Chapter XXXVI: Fall of Robespierre

Inexplicable Character of Robespierre.--Cecile Regnault.--Fete
in honor of the Supreme Being.--Increase of Victims.--The
Triumvirate.--Suspicions of Robespierre.--Struggle between
Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety.--Conspiracy against
Robespierre.--Session of the 27th of July.--Robespierre and his
Friends arrested.--Efforts to save Robespierre.--Peril of the
Convention.--Execution of Robespierre and his Confederates.

Robespierre, who was now apparently at the height of his power, is one of the most inexplicable of men. His moral character was irreproachable; no bribes could corrupt him; he sincerely endeavored to establish a republic founded upon the basis of popular liberty and virtue; and self-aggrandizement seems never to have entered into his aims. He was not a blood-thirsty man; but was ready, with frigid mercilessness, to crush any party which stood in the way of his plans. His soul appears to have been almost as insensible to any generous emotion as was the blade of the guillotine.[419] He seems to have mourned the apparent necessity of beheading Danton. Repeatedly he was heard to say, perhaps hypocritically,

"Oh, if Danton were but honest! If he were but a true Republican! What would I not give for the lantern of Diogenes to read the heart of Danton, and learn if he be the friend or the enemy of the Republic?"

Robespierre would gladly have received the aid of Danton's powerful arm, but, finding his old friend hostile to his measures, he pitilessly sent him to the guillotine. And yet there is evidence that he at times was very weary of that work of death which he deemed it necessary to prosecute.[420]

"Death," said he, "always death; and the scoundrels throw all the responsibility upon me. What a memory shall I leave behind me if this lasts! Life is a burden to me."

On the 7th of May, 1794, Robespierre made a very eloquent speech in the Convention advocating the doctrines of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. He presented the following decrees, which were adopted by acclamation:

"_Art. 1._ The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.

"_Art. 2._ They acknowledge that the worship worthy of the Supreme Being is one of the duties of man."

There were some unavailing attempts now made to assassinate Robespierre; one, very singular in its character, by a beautiful girl, Cecile Regnault, but seventeen years of age. She called at Robespierre's house and asked to see him. Her appearance attracted suspicion, and she was arrested. In her basket a change of clothes was found and two knives. She was led before the Tribunal.

"What was the object of your visit to Robespierre?" the president inquired.

"I wished," she replied, "to see what a tyrant was like."

"Why did you provide yourself with the change of clothes?"

"Because," she calmly replied, "I expected to be sent to prison and then to the guillotine."

"Did you intend to stab Robespierre?"

"No," she answered, "I never wished to hurt any one in my life."

"Why are you a Royalist?" the president continued.

"Because," she replied, "I prefer one king to sixty tyrants."

She was sent to the guillotine with all her family relations. The conduct of this girl is quite inexplicable, and it is doubted whether she seriously contemplated any crime. When she called to see Robespierre _she left her knife in her room in a basket_! Eight carts were filled with victims to avenge this crime.[421]

Robespierre was now so popular with the multitude that all Paris rallied around him with congratulations.

The 8th of May was appointed as a festival in honor of the Supreme Being. Robespierre, the originator of the movement, was chosen President of the Convention, that he might take the most conspicuous part on the occasion. The morning dawned with unusual splendor. For that one day the guillotine was ordered to rest. An amphitheatre was erected in the centre of the garden of the Tuileries, and the spacious grounds were crowded with a rejoicing concourse. The celebrated painter David had arranged the fete with the highest embellishments of art. At twelve o'clock Robespierre ascended a pavilion and delivered a discourse.

"Republican Frenchmen," said he, "the ever fortunate day which the French people dedicated to the Supreme Being has at length arrived. Never did the world which he created exhibit a spectacle so worthy of his attention. He has beheld tyranny, crime, and imposture reigning on earth. He beholds at this moment a whole nation, assailed by all the oppressors of mankind, suspending the course of its heroic labors to lift its thoughts and its prayers toward the Supreme Being who gave it the mission to undertake and the courage to execute them."

