Chapter VIII: The Fall of the Gironde

The first sitting of the National Convention was held on the 21st September, 1792. The Parisian deputies, elected two or three weeks before, under the eyes of the Insurrectionary Commune, belonged almost entirely to the Jacobin party. Their election is a significant example of the methods of Jacobin organisation, and in that election Robespierre, always a vigilant wire-puller, had shown the adroitness of his tactics and had taken the most prominent part. The meeting of the electors took place on the 2nd September, the day when the prison massacres began. No sooner had the electors assembled, than they were transferred, by the directions of the Commune, from their ordinary meeting-place to the Jacobin Club. Some of the electors, who held moderate opinions, were then excluded by a preliminary vote. The system of secret voting was suspended, and all were obliged to vote openly before an audience loudly and watchfully alert. As one Jacobin speaker admitted, his party would have been 'beaten, even in Paris, in any election in which the voting had been secret.' The result was the victory of the extreme politicians. Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Collot d'Herbois were among the best known deputies elected, and all the heroes of the Insurrectionary Commune were brought triumphantly into the Convention.

In the provinces, however, the Jacobins were less successful. There too the minority carried the day, and most of the electors stayed away from the polls. But still the minority in the provinces represented a considerable bulk of opinion. Everywhere the result of the elections was to confirm the _Coup d'etat_ of the 10th August. All who still took part in politics seemed to realise that the cause of the King was incompatible with the defence of the country, and preferred to put the interests of the country first. The consequence was that the Girondist party had a large following in the new Assembly. The Jacobins, it is true, were more compact and vigorous, and the great majority of members in the centre had no very definite views, and could not be depended on to vote consistently. But still the Girondist position was strong. They had the command of the Government. They had eloquent and effective speakers. They had several men of character and ability. They had behind them the weight of moderate opinion, which was shocked by the fearful disorders of September. The massacres had produced a reaction which tended, now that the danger of invasion was over, to strengthen the Girondist ranks. Had the Girondists possessed any organisation, any instincts of party management, or any leaders of authority and insight, they might have formed a powerful party, and have guided the Revolution yet.

But unfortunately the Girondists had none of these things. Vergniaud, their most splendid orator, had none of the qualities needed for a leader. Guadet and Gensonné, the two brilliant advocates who accompanied him from Bordeaux, were no better able to guide a party. Pétion, the ex-mayor, had proved his incompetence already. Roland, with all his honesty and aspirations after order, had little real capacity or strength. Condorcet, the philosopher of the Gironde, brought to the pursuit of politics all the characteristic vices of the academic mind. Barbaroux, the hero of the Marseillais, was only distinguished by his beauty from the rest. Isnard and Louvet, Lanjuinais and Gorsas could not supply what was wanting in their colleagues. The party itself had no cohesion. Brissot, who had for some time been its leader, could not impose his ascendency for long, and found his authority challenged by the rising reputation of Buzot. Gradually two sections of Brissotins and Buzotins grew up within the ranks of the Gironde, and rendered still remoter than before the prospects of united and decisive action on the part of the majority of the House.

Buzot owed to Madame Roland much of the influence which he enjoyed with his party. Her house was the chosen resort of the Gironde. Their policy was largely arranged in her drawing-room. Her husband was their chief representative in the Government, and her interest in her husband's policy was as well known as her attachment to Buzot. Madame Roland is known to us by the portrait which she herself has drawn, and that portrait shows us clearly her undoubted courage and ability, her enthusiasm for the philosophy which she had studied and for the ideals which her bright imagination loved. But the memoirs show us also the self-conscious genius of the writer, her swift but rather shallow judgments, the strong personal element in her opinions, the ill-controlled, ambitious restlessness of her generous and ardent mind, and her incapacity for moderation, for being just towards opponents or tender towards fallen foes. What part Madame Roland played in politics it is impossible to say exactly. We know something of her words and actions upon a few occasions, and those, in spite of the charm and romance which surround her, are not always creditable to her head or heart. She died bravely, and posterity, recognising that, has perhaps been bountiful towards her virtues. But in so far as she inspired the Girondists, her political influence can only be regarded as disastrous, for there never was a party worse advised.

