Chapter 3: 7.I

Decadent.

How little did any one suppose that here was the end not of
Robespierre only, but of the Revolution System itself! Least of
all did the mutinying Committee-men suppose it; who had mutinied
with no view whatever except to continue the National
Regeneration with their own heads on their shoulders. And yet so
it verily was. The insignificant stone they had struck out, so
insignificant anywhere else, proved to be the Keystone: the whole
arch-work and edifice of Sansculottism began to loosen, to crack,
to yawn; and tumbled, piecemeal, with considerable rapidity,
plunge after plunge; till the Abyss had swallowed it all, and in
this upper world Sansculottism was no more.

For despicable as Robespierre himself might be, the death of
Robespierre was a signal at which great multitudes of men, struck
dumb with terror heretofore, rose out of their hiding places:
and, as it were, saw one another, how multitudinous they were;
and began speaking and complaining. They are countable by the
thousand and the million; who have suffered cruel wrong. Ever
louder rises the plaint of such a multitude; into a universal
sound, into a universal continuous peal, of what they call Public
Opinion. Camille had demanded a “Committee of Mercy,” and could
not get it; but now the whole nation resolves itself into a
Committee of Mercy: the Nation has tried Sansculottism, and is
weary of it. Force of Public Opinion! What King or Convention can
withstand it? You in vain struggle: the thing that is rejected as
“calumnious” today must pass as veracious with triumph another
day: gods and men have declared that Sansculottism cannot be.
Sansculottism, on that Ninth night of Thermidor suicidally
“fractured its under jaw;” and lies writhing, never to rise more.

Through the next fifteenth months, it is what we may call the
death-agony of Sansculottism. Sansculottism, Anarchy of the
Jean-Jacques Evangel, having now got deep enough, is to perish in
a new singular system of Culottism and Arrangement. For
Arrangement is indispensable to man; Arrangement, were it
grounded only on that old primary Evangel of Force, with Sceptre
in the shape of Hammer. Be there method, be there order, cry all
men; were it that of the Drill-serjeant! More tolerable is the
drilled Bayonet-rank, than that undrilled Guillotine,
incalculable as the wind.—How Sansculottism, writhing in
death-throes, strove some twice, or even three times, to get on
its feet again; but fell always, and was flung resupine, the next
instant; and finally breathed out the life of it, and stirred no
more: this we are now, from a due distance, with due brevity, to
glance at; and then—O Reader!—Courage, I see land!

Two of the first acts of the Convention, very natural for it
after this Thermidor, are to be specified here: the first is
renewal of the Governing Committees. Both _Sûreté Générale_ and
_Salut Public_, thinned by the Guillotine, need filling up: we
naturally fill them up with Talliens, Frérons, victorious
Thermidorian men. Still more to the purpose, we appoint that they
shall, as Law directs, not in name only but in deed, be renewed
and changed from period to period; a fourth part of them going
out monthly. The Convention will no more lie under bondage of
Committees, under terror of death; but be a free Convention; free
to follow its own judgment, and the Force of Public Opinion. Not
less natural is it to enact that Prisoners and Persons under
Accusation shall have right to demand some “Writ of Accusation,”
and see clearly what they are accused of. Very natural acts: the
harbingers of hundreds not less so.

For now Fouquier’s trade, shackled by Writ of Accusation, and
legal proof, is as good as gone; effectual only against
Robespierre’s Tail. The Prisons give up their Suspects; emit them
faster and faster. The Committees see themselves besieged with
Prisoners’ friends; complain that they are hindered in their
work: it is as with men rushing out of a crowded place; and
obstructing one another. Turned are the tables: Prisoners pouring
out in floods; Jailors, _Moutons_ and the Tail of Robespierre
going now whither they were wont to send!—The Hundred and
thirty-two Nantese Republicans, whom we saw marching in irons,
have arrived; shrunk to Ninety-four, the fifth man of them choked
by the road. They arrive: and suddenly find themselves not
pleaders for life, but denouncers to death. Their Trial is for
acquittal, and more. As the voice of a trumpet, their testimony
sounds far and wide, mere atrocities of a Reign of Terror. For a
space of nineteen days; with all solemnity and publicity.
Representative Carrier, Company of Marat; Noyadings, Loire
Marriages, things done in darkness, come forth into light: clear
is the voice of these poor resuscitated Nantese; and Journals and
Speech and universal Committee of Mercy reverberate it loud
enough, into all ears and hearts. Deputation arrives from Arras;
denouncing the atrocities of Representative Lebon. A tamed
Convention loves its own life: yet what help? Representative
Lebon, Representative Carrier must wend towards the Revolutionary
Tribunal; struggle and delay as we will, the cry of a Nation
pursues them louder and louder. Them also Tinville must
abolish;—if indeed Tinville himself be not abolished.

We must note moreover the decrepit condition into which a once
omnipotent Mother Society has fallen. Legendre flung her keys on
the Convention table, that Thermidor night; her President was
guillotined with Robespierre. The once mighty Mother came, some
time after, with a subdued countenance, begging back her keys:
the keys were restored her; but the strength could not be
restored her; the strength had departed forever. Alas, one’s day
is done. Vain that the Tribune in mid air sounds as of old: to
the general ear it has become a horror, and even a weariness. By
and by, Affiliation is prohibited: the mighty Mother sees herself
suddenly childless; mourns, as so hoarse a Rachel may.

The Revolutionary Committees, without Suspects to prey upon,
perish fast; as it were of famine. In Paris the whole Forty-eight
of them are reduced to Twelve, their _Forty sous_ are abolished:
yet a little while, and Revolutionary Committees are no more.
_Maximum_ will be abolished; let Sansculottism find food where it
can.[757] Neither is there now any Municipality; any centre at
the Townhall. Mayor Fleuriot and Company perished; whom we shall
not be in haste to replace. The Townhall remains in a broken
submissive state; knows not well what it is growing to; knows
only that it is grown weak, and must obey. What if we should
split Paris into, say, a Dozen separate Municipalities; incapable
of concert! The Sections were thus rendered safe to act with:—or
indeed might not the Sections themselves be abolished? You had
then merely your Twelve manageable pacific Townships, without
centre or subdivision;[758] and sacred right of Insurrection fell
into abeyance!

So much is getting abolished; fleeting swiftly into the Inane.
For the Press speaks, and the human tongue; Journals, heavy and
light, in Philippic and Burlesque: a renegade Fréron, a renegade
Prudhomme, loud they as ever, only the contrary way. And
_Ci-devants_ show themselves, almost parade themselves;
resuscitated as from death-sleep; publish what death-pains they
have had. The very Frogs of the Marsh croak with emphasis. Your
protesting Seventy-three shall, with a struggle, be emitted out
of Prison, back to their seats; your Louvets, Isnards,
Lanjuinais, and wrecks of Girondism, recalled from their
haylofts, and caves in Switzerland, will resume their place in
the Convention:[759] natural foes of Terror!

Thermidorian Talliens, and mere foes of Terror, rule in this
Convention, and out of it. The compressed Mountain shrinks silent
more and more. Moderatism rises louder and louder: not as a
tempest, with threatenings; say rather, as the rushing of a
mighty organ-blast, and melodious deafening Force of Public
Opinion, from the Twenty-five million windpipes of a Nation all
in Committee of Mercy: which how shall any detached body of
individuals withstand?