Having finished his brief address, he descended and set fire to a colossal group of figures representing Atheism, Discord, and Selfishness, which the idea of a God was to reduce to ashes. As they were consumed, there appeared in their place, emerging from the flames, the statue of Wisdom. After music, songs, and sundry symbolic ceremonies, an immense procession was formed, headed by Robespierre, which proceeded from the Tuileries to the Champ de Mars. Here, after the performance of pageants as imposing as Parisian genius could invent and Parisian opulence execute, the procession returned to the Tuileries, where the festival was concluded with public diversions.[422]

The pre-eminence which Robespierre assumed on this occasion excited great displeasure, and many murmurs reached his ears. Robespierre, the next day, entered complaints against those who had murmured, accused them of being Dantonists and enemies of the Revolution, and wished to send them to the guillotine. Each member of the Convention began to feel that his head was entirely at the disposal of Robespierre, and gradually became emboldened to opposition.

The legal process by which victims were arrested and sent to the guillotine had now become simple and energetic in the extreme. Any man complained to the Committee of Public Safety of whom he would, as _suspected_ of being unfriendly to the Revolution. The committee immediately ordered the arrest of the accused. The eighteen prisons of Paris were thus choked with victims. Each evening Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, received from the Committee of Public Safety a list of those whom he was to take the next day to the Revolutionary Tribunal. If the committee, for any reason, had not prepared a list, Fouquier Tinville was allowed to select whom he pleased. To be _suspected_ was almost certain death. From the commencement of this year (1794) the executions had increased with frightful rapidity. In January eighty-three were executed; in February, seventy-five; in March, one hundred and twenty-three; in April, two hundred and sixty-three; in May, three hundred and twenty-four; in June, six hundred and seventy-two; in July, eight hundred and thirty-five.[423]

Carts were continually passing from the gates of the Conciergerie loaded with prisoners, who were promptly condemned and sent immediately to the scaffold. Malesherbes, the intrepid and venerable defender of Louis XVI., living in retirement in the country, was dragged, with all his family, to the scaffold. If a man were rich, he was suspected of aristocracy and was sent to the guillotine. If he were learned, his celebrity exposed him to suspicion, and his doom was death. If he were virtuous, he was accused of sympathy for the victims of the guillotine, and was condemned to the scaffold. There was no longer safety but in vice and degradation. The little girls who had been led by their fathers to attend a ball given by the King of Prussia at Verdun were all arrested, brought to Paris, and condemned and executed. "The eldest," says Lamartine, "was eighteen. They were all clothed in white robes. The cart which carried them resembled a basket of lilies whose heads waved to the motion of the arm. The affected executioners wept with them." Josephine Beauharnais, afterward the bride of Napoleon, was at this time in one of the dungeons of Paris, sleeping upon a wretched pallet of straw, and expecting daily to be led to execution.

Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon were the three leading men in the Committee of Public Safety, and were hence called the Triumvirate. All began now to be weary of blood, and yet no one knew how to stem the torrent or when the carnage would cease. The Reign of Terror had become almost as intolerable as the tyranny of the old kings, but not fully so; the Reign of Terror crushed thousands who could make their woes heard; despotism crushed _millions_ who were dumb. There was no hope for France but in some energetic arm which, assuming the dictatorship, should rescue liberty from the encroachments of kings and from being degraded by the mob. Robespierre was now the most prominent man in France and the most popular with the multitude. His friends urged him to assume the dictatorship.

Jealousy of Robespierre's ambition now began to arise, and his enemies rapidly increased. Whispers that he had become a traitor to the Republic and was seeking kingly power began to circulate. Popular applause is proverbially fickle. Robespierre soon found that he could not carry his measures in the Committee of Public Safety, and, disgusted and humiliated, he absented himself from the sittings. He attempted to check the effusion of blood, but was overruled by those even more pitiless than himself. He now determined to crush the committee. Political defeat was death. He must either send the committee to the scaffold or bow his own head beneath the knife. It was a death-struggle short and decisive. Pretended lists were circulated of the heads Robespierre demanded. Many in the Convention were appalled. Secret nightly councils were held to array a force against him. The mob of Paris he could command. Henriot, the chief of the military force, was entirely subservient to his will. He reigned supreme and without a rival in the Jacobin Club. His power was apparently resistless. But despair nerved his foes.

