Chapter 3: 4.vi

Risen against Tyrants.

Against all which incalculable impediments, horrors and
disasters, what can a Jacobin Convention oppose? The
uncalculating Spirit of Jacobinism, and Sansculottic
sans-formulistic Frenzy! Our Enemies press in on us, says Danton,
but they shall not conquer us, ‘we will burn France to ashes
rather, _nous brûlerons la France_.’

Committees, of _Sureté_ or _Salut_, have raised themselves “_à la
hauteur_, to the height of circumstances.” Let all mortals raise
themselves _à la hauteur_. Let the Forty-four thousand Sections
and their Revolutionary Committees stir every fibre of the
Republic; and every Frenchman feel that he is to do or die. They
are the life-circulation of Jacobinism, these Sections and
Committees: Danton, through the organ of Barrère and _Salut
Public_, gets decreed, That there be in Paris, by law, two
meetings of Section weekly; also, that the Poorer Citizen be
_paid_ for attending, and have his day’s-wages of Forty
Sous.[677] This is the celebrated “Law of the Forty Sous;”
fiercely stimulant to Sansculottism, to the life-circulation of
Jacobinism.

On the twenty-third of August, Committee of Public Salvation, as
usual through Barrère, had promulgated, in words not unworthy of
remembering, their Report, which is soon made into a Law, of
_Levy in Mass_. “All France, and whatsoever it contains of men or
resources, is put under requisition,” says Barrère; really in
Tyrtæan words, the best we know of his. “The Republic is one vast
besieged city.” Two hundred and fifty Forges shall, in these
days, be set up in the Luxembourg Garden, and round the outer
wall of the Tuileries; to make gun-barrels; in sight of Earth and
Heaven! From all hamlets, towards their Departmental Town; from
all their Departmental Towns, towards the appointed Camp and seat
of war, the Sons of Freedom shall march; their banner is to bear:
“_Le Peuple Français debout contres les Tyrans_, The French
People risen against Tyrants.” “The young men shall go to the
battle; it is their task to conquer: the married men shall forge
arms, transport baggage and artillery; provide subsistence: the
women shall work at soldiers’ clothes, make tents; serve in the
hospitals. The children shall scrape old-linen into
surgeon’s-lint: the aged men shall have themselves carried into
public places; and there, by their words, excite the courage of
the young; preach hatred to Kings and unity to the
Republic.”[678] Tyrtæan words, which tingle through all French
hearts.

In this humour, then, since no other serves, will France rush
against its enemies. Headlong, reckoning no cost or consequence;
heeding no law or rule but that supreme law, Salvation of the
People! The weapons are all the iron that is in France; the
strength is that of all the men, women and children that are in
France. There, in their two hundred and fifty shed-smithies, in
Garden of Luxembourg or Tuileries, let them forge gun-barrels, in
sight of Heaven and Earth.

Nor with heroic daring against the Foreign foe, can black
vengeance against the Domestic be wanting. Life-circulation of
the Revolutionary Committees being quickened by that _Law of the
Forty Sous_, Deputy Merlin, not the Thionviller, whom we saw ride
out of Mentz, but Merlin of Douai, named subsequently Merlin
_Suspect_,—comes, about a week after, with his world-famous _Law
of the Suspect:_ ordering all Sections, by their Committees,
instantly to arrest all Persons Suspect; and explaining withal
who the Arrestable and Suspect specially are. ‘Are Suspect,’ says
he, ‘all who by their actions, by their connexions, speakings,
writings have’—in short become Suspect.[679] Nay Chaumette,
illuminating the matter still further, in his Municipal Placards
and Proclamations, will bring it about that you may almost
recognise a Suspect on the streets, and clutch him there,—off to
Committee, and Prison. Watch well your words, watch well your
looks: if Suspect of nothing else, you may grow, as came to be a
saying, “Suspect of being Suspect!” For are we not in a State of
Revolution?