Other women, fair and unfair, lovely and unloveable, appear in the story of the French Revolution. There were the salons of the early days, where the Royalists gathered at the houses of Madame de Chambonas and Madame de Sabran, while the other side found more congenial company in the rooms of Mesdames de Beauharnais and Talma. There was the salon of Madame de Genlis with its traditions of Orleanist intrigue, the official society of Madame Necker's circle, and Madame de Broglie's coterie of young, well-bred reformers. Later on, there was the salon of Madame de Staël, where the accomplished hostess pushed the interests of Narbonne as devotedly as Madame Roland pushed the interests of Buzot, and the well-lit tables of Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, who expected to profit by the guests whom she received. There were the quieter but happier homes of Madame de Condorcet and Lucile Desmoulins. There were the not less happy women whom Danton, Robespierre and St. Just loved. There was the Queen, always gallant and unfortunate, but in her political influence most unfortunate of all; Charlotte Corday, the Girondist avenger, whose enthusiasm veiled from her the ugliness of murder; Theresa Tallien, who gave up her life and honour to a worthless man and used her power afterwards for purposes of mercy; Olympe de Gouges, the hapless dramatist and pamphleteer, who played her triple part as hostess, celebrity and victim in the Terror; and many another notable woman, of reputation high or low, of influence worthy or unworthy, such as the Demoiselles de Fernig, who served as aides-de-camp in Dumouriez' camp, Théroigne de Méricourt, known by all and loved by many, who, armed with a naked sabre, led the wild women in October to Versailles, Sophie Momoro, who headed the orgies on the Feast of Reason, and Rose Lacombe, the queen of the vile women who haunted the clubs and streets and galleries, disgraced the National Assembly, and knitted round the guillotine. It is strange, but it would seem to be indisputable, that, in many of the worst excesses of the Revolution, women of the worst character were specially conspicuous, and that when politics degenerated into savagery women without womanliness excelled the most.

The nine months which followed the meeting of the Convention were occupied by the struggle between the Jacobins and the Gironde. Even before the 10th August that struggle had begun. After the fall of Louis, it had become acute; and as soon as the Convention met, the animosities of the rival parties blazed out afresh. The difference in principle between Girondists and Jacobins is not altogether easy to define. Many tenets they professed to share in common, and until the 10th August their aims had been in some respects the same. One noticeable difference, however, between them, lies in the character of the men. The Jacobins, as a whole, though the rule is subject to exceptions, were men of a rougher stamp, occasionally ill-educated, coarse and unscrupulous, in some cases cruel, in many cases corrupt, but practical, alert and intrepid politicians, prepared to run great risks, merciless to their enemies if they conquered, sometimes ready with gay desperation to suffer if they lost the game. The Girondists, as a whole, were men of higher intellectual calibre, of more education and refinement, of a better cast. They were honest and decent. Their intentions were pure. They were embarrassed by scruples in a struggle with opponents who had none. They were distinguished by a fine enthusiasm for their vague and delusive ideals, which, if it seems theatrical now, was genuine then, and to which, while lamenting its waste and its errors, one may pay the tribute of respect.

But when one comes to principles, the difference between the two parties is less clear. The truth is that in the French Revolution there was no place for the Gironde. Two parties, and only two, were possible. One was the party which, representing the great majority of French feeling, had made the Revolution, had swept away the Ancien Régime, had founded the first constitution and had taken its name from its creation, the party which had aimed at establishing political freedom and a new system based on that in France. This party cared for liberty and order but wished for little more, and its mistakes and the fortunes of the time gradually lost it the control of events. The other was the new party, which rose to power on its rival's faults, which cared little for liberty and less for order, but which hoped to use the forces of distress and discontent to grasp the power which its rival had monopolised, to found a new social and industrial system in which it would secure a fairer profit for itself, and to destroy without scruple or compassion all who impeded the realisation of its aims.

