Chapter X

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES AND THE ASCENDENCY OF ROBESPIERRE.

It was in November, 1793, and under the influence of the Commune of Paris, that the Revolution reached its climax. The party of the Commune was undoubtedly strong. It had behind it the elaborate organisation of the Parisian municipality. It had many supporters in the Jacobin Club. It had complete possession of the Cordeliers, once the scene of Danton's triumphs. It had friends on the Committee of General Security. It was countenanced by Pache, the Mayor, and by Bouchotte, the Minister of War. On the Committee of Public Safety it had a powerful champion in the person of Collot d'Herbois, and in Carrier, Fouché, and other proconsuls of the Terror it had agents on whom it could rely. Hébert, its most ambitious leader, enjoyed, as the editor of _Père Duchesne_, a commanding influence in the Press. Chaumette, a worthier disciple, held an important post in the Commune. Vincent, another of its representatives, held an important post in the Ministry of War. Ronsin, the commander of the Revolutionary Army, lent it the assistance of an effective force. Other politicians of less note, Clootz and Momoro, Desfieux and Proli, Maillard, Chabot and Bazire, were sometimes associated with it, and contributed to it their strange enthusiasm, their doubtful services, and their discreditable intrigues. Before long the objects of the Commune appeared without disguise--to destroy the power of the Convention, to usurp the place of the Government, and to make its own views and heroes the chief authority in the State.

The proclamation of the worship of Reason marked the ascendency of this party, and from that moment its decline began. The orgies which accompanied its triumph, the tyranny which it had established in Paris, and the license and brutality which distinguished its representatives in the departments caused grave dissatisfaction in the Jacobin ranks. The majority of the Convention submitted, but they submitted with indignation and disgust, and though they had not the courage to rebel, they were prepared to welcome anyone who would give voice to the resentment which they felt. Under these circumstances a second party raised its head among the forces of the time. Philippeaux and Fabre d'Églantine, two well-known deputies of the Mountain believed to be on terms of intimacy with Danton, came forward to attack the proceedings of the Hébertists. Others, like Westermann and Bourdon de l'Oise, Legendre, Lecointre, Lacroix and many others, joined in the attack with more or less reserve. On the same side Camille Desmoulins threw himself into the battle with all his impetuous eloquence and ardour; and behind the attacking forces there rose, impressive and conspicuous as ever, the figure of the man whom all regarded as a leader, and whom the rising opposition hoped to make the spokesman of their protest against the Commune and the Terror alike.

Danton, like so many of his contemporaries, had soon wearied of the system of the Terror. He watched with repugnance the ruin which it spread. He had no liking for political intrigue. He felt strongly the need of stability and order, if there were ever again to be a settled government in France. It is true that in the earlier days Danton had taken a chief part in securing the Jacobin triumph. In the heat of the revolutionary struggle, in the moment of national danger, no one had been readier to act. He had encouraged and organised the insurrection of the 10th August. He had grasped the helm of State during the perilous days which followed. Many of the characteristic Jacobin measures--the wholesale arrest of the suspected in September, the foundation of the Committee of Public Safety, the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal, of the Maximum and of the tax on the rich, the formation of the Revolutionary Army, the proclamation of the Terror, the conscription and the defence of France--had been largely due to his initiative or support. In common with the rest of his party, Danton had opposed the declaration of war, but as soon as the invaders appeared upon the frontier, he had thrown himself into the battle heart and soul. He cared little for party jangles; but he cared intensely for the honour and greatness of his country. Free alike from narrow theories, from absorbing jealousies and from morbid ambition, Danton had always viewed events with a statesman's eye. He had seen Dumouriez' failings, but he had seen also his conspicuous ability, and he had supported him staunchly to the end. He had seen, as Mirabeau had seen before him, that the government of the country could never prosper until a strong Executive were formed, and accordingly, like Mirabeau, he had endeavoured to induce the Convention to give the Ministers seats in the House. Only when that scheme had failed, had he fallen back on the device of a powerful committee. He had realised much sooner than his colleagues the folly of the reckless decree by which, in November, 1792, the Convention had declared war on all the kings of Europe, and four months later he had secured its repeal. He had discerned the uses of diplomacy, had negotiated the withdrawal of Brunswick, had tried to detach Prussia from the coalition, had secured an alliance with Sweden, and had steadily laboured, in spite of the wild talk of his colleagues, to bring France back into the comity of nations. From the time of the king's death, Danton had done all that eloquent persuasion could do to heal divisions and to unite parties in the work of defending the Republic. He would gladly have worked with the Girondists, had they not driven him by their intemperate charges into the opposing camp. 'If we must shed blood,' he once pleaded nobly, 'let us shed the blood of the enemies of our country.'

