one who, like Hébert, enjoyed anarchy for anarchy’s sake could not be allowed to go on indefinitely wrecking everything ;  the time must come when it would be necessary to suppress him.  Already the green eyes were watching him suspiciously, and it was therefore not Robespierre who in the Comité de Salut Public supported the anti-religious movement of the Hébertistes, but the contemptible comedian Collot d’Herbois.  Amongst the followers of Hébert were first and foremost Chaumette, once a cabin-boy, now procurator of the Commune and king of the Paris rabble ;  Vincent, secretary to the Ministry of War, a creature of such extraordinary ferocity that in his fits of rage he was known to devour raw the flesh of animals ;  Momoro, a printer ;  Anacharsis Clootz, of whom more anon ;  and Ronsin, a general in the Republican army who excelled in the raising of disorderly crowds.  Ronsin’s following inspired even its leader with disgust ;  when some one complained to him of the excesses it committed in the streets and at the theatres, the outrages on women, the robberies and violence that marked its passage, Ronsin answered cynically, “ What do you want me to do ?  I know, like you, that it is a collection of brigands, but I have need of these rascals for my revolutionary army—find me decent folk who are willing to do the job ! ” [172]

According to Prudhomme the Hébertistes were formerly Orléanistes ;  at any rate their private life was far from consistent with the principles of Republicanism and equality that they professed.  Whilst proclaiming the necessity of Spartan simplicity to counteract the famine they led a riotous Epicurean existence, and freely indulged their tastes for rare vintages and fiery liquors.[173]  It was thus largely under the influence of drink that they now embarked on their scheme of dechristianization.

On the night of the 6th to the 7th of November, Hébert, Chaumette, and Momoro went to the “ Constitutional ” bishop of Paris, Gobel, and ordered him to abjure publicly the Catholic religion.  “ You will do this,” they said to him, “ or you are a dead man.” [174]  The wretched old man threw himself at their feet and begged to be spared this ordeal, but the Hébertistes were inexorable, and on the following day Gobel, terrorized into submission, presented himself at the Convention and declared that “ the will of the Sovereign People ” had now become “ his supreme law,” and since the Sovereign so willed it there should be no other worship than that of “ liberty and holy equality.”  Accordingly he now deposited his cross, ring, and other insignia upon the President’s desk, and put on the red cap of liberty.  Several of his vicars followed his example amidst the enthusiastic acclamations of the Assembly.

This grotesque scene gave the signal for the desecration of the churches throughout Paris and the provinces.  At Notre Dame, stripped of its crucifixes and images of the saints, the Feast of Reason took place on the 10th of November.  A temple was raised in the aisle on the summit of a mountain, from which shone forth the “ light of truth,” and amidst the strains of the “ Marseillaise ” and “ Ça ira ! ” the Goddess of Reason, personified by Mlle. Maillard, an opera-singer, dressed in a blue mantle and wearing the red cap of liberty, was borne in procession and solemnly enthroned to the cries of “ Vive la Republique !  Vive la Montague ! ”

At the Church of St. Sulpice, during a ceremony of the same kind, Joachim Ceyrat, the director of the September massacre at the Convent des Carmes, ascended the pulpit and cried out, “ Here am I in this pulpit, from which lies have so long been told to the sovereign people, making them believe that there is a God who sees all their actions.  If this God exists, let Him thunder, and may one of His thunderbolts crush me ! ”  Then looking up to the heavens defiantly, he added, “ He does not thunder, so His existence is a chimera ! ” [175]

Another enthusiastic exponent of materialism was the famous Marquis de Sade, the moral maniac to whom we owe the adjective “ Sadic.”  The atrocities this most vicious of all aristocrats had committed towards poor women of the people in no way precluded him from an honoured place in the ranks of “ democracy.”  Sade was a follower of Marat and a member of the Section des Piques to which Robespierre belonged.  An address from this section drawn up by Sade himself was now presented to the Convention, demanding that in all the churches the cult of the new divinities, Reason and Virtue, should be substituted for the worship of “ the Jewish slave ” and “ the adulterous woman, the courtesan of Galilee.”  This petition was accorded “ honourable mention ” by the Convention, which ordered it to be sent to the Committee of Public Instruction.

But it was Clootz who played the leading part in the campaign against religion.  Anacharsis Clootz, a Prussian baron, distinguished himself throughout the revolutionary movement by his plan of a “ Universal Republic ” and his hatred of Christianity.  The apostle of “ Internationalism ” as developed in the doctrines of the Illuminati, he said nearly everything that Internationalists propound to-day as the last word in modern thought.  Briefly, all nations of the earth were to be welded into one as members of “ the only nation ” (la nation unique), which, by a play on the word german, that is to say, “ closely allied,” he suggested, with an ingenuity worthy of his race, should be known as “ the immutable empire of Great Germany, the Universal Republic.”[176]  By way of illustration he had presented himself at the Legislative Assembly, under the title of “ the orator of the human race,” at the head of a strange procession composed of specimens from all available races—Germans, Swedes, Russians, Poles, Turks, and negroes—whom he had hired for the occasion, in dresses suited to the part, but, since he omitted to pay them as arranged, he found his own door next day beset by a furious crowd,[177] which seemed somewhat to disprove his theory that “ the Republic of the human race will never have any dispute with any one since there can be no communication between the planets.” [178]

In all this Clootz shows himself simply an amiable madman ;  it is only on the subject of religion that he grows violent.  The second title he had bestowed upon himself was that of “ the personal enemy of Jesus Christ.”  Christianity filled him with an almost epileptic fury.  “ Religion,” he wrote, “ is a social disease which cannot be too quickly cured.  A religious man is a depraved animal ;  he resembles those beasts that are only kept to be shorn and roasted for the benefit of merchants and butchers.” [179]  “ The People,” he declared, “ is the Sovereign and the God of the world ;  France is the centre of the People-God ;  only fools can believe in any other God, in a Supreme Being.” [180]

It was in this strain that Clootz addressed the Convention on the 17th of November, and he ended his discourse by presenting the Assembly with a copy of a treatise he had written on the subject.  The Convention thereupon passed a decree “ Anacharsis Clootz, deputy to the Convention, having paid homage with one of his works entitled The Certainty of the Proofs of Mahomedanism, a work that sets forth the nullity of all religions, the Assembly accepts this homage, accords it honourable mention, and orders it to be inserted in the bulletin, and to be sent to all the departments (of France).”

Everywhere in Paris and the provinces a perfect orgy of blasphemy and desecration now began ;  Bacchanalian feasts took place in the churches, triumphal cars carrying streetwalkers dressed in chasubles, and donkeys laden with sacred relics, bénitiers, and church ornaments, passed through the streets ;  crucifixes and breviaries were cast into bonfires amidst cries of “ Perish for ever the memory of the priests !  Perish for ever Christian superstition !  Long live the sublime religion of Nature ! ” [181]

But it was not by “ the people ” these revolting scenes were enacted ;  the people everywhere bitterly resented them.[182]  The closing of the village churches indeed caused so much indignation that the Convention began to fear revolt, whilst in Paris the women of the market overwhelmed the Père Duchesne with insults, and one of the hawkers of this journal complained to the “ Society of the Friends of the Revolution ” that he had been surrounded by these women, who covered him with mud, and seemed disposed to strangle him.[183]  When by order of Chaumette the shrine of Sainte-Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, was thrown into the flames on the Place de Grève, the outrage infuriated those whom the atheists described as the “ ignorant and superstitious populace.” [184]

The truth is, that the whole of the anti-Christian movement was the direct work of the Illuminati.  Anacharsis Clootz, says Robison, “ who was a keen Illuminatus, came to Paris for the express purpose of forwarding the great work, and, by intriguing in the style of the Order, he got himself made one of the Representatives of the Nation. . . .”  At the same time another German Illuminatus, Leuchtsenring, was also employed as secretary or clerk in one of the bureaux of the Assembly.  The inscription put up by order of the Government in the cemeteries all over France, “ Death is an eternal sleep,” had always been the most cherished maxim of the Illuminati.  There was nothing that the people abhorred more than this ;  to them the belief in immortality seemed the only consolation for the miseries of existence.  “ Yesterday,” a government spy reported, “ I talked for an hour with a Jacobin, a lemonade-seller, who begins to feel the weight of years.  He preached to me the doctrine of Christ . . . and explained . . . that it was very comforting for a man of a certain age to be able to see in the future another life awaiting him.  The philosopher, he added, had other compensations, but for us poor folks . . . ! ” [185]  All such hopes, all such beliefs, were now to be torn from the people ;  not content with destroying the body, the regenerators of France set out to destroy the soul.

THE TERROR IN PARIS

The campaign against Christianity heralded the Reign of Terror in the capital.  In the same autumn of 1793 the series of executions began that was to continue without interruption, and in ever-increasing numbers, until the 9th of Thermidor.  In order to carry out the great plan of depopulation the Revolutionary Tribunal had been reconstructed at the end of September and placed entirely under the control of the Comité de Salut Public and its subordinate, the Comité de Sûreté Générale, which dealt directly with the police of Paris.[186]  Instead of twelve jurymen, sixty were now elected ;  amongst these figured three tailors, five carpenters, a seller of sabots, a bootmaker, etc.[187]—a fact that should be noted, since it marks the first appearance of men of the people in the Revolutionary Government.  Hitherto it had been by aristocrats or middle-class men that the attacks on the aristocracy and bourgeoisie had been organized ;  now that the people were to become the victims, it was men of the people who were called in to carry out the work.

But the people were not the first to suffer.  In Paris as in the provinces, as indeed in all revolutions, the task of demolition began at the top and descended by gradual stages to the lower strata of the population.  At the head of the list of victims condemned by the Tribunal of Blood stands “ the widow Capet.”  Her trial, which began on the 14th of October, does not, however, enter within the scope of this history ;  Marie Antoinette, unlike Louis XVI., had played no part in the popular Revolution.  Constantly depicted to the people as a “ Messalina ” or a “ Medici,” whilst to her the people were persistently represented by the revolutionaries as tigers thirsting for her blood, all understanding between them had become impossible, and so throughout the Revolution her attitude towards the people was merely passive.

Yet in reality the people did not hate her.  During those last terrible weeks at the Conciergerie, poor women of the market came to the prison bringing her their finest peaches and melons, and recognizing her gaoler when he came to buy at their stalls, handed him their best fruits and poultry, saying with tears, “ For our Queen ! ” [188]

Others displayed still more energy on her behalf.  Who at the last moment, asks M. Lenôtre, “ were the Royalists who risked their lives to rescue the Queen ?  A shoe-black, a pastrycook, three hairdressers, a pork-butcher, several charwomen, two masons, an old-clothes seller, a lemonade-seller, a winemerchant, a locksmith, and a tobacconist.”  Four of these heroic people—two men and two women—paid for their devotion with their heads.[189]

When at last Marie Antoinette appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal, broken and white-haired, her eyes dimmed with long weeping, even the tricoteuses of Robespierre were stirred to pity, and it was for this reason that Hébert devised his infamous accusation concerning the little Dauphin.  “ A week after the Queen’s trial,” says Prudhomme, “ I said to that monster Hébert, ‘ You must be a great scoundrel to have accused her of so horrible a crime ! ’  He answered, ‘ Having noticed from the beginning of the trial that the public seemed to take an interest in this woman, and for fear she should escape us, I at once drew up my denunciation and passed it to the President, in order to set the multitude against her ! ’ ” [190]

But Hébert and his kind had not succeeded in degrading the populace to their own level.  The Queen’s immortal protest produced so immense an effect on the women of the tribunes that for some moments the proceedings were interrupted.[191]

This faux pas of Hébert’s infuriated Robespierre.  The day after the Queen’s trial, says Vilate, “ Barère had ordered a dinner at Venua’s to which he had invited Robespierre, St. Just, and me. . . . Seated around the table in a secret room well closed, they asked me for some features of the scene that took place at the trial of the Austrian.  I did not forget that of outraged nature when, Hébert accusing Antoinette of obscenities with her son of eleven years old, she turned with dignity to the people ‘ I appeal to all mothers present and to their consciences to declare whether there is one who does not shudder at such horrors ! ’  Robespierre, struck by this answer as by an electric shock, broke his plate with his fork :  ‘ That imbecile Hébert !  As if it were not enough that she should be a Messalina, but he must make her out to be an Agrippina also, and provide her at her last moment with this triumph of public sympathy.’  Every one appeared stupefied.”[192]

Indeed, so thoroughly had popular feeling been aroused in the Queen’s favour that Hébert found it necessary to warn his readers against the women who had planned to call out for mercy when she mounted the scaffold.  But, as at the execution of the King, the revolutionary leaders were prepared for any attempts at rescue ;  30,000 armed men lined the streets, and cannons were placed all along the route between the Conciergerie and the Place de la Révolution.  Beside the cart, drawn by one gaunt white horse, that bore the Queen to her death, rode Grammont, the miserable comedian employed by Philippe d’Orléans in the earlier outbreaks of the Revolution, he who had drunk the blood of the Swiss on the 10th of August at the Tuileries, and now with revolting brutality cried out to the people as the pitiable procession approached the scaffold, “ Voici l’infâme Antoinette !  Elle est f. . . ., mes amis ! ”  Philippe had at last had his revenge.  He was to follow the same road himself less than a month later.

On the whole the people showed themselves indifferent to the execution of the Queen, but they were not indifferent to the fate of the rest of the Royal Family—Louis XVII, his sister and his aunt, Madame Elizabeth, who remained in the Temple.  It seems that Robespierre contemplated killing them all at this crisis, as the following significant passage in a letter addressed to him by one of his friends testifies.  According to Robespierre’s desires, says this naive correspondent, his agents have “ sounded the people on the subject ” by means of circulating the rumour that both the little Capets had died.  “ But we had the grief to see our expectations disappointed in this direction.  No one was taken in by our little ruse ;  every one said, as if with one accord, ‘ Ah ! if those two children there are dead, they have been well helped (to die).’  And all appeared—let us say the word—indignant.  Leave there then, believe me, the little Capets and their aunt ;  even policy demands it, for if you killed the boy the crowned brigands would instantly recognize as King of France ‘ le gros Monsieur de Ham’ (the Comte de Provence).” [193]  It was thus really the people who stood between the poor children in the Temple and their murderers !

After the Queen followed the Girondins, On the last day of October, Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Carra, Isnard, Ducos, and fourteen other members of the faction were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and charged with all the bygone intrigues enumerated by Camille Desmoulins in his Histoire des Brissotins.  By way of emphasizing the accusation of Orléanism, old Sillery, the one-time boon companion of the Duc d’Orléans, was added to their number.  Then to ensure their conviction, the same infamous device was adopted as in the case of the King, that of framing a law to fit the case, and on the fourth day of their trial the Convention passed the decree that when a trial had lasted three days the jury should be ordered to give their verdict without listening to further evidence.  Thereupon the jury, obedient to the orders of the Comité de Salut Public, unanimously declared the accused to be worthy of death, and on the 31st of October the “ Twenty-One ” were executed in the Place de la Révolution.