Between these two parties the Girondists stood. They belonged to neither, but they shared to some extent the views of both. Like the first, they had moderation, a sense of restraint and a love of order. Like the second, they repudiated any compromise with the past and hoped to establish their Utopia. But though they were strong enough to defeat the first, they were not strong enough to resist the second, and they could not fuse with either. They could not join with the Constitutional party, or rally the moderate majority round them, because, though they shared its feeling of propriety, they scorned its tenets and prejudices, its king and its religion. They could not throw themselves into the arms of the Jacobins, because, though they liked some of their democratic schemes, they could not countenance the Jacobin excesses or the Jacobin intrigues, the ruthless levelling of the Jacobin maxims, the Jacobin contempt for property and life.

Nor could the Girondists found a party of their own. Their ideas were not sufficiently definite for that, nor sufficiently different from those of others. The only principles which belonged distinctively to them were an enthusiasm for the forms of a republic, and an enthusiasm for the policy of war. The latter was partly an ill-considered emotion and partly a tactical device. The former was not a principle at all. The essence of republicanism, which is government by the people, had been accepted by all parties except the most reactionary, and was not peculiar to the Girondist belief. The forms of it, which, possessed by an extraordinary desire to emulate the Greeks and Romans, the Girondists esteemed so highly, were hardly worth a struggle to obtain. The fact that the Girondists should have cared for republican forms so much more than for anything else, is perhaps the clearest proof of their incompetence as practical politicians. For, as Robespierre had the sense to see, the term republic is an empty name, which the faith and heroism of men have sometimes associated with ideals of purity and freedom, but which has often been only a disguise for governments that were neither free nor pure.

As soon as the Convention opened, the Republic was proclaimed, and the struggle between the rival parties began. For the moment the Girondists were the stronger, and they were determined to use their power to suppress and, if they could, to punish the leaders of the Insurrectionary Commune. In that attempt they were partially successful. The steady persistence of Roland, supported by the majority of the Convention, succeeded at last in dissolving the Insurrectionary Commune. On the 30th November, a moderate politician, Chambon, was elected Mayor by a large majority, after two other moderates, Pétion and d'Ormesson, had previously been elected and had refused to serve. The council and the other officials of the Commune were also renewed. On this occasion the voting was secret; and although the Jacobins spared no efforts, and succeeded in carrying Hébert and Chaumette, the smallness of the Jacobin vote and the abstention of the vast majority of voters showed how weak numerically were the forces which the minority could command.

But in other respects the Girondists were less successful. Their proposals for the formation of a guard for the Convention resulted only in bringing to Paris a small force of Fédérés from the departments. Their demand for the punishment of those concerned in the September massacres fell to the ground. Their attacks upon Robespierre, Marat and others produced only bitter personalities, which tended to weary the Assembly, and by giving Robespierre opportunities of dilating on his services to the Revolution, to increase his popularity in Paris. The Jacobins began to threaten their monopoly of office. In the middle of October, Pache, the newly appointed Minister of War, and till then an intimate friend of Roland, cast himself into the arms of the Jacobin party. Suddenly turning on his Girondist colleagues, Pache made the War Office the meeting-place of the politicians of the Commune, placed his influence and his funds at their disposal, and to the disgust of Dumouriez and Danton, threw the military arrangements into confusion.

The Girondists were further weakened by the trial of the King. The long debates upon that question, which began early in November, 1792, and which ended in Louis' execution on the 21st January, 1793, certainly damaged the reputation of the party. They showed in a clear light the stern logic of the Jacobin leaders and the weakness and disunion of their opponents. They gave fresh opportunities for excitement and disorder, which the Jacobins knew how to use. The vote which condemned the King to death was carried finally by a narrow majority, but it could not have been carried without wholesale intimidation. The violence of the agitation in the galleries, in the streets, in the Sections, which steadily rose as the debates went forward and as a feeling of sympathy for Louis appeared, produced so general a panic, that it is recorded that fourteen thousand people fled from Paris in the last week of the year, under the impression that the massacres of September were about to be repeated[10]. It is true that in the end the leading Girondists voted for death; but they voted openly in the presence of an armed and vociferating crowd, amply sufficient to decide the wavering and almost sufficient to terrorise the brave. Vergniaud, who voted with the majority when the critical moment came, had already pleaded for mercy in the finest speech which he ever delivered, and had declared the night before the verdict that it was an insult to suppose him capable of voting for Louis' death.