But when the danger of invasion passed away, Danton's energies passed with it. When the Jacobins had conquered and the State was saved, he felt that he had no employment left. He had little sympathy with the Government of the Terror. He wearied of the long tale of violence and outrage. Unscrupulous and hardened as he was, he turned disgusted from the methods of Carrier and Hébert. After his second marriage, in June, 1793, his young wife and the delights of home called him away to purer things than politics. He knew the limits of his own capacity, and that he could not bring to the work of political manœuvring the irresistible vigour and conviction by which he had roused the country and had swept his colleagues into power. Even to the last, when Philippeaux and Desmoulins forced him to the front, and made him the unwilling leader round whom the party of reaction gathered, he was inclined to urge them to put up their weapons, and to fall back on his old plea for unity. He hated personal animosities and was not made to be a faction chief. But he was too conspicuous and too honest to remain altogether in the background, when his comrades were risking their lives in a cause which he knew to be the cause of mercy, and believed to be the cause of France.

Between Hébert and his adherents in the Commune, and the party which gradually ranged itself behind Danton in opposition to the whole system of the Terror, there stood, as a third party, the Government of the day. The Government, that is the Committee of Public Safety, was not, it is true, entirely united. Some of its members, like Collot d'Herbois and in a lesser degree Billaud-Varennes, approved of the methods of the Commune, and were closely leagued with its chiefs. On the other hand, Robespierre detested the brutal license of many of the Communist party, and his feelings were shared by Couthon and St. Just. Others, again, like Carnot, had little liking for either Robespierre or Hébert. Hérault de Séchelles was a friend of Danton and sympathised with his ideas. But, divided as they were, most of the members of the Committee felt that things were going too far. They were responsible for the government of the country, and they could not, therefore, view with unconcern the anarchy and public plunder which marked the course of the agents of the Commune. They were for the moment kings of France, and they had no intention of surrendering their throne to the ambitious municipality of Paris, or of permitting any reaction in the Convention which would deprive them of the power which it had suffered them to usurp.

Accordingly, in the month of November, when Collot d'Herbois was absent in Lyons, a decided movement against the Commune appeared. Robespierre, with his strong sense of decorum and his reverence for the sentimental theology of Rousseau, was shocked by the excesses of the materialist party, and encouraged by the signs of opposition in the Convention, he began to make his opinions felt. As usual, he proceeded with great caution, but by significant hints and phrases he showed his resentment at the conduct of Hébert. On the 17th November, in a long report upon the foreign policy of France, he took occasion to denounce both the 'cruel moderantism and the systematic exaggeration of false patriots.' Four days later, at the Jacobin Club, in answer to a challenge from Hébert, he delivered a singular speech on the religious question, and ended by proposing the purging of the Club. The grounds on which Robespierre attacked his enemies were characteristically circuitous and astute. 'Atheism,' he argued, 'is aristocratic. The idea of a Supreme Being, who watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime, is essentially the idea of the people.'

Cautious as Robespierre's action was, the majority quickly rallied round him. Danton returned to Paris and ranged himself at Robespierre's side. 'We did not destroy superstition,' he cried, 'in order to establish the rule of the atheist.' In the Convention he pleaded for milder measures, and urged that the sword of the Terror should be pointed only at those convicted of crime. As the scrutiny at the Jacobins proceeded, the victory of the opponents of the Commune became more distinct. The attacks made upon Danton and Desmoulins collapsed. Robespierre defended them with spirit and enthusiasm, and asked to be judged by Danton's side. On the 4th December, a new law was adopted by the Convention, consolidating the power of the Committee of Public Safety, bringing all constituted authorities more directly under its control, suppressing the revolutionary armies and the agents of the Commune in the departments, forbidding the raising of taxes except by decree of the Assembly, and extending the Government's supervision over the committees in the Sections of Paris. The effect of this decisive measure was largely to increase the authority of the Committee, and to diminish the influence of the Commune both in the provinces and in the capital itself.