The rest of the faction, with the exception of Louvet, perished later ;  Condorcet took poison ;  Guadet, Salles, and Barbaroux were guillotined in Bordeaux ;  Buzot and Pétion, who attempted flight, were found dead, half devoured by dogs, in the fields of Médoc.  A week later Madame Roland followed the men whom her thirst for vengeance on the Court had driven to their doom.  To the end her hatred of the Queen knew no abating ;  in her prison she heard of the terrible fate of that “ proud woman who hated equality ” without a stirring of compassion.[194]  Manon’s own conception of “ equality ” enabled her to confront the scaffold with composure.  “ Think,” she wrote to Bosc, “ how worthless is the canaille that feasts upon the spectacle ! ” [195]  Thus fortified by the consciousness of her own superiority, which in her case was almost a religion, she flung defiance at the Revolution, and from the platform of the guillotine her last words, addressed to the new statue of Liberty before her, were clearly heard by the wondering multitude :  “ O Liberty, how they have fooled you ! (O Liberté, comme on t’a jouée !) ” [196]  She forgot that she herself had played no small part in the fooling.

Poor old Roland, away at Rouen, hearing of the death of the wife who had long since ceased to love him, went out into a wood and stabbed himself, thereby proving that he was human after all, but, Girondin to the last, he did not forget to leave upon his body a note explaining that these were the remains of a man who had died as he had lived, “ virtuous and upright.”

So ended the famous Gironde.  Within a month the Queen and her two bitterest enemies all met with the same fate on the same spot ;  for two days before the execution of Madame Roland, Philippe Égalité had paid the penalty for his crimes.  All the way from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution the wretched prince was overwhelmed with insults by the populace of whom he had been represented as the idol :  “ Scoundrel, it is you who are the cause of all our ills ! ”  “ It was you who had the Princesse de Lamballe assassinated ! ”  “ Wretch, you wished to be King, but Heaven is just, your throne will be a scaffold ! ”  Above all, it was as the murderer of Louis XVI. the crowd now taunted him :  “ You voted for the death of your kinsman ! ” and mocking voices repeated the infamous words :  “ I vote for death ! ” [197]  Philippe listened to all these cries with perfect sang-froid ;  to him as to every revolutionary, once the game was up, the people were of no account whatever ;  moreover he had taken the precaution to fortify himself with copious draughts of excellent champagne before leaving his prison cell, and it seems to have been this, rather than the ministrations of his confessor, that inspired him with courage to meet his end.[198]

Danton was away at his château in Arcis-sur-Aube when the death of Philippe Égalité occurred, and on his return to Paris at the end of November it became evident that he had undergone some surprising change.  Was it the soothing influence of country life, or the society of the sixteen-year-old girl he had married three months after the death of his wife, or was it the loss of his patron the Duc d’Orléans that had moderated Danton’s revolutionary ardour ?  Or had Danton begun to fear for his own safety ?  Where Orléans had gone, were all those suspected of Orléanisme to follow ?  These and other theories have been put forward to account for the sudden cooling of Danton’s revolutionary ardour.  M. Madelin offers a fresh one by suggesting that Danton had become the victim of neurasthenia.  Yet is Danton’s change of front really so inexplicable ?  Why, after all, should he have wished to continue the Revolution ?  Everything that had inspired his diatribes—royalty, aristocracy, Girondisme—had been swept away ;  his career as agitator was done, and now he was ready to settle down comfortably on the profits of his labours.

It was thus that one day in this winter of 1794, whilst the cold and hungry people of Paris were waiting in ever-lengthening queues for the bread and meat doled out to them in miserable rations, Danton, well warmed and well fed after an excellent dinner at one of the best restaurants in Paris, expressed his attitude to the Revolution :  “ Well, at last our turn has come to enjoy life !  Delicate food, exquisite wines, stuffs of silk and gold, women one dreams of, all this is the prize of acquired power.  For us, then, for us, all this, since we are the strongest.  After all, what is the Revolution ?  A battle.  And shall it not be followed like all battles by the division of spoils amongst the conquerors ? ” [199]

Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Danton should have failed to enter enthusiastically into that plan of depopulation which led only to the Spartan Republic wherein all these things would be denied him.  At any rate, Danton and Camille Desmoulins—who had now become entirely his disciple—began to suggest tentatively that the Terror had gone far enough, and that a committee of clemency should be formed.

“ You wish to exterminate all your enemies by the guillotine,” wrote Camille on the 21st of December, “ but was there ever a greater folly ?  Can you cause a single one to perish on the scaffold without making ten enemies for yourself amongst his family or his friends ?  Do you think it is these women, these old men, these dotards, these egotists, these laggards of the Revolution whom you imprison that are the most dangerous ?  Of your enemies only the cowards and the sick have remained amongst you.  The brave and the strong have emigrated.  They have perished at Lyon or in La Vendée ;  all the rest do not deserve your anger.” [200]

Meanwhile Danton expostulated with Robespierre :  “ Let us limit our power to striking great blows profitable to the Republic.  For that reason we must not guillotine Republicans.” [201]

Robespierre, intent on his plan of depopulation, thought otherwise.  He knew that amongst so-called Republicans there was, as yet, no hope of unity, that on one side the Hébertistes with their passion for destruction, on the other the Dantonistes with their schemes for self-enrichment, would never allow him to establish in peace that model colony of austere equality that was his dream.  Therefore Hébertistes and Dantonistes must go, and according to his customary plan Robespierre set out to destroy one faction by another.  He had used Hébert to bring about the final doom of the Queen and the Girondins, now he used Danton to rid him of the Hébertistes.  In this order of campaign he showed his profound wisdom ;  to have reversed the process, that is to say to have attempted to demolish the Dantonistes with the aid of Hébert, might have proved his own undoing, for the people, drawn to Danton by his plea for clemency, might have rallied round him, but for Hébert, since his attacks on religion, the great majority of the people felt nothing but contempt.

Robespierre, therefore, had the people whole-heartedly with him when he now denounced the atheistic movement of the Hébertistes.  “ Atheism,” he said at the Convention, “ is aristocratic.  The idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and punishes crime triumphant is wholly popular.”

In these words Robespierre had surpassed himself as a crowd exponent-if the people wanted a God, well, he would give them one, and thereby establish his power on an immutable foundation.  The Feast of the Supreme Being eight months later formed the corollary to this design.  Danton, quick to see the advantage offered by this attitude, followed Robespierre’s speech a few days later with a further denunciation of the “ antireligious masquerades ” that had recently taken place, and the two leading demagogues thus joining forces had no difficulty in crushing the wretched Hébertistes out of existence.

On the 21st of March 1794 Hébert, Ronsin, Momoro, Vincent, Clootz, and several foreign intriguers—Proly, Desfieux, Pereyre, and others—were led before the Revolutionary Tribunal on a charge of conspiring with foreign powers, notably with Pitt, to overthrow the Republic.  As far as Pitt was concerned, of course, not a shred of evidence could be produced, but certainly, if foreign powers had desired to destroy France, they could not have chosen more effective measures than those adopted by this anarchic gang.  Clootz, as has been already said, had undoubtedly been sent to France in order to create anarchy, but whether with the collusion of the King of Prussia it is impossible to know.  Robespierre, at any rate, profoundly distrusted this Prussian apostle of Internationalism.  In vain Clootz had declared that “ his heart was French and his soul was sans-culotte ”;  Robespierre in demanding his expulsion from the Jacobin Club on the 12th of December had observed drily, “ Citizens, will you regard as a patriot a foreigner who desires to be more democratic than the French ? . . . Never was he the defender of the French people, but of the human race. . . . Paris swarms with intriguers, with English and Austrians ;  they sit amongst you with the agents of Frederick. . . . Clootz is a Prussian.”[202]

The exponent of universal brotherhood as expressed by the massacres of September—for it will be remembered that it was Clootz who had regretted that they had not “ Septemberized ” enough—had thus failed to inspire his French brethren with confidence, and now, arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal, was obliged to hear his system of a Universal Republic stigmatized as “ a profoundly premeditated perfidy which gave a pretext for the coalition of crowned heads against France.”

When finally the eighteen “ conspirators ” were condemned to death by the Tribunal, Clootz appealed in vain to the “ human race ” against the judgement ;  the human race that filled the tribunes responded merely with frantic applause.

Paris went nearly mad with joy at the execution of the Hébertistes ;  immense crowds collected as the criers went through the streets proclaiming the verdict ;  the air resounded with shouts of “ The Père Duchesne to the guillotine ! ”  Even the populace, whom Hébert, in the days when he held it at his command, had described as “ the only good and pure element of the great Parisian family,” rejoiced at the downfall of its former idol.  Although by now it had begun to grow tired of the spectacle of the guillotine, it prepared on this occasion to assemble in force around the scaffold.  The only fear was that the Place de la Révolution might not prove large enough to hold so vast a multitude.  Every window in the Rue Saint-Honoré was let to see the procession pass.[203]

In the markets, at the street corners, people collected in groups, saying to each other, “ It was the rascal Hébert and his clique who wished to make us die of hunger ;  with the fall of this infernal faction we shall see once more peace and abundance.” [204]  Hébert’s own bloodthirsty phrases were passed derisively from mouth to mouth :  “ Hé ! Hé ! the stovemerchant is going to put his nose out of the little window ! ”  “ He is going to sneeze into the sack ! ” [205]  Some were of opinion that the guillotine was too gentle a mode of execution, and that something more lingering and painful should be devised for such scoundrels-conspirators “ a thousand times more criminal than Capet and his wife.” [206]

When at last, at four o’clock on the fine spring afternoon of the 24th of March, the tumbrils bearing their eighteen victims made their appearance, so immense a crowd had collected that the procession was continually held up on its way to the scaffold.  The pitiful spectacle of Hébert sobbing helplessly, and almost in a state of collapse, had no power to touch the hearts in which more than any one he had helped to kill all sentiments of humanity, and it was his own refrains that now echoed in his ears as the cruel mob surged around him singing in chorus, and with hands and feet drumming out the measure :

Ran plan, ran plan plan-plan,
Ran plan, ran plan-plan,
Tambour, un ran !

or else with shrieks of ghoulish laughter :

Drelin, drelin, drelin !
A la guillotine ! [207]

The other Hébertistes listened to all this with disdain ;  Clootz above all remained immovable, for if, as a contemporary relates, he was “ dying of fright,” it was only “ lest any of his companions should believe in God, and he preached materialism to theirs until his last breath.” [208]

As the tumbrils entered the Place de la Révolution a mighty roar arose from the assembled multitude, and thousands of voices began to chant the revolutionary “ Complainte ” of “ Rougyff.”  One after another the victims ascended the scaffold.  Hébert’s head was the last to fall.  As he lay tied to the plank the executioner playfully danced the blade of the guillotine over the wretched man’s neck before allowing it finally to descend, and the populace, that only a few months earlier had adored Hébert, greeted this brutal jest with laughter and applause.

But if on this occasion the mob of Paris showed itself ferocious, it was the only execution, except that of Robespierre, at which such scenes took place.  In general it will be noticed throughout the Revolution that the men the people ended by hating most were those with whom they had been most intimate, and who had promised them the most.  They liked Marat, Robespierre, and Hébert as long as these demagogues promised them a millennial age and appeared to be, as they professed, true friends of the poor, living in Spartan simplicity and sharing their privations.  But when the people discovered they had been deceived, when no millennium dawned, above all when they realized that their idols feasted whilst they themselves went hungry, they turned and rent them with all the fury of blighted hope and disappointed love.[209]

For this reason Danton did not end by incurring the animosity of the people ;  the “ grand seigneur of the Sans-Culotterie ” had always kept aloof from the crowd, had never promised to share the good things of life with them, never pretended to be one of them ;  no draggled herd of jupons gras had followed in his wake, no adoring tricoteuses had hung upon his lips in the tribunes of the Convention.  The people only knew him now from the distance as a great voice in the Assembly, as a great bon-vivant outside it ;  they were well aware that he lived principally for women and good cheer, and being Parisians rather liked him for it.

The people, therefore, did not rejoice at the death of the Dantonistes which took place on the 5th of April.  For now that Danton had served his purpose by helping to rid him of the “ anarchic ” gang, Robespierre lost no time in turning his attention to the remaining faction.  Only one week after the execution of the Hébertistes, Robespierre hurled his thunderbolt at the head of Danton, and he hurled it by the hand of St. Just.  This was really extraordinarily ingenious, for, as Danton’s past connection with the Orléaniste conspiracy formed the chief ground of accusation against him, Danton might well have retaliated, if the charge had been made by Robespierre himself, with the reminder that he, “ Incorruptible ” though he was, had nevertheless worked with the conspirators in the early days of the Revolution.  Against St. Just, however, no such insinuations could be made.  This irreproachable young man, who moved through the scenes of the Terror like a marble Antinous “ with his feet in blood and tears,” [210] had only joined the revolutionary movement as a deputy of the Convention, and could not be suspected of complicity with previous intrigues.  It was, therefore, to St. Just that Robespierre confided the materials for a great indictment of the Dantonistes on precisely the same lines as Camille Desmoulins’ indictment of the Girondins a year earlier.  It is impossible to read the pamphlet of Camille concurrently with the speech of St. Just and not to recognize that in both the chain of reasoning must have been evolved by the same brain, though in one it is expressed with the sprightly verve of the pamphleteer, in the other with the sober logic of the politician.  And even more than the Histoire des Brissotins of Desmoulins, the “ Rapport ” of St. Just provides the most damning indictment of the Revolution.[211]  No Royalist has ever exposed more remorselessly the workings of the great revolutionary intrigues ;  Montjoie himself could not have penned a clearer resume of the Orléaniste conspiracy and its subsequent ramifications than is contained in the following passages :  “ You have marched,” St. Just said to the Convention, “ between the faction of false patriots and that of the moderates you must overthrow.  These factions, born with the Revolution, have followed in its course as reptiles follow the course of rivers . . . the party of Orléans was the first constituted ;  it had branches in all the governments, and in the three legislatures (i.e. in the Constituent and the Legislative Assemblies and the Convention).  This criminal party, lacking audacity . . ., always dissimulating and never boldly venturing, was carried away by the energy of the men of good faith and by the force of the people’s virtue ;  it followed always the course of the Revolution, shrouding itself continually and never daring.  This is what made people believe at the beginning that Orléans had no ambition, for in the best prepared circumstances he lacked courage and resolution.  These secret convulsions of the dissimulating parties were the cause of public misfortunes.  The popular Revolution was the surface of a volcano of extraneous conspiracies.  The Constituent Assembly, a senate by day, was by night a collection of factions which prepared the policy and artifices of the morrow.  Affairs had a double intention ;  one ostensibly and gracefully coloured, the other secret, leading to hidden results contrary to the interests of the people.  They made war on the nobility, the guilty friend of the Bourbons, in order to pave the way to the throne for Orléans.  One sees at each step the efforts of this party to ruin the Court, its enemy, and to preserve royalty, but the loss of one entailed the other ;  no royalty can exist without a patriciate. . . .

“ There was a faction in 1790 to place the crown on the head of Orléans ;  there was one to maintain it on the head of the Bourbons ;  there was another faction to place the House of Hanover on the throne of France.  These factions were overthrown with royalty on the 10th of August ;  terror forced all the secret conspiracies in favour of monarchy to dissimulate more profoundly than ever.  Then all these factions took the mask of the Republican party ;  Brissot, Buzot, and Dumouriez continued the faction of Orléans ;  Carra the faction of Hanover ;  Manuel, Lanjuinais, and others the party of the Bourbons.”  Now, though the last passage displays some inconsistency—for it will be remembered that during the Massacres of September Robespierre had accused Brissot of being in league with Brunswick—the preceding statements concerning the factions will be seen exactly to coincide with those of Montjoie, Beaulieu, Pagès, the “ Deux Amis de la Liberté,” and others quoted earlier in this book ;  and thus, even in the opinion of Robespierre and St. Just, the French Revolution was not, as is generally supposed, a struggle between monarchy and republicanism, or between autocracy and democracy, but simply a ramification of conspiracies by various factions to usurp power at the expense of the people.