With the trial of the King the demoralisation of politics increased. The Convention lost all dignity and decorum. The violence of the rival parties deepened. Deputies came down armed to the meetings of the House. The president, powerless to keep order, was frequently insulted in the chair. Abusive terms were shouted across the floor. The voices of the speakers were constantly drowned in the din from the galleries, where, according to Brissot, 'the brigands and bacchantes' ruled. The same demoralisation appeared in the public service. On the proclamation of the Republic, in September, 1792, all administrative and judicial officers were renewed. The Convention declared that a knowledge of the law should no longer be a necessary qualification for judicial appointments. Education was regarded as equally unnecessary, and a number of ignorant and incompetent officials were thus imported into the administration. The multiplication of offices and places, so profitable to those in power, rapidly increased as time went on, and with the spirit of plunder the spirit of corruption spread. Under Pache the War-Office became a centre of Jacobin intrigue, where the Minister and his associates could display with effect their bitter distrust of the Commander-in-Chief, undermine Dumouriez' authority in the army, and, regardless of his wishes and designs, promote their own theories and provide for their friends.

From the beginning of the new year the Girondists steadily lost ground. In January, Roland, their most active supporter in the Government, resigned his office. The control of the Ministry of the Interior, with all its authority and resources, thereupon passed into the hands of Garat, a man of amiable intentions and moderate views, but entirely lacking in force or decision, and with none of Roland's devotion to the Gironde. Early in February, Pache, who had been compelled to retire from the War Office, to the delight of Dumouriez and Danton, was elected Mayor in Chambon's place, and in his person the Jacobins finally regained control of the Commune of Paris. About the same time Condorcet brought forward the Girondist proposals for a new constitution, proposals wildly unpractical in their nature, which gave satisfaction to no one at all, and which lent some colour to the charge, which the Jacobins pressed against the Gironde, that they wished to confer powers upon the departments which would make them almost independent States, to destroy the influence of the Government in Paris, and to break up the unity of the Republic. The Girondists, who had no large following in the capital, proceeded to alienate what following they had. They declared irreconcilable war upon the Commune. They denounced the disorder of the Parisian mobs, and their demands for exceptional legislation in their favour. They boasted unwisely of the devotion of the provinces to themselves. They threatened to punish heavily any attempt at intimidation by the Sections, but they took no steps to guard effectually against it. Finally, they made an attack upon Danton as ill-judged as it was unprovoked, and thus alienated the only man who had influence and ability enough to save them, and who, weary of factious animosities and earnestly desiring to found a Government strong enough to make itself respected, might with a little tact have been induced to offer them his powerful support.

Moreover, the course of external politics once again assisted the Jacobin designs. The victory of Valmy had been followed by a series of successes on the Rhine, in Savoy and in Nice, by the defeat of the Austrians and the conquest of Belgium. But the reckless policy of the Convention, its disregard of treaties, and its determination to spread revolutionary principles at any cost, multiplied the enemies of France. The French Government's resolution to attack Holland offended and alarmed the English. The execution of Louis created deep and general indignation in Europe. Early in 1793, England, unheeding Pitt's pacific dreams, and roused by the warning tones of Burke's hot anger and imagination, plunged into the war. Spain, under its Bourbon princes, followed suit. The difficulties of the French troops increased as their spirit and discipline diminished. The allied armies resumed the offensive. At the beginning of March a succession of reverses overtook the French arms, and the invasion of Holland was abandoned. On the 18th, Dumouriez with the main army was defeated by the Austrians in the battle of Neerwinden, and Belgium was lost. Dumouriez, disappointed by the turn of events, long weary of the Jacobin ascendency and meditating means to overthrow it, rejected Danton's friendly encouragement, talked openly of restoring the Constitutional throne, and determined to declare against the Convention. The Convention, aware of his designs, sent off commissioners to arrest him in his camp. On the 3rd April, foiled at the last by his own irresolution and by the apathy of his troops, Dumouriez left his army and took refuge in the Austrian ranks. Once again the French commander had deserted in the face of disaster, and the danger of invasion reappeared.