The reaction against the Commune had unmistakably begun. On the day after the decree of the Convention the first number of the _Vieux Cordelier_ appeared. The Hébertists, defeated in the Jacobins, had made their headquarters at the Cordeliers Club; and in order to emphasise the difference between the new doctrines and the spirit which had inspired the Cordeliers in their earlier days, Camille Desmoulins gave to his protest the title of the club, where his wit and Danton's eloquence had once held undisputed sway. Danton and his friends were known to sympathise with the opinions of the new journal. Robespierre corrected the first number in proof. Desmoulins began by denouncing the Hébertists, but as the tide of reaction rose and the friends of moderation gathered courage, he passed on to attack the whole system of the Terror, and in the famous third number of his paper he boldly arraigned its tyranny and crimes. Two days later, on the 17th December, the Convention, on the motion of Danton's adherents, decreed the arrest of three agents of the Commune, Vincent, Ronsin and Maillard. Proposals were freely put forward for renewing and remodelling the Government itself. Bodies of petitioners appeared at the bar of the Convention asking for mercy towards the suspects. Robespierre proposed the appointment of a commission to consider all cases of unjust arrest. Camille Desmoulins appealed to Robespierre and passionately urged the cause of mercy. 'The liberty I worship is no unknown God.... It is happiness, reason, equality, justice.... Robespierre, friend and comrade of my schooldays, whose eloquent words our children will read often, recall the history and philosophy that we learned. Remember that love is stronger and lives longer than fear, that reverence and religion spring from kindly treatment ... and that no men can mount on blood-stained steps to heaven. Why,' cried the writer bitterly, as he wound up his powerful appeal, 'why has compassion become a crime in France?'

To such a height had the reaction attained, when, on the 21st December, Collot d'Herbois suddenly arrived in Paris. He was welcomed by the Hébertists as a deliverer. 'The giant has arrived,' cried Hébert gladly, 'the faithful defender of the Sansculottes,' and Collot at once espoused the cause of his allies. Full of vigour and self-confidence, the executioner of Lyons entertained no scruples about the Terror. He denounced all ideas of moderation. His presence reanimated the Committee, cheered the party of the Commune, and abashed the hopes of the reaction. The capture of Toulon, which occurred about the same time, served to increase the prestige of the Government. Many who had welcomed Desmoulins' appeal began to feel that they had been too precipitate. The Commune, gathering courage, demanded and obtained the release of its imprisoned agents. The commission to enquire into cases of unjust arrest was cancelled. Collot d'Herbois quickly made his influence felt at the Jacobins and in the Committee, and all the waverers, as usual, rallied to the stronger side. Robespierre, alarmed at the turn events were taking, began to dissociate himself from his new allies, lamented the bitterness of party feeling, and declared that his object was 'to overwhelm factions, foreigners and moderates, but not to ruin patriots.' Even Danton took occasion to declare his loyalty to the Government, and endeavoured to restrain the incautious declarations of his friends.

All through January and February, 1794, the struggle of parties continued, and the fiercest animosities prevailed. At the Jacobins, Desmoulins' colleagues renewed their onslaught on the followers of Hébert, but no longer with the same success. Robespierre laboured steadily by perpetual speeches to secure his ascendency in the club, and studiously avoided committing himself to either side. But his position changed. He began to display undisguised hostility towards Philippeaux and Fabre d'Églantine, the most outspoken members of the moderate party. He assumed a tone of paternal reproach towards Camille Desmoulins, and proposed that the _Vieux Cordelier_, which he had once cordially welcomed, should be burned. Danton, disheartened, and embarrassed, relapsed into listless inactivity, and contented himself with deprecating personal attacks. The chances of a reaction against the Terror passed away, and the Government daily offered a stronger front to the enmity of Hébertists and Dantonists alike.