After this admirable preamble St. Just proceeded to describe the rôle played by the Dantonistes throughout the Revolution—he spoke of Danton’s connection with Mirabeau, “ who was meditating a change of dynasty, and realized the value of his audacity ”;  he referred to Danton’s collusion with the petition of the Champ de Mars in 1791, his nomination of Orléans to the Convention, his intrigue with Dumouriez to ensure the safe retreat of the Prussian armies after Valmy ;  in scathing terms he described his “ cowardly and constant abandonment of the public cause ” at times of crisis, by invariably adopting the plan of retreat, notably on the 9th of August, when he had betaken himself to his bed whilst the revolutionary army was mustering ;  and he ended by denouncing the love of riches that distinguished the Dantonistes, their “ need of pleasures acquired at the cost of equality.”

As a matter of fact no one at the time doubted Danton’s venality, nor did this greatly injure him in the mind of the public, since few of the revolutionary leaders had shown themselves proof against the seduction of money ;  Robespierre would not have won the title of “ Incorruptible ” if he had not been almost unique in this respect.  Danton himself had hitherto made no secret of his greed for gold, only when charged with it before the Revolutionary Tribunal did he attempt denial “ I—sold ?  Men of my stamp are not to be bought ;  the seal of liberty and Republican genius are stamped in ineffaceable characters on their foreheads.”

The trial of the Dantonistes—Danton, Desmoulins, Fabre d’Églantine, Herault de Séchelles, Lacroix, Philippeaux—presented one of the strangest scenes of all the Revolution.  Danton, who had entered the court “ like a furious bull plunging into the arena with lowered horns,” attempted to carry off the situation with a high hand, now chaffing the judges or throwing bread pellets at their heads, now breaking out into furious bellowings, but never refuting the accusations brought against him.[212]  Again and again the President was obliged to call him to order, reminding him that his anger and his coarse invectives were damaging his case.  Outside the hall of the Tribunal an immense crowd listened breathlessly whilst the thunder of Danton’s voice rolled out through the open windows across the Seine, where further crowds had gathered ;  and as each resounding phrase struck on their ears, the people passed it on till it reached the farthest limits of that vast multitude.

Finally the Tribunal, adopting the same illegal methods that had been employed at the trial of the King and of the Girondins, cut short the proceedings and pronounced sentence of death.  Danton’s fury now knew no bounds ;  transferred to his cell at the Conciergerie to await execution, he continued to bellow incoherent phrases through his prison bars :

“ It was on this day that I instituted the Revolutionary Tribunal ;  but I ask pardon from God and men ;  it was not that it might become the scourge of humanity, it was to prevent a renewal of the massacres of September. . . .

“ I leave everything in a fearful muddle ;  there is no one who understands government. . . .

“ They are all my brothers Cain.  Brissot would have had me guillotined like Robespierre. . . .

“ I had a spy who never left me. . . .

“ The f. . . . beasts, they will cry ‘ Vive la Republique ! ’ as they see me pass ! ” [213]

In the end Danton resigned himself and faced his end with courage.  A few moments before starting for the place of execution he summed up his philosophy of life in a characteristic sentence :  “ What matter if I die ?  I have well enjoyed myself in the Revolution ;  I have spent well, caroused well, caressed many women ;  let us sleep !  (Qu’importe si je meurs ?  J’ai biers joui dans la Révolution, j’ai bien dépensé, bien ribotté, bien caressé des filles ;  allons dormir !) ” [214]  As the three scarlet tumbrils made their way along the Rue Saint-Honoré, serried rows of spectators watched them pass in silence ;  this time they did not rejoice, but neither did they dare to express disapproval.  Camille Desmoulins, the one-time “ procurer of the lantern,” displayed pitiable weakness now that his own turn had come.  In his despair he had so torn his clothes that his body was bare almost to the waist ;  all the way he talked feverishly to his companions, laughing convulsively the while like one demented.

Only a year ago, in sending the Girondins to their doom, Camille had said confidently, “ We have the people with us ! ” now, like every demagogue in turn, he appealed vainly to the people’s pity.  At one moment overcome with frenzy, Camille, struggling madly, tearing at his clothes, shrieked out to them, “ People, it is your servants who are being sacrificed !  It is I who in 1789 called you to arms !  It is I who uttered the first cry of liberty !  My crime, my only crime, is to have shed tears !”  But the mob, always cruel to those who showed fear, responded only with jeers and insults.  At this Danton, rolling his enormous round head contemptuously, said with a derisive smile to Camille, “ Be quiet, and leave alone that vile canaille ! ”

At the last moment the thought of his young wife, whom, voluptuary though he was, he loved sincerely, wrung from Danton one cry of agony, “ My beloved, I shall see you no more ! ”  Then pulling himself together, “ Come, Danton, no weakness ! ”  Turning to the executioner he said, “ Show my head to the people, it is worth it ! ”  And amidst cries of “ Vive la République ! ” that terrible head was held aloft.

The execution of Danton has been frequently described as the vengeance of Robespierre on a formidable rival.  Undoubtedly Robespierre’s devouring envy was aroused by Danton’s powerful oratory, as formerly it had been aroused by the eloquence of the Girondins.  At the same time it must be admitted that the Dantonistes’ philosophy of life was incompatible with the schemes of Robespierre and St. Just.  Long after the death of the Dantonistes Fievée relates that he asked Voulland, a member of the Comité de Sûreté Générale and the intime of Robespierre, why the destruction of this party had been found necessary, to which Voulland replied that as long as the Orléans faction prevailed, that is to say, “ the deputies who mingled pleasures, luxury, and cupidity with proscriptions,” it was impossible to restore order.  “ Heaven knows what would have become of France in their hands ! ”  As to Camille Desmoulins, Voulland added, “ who had ranged himself on their side as a dupe rather than as an accomplice, could we save him whilst attacking Danton, the most dangerous of all Orléanistes, and Fabre d’Églantine, even more immoral than Danton ? ”

It is not therefore, as certain historians would have us believe, because the Dantonistes had become humane and “ moderate ” that their fall was inevitable, but because they were Orléanistes, because they were voluptuaries and reactionaries—reactionaries in the true sense of the word ;  that is to say, men who wished to maintain the easy morals and the inequalities of the Old Régime in an aggravated form.  So whilst there can be no excuse for their murder—and their trial was really nothing but judicial murder—it was obviously impossible for Robespierre to realize his plan of an austere Republic, founded on absolute equality, as long as they remained in power.

THE GREAT TERROR

The question has frequently been asked why, after the death of the Dantonistes, Robespierre did not immediately embark on his schemes of reconstruction.  Why should the final overthrow of his most formidable rivals have proved the signal for a still more rigorous application of the Terror ?  But when we have once grasped the theory on which the Terror was founded, the problem seems easier of solution.  For in the spring of 1794 the process of depopulating Paris had only just begun, and to the triumvirate it seemed more than ever necessary to continue the operation with unremitting energy if a harmonious Socialist State was to result.

In order to understand this necessity to its full extent we must realize something of the state of Paris under the reign of Robespierre and his allies.

The truth is, then, that the populace whom these demagogues had made all-powerful had now become their terror ;  no Sultan was ever watched more anxiously by trembling “ wazirs ” than was the Sovereign People by its courtiers of 1794.  With a view to guarding against any ebullitions of popular feeling, agents were employed by them to go about the city and study the moods of the people—“ listeners ” and “ observers ” who stood beside the groups at the street corners, amongst the women in the markets and in the queues at the shop doors, or who mingled with the crowds watching the victims going to the guillotine.  Everything the observers noticed ;  everything the listeners overheard ;  expressions of approval or murmurs of dissatisfaction at the existing régime, smiles, frowns, angry exclamations, or derisive laughter—all these were set down and conveyed verbatim to the revolutionary committees in detailed daily reports.  These documents, which have been published both by Schmidt and Dauban, afford us the minutest insight into the mind of Paris at this moment, and at the same time throw a curious light on the mentality of the demagogues.  The fact that they should have held this intricate system of espionage to be necessary shows how profoundly they distrusted the people they professed to worship, and how keenly they realized the insecurity of their own position.  Nor were such fears groundless, for the result of all these observations was to reveal that beneath the apparent submission of the people there lay a deep undercurrent of discontent.  This perhaps was not altogether surprising, for the famine was now worse than ever.  All over France the inhabitants of the towns had been put on rations of the meagrest description ;  in the country districts, where even these were not obtainable, the unhappy peasants staved off the pangs of hunger with grass and acorns.[215]  The queues at the shop doors had grown steadily longer ;  from three or four o’clock in the morning rows of starving men and women stood in the cold and rain, or, sinking from exhaustion, lay in heaps upon the pavement.[216]  The law of the “ maximum,” by which a fixed price was set on all the necessaries of life, far from easing the situation as had been promised, immensely complicated it.  The fishermen refused to put out to sea, the millers concealed their grain rather than sell it at a loss, the shopkeepers reserved their goods for favoured customers or disposed of them secretly at prices above the maximum to those who could afford to pay.  The people, enraged by these manœuvres, and faithful to Marat’s teachings, continued to waylay the peasants bringing supplies into the city, and pillaged the carts containing eggs, butter, or poultry.  “ Some paid ;  the others carried off the things without paying.  The peasants in despair swore they would bring nothing more to Paris.” [217]

Besides the want of food, the want of employment was still acute ;  bands of workmen gathered at the street corners complaining of the times.  “ How can you expect us to work when all the rich people, whether patriots or not, are imprisoned ? ” [218]  Beggars, old men, women and children besieged passers-by for alms.  Meanwhile the men who were still employed perpetually demanded higher pay ;  the masons and carpenters put up their prices every ten days, threatening not to work unless their demands were acceded to.  “ Everybody,” writes a government agent, “ cries out against the tyranny of the workmen.” [219]  But even when the money they claimed had been paid they were not contented, for often they could buy nothing with it.  What was the good of earning 100 sols a day instead of 20 sols [220] when neither bread nor meat, candles or firing were to be had ?  Moreover, owing to the bankruptcy of the State, the assignats or paper money they received had only a fictitious value.  “ A cab fare,” relates Mercier, “ cost 600 livres ;  that is to say, 10 livres a minute.  A private person going home in the evening said to the cabman, ‘ How much ? ’ ‘ 6000 livres.’  He pulled out his pocket-book and paid.  Every one was rich in imagination ;  they were unhappy only when they were disillusioned.” [221]

The people were perpetually being disillusioned.  This beautiful reign of equality which had been promised them had brought them nothing but misery ;  yet they were continually assured that when a particular political faction had been overthrown all would be well, and the famine would miraculously disappear.  Once it had been “ the Court and aristocracy ” who had monopolized the corn, but Court and aristocracy were long since swept away, and still the grain was not forthcoming ;  then it was against the Girondins that the same charge had been brought, but the Girondins too were gone, and still the scarcity continued ;  now the Hébertistes, to whom it had likewise been attributed, had followed the Girondins, yet the people were hungrier than ever.

Nothing had happened as they expected.  Wealth still mocked at poverty, and those in power still drank and feasted whilst the struggling thousands starved.  For at the butchers’ shops, where the people waited from early dawn for a miserable scrap of meat, the best joints were reserved for the members of the revolutionary committees and their friends.[222]  The restaurants too, where the “ representatives of the people ” forgathered, were still lavishly supplied with excellent food, as many as three or four meat courses being served at one meal.[223]  It is hardly surprising, then, if the people grew indignant and cried out that, whilst “ fathers of families could not put the pot on the fire in their homes when their wives were sick,” and “ honest citizens were eating only bread and potatoes, the wealthier citizens were making up parties for the restaurants. . . . It is only well-off people,” they said, “ who dine at restaurants, and they go there to regale themselves with light women whilst the poor sans-culottes eat bread.” [224]

Exasperated by their sufferings, the people cast about for remedies which varied according to the temperament of the malcontents ;  thus, whilst some cried “ Vive l’ancien Régime ! then we had abundance of everything ! ” [225] others declared that things would go no better unless more victims were executed, and, nodding their heads in the direction of the guillotine, added, “ It is only that saint there who can save us ! ” [226]

The fact is that the people of Paris were now neither Royalist nor Republican, neither for their present rulers or against them ;  their faith in all government had been shaken to its foundations.[227]  In consequence of seeing one faction after another led to the guillotine, they had come to regard this spectacle as the natural ending to a political career :  “ All these rascals of deputies will pass that way ! ” they cried out in the popular assemblies.[228]  A government agent, adopting an admirable simile, remarks :  “ The mass of the nation is a bear, and the political parties working it are turbulent monkeys who have climbed up and are playing on its back.” [229]  The question for every demagogue was thus, “ Will the bear rise and throw us off ? ”  And, haunted by this apprehension, they played on in fear and trembling, now patting the great beast into good-humour, now terrorizing it into submission.

One thing was certain, the people were not to be depended on to support any faction or government consistently ;  the needs of the moment were their only law.  These same women who would fight each other to the death for a few ounces of butter,[230] and tear provisions furiously from the market-carts, would not raise a finger to save their idols from destruction—never once attempted to drag a victim—even one of their own kind—from his seat in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine.

How was it possible to make a “ nation of gods ” out of such elements ?  Where amidst all this sea of human passions was the “ virtue,” the austerity, the “ civism ” necessary to the ideal Republic to be found ?  Inevitably, therefore, the people of Paris must be subjected to the same process as the people in the provinces before the work of reconstruction could begin.  It was thus that in April of 1794 Robespierre and his colleagues, now in sole possession of the field, set to work with redoubled energy on their great scheme—the depopulation of Paris.

From this moment the rôle of the people ceased entirely ;  except as a hired and often recalcitrant claque, even the populace took no part in the scenes of bloodshed that followed.  Once the people had been the tools of the demagogues, carrying out their vengeances ;  now the people’s own turn had come—as it must come in every revolution that does not stop half-way—and they had become the victims.  No longer was the force of the people turned against themselves—demagogy had abandoned “ jiu-jitsu ” and assumed the bludgeon.  The Reign of Terror was absolute despotism.