The events on the frontier reacted immediately upon politics in Paris. Danton at last succeeded in convincing the Assembly of the absolute necessity of a strong Executive. In the end of March and the beginning of April, a series of decrees passed the Convention, establishing, for the first time since the outbreak of the Revolution, a powerful Government in France, and founding or re-organising at the same time the three chief instruments of the Terror. One decree created the Revolutionary Tribunal, a court with summary process and extraordinary powers, to try conspirators against the State; another, the famous Committee of General Security, to hunt down and punish political crime; and a third, the still more famous Committee of Public Safety, soon to become the most redoubtable despotism in the history of the world. With these decrees went other energetic measures--fresh powers for the commissioners, the 'Representatives on Missions,' sent into the provinces to execute the orders of the Convention; a fresh levy of 300,000 men for the campaign, to be raised, if necessary, by conscription; fresh decrees entailing penalties on Emigrants and non-juring priests, outlawing all enemies of the Revolution, and establishing in every Section of Paris a Committee of Supervision, armed with despotic powers, to watch, disarm, arrest, and tax all politicians on the other side. The national danger once again called to the front the vigilant minority, which created a despotism to save the Revolution and dragged the reluctant majority behind.

How far in all these measures the Jacobins were acting from patriotic motives, and how far they were merely working for the advantage of their party, it is hardly possible to say. Danton's motives stand above dispute, and many others, it may be, deserve to be associated with him in their love of France. Probably the Jacobins, like other politicians, believed or could easily persuade themselves, that the cause of the country and their party interest were the same. But whatever the motive may have been, there is no doubt that the result of all these measures was to strengthen the Jacobins and to weaken their rivals, although in most of them, the Gironde joined.

There were, however, other measures passed in the spring of 1793, which were little in harmony with Girondist ideas, and which owed their origin to the Jacobins alone. Economic causes were at work to increase the agitation in Paris. In spite of the sale of the Church lands and of the property of the Emigrants, the financial position of the Government was most unsatisfactory. The taxes were ill-paid. The credit of the State had sunk very low. The expenses of the war and of the administration were increasing every day. Specie was very difficult to obtain. The Government, in consequence, fell back upon fresh issues of Assignats, and the value of the Assignats steadily fell. At the same time prices rose with alarming rapidity. Trade, already dislocated by the confusion of the time, tended to leave Paris, where the Assignats were most abundant. Speculation naturally increased. Large dealers, contractors and capitalists made considerable profits by laying in stores, by holding back commodities, and by turning the fluctuations of the market to account. It is true that, early in 1793, wages began to rise rapidly as well, because of the large drafts of men drawn from Paris to the seat of war. But the wages of the working class were paid not in money, but in depreciated Assignats; so that, while the poor felt the rise in prices and the scarcity of food, and while they resented the apparent prosperity of the dealers whose machinations their leaders denounced, they did not feel the full advantage of the rise in wages, and their angry discontent increased. The economics of the destitute are always blind. They were easily persuaded that the rich were profiting by a system which brought only suffering to them.

The result was an outcry in the poorer districts of the city against all speculators and capitalists. Demands were raised for the rigid regulation of trade, for cheap food, for the fixing of prices, and for imperative laws to keep up the value of the paper money. The Commune took up the popular cry, and demanded with success large grants from the Treasury, in order to provide the capital with bread. Marat, as usual, denounced his opponents and incited the people to help themselves; and at the end of February, Marat's encouragement produced a somewhat formidable riot, in which many tradesmen who were not Jacobins suffered serious loss. The leaders of the Mountain, that is the leaders of the Jacobins in the Convention, who had little economic knowledge, and who, seeing distress and scarcity, believed it possible to end them by arbitrary laws, supported the demand for exceptional measures. The indifferent members of the Centre, whose acquaintance with economic laws was probably no wider than that of the Mountain, gave their consent to proposals which they hoped would quiet Paris and avert insurrection. Danton suggested that the price of bread should be regulated by the rate of wages. In April and May a series of summary decrees were passed by the Convention entailing the most severe penalties on all who trafficked in the currency, establishing a Maximum price for grain, and imposing a heavy tax in the shape of a forced loan upon the rich.