At last, after many weeks of struggle and intrigue, the crisis came. At the end of February, St. Just returned to Paris from a mission in the provinces, and brought a new influence to bear upon events. St. Just was the loyal disciple of Robespierre, but he possessed far more energy and decision than his chief. He shared Robespierre's dislike of Hébert, but he did not share his kindly feeling towards Danton. Desmoulins had ridiculed the stiff pomposity of the young Committee-man's demeanour, and to St. Just ridicule was an unpardonable wrong. While Robespierre pleaded indisposition and held aloof from the meetings of the Committee, St. Just declared himself without disguise. He proposed to enforce the authority of the Government by sacrificing Dantonists and Hébertists alike. He denounced significantly 'the greatest criminals, who are only trying to destroy the scaffold because they dread the prospect of mounting it themselves.' His presence seems to have roused his colleagues, as the arrival of Collot had roused them before. The Commune was once more made to feel the weight of the Committee's authority. A decree of the Convention confiscated the property of the suspects in order to provide for destitute patriots, and by this great bribe diminished the influence which the Commune enjoyed with the needy poor. The Hébertists, now thoroughly alarmed, made a last effort to assert themselves. They held stormy meetings at the Cordeliers Club, and indulged in reckless schemes of insurrection. But even Collot d'Herbois seems to have felt that the leaders of the Commune had gone too far, and he gave his consent to the policy of the Committee. St. Just took the lead in the attack. On the night of the 13th March, Hébert and his principal colleagues were arrested. Next day, Robespierre reappeared in the Convention and resumed his place at the Jacobin Club. For the first time in the history of the Revolution the less extreme party, with legitimate authority behind it, had asserted itself against the forces of insurrection, had assumed the offensive and had won the day.

On the one side the enemies of the Government had fallen. It only remained for them to dispose of the rest. The extreme Terrorists had consented to allow their friends in the Commune to perish, but only on condition that the advocates of mercy should perish too. The moderate party had many supporters in the Convention, and were a serious danger to the supremacy of the Committee. They counted on the support of Danton, and though Danton gave them little encouragement, they used his great name to forward their designs. 'Danton sleeps,' said Desmoulins, as he took up his pen again to attack the system and the agents of the Terror, 'Danton sleeps, but it is the sleep of a lion, and he will wake to defend us.' But Danton's power and energy seemed destined never to wake again. Heartily weary of conspiracies and factions, discerning plainly enough the danger which confronted him but unable to rouse himself to avert it, disdaining to take measures to defend himself or to fight his opponents with their own weapons of intrigue, Danton remained undecided and inert. He would not compass his enemies' destruction, and he did not believe that his enemies would dare to compass his. Perhaps he relied on Robespierre's friendship, and forgot that Robespierre was not the man to risk his own ascendency in order to save another's life. At any rate when the crisis came, Robespierre swallowed any scruples that he felt, and consented to unite the Government by abandoning Danton to his opponents. On the night of the 30th March, Danton, Desmoulins and their colleagues were arrested, and next day Robespierre came forward and denounced the 'broken idol' in the Convention. Danton's bearing before the Revolutionary Tribunal was marked by his habitual scornful courage. 'My abode,' he said, in answer to the judge's questions, 'will soon be in eternity; my name you will find in the Pantheon of history.' He defended himself hotly and proudly against the ridiculous charges of royalist conspiracy. His vigorous eloquence created so profound an impression that his accusers trembled for the consequences, and took exceptional measures to cut the trial short. On the 5th April, Danton was guillotined. 'I see now,' he said, 'that in times of Revolution, power falls ultimately to the greatest scoundrels.... Ah, better be a poor fisherman than meddle with the governing of men!'