“ One must have seen,” says Frenilly, “ as I saw in 1793 and 1794, in the country and in the towns—which history will never tell—the entire population, good and simple peasants, tradesmen, artisans and owners of property, all trembling beneath the hauteur of a few lawyers formed into a Popular Society.  Never did vassals submit more humbly to vexations ;  never did barons exercise them with more arrogance.”[231]  The people were no longer merely paralysed, but absolutely crushed.  Every vestige of liberty accorded by the first two Assemblies under Louis XVI.—personal liberty, liberty of the press, religious liberty, the sacredness of property—were utterly destroyed.  Even speech was no longer free—a word sufficed to send one to the scaffold.  “ The worst thing under the rule of Robespierre,” old men used to say long afterwards, “ was that in the morning one could never be sure of sleeping in one’s bed that night.” [232]

Immediately after the death of the Dantonistes the condemnations passed by the Revolutionary Tribunal increased in number ;  during the preceding month of Ventose the guillotine had claimed only 116 victims ;  in Germinal, on the 16th day of which the Dantonistes perished, the figure rose to 155, and in the following month of Floréal to no less than 354.  These were still taken principally from amongst the Royalists, aristocrats, or bourgeois—on the 20th of April twenty-five Parliamentarians ;  on the 3rd of May the Grenadiers des Filles-St. Thomas, who had remained loyal to the King at the siege of the Tuileries ;  on the 8th of May twenty-eight farmer-generals ;  on the 10th of May Madame Elizabeth and a number of aristocrats, both men and women.  It was not until Robespierre had succeeded in obtaining the decree known as the “ Loi du 22 Prairial ” (the 10th of June) that the great indiscriminate butcheries began.[233]  By this infamous law victims summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal were denied all rights of defence ;  no advocates were to be allowed, no witnesses called, and the penalty imposed in all cases was to be death.

The “ Loi du 22 Prairial ” was undoubtedly Robespierre’s bid for absolute power.  Two days earlier he had presided at the “ Feast of the Supreme Being,” where he had thrown off his disguise of austerity and appeared before the people curled and powdered, in his pale-blue coat and nankin breeches, holding in his hands an enormous bouquet of flowers and wheat-ears.  In order to make his entry more impressive, he had kept the immense crowd waiting for half-an-hour before he made his appearance, and as a storm of applause greeted his arrival a glow of triumph overspread the sallow countenance of the Incorruptible.  At this moment, writes one who looked on, “ he believed himself to be King and God.” [234]  The plaudits of the multitude mounted to his head like wine, and it was under the influence of this intoxication that he ventured on his great coup—the passing of the law that was to place in his hands the power of life and death.

Yet if it is to Robespierre that the system of the Terror in Paris must be mainly attributed, we should be mistaken in regarding him as the most sanguinary of the Terrorists.  On the contrary, everything goes to prove that Robespierre and his principal ally, St. Just, did not love bloodshed for its own sake ;  they regarded it merely as a means to an end—the establishment of a harmonious democracy on the plan they had devised.  But, however exalted may have been the ideal at which they aimed, it was obviously impossible for them to find idealists exclusively to co-operate with them or to execute their scheme, and they were therefore obliged to throw in their lot with a band of men so atrocious that by comparison they themselves seem almost humane.  These men were to be found amongst their colleagues in the Comité de Salut Public and their instruments in the Comité de Sûreté Générale and the Revolutionary Tribunal.

The Comité de Sûreté Générale had been created in 1789 by the National Assembly as a “ committee of information,” and only took its later name on the 30th of May 1792.  Although supposed to be subordinate to the Comité de Salut Public, and in accord with it, the Comité de Sûreté Générale had in reality become its rival, and each committee was in turn divided into rival factions.  These factions, and the mysterious names they bore, have been described by Sénart, and when tabulated in the following manner throw a strange light on the workings of the Terror :

By means of this table the really sanguinary authors of the Terror can be seen at a glance ;  these were the “ Gens Révolutionnaires ” of the first committee, and the “ Gens d’Expédition ” of the second.  For innate ferocity, for real bloodthirstiness—bloodthirstiness without any ultimate purpose—we must look, not to the triumvirate formed by Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just, but to that infamous trio who afterwards overthrew them—Barère de Vieuzac, Billaud-Varenne, and Collot d’Herbois.  Was it not Billaud who had presided at the massacres in the prisons, and urged the assassins on to violence ?  Was it not Collot who had declared these same massacres of September to be the “ Credo ” of liberty, and who, as the ally of Chalier, had organized the atrocities that took place at Lyon ?  And it was Barère, that miserable “ chameleon,” now Feuillant, now Jacobin, now aristocrat, now revolutionary, “ atheist in the evening, deist in the morning,” [235] who in one atrocious phrase epitomized the plan of depopulation into which no one had entered more heartily than he.  One day, Vilate relates, Barère, looking out of a window in the Tuileries towards the city, said, “Paris is too large ;  it is to the Republic, by means of its monstrous population, what a violent rush of blood is to the heart of a man—a suffocation that withers the other organs and leads to death.”  And to Dupin he added :  “ Do you know, Dupin, that the idea of Nero, when he set fire to Rome in order to have the pleasure of re-building it, was a really revolutionary idea ? ” [236]

The former phrase became current coin amongst the Terrorists ;  it was continually on their lips, says Mercier, and they would observe that, in order to counteract this unhealthy rush of blood to the heart, one should have recourse to “ phlebotomy.” [237]

At his pleasure-house of Clichy, Barère met twice a decade [238] with his allies, the “ Gens d’Expédition ” of the Comité de Sûreté Générale, to plan fresh fournées for the guillotine.

It was these monsters—Vadier, Voulland, Amar, Jagot, Louis du Bas Rhin, names long since forgotten, yet in their day names of dread and horror—who lent to the Terror that spirit of ghoulish ferocity that makes the history of the period unique in the annals of mankind.  This hideous band that Sénart describes with fearful realism in his Mémoires reminds one of nothing so much as a pack of jackals breaking the stillness of a Himalayan night with their dreary howling after blood.  Thus Sénart relates :

“ There had been one evening a great number of people guillotined ;  Louis du Bas Rhin said :

“ ‘ It is going well ;  the baskets are filling.’

“ ‘ Then,’ answered Voulland, ‘ let us make a provision of game. . . .’

“ Vadier said to Voulland :  ‘ I saw you on the Place de la Révolution near the guillotine.’

“ ‘ I went to laugh at the faces those rascals make at the window.’

“ ‘ Ho ! ’ said Vadier, ‘ it is a funny passage—the little window.  They give a good sneeze into the sack.  It amuses me, I have taken quite a liking for it.  I often go there.’

“ ‘ Go to-morrow,’ resumed Amar, ‘ there will be a great show ;  I was at the Tribunal to-day.’

“ ‘ Let us go there,’ said Vadier.

“ ‘ I’ll go for certain,’ retorted Voulland.”

Senart declares that during this conversation he pinched himself to make sure he was not dreaming ;  he felt as if he were between a tiger, a panther, and a bear.

Now it is remarkable that none of Robespierre’s many enemies ever attributed to him sentiments of this atrocious kind, though had they done so they would have been readily believed.  Yet amongst all the witnesses who afterwards came forward at the trial of Fouquier Tinville to testify to the system of the Terror, and Robespierre’s share in it, none asserted that he had appeared to take delight in the sufferings of his victims or that he had even assisted at the spectacle of the guillotine.  Indeed, all evidence goes to show that Robespierre took the first opportunity to disassociate himself from the men he had set in motion ;  and it was thus that five days after the passing of the “ Loi du 22 Prairial ” he ceased to attend the meetings of the Comité de Salut Public.  But to argue from this, as Robespierre’s panegyrists have done, that he now wished to arrest the course of the Terror is quite another matter.  No, Robespierre did not wish to arrest the Terror—of this there can be no possible doubt.  Was not the law that inaugurated those last terrible six weeks of his own making ?  And if he no longer took part in the discussions of the Comité de Salut Public, were not the sanguinary Commune and the police of Paris entirely under his control ?[239]  If, therefore, Robespierre withdrew from the committee, it was either because he disapproved the manner in which his more ferocious colleagues carried out the system of the Terror, or, more probably, because he had begun to see in Billaud, Collot, and Barère a faction that threatened not only his supremacy but his life.  After the “ Loi du 22 Prairial,” says Vilate, “ Robespierre became more sombre, his scowling air repelled every one, he talked only of assassination, again of assassination, always of assassination.  He was afraid that his shadow would assassinate him.”

Already he believed that an attempt had been made to murder him.  In the evening of the 25th of May Cécile Renault, the daughter of a small stationer, had entered the gloomy courtyard of the carpenter’s house in the Rue Saint-Honoré and asked to see Robespierre.  When told that he was out she showed temper and, evidently disbelieving the assertion, answered that a public functionary should be willing to receive all those who asked to see him.  On these words she was led to the Comité de Sûreté Générale, and, by way of making her condemnation absolutely certain, observed that “ under the Old Régime when one presented oneself to the King one was allowed to enter at once.”  “ Then would you rather have a king ? ” they asked her, and she answered boldly, “ I would shed all my blood to have one. . . . That is my opinion ;  you are only tyrants.”  She had gone to Robespierre, she told the Committee, “ in order to see what a tyrant was like.”

They found on her two little penknives, and in a basket she had left at a lemonade-seller’s near-by a change of linen, which she explained she had brought with her, as she expected to be sent to prison and thence to the scaffold.

Before the Revolutionary Tribunal she declared that she had not intended to kill Robespierre, but persisted in expressing her devotion to Louis XVI.:  “ I said I wept for our good King, yes, I said it, and I wish he were still living.  Are you not five hundred kings, and all more insolent and more despotic than the one you killed ? ”

This, of course, sealed the fate of Cécile Renault, and since on the same day a man named Amiral had really attempted to shoot Collot d’Herbois, the revolutionary committees seized the opportunity to proclaim that a “ vast conspiracy ” had been discovered.  On the proposal of Louis du Bas Rhin of the Comité de Sûreté Générale, they further decided to represent this conspiracy as originating in England.  Once again it was Pitt—solemnly declared by the Convention ten months earlier to be “ the enemy of the human race ”—who had instigated the papermaker’s daughter to assassinate Robespierre.  This ludicrous fable offered Barère an occasion to pour forth furious diatribes against the English [240]—“ that treacherous and ferocious people, a slave at home, a despot on the Continent, and a pirate at sea ”;  at the same time it afforded Robespierre a pretext for sending an enormous batch of victims to the guillotine.  Amongst these were included, not only Cécile Renault’s father, the papermaker, her young brother, and an aunt who had been a nun, but all kinds of men and women, some belonging to the nobility, some to the people—the heretofore Prince of Rohan-Rochefort, the beautiful Émilie de Sartines, and her mother, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, four administrators of police, a grocer, a lemonade-seller, a concierge, and two domestic servants—sixty-one in all.

The most pathetic of these conspirators was a little seamstress of seventeen, known as “ la petite Nicholle,” too poor even to afford herself a bedstead, and when Sénart, secretary to the Comité de Sûreté Générale, sought her in her attic on the seventh floor, he found her lying on a straw mattress laid upon the boards.  “ Voulland,” says Sénart, “ wished for her death, because he said she took food to the woman Grandmaison ”—an actress included in the same fournée—“ ‘ and for that reason,’ said the hypocrite Louis du Bas Rhin, ‘ she will go with her.’  I was assured of her innocence. . . .”

It was also Louis du Bas Rhin who proposed that, in order to make the procession more imposing, all the victims should be sent to the scaffold in the scarlet dress of assassins, “ for,” said he, “ small things lead to great ones, appearances create illusions, and it is by illusions that the people are led.”  At this Vadier, fearing that his prey was to be snatched from him and the whole affair to end in a vain parade, cried out, “ But we must have reality, we must have blood ! ”  Louis du Bas Rhin answered reassuringly, “ Poets represent the sage to us as sheltered by a wall of brass ;  let us raise a wall of heads between ourselves and the people.”  What despot, asks Sénart, had ever said, “ Raise a wall of heads between myself and my subjects ? ”  On the day of execution the jackals were there to watch the procession pass, and it was then that Voulland, turning to his companions, uttered his famous bon mot :  “ Come, let us go to the high altar and see the celebration of the Red Mass.”  Fouquier, too, was determined not to miss the spectacle ;  from a window in the Conciergerie he had watched the scarlet-clad figures ascending the tumbrils and, irritated by the sang-froid of Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, exclaimed, “ See how brazen they are !  I must go and see them mount the scaffold, even if I have to miss my dinner ! ”[241]

The calm invariably displayed by the victims was a source of continual annoyance to the jackals of the Comité de Sûreté Générale and their allies in the Revolutionary Tribunal.  One evening as they met at their favourite tavern—Chrétien, on the Place du Théâtre Favart—to drink punch and liqueurs, to smoke and laugh over the executions, and boast of the way they invented accusations against innocent people, Renaudin, one of the most ferocious members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, referring to a certain victim, remarked, “ There was nothing against him.”  “ When there is nothing,” said Vilate, “ one invents.”  “ As for me,” said Foucault, “ I find nobles everywhere, even amongst cobblers.”  Prieur then observed, “ There is one thing that puts me in a temper, and that is the courage with which all these counter-revolutionaries go to their death.  If I were in the place of the Public Accuser, I would have all the condemned people bled before their execution, so as to break down their insolent bearing.”  “ Bravo, my friend,” cried Leroy, known under the sobriquet of “ Dix Août,” “ I will undertake to speak of it to Fouquier ! ” [242]

After the great fournée of the Chemises Rouges things moved faster, yet still not fast enough to satisfy the members of the two committees, and it was then decided to have recourse once more to the old device that had succeeded so admirably in September 1792, and to announce that vast conspiracies were being formed in all the prisons.  The pretext, which seems to have been concerted between Robespierre and Hermann, president of the Revolutionary Tribunal,[243] was, however, this time not so plausible, for the successes of the Republican armies made it impossible to represent the prisoners as a danger to the country through collusion with invading legions.[244]  In order, therefore, to give some colour to the story, an attempt was made by means of systematic ill-treatment—by taking from them all their possessions, feeding them abominably, and waking them up repeatedly in the night—to drive the prisoners to form some plan of revolt which could be called a conspiracy.[245]  But the unhappy captives bore all their sufferings with complete resignation ;  not the faintest shadow of a conspiracy could be detected in any of the prisons.  Yet in each prison in turn—Bicêtre, the Luxembourg, the Carmes, Saint-Lazare, and La Force—it was announced that a conspiracy had been formed, and on this pretext people of all kinds, men and women, deaf, blind, or paralysed, were condemned to death en masse.  Many of these conspirators, accused of having conferred together, met for the first time in the tumbrils on the way to execution.

The hecatombs now became appalling.  During the last six weeks before the fall of Robespierre, that is to say between the passing of the “ Loi du 22 Prairial ” on June 10 and July 27, the period which constitutes “ The Great Terror,” no less than 1366 victims perished, and amongst these by far the largest proportion was taken from amongst either “ the people ” or the petite bourgeoisie.[246]  “ One saw before this Tribunal of Blood,” it was said later in the trial of Fouquier Tinville, “ labouring men who tilled the soil, whose rags hardly covered their nakedness, ascending the rows of seats (of the Tribunal), and being led to the scaffold for having in a moment of anger, or perhaps of drunkenness, made some observation, or for having, through want of education (!), opposed the removal of their church bells.” [247]

In order to swell the numbers of the condemned, poor people were dragged to Paris from all parts of France and butchered without any explanation being given them.[248]  “ Twenty women of Poitou,” writes an eye-witness, “ poor peasants mostly, were assassinated all together.  I see them still, those unhappy victims, lying out in the courtyard of the Conciergerie, overcome with fatigue after a long journey—sleeping on the paving-stones.  Their glances, which betrayed no understanding of the fate that threatened them, resembled those of oxen herded together in the market-place, looking around them fixedly and without comprehension.  They were all executed a few days after their arrival.  At the moment of going to death, some one tore from the breast of one of these unfortunate women the child that she was nursing. . . . Oh ! cries of maternal anguish, how piercing you were, but you were in vain.  Some of the women died in the cart and they guillotined the corpses.” [249]

In this case the victims were condemned all in a batch, without specific grounds of accusations being brought against them individually ;  where men and women of the people were condemned singly some trumped-up charge was usually forthcoming.  The following entries taken at random from Wallon’s records of the Revolutionary Tribunal give an idea of the pretexts on which these poor creatures were done to death :

1.  Françoise Bridier, widow Loreu, aged 72, domestic servant, accused of having hidden 12 ells of linen cloth required for the clothing of the volunteers.