These measures, again, damaged the Girondists in Paris. They had as a party a clearer conception than their opponents of the danger of arbitrary interference with prices and with trade. Some of their leaders opposed the proposals of the Commune, and even ventured to protest against the grants spent in providing cheap bread for the capital. But their protests only increased their unpopularity in Paris, and led to demands for their punishment and removal, to fresh threats and denunciations. On the 10th March, a fresh insurrection was set on foot in some of the Sections, with the object of marching on the Convention and getting rid of the Girondists by force. But it was discountenanced by the Jacobin leaders, and it ended in an ineffectual riot. The alarm, however, created by the bad news from the frontier tended to heighten the political fever, and with that the risk of insurrection. In March and April the danger was increased by the serious rising in La Vendée, which, beginning in a series of isolated outbreaks occasioned by the conscription and by local causes, developed into a widespread political movement on behalf of monarchical ideas, and by its spirit and its successes seemed to threaten the safety of the Republic.

While the Girondists wavered and lost ground, the Jacobins were organised and were preparing for the battle. They had behind them all the authority of the Commune of Paris, the prestige of the well-known leaders of the Mountain, and the forces of the two great Clubs. They had, owing to the apathy of their opponents, obtained the control of most of the Sections. They had practically the military power too. After the 10th August, the National Guard had been organised afresh into forty-eight battalions, one for each Section. The artillery of the Guard had been separately organised, and the artillerymen, recruited from the poorest class, formed a body on whom the Jacobins could generally depend. The old bourgeois members no longer appeared, but paid Sansculottes to do their duty for them; and the nucleus of a fighting force was formed by the men of the 10th August and of the 2nd September, who could be relied on to act as the Commune required. Besides that, in the middle of May, the Commune ordered the enlistment of a special force of Sansculottes, which was organised later as the Revolutionary Army. Further, the Jacobins had the control of the police. Each Section had its elected police-commissioners, acting under the direction of the Commune, and as a matter of fact police-commissioners became in many Sections insurrectionary leaders. Thus the forces which existed nominally to protect the friends of order, had become the active agents of the other side. The Committees of Supervision lately instituted by the Convention, and known before long as Revolutionary Committees, sat in every Section, denouncing, disarming, and fining their enemies, dealing out certificates of 'civism' to their allies, forming ready centres of Jacobin intrigue, and arranging plans for a general rising. If ever the Moderates dared to assert themselves in the Sections, the Jacobins could call in the authority of the police, and thus secure the arrest of their opponents. All that they wanted was time to organise their forces, so as to make the success of an insurrection certain.

To these preparations Girondists had nothing to oppose. They too must have realised that the question had come to be one of force, and yet they took no steps to gather forces for themselves. They inspired no enthusiasm in the capital. There was no class in Paris on whom they could rely. The National Guard would not rise to defend them. They had no guard or organisation of their own. Neither the aristocrats nor the bourgeois recognised them as leaders, and they made few efforts to rally the partisans of order round them. The Girondists, it is true, had eloquence and parliamentary battalions, and they were probably right in believing that the majority of citizens preferred their policy and conduct to those of their opponents. But these advantages were of little weight or value when physical force lay in the other scale.

At last, however, the Girondists began to recognise their danger. In April they attacked Marat, and sent him before the Revolutionary Tribunal. But Marat was triumphantly acquitted. They denounced the insurrectionary plots in the Sections. But the plots went merrily on. They refused to listen to Danton's overtures of conciliation. They obtained addresses of confidence from the departments. They proposed to appeal to the country against Paris. They suggested that the Convention should be moved to Versailles or Bourges. But all these proposals were without result. Later still, as their apprehensions increased, they boldly talked of dissolving the Commune, and on the 18th May they carried a motion appointing an extraordinary Commission of Twelve, to enquire into the conspiracies against the Convention. At the end, though they lacked unity, they did not lack vigour. The Commission intrepidly challenged the plotters, and struck at the chief by arresting Hébert. Hébert's arrest precipitated the crisis, and the alarm which it caused in the camp of the Commune showed that the Jacobins felt the gravity of the Girondist attack. But in order to make their attack effective, the Girondists must have had a force behind them, and this they had not the penetration to perceive or the power or resolution to create.