The fall of Danton left Robespierre by far the most conspicuous man in France. For character and reputation he had no rival in the Committees, and it was largely on his popularity that the Government rested for support. In some points Robespierre compared favourably with his colleagues. His life was frugal, pure and decent. His dress was always neat. His sense of decorum never deserted him. His devotion to his principles and his hatred of license and irreverence were sincere. He represented admirably the complacent Philistinism of a certain type of French bourgeois. His language breathed of virtue and emotion. His long-winded, didactic generalities, his perpetual appeals to morality and conscience imposed on well-intentioned, narrow minds, and, no doubt, imposed upon his own. Robespierre's followers, women especially, with whom his influence was great, took him at his own valuation. They did not discover his amazing egotism. They did not resent the qualities which make him appear to us the typical prig of history. They liked the long abstract discourses, which were the fashion of his time and sect. They liked his plain respectability. They liked his war upon corruption. They liked his feeling for religion and his copious sentiment. They were charmed by his high-sounding and unpractical ideals. They marvelled when he recited, as he never tired of doing, the tale of his own virtues. Robespierre was essentially a priest, and he exercised a priest's fascination, preaching unceasingly and claiming without scruple the admiration of his flock. 'I have never bowed,' he cried, 'beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption.' 'Surrounded by assassins, I have little to reconcile me to life except my love for my country and my thirst for justice.' 'I am a living martyr to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime.' 'If such truths must be dissembled, then bring me the hemlock.' He was for ever proclaiming himself the champion of morality, for ever protesting his readiness to die in its cause. He reiterated it so often, and he believed it so intensely, that he made his followers believe it too.

Moreover, Robespierre's sentiment was genuine. He had brought with him from Arras the reputation of a young provincial lawyer, upright, industrious and tender-hearted, fond of indifferent verse and of pet-birds. In his early days he had resigned an honourable office rather than condemn a man to death. He had from the first figured as the friend of humanity, as the defender of the unfortunate and the oppressed. If any question arose of suppressing disorder, he had always raised his voice against severity. He had pleaded for the abolition of the penalty of death. He had championed the cause of coloured men. He had more than once shown his sympathy for priests. Later on, he had defended the seventy-three members of the Convention, who were attacked for protesting against the arrest of the Gironde. He was known to have resented the treatment of Madame Elizabeth and the insults offered by Hébert to the Queen. He had taken no part personally in the enormities of the proconsuls of the Terror. He had repudiated the immorality and materialism of the leaders of the Commune. He had helped to secure the recall of Carrier. Conscious cruelty had no place in his speeches or ideals.

But when one turns from Robespierre's speeches to his actions, a different tale is told. In vain his apologists recapitulate his language, and dwell on his protestations of virtue, on his ceaseless iteration of benevolent designs. His career stands out in flagrant contrast to his oft-repeated principles, and the record of his career no apologies can explain away. The most noticeable characteristics of Robespierre's public life were his lack of initiative, his disingenuous reserve, and his profound incompetence as a practical politician. There is hardly a single great measure of the Terror, except the development of the Revolutionary Tribunal, in which Robespierre took a leading part. His method was to combat every proposal and every party, but rarely to make a proposal himself. If a critical occasion came, Robespierre always waited to see the issue before he declared himself. He never threw off his nervous hesitation. He never committed himself to violent risks, or took the initiative in violent courses. These characteristics are illustrated at each stage of his career. In the difficult days of July, 1791, at the time of the 'Massacre of the Champ de Mars,' he conducted himself with exemplary caution. A year later, on the 10th August, he remained in the background till the battle was decided, but he joined the Commune openly on the 11th, when the victory was won. Later still, though he detested the doctrines of the Hébertists, he did not venture to attack them straightforwardly. He only threw out hints against them until he saw which way the tide was running, and then he tried to discredit them by arguing that atheism was an aristocratic idea! He was absent, on the plea of illness, while their fate was being decided in the Committee, but he was well enough to re-appear in public the morning after their arrest. He encouraged Desmoulins cordially in his crusade against the Commune; but he changed his tone as soon as Collot d'Herbois' reappearance turned the scale against Desmoulins' views, and he finally threw over without a struggle the man who had been for years his warm admirer and friend. With equal treachery he sacrificed Danton as soon as it was evident that the strongest party was bent on Danton's destruction, and directly the arrest was made, he came forward to denounce a colleague, at whose side, only a few weeks before, he had proudly asked to stand. Of course it is possible that Robespierre was able, with his remarkable faculty of self-deception, to persuade his conscience in every case that he was acting as the interests of virtue required. But it is difficult by any sophisms to excuse such heartless opportunism, and to avoid the conviction that, whoever fell, Robespierre was determined to be upon the winning side.