2.  Anne Thérèse Raffé, widow Coquet, denounced by the citizen Folatre to whom she had wished to give a note of 50 livres which he did not need.

3.  Germaine Quetier, the wife of Charbonnier, who said that she wanted a rouet (spinning-wheel), which she pronounced like ‘ roi.” [250]

But it must be admitted that some of the victims brought their fate on themselves.  “ Aristocracy ” was still rampant amongst certain classes of the people, and nothing could persuade them to keep silent.  Thus Madame Blanchet, the old servant of the Abbé de Salamon—she who had turned over the corpses in the courtyard of the Abbaye in her search for her master during the massacres of September—still continued to speak her mind very freely.  Blanchet was therefore imprisoned at the “ Anglaises,” where she found herself amongst a number of ci-devants who had sympathized with the Revolution.  One of these ladies, the Duchesse d’Anville la Rochefoucauld, taunted Blanchet, saying, “ Citizeness Blanchet, you will be guillotined like us ! ”  “ I know that well,” Blanchet answered, “ but there is a difference between us.  I shall die for your cause, which you yourself have abandoned, and you, you will die for having embraced the cause of the patriots. . . . It will be much more degrading to perish thus. . . . No one will be sorry for you, but for me all honourable people who learn of my sad fate will weep. . . . I have always been an aristocrat myself, and you, you were always the friend of that contemptible Condorcet about whom I could tell you fine things ! ” [251]

But it was not only the “ respectable poor ” like Blanchet who entertained aristocratic sentiments.  Some of the disreputable women of the people were violently Royalist.  The Comtesse de Bohm has described a number of these poor creatures, mostly street criers, who were her fellow-prisoners at the Conciergerie, and “ carried Royalism to excess.”  When, as frequently happened, they became noisily drunk, “ their songs, their toasts, were constantly intermingled with cries of ‘ Vive le Roi ! ’ ”  “ These resounding exclamations,” writes Madame de Bohm, “ annoyed the gaolers, who, unable to make them keep silence, daily threatened and struck these drunken women.  This bold, free, and exalted way of showing one’s feelings, of preferring death to constraint, indicates a certain greatness of soul, a savage independence which contrasted strangely with the baseness, the coarseness, and the obscene habits of my neighbours. . . . I sometimes represented to them the dangers they were incurring.  ‘ Oh well, my girl, we shall be guillotined !  One can only die once ! ’  The turnkeys, tired of these vociferations, denounced them ;  and after being judged and condemned they mounted the scaffold, crying deafeningly, ‘ Vive le Roi ! ’ ”

The temptation to commit suicide by uttering this fatal cry proved irresistible to certain women ;  thus Marie Corrié, a young laundress of twenty-three, from sheer “ gaiety of heart ” opened her window and shouted loudly, “ Vive le Roi ! ”  Before the Revolutionary Tribunal she frankly admitted the offence, declaring that she would always cry “ Vive le Roi ! ” and “ Vive Louis XVII. ! ”  The guillotine silenced her at last.

It seems, indeed, that throughout this fearful period of the Terror some mysterious spirit of exaltation was abroad ;  the utter uncertainty in which one lived, the breathless suspense that kept the nerves at concert pitch, the bridging over of the chasm that divides life from death effected by the daily spectacle of those slow-moving “ hearses of the living ” conveying youth and age, virility and beauty, to the other world, even the tropical heat of the weather, all combined to produce an abnormal state of mind which drove people of ardent imaginations to throw their lives recklessly away.

But whatever the cause, the courage displayed by the women of all classes during the Reign of Terror must eternally remain one of the most glorious episodes in the history of France.  Amongst the hundreds that perished one alone, poor old Madame du Barry, showed weakness ;  all the rest, without exception, faced the scaffold with unfaltering courage.

In the women of the aristocratic classes this heroism is the less surprising, for they were trained from infancy to hide their feelings and to live up to their traditions.  To these bearers of great names, dying for a cause that was their own, the Terror must have appeared as a mighty drama in which each one felt herself called to play her part worthily, knowing full well that every word, every smile or glance or gesture would be noticed and recorded, her last words handed down from generation to generation, the lock of hair she gave preserved as a sacred relic amongst her descendants.

But for the women of the people, where was the incentive to courage ?  To these poor souls, suddenly and roughly hurried out of life for no apparent reason, the Terror can have presented nothing in the least dramatic—merely a black horror they could not understand.  The Revolution, they were told, was for the good of the people ;  yet were they not the people ?  Surely to be butchered in the name of democracy was a thousand times more maddening than to fall a victim to the tyranny of the Old Régime !  It cannot be too often repeated—the people were the chief sufferers in the Terror.  Even in the prisons the aristocrats fared better than they.  For there, as everywhere else during the reign of equality, money could buy alleviations, and the wealthier prisoners were able, by the payment of four or five livres a day, to secure cells and pallet-beds, wretched enough in truth, yet infinitely to be preferred to the dreadful Souricière or “ Mouse-Trap ” of the Conciergerie, where the unhappy members of the people were flung upon filthy straw to be devoured by rats and poisoned with pestilential odours.[252]

Why did the people submit to this régime ?  How, in the words of Vilate, are we to understand “ the blind docility of the most enlightened of nations in allowing itself to be taken piecemeal and butchered en masse like a stupid herd led to the shambles ?  History will ask this question.”

The answer is surely that the despotism of the demagogues was organized, whilst the people were composed of solitary units that could not coalesce.  To form an effectual opposition it would have been necessary to meet in consultation, to draw up some plan of campaign, and any such attempts would have been instantly crushed.  The people, therefore, felt themselves helpless ;  no one dared to break line, to take the first step, uncertain whether he would get a backing from his fellows or whether those very men who seemed most eager to rebel would not at the last moment be stricken with panic and betray their allies.

Fear, indeed, held all hearts in its grip.  The Terrorists themselves were terrorized.  They lived in dread now less of the people than of each other.  The revolutionary committees were divided against themselves.  Robespierre had his spies in the Comité de Sûreté Générale ;  meanwhile Vadier of this committee employed an agent to shadow Robespierre.  From this mutual distrust and suspicion arose much of the frenzy that characterized the Terror ;  each man and each faction strove to outdo the other—“ to kill in order not to be killed ” became the plan of one and all.

Meanwhile the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal were driven onwards by the same haunting terror ;  Fouquier Tinville himself trembled perpetually lest his zeal should be deemed unsufficing.  This was afterwards clearly proved at his trial, when all the workings of the Terror were laid bare.

Fouquier, it then transpired, was in the habit of going regularly every night during the time that he occupied the post of Public Accuser to receive his orders first from the Comité de Salut Public, then from the Comité de Sûreté Générale.[253]  It was then that the fate of the prisoners was decided and the fournée of the morrow arranged, after which Fouquier, armed with his lists, returned to the Conciergerie at one o’clock in the morning, or even later.  Against these decisions of the committees there was no appeal :  “ Do you not know,” Fouquier said to Sénart, “ that when the Comité de Salut Public has decided on the death of any one, patriot or aristocrat, no matter, he has got to go ? ” [254]

That Fouquier knew exactly the number of the condemned before they were brought to trial was proved conclusively.  One day, Sénart related, he was waiting in an ante-chamber outside Fouquier’s room at the Conciergerie, when one of the executioner’s employés arrived, and Fouquier at this moment making his appearance the man said to him, “ I have come, citizen, to ask you how many carts are wanted.”  Fouquier counting on his fingers murmured, “Eight—ten—twelve—eighteen—twenty-four—thirty—there will be thirty heads to-day.”  Sénart thereupon said to Fouquier, “ What ? the trial has not yet begun, and you know beforehand the number of heads ? ”  “ Bah !  bah ! ” answered Fouquier, “ I know what I am about, and besides, sir, that is none of your business.  I know how to silence the ‘ moderates.’ ”[255]  And he went off into his office saying suavely, “ Au revoir, my fine gentleman ! ” [256]

Fouquier at his trial, confronted with this incident, stammered out that the witness could not be relied on ;  but whether Sénart is to be absolutely believed or not, the undeniable fact remains that the tumbrils arrived regularly in the courtyard of the Conciergerie every morning between nine and ten o’clock, before the trial began, and were found after it had ended to provide precisely the accommodation required.[257]

This detail, moreover, corresponds exactly with Fouquier’s own repeated statement that he was merely “ a cog in the wheel of the revolutionary machine,” [258] that he was perpetually goaded on to greater activity by the committees, threatened with dire consequences if he failed to provide a sufficient number of heads.

But that Fouquier was, as he also declared, an unwilling instrument in the hands of the committees it is impossible to believe ;  overwhelming evidence goes to prove that, like his allies the jackals of the Comité de Sûreté Générale, Fouquier warmed to the work and, once put on the scent, followed it up with all the fury of a beast of prey.  “ Heads are falling like tiles,” he said exultingly to Héron, who answered him, “ Oh, things will go still better—do not worry ! ” [259]  Sometimes during the so-called trials Fouquier would enliven the proceedings with jests ;  thus when a woman, paralysed even to her tongue, appeared before the Tribunal, he observed gaily, “ It is not her tongue, but her head we need.” [260]

Yet it seems that there were moments when Fouquier, like Charles IX. on his death-bed, was overcome with horror at the thought of the innocent blood he had shed.  One night as he passed over the Pont Neuf with Sénart he looked down at the Seine and cried incontrollably, “ Ah, how red it is !  How red !”  Then turning to Sénart he said, “ I live unquietly ;  I am tormented by the shades of those whom I have had guillotined—yet they had to die ;  the political system required it.”  Sénart took this opportunity to ask him why he condemned victims without proof instead of making inquiries, to which Fouquier replied, “ That would be the way to get myself guillotined.” [261]

Spurred on by this fear Fouquier redoubled his activities.  Often after his interviews with the committees he would go into the tap-room of the Conciergerie to nerve himself for his fearful task with copious draughts of beer.  It was then that he confided to his colleagues of the Revolutionary Tribunal the instructions he had received for further fournées :  “ Things are not going fast enough. . . . We must have 200 to 250 heads a decade ;  the Government wishes it.” [262]  Then when this figure had been achieved—exceeded—“ We are not keeping up the pace. . . . The last decade was not bad, but this one must go to 400 or 450. . . . Il faut que cela aille.” [263]

And it went—with fearful rapidity.  During the month of Messidor the number of victims had risen to 796 ;  in the first nine days of Thermidor alone it reached no less than 342.  At this rate Fouquier’s 450 a decade would speedily be attained.  Plans, indeed, had been made on a far larger scale ;  the size of the guillotines was to be increased so that four heads could be severed at a blow ;  an amphitheatre capable of containing 150 victims was to be erected at the Revolutionary Tribunal, and of this number each fournée for the guillotine was to be composed.[264]  Already an immense sangueduct had been constructed in the Place Saint-Antoine, to which the guillotine had been removed on the 21st of Prairial, in order to carry away the torrents of blood that flowed from the scaffold, and an operation of the same kind was in progress at the Barrière du Trône, which had now become the place of execution.[265]

For as a spectacle the guillotine had long since lost its popularity ;  none but the tricoteuses, the hired “ furies of the guillotine,” now applauded the executions ;  even the populace of Paris were sickened with the sight of bloodshed.[266]

Directly after the passing of the “ Loi du 22 Prairial ” the inhabitants of the Rue Saint-Honoré petitioned for the removal of the guillotine from the Place de la Révolution near-by, for not only had the spectacle of the tumbrils daily passing under their windows become intolerable to the dwellers in this street, but the whole neighbourhood had become infected with the odour of carnage—the very oxen drawing country-carts refused to pass over the blood-soaked soil of the Place de la Révolution.  Accordingly the scaffold had been erected in the Place Saint-Antoine, but Saint-Antoine too had complained of its propinquity, and again it was found necessary to remove the instrument of death—decidedly La Sainte-Guillotine had lost favour with the public.

Sanson, the executioner, himself was growing weary, and declared that “ the immense and unremitting work ” to which he and his aides were subjected was enough “ to lay low the most robust of men,” consequently he now desired to end his term of service.[267]

At the Conciergerie, too, the officials were beginning to find the strain unendurable ;  one entering the office cried out to his comrades, “ It is finished, no one is being judged any longer ;  we shall all go the same way, we are all lost ! ” and a porter of the prison, named Blanchard, bursting into tears, declared that he could bear it no longer, that he “ was not the sort to occupy such a post, and that it made him ill.” [268]

Everywhere throughout the city the same sense of horror prevailed ;  the Palais Royal, once the hotbed of revolution, was silent and deserted—the courtesans that had filled its arcades had retired into hiding, the taverns were empty, the booksellers displayed no pamphlets ;[269]  people moved fearfully about the streets, afraid to speak, to smile, even to whisper.  In a word, Paris was once more on the verge of a crise de nerfs.

As usual, at nearly every great crisis of the Revolution, the weather was hot to suffocation.  From the 4th of Thermidor the temperature rose steadily until by the 8th Paris bad become a furnace—men and animals dropped dead from the heat.  So physically and morally the storm gathered, then burst with a mighty thunderclap over the affrighted city on that momentous day—the Neuf Thermidor.

LE  NEUF  THERMIDOR

Ever since the Feast of the Supreme Being Robespierre had understood that the time was approaching when he must engage in a life-and-death struggle with his rivals of the Comité de Salut Public, and it was in preparation for this contingency that, after ceasing to frequent the meetings of the committee, he allied himself more closely with the Commune and the Jacobin Club.  By this means he had succeeded in organizing a formidable opposition, and it seems probable that he had planned a rising for the 10th of Thermidor, by which the revolutionary committees were to be overthrown and the triumvirate of Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just left in sole possession of the field.

On the 8th of Thermidor (the 26th of July) Robespierre judged that the moment had come to open the campaign against his enemies.  Ascending the tribune of the Convention he embarked on a denunciation of the two revolutionary committees—the Comité de Sûreté Générale must be purged and subordinated to the Comité de Salut Public ;  the latter committee must likewise submit to purgation, the traitors must be punished.  In other words, both committees were to be entirely subordinated to that virtuous and incorruptible trio—Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just.  The rival faction, instantly taking up the gauntlet, retorted with accusations against the Incorruptible.  “ One man only,” cried Cambon, “ paralyses the will of the Convention—that man is Robespierre ! ”

Robespierre, undismayed, went on after the sitting of the Convention to the Jacobin Club and delivered a further oration, this time openly attacking Billaud and Collot, who were present at the meeting and found themselves obliged to escape for their lives amidst the angry howls of the Jacobins.  Encouraged by this demonstration Robespierre retired peacefully to bed, whilst St. Just spent the night at the Comité de Salut Public, writing out the act of accusation which was to be brought against the opponents of the triumvirate on the morrow.