Yet it cannot be said that their leaders were unwarned. Garat, their principal representative in the Ministry, complacently shut his eyes to the danger, and to the last moment assured his colleagues that Paris was quiet and that nothing need be feared. And yet Garat had at the time in his service a small staff of secret police, who were daily reporting to him on the condition of Paris, and among them one, Dutard, an observer of singular acuteness, whose reports the minister apparently laid on the shelf unread, but whose name and counsels deserve to be rescued from oblivion. In Dutard's reports we have striking evidence of the apathy of the great mass of the Parisians, of their indifference to Girondists and Jacobins alike. If Dutard's opinion is to be trusted, most of the small traders and working people, who had welcomed the Revolution with enthusiasm and who had acquiesced in the downfall of the throne, had since passed into the ranks of disaffection. The butchers, the tailors, the shoemakers, the wine-dealers, even the market-women and the better artisans had ceased to belong to the advanced party. The recruits of the Commune in May were drawn from a lower and more reckless class, from unemployed or idle workmen, from porters, hucksters, foreigners and domestic servants, reinforced by criminals and outcasts, and swelled by the social refuse of great cities, which no legislation or philanthropy has yet been able to remove. This ignorant and undisciplined body, easily led and easily misled, very sensitive to want and panic, not very sensitive to principle or order, formed a force on which the party of violence could depend, and the agents of the Commune were busily appealing to its interests, drilling it into battalions, and rousing it to act. But after all, compared with the population of Paris, this force was small. The great mass of Parisian citizens dreaded and disliked it. They hated its doctrines. They shuddered at the recollection of its outbreak in September, and were cowed by the fear lest that outbreak should recur. The aristocrats held themselves aloof, provoked opposition and made mischief. The bourgeois declined all public duties, and shunned the assemblies of the Sections, the debates of the clubs, the gatherings and demonstrations in the streets, the political discussions in the cafés. They only wanted to be left alone, to amuse themselves, to gather in the Champs Elysées or in the Gardens of the dismantled Tuileries, to enjoy the sunshine and the summer breezes, to attend to their own small affairs, and to escape the bewildering and dangerous vicissitudes of public life. They had no union, no rallying-point, no leaders. Worst of all, they had for the most part little courage, and had not learned, as they learned later, that if they wished to be delivered they must assert themselves and act.

Yet at times there were traces of a better spirit among them. The first attempts made to raise the forced loan from the rich and to compel them to enlist for service in La Vendée seem to have stirred them to resistance, and in the course of May, Dutard reported signs of a rally of moderate politicians, and the reappearance of the majority in the Sections. Could the Girondists have taken advantage of this spirit, could they have used their influence in the Government and in the Convention to bring troops to Paris, to shut the clubs, to overawe the Commune, to enlist and draft off to La Vendée some of the destitute and unemployed, to appeal to the instincts of property and order which every civilized community retains, and to encourage those instincts to assert themselves by an adequate display of force, they might yet have won the day. But the Girondists could not seize the opportunity. Very few of them saw as clearly as Garat's clever agent what was wanted. They had not the authority, the union or the promptitude to induce the Convention to take the necessary steps. So the majority relapsed into submission, and the minority, helped by force and terror, secured the lead again.

The arrest of Hébert, on the 24th May, marked the climax of the struggle. It startled the Commune and it forced them to act. Their plans had long been maturing, and in the days which followed they were rapidly completed. On the one hand the insurrectionary leaders organised their forces in the Section of the Evêché, and elected a variety of committees and commissioners to direct the operations of the insurgents. On the other hand the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety hesitated and trimmed between the rival parties, while the bolder spirits among the Gironde persevered in their attack. Some of the more desperate Jacobins proposed the murder of the unpopular deputies, but the responsible leaders insisted that the Girondists should be disposed of by more legitimate means. In the end, the tactics of the 10th August were closely followed. An insurrectionary municipal body, elected by the most extreme Sections, met at night on the 30th May, declared the regular authorities of the Commune superseded, appointed Hanriot Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, ordered the tocsin to be rung, and proceeded to recruit the battalions which were to intimidate the Convention into proscribing the Gironde. Even then the result was very doubtful. The insurrectionary leaders found it difficult to raise the force which they required. Some of the Sections and of the National Guards showed a disposition to take the other side. On Friday, the 31st May, and again on Saturday, the 1st June, the insurrectionary leaders failed to obtain their objects, and although they induced the Convention to cancel the Commission of Twelve, they were unable to secure the proscription of their opponents. It was not until the third attempt, on Sunday, the 2nd June, that Hanriot's Sansculottes, aided by the artillerymen of the National Guard and by a disorderly battalion of foreigners, which was then leaving Paris under orders for La Vendée, were able to muster in sufficient force to overawe the Convention, and to induce it to vote the arrest of the twenty-two leaders of the Gironde.