Hardly less noticeable than his tortuous manœuvring was his incompetence in practical affairs. His speeches were treatises full of vague and abstract speculation, in which the same forms and phrases constantly appeared, but singularly lacking in definiteness and meaning, with very little bearing upon facts, and generally without any practical conclusions or result. He seemed to talk for the sake of talking, but the listeners, who accepted his theory as their gospel, never seemed to tire of the voice of the priest. At the height of the struggle between the rival parties in January, 1794, Robespierre solemnly invited the Jacobins to consider 'the crimes of the English Government and the vices of the British Constitution.' At another time of stirring interest and activity, he busied himself with drawing up a lengthy indictment of the monarchs of the world. At another time, he contributed to a practical discussion some luminous remarks, in which he insisted that the outbreak of the Revolution had been largely due to the determination of 'the London Cabinet ... to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI,' and that Pitt was 'an imbecile ... who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean,' conceived plans only worthy of a madhouse. It is no wonder if his colleagues in the Government, who were nearly all of them vigorous men of action, came to regard him with something like contempt. All through the Revolution Robespierre's attitude was the same. He never displayed much practical ability. The overthrow of the monarchy, the establishment of the Republic, the defeat of the invaders, the triumph of the Revolutionary Government, the organisation of the national defence, owed little to him. On the Committee of Public Safety his services, apart from matters of police, were unimportant. He did little useful work himself, and his jealous interference only hampered and embarrassed those who did. He never went on mission. The equipment of the army and navy, the management of the food supply, the control of the proconsuls, the administration of the country, the heroic labours of the terrible Committee, rested in other hands. Robespierre was only its tireless rhetorician, watching, manœuvring, expatiating incessantly on his ideals, his virtues and himself. Even after the fall of Danton, when he had ample scope for his designs, all that he contributed as a practical reformer to the Utopia which he had described a hundred times, was a masquerade to the discredit of religion and the most sanguinary police-law which the world has seen.

But wrapped as Robespierre was in self-complacency, he was always sufficiently awake to suspect and envy others. The doctrine of mistrust was a part of the Jacobin creed. The habit of suspecting others seemed to grow upon all those who professed the faith, and gradually to distort their views and to discolour their judgment. The Robespierre of 1794, the jealous, nervous, inflated fanatic, was a very different being from the earnest, narrow-minded lawyer, who had set out from Arras five years before to take his part in regenerating France. As Marat had developed, under the influence of the Jacobin theory and amid the desperate excitements of the time, from a soured idealist into the furious advocate of murder, so Robespierre had developed too. The mania of panic and suspicion had settled upon him. The peril which he and his colleagues encountered had convinced him that he was a martyr, and that all who did not recognise his virtues were conspirators seeking for his death. 'Gazing on the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled down,' he cried in his last great speech in the Convention, 'I have sometimes trembled lest I should be soiled by the impure neighbourhood of wicked men.... I know that it is easy for the leagued tyrants of the world to overwhelm a single individual; but I know also what is the duty of a man who can die in defence of humanity.' In the latter part of Robespierre's career it seemed that nothing was too innocent for him to mistrust or too improbable for him to suspect. 'I am not obliged to reflect,' he told Garat, 'I always rely on first impressions.' He believed that his instinct could not err, and his instinct always was to think the worst. 'Evidently,' he said one day to Garat, early in the spring of 1793, 'the Girondists are conspiring.' 'Where?' asked Garat. 'Everywhere,' answered Robespierre. He needed no facts to prove it. His virtue, the watchdog of the Republic, told him it was true. At one moment Lafayette was the traitor, at another Brissot, at another Dumouriez, at another Hébert. Servan, he insisted, was given a command in the Pyrenees, in order to hand over the keys of France to Spain. 'Is there no doubt of this in your mind?' asked Garat. 'None whatever,' replied the infallible pedant. Again and again Robespierre denounced mysterious conspiracies and treasons in Paris, in the departments, in the Commune, in the Convention. He had no doubt whatever that he was unmasking traitors, and traitors he could not scruple to send to the guillotine. In particular, the generals of the Republic were singled out by Robespierre as objects of alarm. It was he who sent Custine to the scaffold, and scouted the suggestion that it was necessary to offer written proofs of his guilt. It was he who took the chief part in denouncing Houchard and in consigning him to a similar fate. It was he who first threw doubts on the good faith of Kellermann. It was he who, upon no evidence whatever, ordered the arrest of Hoche upon a charge of treason[11].