Three very able men, accustomed to command--Tallien, Barras, and Freron--headed the conspiracy against Robespierre. The party thus organized was called the _Thermidorien_, because it was in the month of Thermidor (July) that they achieved their signal victory, and, trampling upon the corpse of Robespierre and of his adherents, ascended to power. But nearly all these men, of all these parties, seem to have had no sense whatever of responsibility to God, or of Christianity as the rule of life. They had one and all rejected the Gospel of our Savior, and had accepted human philosophy alone as their guide. They were men, many of them, great in ability, illustrious in many virtues, sincerely loving their country, and too proud to allow themselves to be degraded by bribes or plunder. As the general on the battle-field will order movements which will cut down thousands of men, thus did these Revolutionists, without any scruples of conscience, send hundreds daily to the guillotine, not from love of blood, but because they believed that the public welfare demanded the sacrifice. And yet there was a cowardly spirit impelling these massacres. No one dared speak a word in behalf of mercy, lest he should be deemed in sympathy with aristocrats. He alone was safe from suspicion who was merciless in denunciation of the suspected. It is, however, remarkable that nearly all the actors in these scenes of blood, even in the hour of death, protested their conscientiousness and their integrity.

Robespierre was now involved in inextricable toils. He was weary of blood. The nation was becoming disgusted with such carnage.[424] He was universally recognized as the leading mind in the government, and every act was deemed his act. His enemies in the Committee of Public Safety plied the guillotine with new vigor, knowing that the public responsibility would rest on Robespierre. Robespierre was strongly opposed to that reckless massacre, and yet dared not interfere to save the condemned. His own dearest friends were arrested and dragged to the guillotine, and yet Robespierre was compelled to be silent. Earnestly he was entreated to assume the dictatorship, and rescue France from its measureless woe. Apparently he could have done it with ease. He refused; persistently and reiteratedly refused. What were his motives none now can tell. Some say cowardice prevented him; others affirm that true devotion to the Republic forbade him. The fact alone remains; he refused the dictatorship, saying again and again, "No! no Cromwell; not even I myself."

Robespierre retired for some weeks from the Committee of Public Safety, while blood was flowing in torrents, and prepared a very elaborate discourse, to be delivered in the Convention, defending himself and assailing his foes.

On the morning of the 26th of July Robespierre appeared in the Convention, prepared to speak. His Jacobin friends, forewarned, crowded around him, and his partisans thronged the galleries. His foes were appalled, and trembled; but they rallied all their friends. It was a decisive hour, and life or death was suspended on its issues. The speech, which he read from a carefully-prepared manuscript, was long and exceedingly eloquent. His foes felt that they were crushed, and a silence as of death for a moment followed its delivery. The printing of the speech was then voted, apparently by acclamation, and the order for its transmission to all the Communes of the Republic.

The foes of Robespierre were now emboldened by despair. Their fate seemed sealed, and consequently there was nothing to be lost by any violent struggle in self-defense. Cambon ventured an attack, boldly declaring, "One single man paralyzes the National Convention, and that man is Robespierre." Others followed with more and more vigorous blows. Robespierre was amazed at the audacity. The charm of his invincibility was gone. It soon appeared that there was a strong party opposed to Robespierre, and by a large majority it was voted to revoke the resolution to print the speech.

Robespierre, mute with alarm, left the Convention, and hastened to his friends in the Club of Jacobins. He read to them the speech which the Convention had repudiated. They received it with thunders of applause and with vows of vengeance. Robespierre, fainting with exhaustion, said, in conclusion,

"Brothers, you have heard my last will and testament. I have seen to-day that the league of villains is so strong that I can not hope to escape them. I yield without a murmur! I leave to you my memory; it will be dear to you, and you will defend it."

Many were affected even to tears, and, crowding around him, conjured him to rally his friends in an insurrection. Henriot declared his readiness to march his troops against the Convention. Robespierre, knowing that death was the inevitable doom of the defeated party, consented, saying,

"Well, then, let us separate the wicked from the weak. Free the Convention from those who oppress it. Advance, and save the country. If in these generous efforts we fail, then, my friends, you shall see me drink hemlock calmly."

David, grasping his hand, enthusiastically exclaimed, "Robespierre, if you drink hemlock, I will drink it with you." "Yes," interrupted a multitude of voices, "all! we all will perish with you. To die with you is to die with the people."