No frightfuller Law ever ruled in a Nation of men. All Prisons
and Houses of Arrest in French land are getting crowded to the
ridge-tile: Forty-four thousand Committees, like as many
companies of reapers or gleaners, gleaning France, are gathering
their harvest, and storing it in these Houses. Harvest of
Aristocrat tares! Nay, lest the Forty-four thousand, each on its
own harvest-field, prove insufficient, we are to have an ambulant
“Revolutionary Army:” six thousand strong, under right captains,
this shall perambulate the country at large, and strike in
wherever it finds such harvest-work slack. So have Municipality
and Mother Society petitioned; so has Convention decreed.[680]
Let Aristocrats, Federalists, Monsieurs vanish, and all men
tremble: “The Soil of Liberty shall be purged,”—with a vengeance!

Neither hitherto has the Revolutionary Tribunal been keeping
holyday. Blanchelande, for losing Saint-Domingo; “Conspirators of
Orleans,” for “assassinating,” for assaulting the sacred Deputy
Leonard-Bourdon: these with many Nameless, to whom life was
sweet, have died. Daily the great Guillotine has its due. Like a
black Spectre, daily at eventide, glides the Death-tumbril
through the variegated throng of things. The variegated street
shudders at it, for the moment; next moment forgets it: The
Aristocrats! They were guilty against the Republic; their death,
were it only that their goods are confiscated, will be useful to
the Republic; _Vive la République!_

In the last days of August, fell a notabler head: General
Custine’s. Custine was accused of harshness, of unskilfulness,
perfidiousness; accused of many things: found guilty, we may say,
of one thing, unsuccessfulness. Hearing his unexpected Sentence,
“Custine fell down before the Crucifix,” silent for the space of
two hours: he fared, with moist eyes and a book of prayer,
towards the Place de la Révolution; glanced upwards at the clear
suspended axe; then mounted swiftly aloft,[681] swiftly was
struck away from the lists of the Living. He had fought in
America; he was a proud, brave man; and his fortune led him
_hither_.

On the 2nd of this same month, at three in the morning, a vehicle
rolled off, with closed blinds, from the Temple to the
Conciergerie. Within it were two Municipals; and
Marie-Antoinette, once Queen of France! There in that
Conciergerie, in ignominious dreary cell, she, cut off from
children, kindred, friend and hope, sits long weeks; expecting
when the end will be.[682]

The Guillotine, we find, gets always a quicker motion, as other
things are quickening. The Guillotine, by its speed of going,
will give index of the general velocity of the Republic. The
clanking of its huge axe, rising and falling there, in horrid
systole-diastole, is portion of the whole enormous Life-movement
and pulsation of the Sansculottic System!—“Orléans Conspirators”
and Assaulters had to die, in spite of much weeping and
entreating; so sacred is the person of a Deputy. Yet the sacred
can become desecrated: your very Deputy is not greater than the
Guillotine. Poor Deputy Journalist Gorsas: we saw him hide at
Rennes, when the Calvados War burnt priming. He stole afterwards,
in August, to Paris; lurked several weeks about the Palais
_ci-devant_ Royal; was seen there, one day; was clutched,
identified, and without ceremony, being already “out of the Law,”
was sent to the Place de la Révolution. He died, recommending his
wife and children to the pity of the Republic. It is the ninth
day of October 1793. Gorsas is the first Deputy that dies on the
scaffold; he will not be the last.

Ex-Mayor Bailly is in prison; Ex-Procureur Manuel. Brissot and
our poor Arrested Girondins have become Incarcerated Indicted
Girondins; universal Jacobinism clamouring for their punishment.
Duperret’s Seals are _broken!_ Those Seventy-three Secret
Protesters, suddenly one day, are reported upon, are decreed
accused; the Convention-doors being “previously shut,” that none
implicated might escape. They were marched, in a very rough
manner, to Prison that evening. Happy those of them who chanced
to be absent! Condorcet has vanished into darkness; perhaps, like
Rabaut, sits between two walls, in the house of a friend.