The growth of this fever of suspicion, which was common to most of the Jacobin party, but which was specially marked in Marat and in Robespierre, enables one to understand how a man naturally neither cruel nor unprincipled became so largely responsible for the bloodshed of the Terror. Robespierre's apologists have vainly endeavoured to defend him against this reproach, and to maintain that he always wished to stop it. But even their defence of Robespierre contains conclusive evidence of his guilt. His position, after the fall of Danton, was unquestionably strong. In the two governing Committees, though he had enemies and critics, he was closely supported by Couthon and St. Just. His popularity in Paris was considerable. His reputation within his own party stood higher than that of any of his colleagues. The Jacobin Club was his stronghold. On the triumph of the Committee in March, 1794, the Commune had been reconstituted, and its new heads, Fleuriot and Payan, were devoted to Robespierre's interest. The Revolutionary Army of the capital had been dissolved, but Hanriot, Robespierre's firm friend, retained his command in the National Guard, and was zealous in Robespierre's service. The ministries also had been suppressed. Twelve new commissions had been appointed to administer affairs in their place, and in the appointments to these commissions Robespierre's influence was naturally large. Had Robespierre really cared to use his power to mitigate the Terror, it is difficult to believe that he could not have done so with success. In the existing state of public opinion he could, for such an enterprise, have commanded overwhelming support. The great majority of the Convention, as their conduct both before and after proved, were only waiting for an opportunity to throw their weight into the scale of mercy.

But the fact is that Robespierre's influence was used throughout in the opposite direction. He detested, it is true, the disorderly excesses that had accompanied the Terror in the departments. He wished to centralise and regulate the system, to make it uniform, moral and decorous, to take the power of the sword out of the hands of men whom he distrusted and disliked. But he did not wish to end it. The police-law of April, 1794, which directed that all conspirators should be brought to Paris for trial, and the establishment of a new Bureau of police under the supervision of St. Just and of Robespierre himself, were designed to prevent the occurrence of enormities like those of Carrier in the provinces, and to deprive Robespierre's opponents in the Committee of General Security of their monopoly in matters of police. But they were not measures of compassion. From the first, Robespierre had taken a prominent part in founding and developing the Revolutionary Tribunal. Again and again he had protested against its delays and its unnecessary forms. When he attained the climax of his power, he swept those forms away. In the Revolutionary Tribunal he had staunch adherents. His work in the Committee of Public Safety was always largely concerned with questions of police. The Terror was an essential part of his system. He honestly believed that his Utopia could not flourish until he had consumed the wicked, and against the wicked accordingly he sharpened the sword of death.