The 9th of Thermidor dawned sultry and lowering—no sun, and a sky of molten lead.  But Robespierre and St. Just appeared at the Convention dressed as for a gala—Robespierre in the lightblue coat which had made its debut at the Feast of the Supreme Being, St. Just in a coat of chamois colour with an immense and carefully arranged cravat, white waistcoat, and breeches of delicate grey.  The tribunes, still Robespierriste, greeted these apparitions with frenzied applause.

Then St. Just ascended the tribune to deliver his speech of indictment, and once again reverted to the surgical simile which ever since the massacres of September had haunted the imagination of each revolutionary leader in turn :  “ I had been charged to make a report to you on the scandalous deviations that for some time have tormented public opinion, but the remedies I wished to propose to you were powerless to heal the ills of the Republic ;  a little balm will not suffice for so difficult a cure, we must carve down to the quick and cut off the gangrened limbs.”[270]

At these words Tallien rose indignantly, and rushing at the tribune thrust aside St. Just :  “ I demand that the curtain be drawn aside ! ”  Tallien was quickly followed by Billaud-Varenne, crying out that a plot had been formed to murder the Convention :  “ The Convention will perish if it shows weakness ! ”

Then from all sides a tremendous uproar arose ;  members waved their hats, the audience shouted, “ Long live the Convention !  Long live the Comité de Salut Public ! ”

Collot, the president on this day, pealed his bell to restore order ;  Tallien flourished a dagger—sent him, it was said, by Térésia Cabarrus, now in prison awaiting death—and threatened to pierce the heart of “ the new Cromwell ” if the Convention did not decree his arrest ;  Robespierre dashed frantically at the tribune, but his voice was drowned in cries of “ Down with the tyrant ! ”

Then one after another, Tallien, Fréron, Billaud, Collot, Barère, once the servile accomplices of Robespierre, now his cowardly assailants, rose to denounce him :  he whom they had hailed as the “ Incorruptible ” had become “ the new Catilina ”;  with St. Just and Couthon he had intended to establish a triumvirate after the manner of Sylla ;  one accused Robespierre of befriending Danton, another of murdering him.  Meanwhile the wretched Vadier interposed perpetually with his story of Catherine Théot, the crazy old woman who called herself the mother of God, and under whose mattress a letter to Robespierre had been found addressing him as the Messiah.

Amidst all this wild medley of accusations Robespierre and his allies vainly strove to obtain a hearing ;  once the thin voice of the Incorruptible raised itself above the tumult in a despairing appeal :  “ For the last time will you let me speak, president of assassins ? ”  But the words he would have spoken died away in his throat :  “ The blood of Danton chokes him ! ” cried Gamier de l’Aube.  “ Ah, then, it is Danton you wish to avenge ? ” began Robespierre, but again his voice was drowned in angry clamour.  An obscure member named Louchet called out for his arrest, and the proposal being put to the vote was unanimously adopted.  Other members followed, demanding the decree to be extended to his brother, Augustin Robespierre, to St. Just, Couthon, and Lebas, and these demands again met with unanimous approval.  So at half-past five, as the sitting ended, the police entered the hall and led away the five arrested deputies to the prisons assigned to them.

But the Commune, which still remained faithful to Robespierre, prevented the execution of this project ;  word had already been sent out by Fleuriot Lescot, the mayor of Paris, to the concierges of the different prisons forbidding them to admit the Robespierristes, who were then—again by the order of the mayor—conveyed triumphantly to the Hôtel de Ville.  Meanwhile Fleuriot Lescot ordered the tocsin to be sounded, and summoned the Jacobins to the rescue of “ the martyrs.”

But now that the moment for action had come Robespierre displayed the same fatal irresolution that had characterized the leaders of each party in turn at the moment of crisis.  Like Louis XVI. on the 10th of August, the Girondins on the 2nd of June, Danton on the 5th of April, Robespierre could find no stirring words wherewith to inspire his supporters, could decide on no heroic course of action that might have rallied the hesitating multitude around him.

There were no great men in the Revolution, contemporaries declare ;  amongst the many leaders of the people was not one Cromwell,[271] and when we consider the end of all these men whom historians have magnified into giants, and observe the total inability of one and all to play a losing game, we are forced to the same conclusion.  Whilst still on the crest of the wave—whither they had been carried by circumstances rather than by personal ability—they could display vigour, audacity, resolution, but the moment the tide turned forcibly against them, they allowed themselves to be engulfed almost without a struggle.

As late as seven o’clock on that evening of the 9th of Thermidor the day was not lost for Robespierre and his adherents—Hanriot that afternoon had triumphantly escorted “ a batch ” of forty-two to the guillotine—nearly all obscure and humble members of the petite bourgeoisie or the people—ruthlessly cutting down the crowd with his sabre when for the first and last time they attempted to intervene and save the victims ;[272]  and since still at the head of his troops, the Commune had reason to hope that he would repeat his success of the 31st of May by keeping the Hôtel de Ville in a state of siege.  But Robespierre, instead of concerting with Hanriot on the measures to be taken, left the commander to his own devices, which, on this fateful day, consisted in getting gloriously drunk and galloping about Paris shouting, “ Kill the policemen ! ”

Hanriot’s wild career was brought to an abrupt conclusion in the Place de Palais Royal, where he fell from his horse and was seized by the police, who placed him under arrest.  Later in the evening, Coffinhal, vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, came to his rescue with 200 gunners and delivered him, but the wretched man had now completely lost his head, and instead of rallying the crowd merely succeeded in terrifying it by his maniacal aspect and behaviour.

All this time the Faubourgs were waiting for orders.  Accustomed throughout the Revolution to march only at the word of command, they were now quite incapable of independent action, and had no idea whether they were to support the Commune or the Convention.  Sainte-Antoine at last wrote naively to the magistrates of the Commune explaining the dilemma, and if Robespierre or any of his supporters had only gone in person to rouse the district, they could undoubtedly have mustered the men of the Faubourg around them.[273]  Instead of this Robespierre could do nothing but talk, leaving the field open to his adversaries, who thereupon circulated a rumour in Saint-Marceau that he was a Royalist conspirator, for a seal with a fleur de lys had been found in his possession.[274]

The Faubourgs, thus left without a leader, abandoned the Commune and went over to the Convention.

Meanwhile the crowd collected on the Place de Grève outside the Hôtel de Ville showed no more decision than the Faubourgs, and only awaited events in order to throw its weight into the scale on either side.  Already, however, its confidence in the Commune had been shaken by the deranged behaviour of Hanriot, and to this Paris populace that always worships strength the news that Robespierre and his party had been outlawed by the Convention served finally to alienate any lingering sympathy it entertained for the defeated faction.  When at midnight the storm that all day had been gathering burst over the city in a torrent of rain, the crowd, damped both in mind and body, took the opportunity to disperse, leaving the Robespierristes to their fate.

It was thus that Barras, placed by the Convention in command of the troops, was able to advance through the deserted Place de Grève without encountering any resistance, and Leonard Bourdon at the head of the armed police went forward into the Hôtel de Ville to re-arrest the five deputies.

Then Hanriot, losing his head completely, rushed into the Salle de Conseil where Robespierre and his party were assembled, crying out that all was lost, whereupon Coffinhal overwhelmed him with reproaches, and finally seizing him round the body hurled him out of the window into the courtyard below.  There a manure heap broke his fall, and the besotted commander was able to crawl into a sewer, where he remained until the following day.

Close on the heels of Hanriot, Leonard Bourdon and his policemen entered the Salle de Conseil, and at this sight the Robespierristes gave way to despair.  A scene of wild confusion followed.  Maximilien Robespierre, seated at a table where he had begun to write out an order summoning the Section des Piques to his rescue, fell forward suddenly shot through the jaw—whether by his own hand or by that of the policeman Merda, who afterwards boasted of the deed, is uncertain ;[275]  his brother Augustin climbed out of the window, and running along an outside ledge flung himself down on to the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, where he lay, mutilated and bleeding ;  Couthon dragged his paralysed limbs beneath a table, whence he was dislodged and brutally flung down the staircase by the commissioners of the Convention.  St. Just, according to certain contemporaries, alone remained immovable ;  according to others, he asked Lebas to shoot him, but Lebas responded, “ Coward !  I have other things to do ! ” and forthwith blew out his own brains.

Early in the morning of the 10th of Thermidor a part of this human wreckage was gathered up and carried to the Tuileries, where the Convention still remained sitting :  first of all Maximilien Robespierre borne on a stretcher, his eyes closed, his naturally bilious countenance wearing the livid hue of death, and so apparently lifeless that the Assembly refused to admit “ the corpse of the tyrant,” and the stretcher-bearers were obliged to go on to the Comité de Salut Public and deposit their burden on a table—according to Barras, the famous greencovered table around which the committee gathered nightly to draw up their lists of proscriptions.

Here, then, on the very spot where he had ordained the slaughter of countless human beings, Robespierre lay himself, a piteous object now, with his head resting on a wooden box, and the blood flowing from his fractured jaw over the white frilled shirt and the pale-blue coat.  For seven hours, racked with agony, the man before whom all France had trembled endured the jeers and insults of the soldiers and policemen he had believed to be devoted to his cause.  At one moment a working-man approached and, looking long and closely into the shattered face of the tyrant, murmured in awe-struck tones, “ Yes, there is a God ! ” [276]

After a while St. Just, still erect and impassive, was led in with Dumas, their hands tightly bound, and later more stretchers arrived at the foot of the staircase leading to the committee-room on which lay the mangled forms of Couthon and Augustin Robespierre. At ten o’clock, whilst the criers went through the streets calling out, “ The Great Arrest of Catilina Robespierre and his accomplices ! ” the prisoners were all transferred to the Conciergerie—“ the ante-chamber of death.”  No trial was to be accorded them, for with the downfall of each faction the revolutionary government took a further step in illegality, and, the Robespierristes having been declared outlaws, the Convention held it necessary only to bring them before the Revolutionary Tribunal for purposes of identification, a process that occupied a bare half-hour.  The whole band, to the number of twenty-two, including, besides Robespierre and his accomplices, the miserable cobbler Simon, to whom the little Dauphin had been confided, Fleuriot Lescot, and twelve members of the Commune, were sentenced to be executed the same afternoon on the Place de la Révolution.  For on this great day no fear was entertained of wounding the susceptibilities of the dwellers in the Rue Saint-Honoré and the surrounding district by the spectacle of the guillotine, and the Place de la Révolution alone could accommodate the crowds that hastened from all quarters of Paris to celebrate the death of the tyrant.

When in the late afternoon the four tumbrils emerged from the courtyard of the Conciergerie, all Paris had turned out to see them pass, and to the wondering multitude the sight presented by the men who had so long held them under the sway of the Terror seemed awe-inspiring evidence of “ the justice of God.” [277]

So had the mighty fallen !—Robespierre the all-powerful, a crushed and broken thing, the livid countenance swathed in its bloodstained bandages, the sky-blue coat torn and discoloured ;  Couthon lying helplessly on the straw of the tumbril trampled by the feet of his companions ;  Hanriot, who but yesterday had cleared the way for the forty-two poor victims, cutting down the people with his sabre, now a ghastly spectacle, with one eye falling from its socket, his face bleeding, his clothes tattered and covered with filth from the sewer whence he had been dragged.  St. Just alone retained his habitual calm.  The voluminous cravat was gone, leaving his neck bare for execution, but the delicate chamois-coloured coat still remained unspotted, the wide expanse of white waistcoat still fresh and uncrumpled, whilst in his buttonhole there glowed a red carnation.  So with head erect St. Just, that strange enigma of the Terror, passed to his death, a marble statue to the last.

As the procession slowly made its way along the Rue Saint-Honoré it was not only joy that greeted its progress but fury—the long-pent-up fury of a crushed and suffering people.  The tyrant had fallen, but could his downfall give them back their dead ?  Everywhere in that vast crowd were men and women who had lost their all, in whose hearts was no room for rejoicing, only for reviling.  One such grief-racked creature—a woman—sprang on to the back of the cart that held Robespierre and, clinging to the bars, cried out in a voice of agony :

“ Monster vomited by Hell, thy torment intoxicates me with joy !  I have only one regret—that thou hast not a thousand lives so that I might enjoy the spectacle of seeing them torn from thee one by one !  Go, scoundrel, go down to the tomb with the curses of all wives and of all mothers ! ”

Thus amidst the maledictions of the people, whose servile courtier he had been, Maximilien Robespierre passed to his death.  Those amongst the crowd around the scaffold who desired to see him suffer—and they were many [278]—were gratified by the horrible scene that took place on the platform of the guillotine when the executioner, roughly tearing off the bandage that bound the head of Robespierre, loosed the fractured jaw, which fell, leaving a gaping chasm, and wrung from the tortured victim a roar of agony “ like that of a dying tiger which could be heard in the furthest extremities of the square.”

As at the death of Hébert, the brutality of the executioner delighted the spectators, and when a moment later the mutilated head was raised aloft, the vast multitude that filled the Place de la Révolution and overflowed into the Tuileries and the Champs Élysées broke into a perfect thunder of applause that rose and fell and rose again, whilst men and women fell into each other’s arms crying out, “ At last we are free !  The tyrant is no more ! ”

But this time it was no sudden madness such as had seized a part of the crowd gathered around the scaffold of the King, and which had been immediately succeeded by reaction ;  on this 10th of Thermidor the people really did go home rejoicing with a joy that throughout the days that followed grew in intensity, transforming Paris from a place of gloom and mourning into a gala city of new-found delights.  Only to be able to walk abroad at liberty, to hold one’s head up in the sunshine, to greet one’s fellow-men, to speak one’s thoughts aloud—what strange and wondrous happiness !  At the street corners, in the public squares, the theatres, the cafes, long-lost friends whom terror had kept apart clasped each other’s hands, embraced with tears of joy—it was a delirium, an ecstasy of bliss !

Why had the death of Robespierre brought about this marvellous transformation ?  Robespierre and his allies were, as we have seen, by no means the sole authors of the Terror—nor indeed the most ferocious.  Barère, Billaud, Collot, Fréron, Tallien—henceforth to be known as the Thermidoriens—still remained ;  Fouquier still sat making up his lists in his tower at the Conciergerie ;  the jackals of the Comité de Sûreté Générale still prowled at large about the city.  Until the 10th of Thermidor it does not appear that one of these men had any thought of ending or even modifying the Terror.  It was certainly not from any disapproval of the system they had attacked Robespierre.  For amongst all the accusations brought against him at the Convention by the Thermidoriens, not one related even remotely to the matter of bloodshed ;  on the contrary, he had been reproached for not loving Marat or Chalier, the author of the atrocities at Lyon and the object of Collot’s ardent admiration.

These facts have given the panegyrists of Robespierre a further opportunity to declare that he wished to end the Terror, and that the Thermidoriens were alone to blame for its continuance.  But to suppose this is to deny Robespierre any motive in originally organising it.  If, as we have seen, he had embarked on it with a purpose—a system of depopulation which was to produce a harmonious democracy—why should he wish to arrest it at this stage ?  The execution of 2800 people could not be said to have sensibly diminished the population of Paris, nor could the death-roll for all France—even if it amounted to the figure of 1,025,711 given by Prudhomme—be considered as more than a step towards the reduction of the French nation to the eight millions generally advocated by the leaders.  There is, therefore, every reason to suppose that by the 9th of Thermidor the Terror was really only beginning, and that if the division had not taken place on this day between the Terrorists the Hecatombs would have reached colossal proportions.