The fall of the Girondists was thus accomplished in Paris after a close and doubtful struggle, in which with energy and union they might very possibly have saved themselves. It produced a general outbreak in France. Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulon, Grenoble, Caen, many of the greatest cities in the country, declared against the Jacobin Government in Paris. The great majority of the departments prepared to raise the standard of revolt. On the Northern and Eastern frontiers the Allies took Condé, Valenciennes, Mayence, and again threatened to advance on Paris. In the South-West the Spaniards, in the South-East the Sardinians made way against the French. On the Loire the insurgents of La Vendée beat the troops of the Republic in battle after battle, and threw themselves on Nantes. The English fleet blockaded the French ports. All the enemies of the Revolution hurried to enlist on the same side. Some of the Girondists escaped from Paris, and began to organise resistance in the North; and Charlotte Corday, determined to avenge their injuries, travelled up alone from Caen, and assassinated the famous Jacobin leader who had made himself the apostle of assassination as a method of political advance.

In the midst of these perils the Jacobin Government displayed undaunted vigour and resource. The threatened resistance of the departments, which had little union or organisation, was averted by vigorous and prudent measures. The revolted cities were isolated and gradually reduced. New generals were found and new levies raised for the war. The appointment in turn of Houchard and Jourdan to the chief command resulted in victories at Hondschöten and Wattignies, and from the beginning of September onwards, the tide turned in favour of the French. The Allies, always divided and lethargic, gradually fell back before their enemies. After the autumn of 1793, all serious danger of invasion passed away. The French army began to learn the uses of discipline and the secrets of conquest, and under its great commanders entered on its irresistible career. In the West the Vendéans were at last defeated, and their heroic insurrection crushed. The Girondists in the provinces failed, as they had failed in Paris, to raise the forces essential to success, and one by one they were hunted down, or disappeared. Before the end of October, the Jacobins were everywhere triumphant, the Terror was established, and the Revolutionary Tribunal was busily at work.

It is not necessary to linger here over the fate of the victims. The Girondist ideals will always command sympathy. Their eloquent hopes, their courage and disasters will always win respect. But when they are tried as statesmen, their lamentable incompetence stands clear, and their failure, though pitiable, seems scarcely undeserved. The triumph of the Jacobins was celebrated by the death of their opponents. They dealt their blows on all parties alike. Many of the Girondist leaders perished in the provinces, and in the autumn and winter of 1793, a long train of illustrious prisoners mounted the scaffold in Paris. Marie Antoinette, undaunted to the last, expiated her rank and ended her misfortunes. Madame Roland, with equal bravery, followed in the steps of the unhappy queen whom she had so unsparingly assailed. A few weeks later, the sinister irony of their judges sent to the guillotine another woman, who like them had for a brief time tried to rule the destinies of France, the once omnipotent Madame Dubarry. Vergniaud and Brissot, once the heroes of the Republic, Bailly, once the hero of the Parisians, Barnave, once the hero of the Assembly, Philippe Egalité, once the hero of the mob, Houchard, only a few weeks before the hero of the army, atoned by suffering the same indignity for the many different parts which they had played. But to the last the Girondist enthusiasts, with the tranquil courage of the Ancients whom they loved, bore witness to their republican ideals, and as they passed from their prison to the scaffold chanted the Marseillaise.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: The only authority for this statement that I know of is the _Chronique de Paris_, of Dec. 26, 1792, quoted and accepted by Von Sybel (Eng. Tr.), ii. 287. Whether entirely accurate or not, it serves to illustrate the undoubted panic in Paris.]