With this crusade against the enemies of his ideal he mingled schemes of arbitrary benevolence. Both St. Just and Robespierre were determined to found the State which Rousseau had conceived, wherein all should be equal, virtuous, enlightened, without poverty or riches, irreverence or sin. As a step towards it they determined to establish Rousseau's Church. On the 18th Floréal (7th May), Robespierre induced the Convention to decree its belief in a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. On the 20th Prairial (8th June), he celebrated, in one of the strangest pageants of history, the festival of the new Deity in France. Arrayed in a brilliant uniform, and carrying a bouquet of flowers and corn sheaves, Robespierre marched at the head of a procession out to the Champ de Mars, burned the symbols of Atheism and Vice, and inaugurated the new religion. 'Here,' he cried, 'is the Universe assembled. O Nature, how sublime, how exquisite, thy power! How tyrants will pale at the tidings of our feast.' And within two days of this ideal festival he set to work to re-organise the machinery of the guillotine. A few weeks before he had taken a chief part in establishing, on the demand of his adherent Maignet, an extraordinary tribunal at Orange in the South, and had drawn up with his own hand a paper of instructions, which laid it down that the conscience of the judges was to be the only test of the guilt of the accused. In the law of the 22nd Prairial this monstrous principle was carried further. The decree provided that the Revolutionary Tribunal should be divided into four sections to expedite its work, that prisoners should thenceforward be tried in batches, that they should no longer have counsel to defend them or be allowed to call witnesses for their defence, and that the question of their guilt should be left to the enlightened conscience of the jury! The results of this proposal were that, in the six or seven weeks which followed, the number of victims guillotined mounted to over thirteen hundred, a number considerably exceeding the total reached during the first fifteen months of the tribunal's existence. In face of this measure, which was unquestionably Robespierre's work, it is idle to pretend that he wished to check the Terror. No doubt he disliked its extravagance and license. No doubt he wished to strike some of the Terrorists. But apart from that there is no evidence that he attempted to stop it, and against him there is the whole tenour of his policy and the testimony of this nefarious decree.

But Robespierre's ascendency was destined to be brief. The majority of his colleagues had begun to dread him. They knew that he was jealous of their authority. After the 10th June he held himself more and more aloof[12]. He did not resign his place on the Committee; but finding that he could not make its members accept his ascendency, he began to form schemes for purging the Government afresh, to dissociate himself from his colleagues, and to concentrate his forces in the Commune and at the Jacobin Club. At last, aware that a breach was inevitable, St. Just and others urged him to take vigorous measures against his opponents. But Robespierre, always incapable of decisive action, preferred to confine himself to speeches and to vague hints of conspiracy and treason. On the 8th Thermidor (26th July), in a long and mysterious speech, marked by his habitual and astonishing egotism, he denounced the plots against the Convention, and demanded the punishment of evil men. But he named no one, and his threats frightened all. That night the combination which had been gradually forming against him came to a head. Tallien, Billaud, Bourdon and others, Dantonists and Hébertists, all parties alike determined to unite, to save their lives. On the morrow, the 9th Thermidor, the crisis came, and the Convention, for once acting with unanimity and vigour, rejected Robespierre's appeal and boldly ordered his arrest. For a few hours the issue of the struggle hung doubtful. The Commune rallied to Robespierre's defence. He was delivered from prison and carried to the Hôtel de Ville in triumph. Hanriot summoned his artillerymen to the rescue, and once again the Commune proposed to raise an insurrection. But the name of the Commune was no longer a watchword in the capital. The Convention held its ground with unusual courage. It outlawed all the chief conspirators. It took prompt measures to organise resistance, to rouse Paris, to summon the forces of the Sections to its aid. The prestige of the National Assembly, when united, was still redoubtable, and Hanriot's troops hesitated to attack it. Early in the dawn of the following day the Conventional forces assumed the offensive, and marched on the Hôtel de Ville. The insurrection collapsed, and Robespierre and his confederates died. At last the lawful authority in France, so long paralysed and broken, had dared to act decisively, and to use force to make itself obeyed. From the moment that its vigour revived its triumph was assured, and with its triumph the reaction began.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Even M. Hamel admits this (_Hist. de Robespierre_, III. p. 499 _et seq._), although he endeavours, in a manner that is not convincing, to throw the responsibility on to Carnot. Carnot claimed to have saved Hoche's life. He certainly joined in ordering his release from prison almost immediately after Robespierre's fall.]

[Footnote 12: Robespierre himself said, on the 8th Thermidor, that for the last six weeks he had 'absolutely abandoned his functions as a member of the Committee of Public Safety.' Louis Blanc argues that he was therefore not responsible for the Terror. But another of Robespierre's admirers, Hamel, has taken pains to prove that Robespierre was constantly present at the Committee's meetings up to the 9th Thermidor, and decides that his alleged retirement must consequently have been 'toute morale' (vol. III. pp. 594-601).]