With this scheme, however, the Thermidoriens were heartily in accord.  How, then, did it come to pass that the downfall of the Robespierristes resulted in the ending of the Terror ?  The simplest explanation seems to be that the system of the Terror gave way under the weight of public opinion.  For to the people of Paris, who always identified each regime with a personality, Robespierre and the Terror were synonymous, and consequently to their minds the end of Robespierre meant the end of the Terror—hence their outburst of rejoicing.

The Thermidoriens realizing this, and finding themselves greeted on the morning of the 10th of Thermidor by a rapturous crowd as the deliverers of France, were quick to see that their best chance of popularity lay in accepting the role assigned to them.  If the people thought that in overthrowing Robespierre they had intended to overthrow the system of the Terror, well, they would stop the Terror and shift all the blame for the past from their own shoulders by making Robespierre the scapegoat of the whole Terrorist party.  For the purpose that had inspired the Robespierristes to reduce the population these Opportunists cared nothing, and they were ready to fall in with any régime provided only they themselves could cling to place and power.

The Thermidorien reaction was thus not the work of a political party, but a really popular movement brought about by the force of the people’s will, which, for the first time since the beginning of the Revolution, triumphed over the designs of the demagogues.

Although the 9th of Thermidor had removed only a portion of the Terrorists, the growing force of public opinion rendered the downfall of the remainder inevitable.  On the 27th of November, Carrier, the “ depopulator of Nantes,” was summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal, where he protested his innocence and declared that he had acted only from motives of the purest patriotism.  A more plausible line of defence consisted in his plea that his methods had received the approval both of the Comité de Salut Public and of the Convention,[279] and that no reproaches had been addressed to him until after the Terror had ended.[280]  The apologists of Robespierre have attempted to prove that Carrier was recalled from Nantes on account of the atrocities he committed there ;  the truth is that he incurred the displeasure of the Incorruptible, not by his fearful cruelty towards the people, but by his corrupt and vicious manner of life, and also by his threatening attitude towards Robespierre’s protégé, young Jullien, who, terrified for his own safety, wrote to the Comité de Salut Public to complain.  Moreover, in the letter from the Comité summoning him back to Paris not the faintest disapproval was expressed, and Carrier was merely informed—amidst assurances of fraternal good-will—that his arduous labours had entitled him to a little rest and that another mission would be given him.  It was, therefore, in no way a chastened or repentant Carrier who returned to Paris on February 16, 1793—that is to say, more than three months after he had inaugurated the noyades.  On his arrival he received the compliments of the Jacobin Club, and met with not a word of remonstrance from the Convention, where he resumed his place as a respected member and of which he was elected secretary three months later.  But to the people Carrier, like Robespierre, embodied the system of the Terror, and he was condemned to death amidst universal applause.  On the 16th of December 1794 an immense crowd once more assembled to watch the passage of the cart containing Carrier and two of his accomplices—Grandmaison, a member of the revolutionary committee of Nantes, convicted of having sabred the drowning victims of the noyades as they struggled in the water, and Pinard, leader of the negro legion that had outraged and murdered women and children.  If the people had expected a wild-beast show they were not disappointed, for although Carrier, fortified by the conviction that he was a martyr dying for his country, faced his end with serenity, and Grandmaison only sobbed with helpless rage, Pinard presented a terrifying spectacle as, with flaming eyes and foaming lips, he spat upon the crowd, or when the jolts of the tumbril threw him against Carrier attempted to tear him with his teeth, overwhelming him with invectives for the fate he had brought on them all.  It is said that as Carrier lay strapped to the plank of the guillotine a clarionet struck up the air of the “ Ça ira ! ” and at this last insult the wretched man raised his head and darted a look of fury at the jeering multitude.  The musician continued to play gaily until the blade had fallen.

On the 1st of May 1795 the Public Prosecutor of Paris followed the same road to the Place de Grève.  Fouquier too protested his innocence :  “ I acted only in accordance with the laws passed by an all-powerful Convention.”  If he, the instrument, was brought to justice, should not the authors of the system, the remaining members of the revolutionary committees, be summoned before the Tribunal ?  True, and the subsequent condemnation of Collot, Billaud, and Barère to mere transportation for life was only one more miscarriage of justice in the history of the iniquitous tribunal.

The spirit that animated the multitude around the tumbrils which bore Fouquier and his accomplices to the scaffold was less one of “ ferocious joy,” says a police report, than of “ curiosity to see extraordinary monsters ”;  the truth is, perhaps, that Paris was now too hungry to rejoice uproariously at anything.  But when the carts approached the Place de Grève there burst forth shouts of fury :  “ Go and join your victims, scoundrel ! ”  “ Give me back my brother, my friend, my father, my wife, my mother, my children ! ”  As at the execution of Robespierre, a woman, half demented with grief, clung to the bars of the tumbril cursing the murderer of her husband.  Fouquier, looking forth with bloodshot eyes at the starving people, returned insult for insult, jeered at their misery in incoherent words of which the following only were distinguishable :  “ Vile rabble, go and look for bread ! (Vile canaille, va chercher du pain !).”

Fouquier, reserved to the end as the pièce de résistance of the day, heard the blade descend fifteen times whilst in an agony of terror he waited his turn at the foot of the scaffold.  As each head was held up to the wondering gaze of the multitude a mighty sigh of relief rose from amongst them like the moan of a troubled sea, but when that last frightful trophy was raised aloft the people, struck with horror as at a Gorgon’s head, were frozen to silence.

RESULTS OF THE TERROR

The Terror, then, had ended, and what had it done for the people ?  It is to Carrier that we owe the famous phrase, “ France was saved by the Terror,”[281] a phrase eagerly adopted by revolutionary historians, and that by force of repetition has almost come to be believed.

But from what was France saved by the Terror ?  From hunger ?  From misery ?  From oppression ?  Alas, no, all these evils, which, as we have seen, flourished more luxuriantly during the Terror than ever before it, increased steadily after it had ended.  Throughout the lean years that followed Paris was reduced to the lowest pitch of wretchedness ;  people fainted in the streets for want of food,[282] or in desperation threw themselves into the Seine ;  women, maddened at the sight of their starving children, cried out for death to end their sufferings ;[283]  and when at last bands of women invaded the Convention as they had once invaded Versailles clamouring for bread, they were met this time with no tears of compassion, but were driven out with whips.[284]

What wonder, then, that the people “ incessantly compared their condition with that of 1788,” [285] that the women said to each other in the streets :  “ We need a good father of a family to feed us as we had before ;  how can we love the Republic that makes us die of hunger ? ” [286]

Not only did the people suffer from official mismanagement and indifference, but from the lack of all private effort to relieve distress—benevolence had vanished with the Old Régime.  “ Every day offers the proof of a sad truth,” says the Républicain Français, “ which is that the parvenus, the new rich, have harder hearts than those born in affluence.  The latter used to share their superfluity with the poor, and nothing was commoner in this town than to see delicately bred women carrying soup, money, and consolations into garrets and prisons.  To-day one dies of hunger and grief amidst these new millionaires enriched by our spoils ;  one dies without experiencing a single moment of pity.”

It will be urged that it was from external danger that the Terror saved France ;  that if the people suffered the State prospered, the defences of the country had been made secure.  To judge of the truth of this statement let us refer to the description of the condition of France at the end of the Terror, given by one of the revolutionaries themselves—Larevellière Lépeaux, a member of the Directory :

“ The National Treasury was entirely empty ;  not a sou remained.  Assignats were without value . . . public revenues were nil, no plan of finance existed. . . . Enfuriated stockjobbing had taken the place of loyal and productive commerce ;  it corrupted all classes of society . . . there was not a sack of corn in the granaries nor even a single grain of wheat. . . . Hospitals were without revenues, without resources or administration ;  public relief of every kind was reduced almost to nothing.  The canals were ruined, many bridges broken down, the roads impassable . . . communications of all kinds had become extremely difficult. . . . Public instruction, so to speak, no longer existed. . . . The insolent cynicism of the leaders of anarchy had created oblivion to all decency . . . what was the state of the army ?  Disorganization was complete . . . in a word, the army, whether in the interior or on the frontiers, was without discipline, without provisions, without pay, without clothing, without equipment.  As a climax of misfortune these beaten and discouraged armies had lost all the fruit of their successes beyond the Rhine. . . . As to the navy . . . our fleets were humiliated, beaten, blockaded in our ports, tormented by insubordination . . . ruined by desertion.”

Such, then, was the state to which France was reduced by the Terror.  Can we doubt that if it had continued she must eventually have fallen a prey to a stronger power ?  And what prevented this ?  One thing only—the advent of the strong man for whom during ten long years she had waited in vain ;  the man who put down with an iron hand the tyranny and corruption of the Directory and rallied the French around the standard of the Empire.  The truth is then that France was saved from dismemberment, not by the Terror, but by Imperialism, whilst she was saved from internal ruin and disruption, in spite of the Terror, by the indomitable spirit of her people.

THE COURSE OF THE INTRIGUES

Whilst France was brought to the verge of ruin, and her people were dying of starvation, the great intrigues continued their course with unabated ardour.  Orléanisme, though momentarily checked by the execution of Philippe Égalité and the banishment of his sons, was to see its efforts rewarded thirty-six years later ;  Prussia, rid of the most formidable obstacle to her power—the Franco-Austrian alliance—could afford to bide her time in spite of military defeats in order to realize her dreams of European domination ;  Anarchy, which had already triumphed under Marat and the Hébertistes, had become a force that has never since ceased to threaten the peace of the world.  These consequences must be dealt with more fully in a concluding chapter amongst the results of the Revolution as a whole.

Alone of the four great intrigues, that of the English Jacobins received a serious check in the Reign of Terror.  This was, however, not owing to any modification in the sentiments of our revolutionaries ;  the frightful period of bloodshed and horror that had overtaken France served merely to stimulate their ardour for revolutionary doctrines, and right up to the 9th of Thermidor they never relaxed their efforts to bring about the same order of things in our own country.  True, the outbreak of war between England and France, followed by Pitt’s timely introduction of the Traitorous Correspondence Act, considerably hampered their relations with the French Jacobins, and open addresses of congratulation were rendered impossible ;  nevertheless the intrigue between the Subversives in both countries was still clandestinely carried on, and mutual support was given throughout the Terror :  Danton, by means of his connections in London, actively co-operated in the attempt to overthrow the British monarchy ;[287]  Fox assured the Comité de Salut Public of his sympathy and approval,[288] and later publicly applauded British reverses ;  whilst Lord Stanhope continued to maintain an affectionate correspondence with Barère, the archenemy of his country,[289] and to applaud the atrocities committed in France.  This last flagrant betrayal of the interests not only of the English people but of the human race roused even the indignation of men who had formerly sympathized with the Revolution, and in April 1794 we find William Miles, once a member of the Jacobin Club in Paris, writing these words of remonstrance to Lord Stanhope :

“ In the name of Heaven, my Lord, what frenzy is this that stimulates you to qualify as improvement what has proved fatal to millions ?  Whichever way you direct your attention you find affluence and content, freedom and happiness.  In France every tree is a gibbet and every other man you meet a hangman.  Yet your Lordship stands forth avowedly an admirer of crimes which desolate the earth and dishonour humanity.” [290]

But the people of England expressed their disapproval in a more emphatic manner, and on the night of the 10th to the 11th of June, whilst London was celebrating Lord Howe’s victory over the French, the crowd, enraged by Lord Stanhope’s revolutionary sentiments, set fire to his house, and the unhappy peer was obliged to escape for his life over the roofs.  The same thing had happened three years earlier at Birmingham, when the so-called Constitutional Society of that town, headed by Dr. Priestley, had issued “ inflammatory handbills of Republican tendency.”  When on the 14th of July the Society met at a dinner to celebrate the fall of the Bastille, an angry crowd assembled and burnt down both the meeting-houses of the sect ;  Dr. Priestley’s house was attacked and he himself had to fly from door to door for refuge.  The riots went on for three days, and the magistrates were powerless to interfere.  It is, therefore, as much of an error to imagine that the failure to produce revolution in England was owing to the uninflammable character of the English as it is to attribute its success in France to the inflammable character of the French.  It was precisely because the great majority of the French people were uninflammable, because they passively submitted to the domination of a handful of demagogues, that the Revolution was able to assume such frightful proportions.  And it was because the English people beneath their apparent calm were in reality highly inflammable, were ready to oppose an active and even violent resistance to subversive doctrines, that the revolutionary movement could make no headway amongst them.  Nor was this the result of servile submission to the existing order of things ;  the people of England were well aware that great and drastic reforms were needed, but because they understood the meaning of true liberty it was not to Jacobinism that they looked for salvation.

Thus England at this supreme crisis in her history was saved from anarchy and ruin, not only by the statesmanship of Pitt and the eloquence of Burke, but by the sound common sense of the British People.

145. Deux Amis, xii. 411 ;  J.B. Carrier, by A. Lallié, p. 379.

146. Professor Moreton Macdonald has admirably refuted this legend in The Cambridge Modern History, viii. 372.

147. Buchez et Roux, xxix. 25.

148. Plan de Constitution, p. 17.

149. See also Danton’s remark to the Duc de Chartres, on October 1792, after the foundation of the Republic :  “ This country is not made for a Republic ;  one day it will cry ‘ Vive le Roi ! ’ ”  (M. de Barante, Histoire de la Convention Nationale, ii. 477).

150. The following explanation of the plan of Robespierre and St. Just is written on the hypothesis that these men were sincere—a point which is by no means proved.  It is perfectly possible that, as M. Aulard suggests, Robespierre only professed Socialist doctrines as a matter of policy—in order to bring himself into power.  Nor must we forget the letter found amongst his papers at his death addressed to him by a friend who urges him to join him at the place where he has “ formed a sufficient treasure to be able to exist for a long time,” and ending with the words :  “ I shall await you with great impatience so as to laugh with you over the rôle you have played in the troubles of a nation as credulous as it is eager for novelty ” (Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, ii. 157)  Whether Robespierre was a consummate hypocrite or an honest fanatic is, therefore, an open question—for the purpose of this book I have assumed the latter.

151. Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 463.

152. Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 205.

153. “ Une charrue, un champ, une chaumière . . . voilà le bonheur ” (Rapport de St. Just sur les Factions de l’Étranger).

154. “ Institutions ” of St. Just, Buchez et Roux, xxxv. 275 ;  Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 461.

155. Beaulieu, v. 219.

156. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, iv. i 12.

157. Procès de Fouquier Tinville, Buchez et Roux, xxxv. 45.

158. Ibid. p. 44.

159. Ibid. xxxiv. 271.

160. Ibid. p. 337.

161. Procés de Carrier, ibid. p. 208.  For other contemporary references to “ the plan of depopulation ” see Pagès, ii. 89 ;  Deux Amis, xii. 238 ;  Mémoires de Senart, edition de Lescure, p. 84 :  “ this great system of devastation and of depopulation ” (the Résumé du Procès de Fouquier Tinville, by Cambon de Gard) ;  “ the fearful system of depopulation devised by the faction of Robespierre ” (Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire, by E. Campardon, ii. 207) ;  also Paganel, Essai Historique, ii. 350, 359, 381.

162. Evidence of Lamarie, Procès de Carrier, Buchez et Roux, p. 204.

163. Description confirmed by the contemporary Philippe Morice in his “ Souvenirs,” Revue des Questions historiques, for October 1892.

164. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, v. iii.

165. Mémoires de Larevellière Lépeaux, i. 150.

166. Résumé du Procès de Fouquier Tinville, by Cambon de Gard, Substitut de l’Accusateur Public, in Le Tribunal révolutionnaire, by E. Campardon, ii. 297.

167. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, ii. 9.

168. Le Rougyff, No. 8.  (“ Rougyff ” is an anagram of Guffroy.)

169. Letter to Robespierre from one who had been his friend :  “ What ? reduce France to two million men, and ‘ that is still too many,’ you said ! ” (Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, ii. 153).

170. Pagès, ii. 89 ;  Fantin Désodoards, iv. 131.

171. Le Père Duchesne, by Paul d’Estrée, p. 69 :  “ Je mène la vie la plus douce et la plus paisible ”  (Letter from Hébert written in 1792).

172. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, v. 131.

173. Ibid. v. 140.

174. Le Père Duchesne, by Paul d’Estrée, p. 343 ;  Beaulieu, v. 241.

175. Journal des Lois, du 14 Prairial, An iii.

176. Speech of Clootz to the Assembly, September 9, 1792 ;  Moniteur, xiii. 660.  See also La République Universelle, by Anacharsis Clootz.

177. Letters of Helen Maria Williams (1795), p. 140.

178. Speech of Anacharsis Clootz to the Convention, April 26, 1793.

179. La République Universelle, p. 27.

180. Clootz has obtained at least one panegyrist amongst posterity, and at the same time a convert to his theories of anti-patriotism.  Thus at that most tragic date in the history of France—1871—a Frenchman could be found to write these words :  “ Clootz appears like the angel of the Revolution, the seal on the alliance between France and the nations. The greatest figure of the French Revolution was a German.  Man of vast Utopias and limitless horizons, this apostle of universal fraternity was the first to pass over the Rhine with the olive-branch of peace ” (Les Hébertistes, by G. Tridon).

181. The Great French Revolution, by Kropotkin, p. 523.

182. Buchez et Roux, xxx. 42, 43.

183. Ibid. xxx. p. 182.

184. Ibid. p. 142 ;  Schmidt, ii. 63.

185. Schmidt, ii. 10.

186. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 467.

187. Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire, by G. Lenôtre, p. 130.

188. La Captivité et le Mort de Marie Antoinette, by G. Lenôtre, pp. 244. 281.

189. Le Vrai Chevalier de Maison Rouge, by G. Lenôtre, p. 97.

190. Prudhomme, Histoire des Révolutions, vii. 203 (quoted by Granier de Cassagnac, Causes de la Révolution, ii. 56).

191. Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire, by G. Lenôtre, p. 141.

192. Causes secrètes de la Révolution, by Vilate.

193. Letter from one who signs himself “ Niveau,” found amongst Robespierre’s papers after his death (Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, etc., i. 263).

194. Mémoires de Madame Roland, ii. 389.

195. Ibid. p. 411.

196. Letters of Helen Maria Williams (1795), p. 102 ;  Dauban, La Demagogie à Paris en 1793, p. 37.

197. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, iii. 286 ;  Fortescue Historical MSS. ii. 462.

198. Mémoires de Monseigneur de Salamon, p. 291 ;  Philippe d’Orléans Égalité, by Auguste Ducoin, p. 294.

199. Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution, vii. 96 (anecdote related by Godefroy Cavaignac).

200. Le Vieux Cordelier, No. IV.

201. Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 32.

202. Buchez et Roux, xxx. 338.  Mercier also regarded Clootz as the agent of Prussia :  “ The Prussian, Anacharsis Clootz, paved the way for Frederick William ” (Le Nouveau Paris, ii. 91).  And Brissot takes the same view :  “ I accompany the name of Clootz with the epithet Prussian, not so much to recall his birthplace as to recall the fact that Clootz behaves here like a good and faithful subject of His Prussian Majesty, who, on his side, reserves his lands for him ” (J.P. Brissot à ses Commettants, p. 52).

203. Schmidt, ii. 163.

204. Ibid. p. 160.

205. Journal d’un Bourgeois, by Edmond Biré, iv. 318.

206. Schmidt, ii. 158, 163, 174 ;  Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 252.

207. Anacharsis Clootz, by Georges Avenel, ii. 147.

208. Mémoires de Riouffe, i. 69.

209. “ The people cannot forgive Hébert for having deceived them. . . . ‘ Oh ! the hypocrite ! oh ! the scoundrel ! ’ they cried on all sides ” (Police report of March 21, 1794 ;  Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 288).  “ The women said that the more they had loved the Père Duchesne, the more horror they had of him . . . it is to be believed that the mass of the people will look on quietly at the trial of these men who had obtained their confidence ” (ibid. p. 246).

210. St. Just’s own expression, see “ Rapport de Courtois ” in Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, i. 20.

211. “ Rapport fait à la Convention Nationale . . . sur la Conjuration ourdie depuis plusieurs Années par des Factions criminelles pour absorber le Révolution française dans un Changement de Dynastie . . .” (Séance du II Germinal, An ii.).

212. Buchez et Roux, xxxii. 164.

213. Mémoires de Riouffe, i. 67.

214. Mémoires de Sénart (edition de Lescure), p. 71.

215. Speech by Tallien at the Convention, March 12, 1794.  See also Buchez et Roux, xxxii. 423.

216. Taine, viii. 255.

217. Dauban, Paris en 1794, pp. 87, 173, 198.

218. Ibid. p. 62.

219. Ibid. p. 149.

220. Ibid. p. 185.

221. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, ii. 94.

222. Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 126.

223. Ibid. p. 181.

224. Ibid. p. 65.

225. Ibid. p. 202.

226. Ibid. pp. 173, 253.

227. “ Everywhere the citizens are heard to say they have no great confidence in those in power after the arrest of several of them. . . ” (ibid. p. 269).  “ The people appear to repent of the ease with which they gave their confidence to men who have so cruelly deceived them.  They wish now to go to the other extreme, for they will no longer trust anyone ” (ibid. p. 271).

228. Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 280.

229. Schmidt, ii. 30.

230. Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 144.  At this immense crisis, amidst the fearful bloodshed of the Terror, nothing seems to have stirred the women of Paris so deeply as the question of butter—“ butter of which they make a god ! ”  (ibid. p. 231).  Thus the Comité de Salut Public headed by Robespierre, writing to summon St. Just back to Paris on the 6th of Prairial describes as one of the chief dangers of the capital “ the crowds waiting for butter, which are more numerous and more turbulent than ever ” (Papiers trouvés chez Robespierre, ii. 6).

231. Dauban relates that sixty years later the peasants of France had not recovered from their fright.  When M. Vatel went to make historical researches in the provinces, and asked the old men for their recollections of the Terror, the whole country-side was immediately in a ferment ;  the people asked anxiously, “ Are they going to re-establish all that ?  Are we to go back to the time of the bad paper (the worthless assignats) and the great fear ? ”  (La Demagogie en 1793, p. xii.).

232. Taine, La Révolution, viii. 203.

233. Robespierre seems to have meditated this law for three months before it was finally passed.  As early as the month of the Ventose, D’Aubigny related at the trial of Fouquier Tinville, he attended a dinner at which he met Robespierre, who complained of the dilatoriness of the Revolutionary Tribunal in punishing conspirators.  Sellier replied that the Tribunal merely observed the forms necessary to the protection of the innocent.  “ Bah !  bah ! ” said Robespierre, “ that is how you are with your forms !  Wait, before long the Committee will have a law passed that will clear the way for the Tribunal and then we shall see ! ” (evidence of J.L.M. Villam d’Aubigny, ex-Adjoint au Ministre de la Guerre, etc., Procès de Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 410).

234. Mémoires de Fievée (edition de Lescure), p. 162.

235. Causes secrètes de la Révolution, by Vilate (edition de Lescure), p. 224.

236. Ibid. p. 262.

237. Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris, ii. 132.

238. Decade = 10 days, the measure of time which in the Revolutionary Calendar was substituted for weeks.

239. Schmidt, ii. 208 ;  Mémoires sur les Prisons, i. 237.  “ Robespierre,” says Michelet, “ no longer went to the Comité de Salut Public, but he kept his power of signature, he signed at home ;  a number of orders signed by his hand are still in existence ” (Histoire de la Révolution Française, ix. 196).

240. It was on this occasion that the Convention passed the decree that all English and Hanoverian prisoners should be shot.  “ Fortunately,” says Taine, “ the French soldiers feel the nobility of their profession, and on the order to shoot the prisoners a brave sergeant replies, ‘ We will not shoot them ;  send them to the Convention ;  if the representatives take pleasure in killing a prisoner, they can kill him themselves and eat him too, like the savages they are.’  This sergeant, an uncultivated man, could not rise to the heights of the Comité or of Barère. . . .” (La Révolution, vii. 309).

241. Evidence of Robert Wolf, clerk of the Court at the Revolutionary Tribunal, Procès de Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 447.

242. Histoire secrète du Tribunal révolutionnaire, by Proussinalle, ii. 175, 181.

243. Evidence of Grandpré, chief of police, Procès de Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 432.

244. Evidence of Sauvebœuf :  “ Our victories no longer permitted of the renewal of this pretext ” (ibid. p. 372).

245. Evidence of Sauvebœuf and of Réal, counsel, ibid. pp. 372, 389.

246. I have shown elsewhere (The Chevalier de Boufflers, p. 377) the proportion of victims amongst the middle- or working-classes to have been approximately 2110 out of the total of 2800.  Mr. Croker places the total at 2730, and calculates that of these 650 were “ rich people,” rather over 1000 were middle-class, and 1000 working-class.  M. Louis Blanc (Histoire de la Révolution, xi. 155) accepts this statement, but endeavours to clear his idol Robespierre from guilt by saying that he protested against the massacre of poor people.  This is a pure invention—Robespierre never once uttered such a protest.  See his speeches against “ indulgence ” on June 10, July 9, 11, and 14, and especially his protest against showing sensibility on July 1 (13th Messidor) just after the execution of seventy-two victims, nearly all working-men (Michelet, ix. 196).

247. Notes by the reporter of the trial of Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 487.

248. Evidence of Grandpré, ibid. p. 427.

249. Mémoires de Riouffe, i. 87 ;  Letters of Helen Maria Williams (1795), p. 108.  Helen Maria Williams, who had so rejoiced over the 10th of August, was now in prison, her revolutionary ardour considerably cooled.

250. Wallon, Histoire du Tribunal révolutionnaire, iv. 402.

251. Mémoires de Monseigneur de Salamon, p. 206.  Blanchet survived the Terror and died in her master’s arms eleven years later.

252. Paris Révolutionnaire, by G. Lenôtre, p. 350.

253. Mémoire written by Fouquier in his own defence, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 234.

254. Evidence of Villam d’Aubigny, ex-Adjoint au Ministre de la Guerre, Procès de Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 412.

255. At the trial Sénart said that Fouquier added, “ Do you think I do not know the number of those who will be condemned ? ”

256. Mémoires de Sénart.

257. Evidence of Grandpré, Procès de Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 427.

258. Ibid. p. 293.

259. Evidence of Sénart, ibid. p. 307.

260. Evidence of Retz, ibid. p. 135.

261. Mémoires de Sénart (edition de Lescure), p. 114.

262. Evidence of Auvray, usher to the Revolutionary Tribunal, of Bucher and of Tavernier, clerks of the court, Procès de Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxv. 9, 12, 15.

263. Evidence of Robert Wolf, ibid. xxxiv. 448 ;  of Tavernier, ibid. xxxv. 2.

264. Mémoires de Riouffe, i. 84 ;  Taine, viii. 133.

265. Mémoires de Riouffe, ii. 196.

266. “ We must say that for more than six months before the 9th of Thermidor the public no longer applauded condemnations, but loudly manifested its joy and satisfaction at all acquittals.  If furies of the guillotine, led astray, corrupted and paid by the faction of the murderers, often insulted the victims who walked to death with the calm of innocence, we must declare it was never the people of Paris ;  this people never asked for blood. . . .”  (Notes of reporter at trial of Fouquier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 488).

267. La Guillotine, by G. Lenôtre, p. 181.

268. Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire, by G. Lenôtre, p. 280.

269. “ Nothing was published.  In the enormous collection of revolutionary pamphlets we find this interval (between the Fête du l’Être Suprême and the fall of Robespierre) almost a blank ” (Croker’s Essays on the French Revolution, p. 404).

270. This last phrase, given by Beaulieu and by Fantin Désodoards, which alone explains the uproar created in the Convention, is omitted by Buchez et Roux, who give the speech of St. Just as it was written, not as it was delivered.  The Moniteur does not report it at all.

271. Mémoires de Frénilly, p. 166.  And Mounier :  “ Nature in giving us for this Revolution so many men with the heart of Cromwell did not produce one with his head ” (Appel au Tribunal de l’Opinion publique, p. 291).  And Madame Roland :  “ France seemed exhausted of men ;  it is a really surprising thing the dearth of them in this Revolution, there have been hardly anything but pigmies ” (Mémoires, i. 235).

272. Beaulieu, v. 497 ;  Dauban, Paris en 1794, p. 446.  This incident provides further proof that Robespierre did not disapprove of the butchery of poor people, for Hanriot was absolutely under his orders.

273. Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 58.

274. Ibid. pp. 59, 84.

275. On this point opinions are almost equally divided.  Merda (or Méda) declared he shot Robespierre ;  others present at the scene declared that they saw Robespierre shoot himself.  See the conflicting evidence collected by M. Biré in the Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, v. 387-392.

276. Toulongeon, iv.;  Moniteur, xxi. 385.

277. Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, by Edmond Biré, v. 399.

278. Beaulieu, v. 502 :  “ The greater number of those who were present at his execution would have liked to see him suffer the tortures of Damiens, to whom he was said to be related.”

279. Campardon, Le Tribunal Révolutionnaire, ii. 118 ;  J.B. Carrier, by A. Lallié, p. 258.  In a memoir presented to the Comité de Salut Public by Lequinio (another emissary to the provinces) on the 12th of Germinal, An ii., the question is asked whether it would be advantageous to continue the plan of total destruction ;  Carrier, quoting this letter at his trial, remarked that it proved this plan of destruction to have existed (Campardon, ii. 122).  As M. Lallié points out, he was therefore only one of the agents ordered to execute it.

280. Campardon, ii. 121.

281. Procès de Carrier, Buchez et Roux, xxxiv. 208.

282. Schmidt, ii. 337.

283. “ The 6th of Germinal (An iii.) several women asked for knives with which to stab themselves.”  The 30th of Brumaire “ a woman in a frenzy came to ask a baker to kill her children as she had nothing to feed them with ” (ibid.).

284. On the 12th of Germinal, and again on the 1st of Prairial, An iii.  April 1 and May 20, 1795), Schmidt, ii. 3o8, 327.

285. Schmidt, ii. 462.

286. Ibid. p. 481.  See also p. 298 :  “ The public said loudly, ‘ We are going to have a king and we shall be much happier ;  we shall not suffer so much.’ ”

287. Danton Émigré, by Dr. Robinet, p. 90.

288. See remark of Vergniaud to Mrs. Elliott at the Comité de Salut Public :  “ Mr. Fox is our friend ... he loves our revolution, and we have it here under his own hand-writing ” (Journal of Mrs. Elliott, p. 146).

289. The Life of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, by Ghita Stanhope and G.P. Gooch, p. 134.

290. Ibid.