One or two of Robespierre's opponents had followed him from the Convention to the Hall of the Jacobins. Couthon pointed them out and denounced them. The Jacobins fell upon them and drove them out of the house wounded and with rent garments. With difficulty they escaped with their lives. Robespierre witnessed this violence, and dreading the effects of a general insurrection, withdrew his consent to adopt means so lawless and desperate. He probably felt that, strongly supported as he was, he would be able the next day to triumph in the Convention.

"At this refusal," says Lamartine, "honest, perhaps, but impolitic, Coffinhal, taking Payan by the arm and leading him out of the room, said,

"'You see plainly that his virtue could not consent to insurrection. Well! since he will not be saved, let us prepare to defend ourselves and to avenge him.'"

The night was passed by both parties in preparing for the decisive strife of the next day. The friends of Robespierre were active in concerting, in all the quarters of Paris, a rising of the people to storm the Convention. Tallien, Barras, Freron, Fouche, slept not. They were informed of all that had passed at the Jacobins, and their emissaries brought them hourly intelligence through the night of the increasing tumult of the people. They made vigorous preparations for the debate within the walls and for the defense of the doors against the forest of pikes with which it was about to be assailed. Barras was intrusted with the military defense. It was resolved that Robespierre should be cried down and denounced by internal tumult and not permitted to speak. Each party, not knowing the strength of its opponents, was sanguine of success.

The morning of the 27th of July dawned, and as Robespierre entered the Convention, attired with unusual care, and with a smile of triumph upon his lips, silence and stillness reigned through the house. St. Just, in behalf of Robespierre, commenced the onset. A scene of tumult immediately ensued of which no adequate description can be given. Robespierre immediately saw that his friends were far outnumbered by his foes, and was in despair. Pale and excited, he attempted to ascend the tribune. Tallien seized by the coat and dragged him away, while cries of _Down with the tyrant_ filled the house.[425]

"Just now," shouted Tallien, taking the tribune from which he had ejected Robespierre, "I demanded that the curtain should be withdrawn; it is so; the conspirators are unmasked and liberty will triumph. Up to this moment I had preserved utter silence because I was aware that the tyrant had made a list of proscriptions. But I was present at the sitting of the Jacobins. I beheld the formation of the army of this second Cromwell, and I armed myself with this poniard, with which to pierce his heart if the National Convention had not the courage to order his arrest."

With these words he drew a dagger and pointed it menacingly at the breast of Robespierre. At the same time he moved the arrest of Henriot and others of the leading men of that party. The motion was tumultuously carried. In vain Robespierre attempted to gain a hearing. Cries of "Down with the tyrant" filled the house, and menaces, reproaches, and insults were heaped upon him without measure. The wretched man, overwhelmed by the clamor, turned pale with indignation, and shouted "President of assassins, will you hear me?" "No! no! no!" seemed to be the unanimous response. In the midst of the uproar Louchet moved the arrest of Robespierre. The proposition was received with thunders of applause.[426] The brother of Robespierre, a young man of gentle, affectionate nature and many virtues, who was universally esteemed, now rose, and said,

"I am as guilty as my brother. I have shared his virtues, I wish to share his fate."

Robespierre instantly interposed, saying, "I accept my condemnation. I have deserved your hatred. But, crime or virtue, my brother is not guilty of that which you strike in me."

Shouts and stamping drowned his voice. As cries of _Vive la Republique_ rose on all sides, Robespierre quietly folded his arms, and, with a contemptuous smile, exclaimed, "The Republic! it is destroyed; for scoundrels triumph." It was now three o'clock in the afternoon. The two Robespierres, Couthon, St. Just, and Lebus were led by _gens d'armes_ from the Convention across the Place du Carrousel to the Hotel de Brionne, where the Committee of General Safety were in session. A crowd followed the prisoners with derision and maledictions. As they entered the Carrousel a procession of carts, containing forty-five victims on their way to the guillotine, met them.

After a very brief examination Robespierre was sent to the Luxembourg. His confederates were distributed among the other prisons of Paris. The Mayor of Paris and Henriot were in the mean time active in endeavors to excite an insurrection to rescue the prisoners. The following proclamation was issued from the Hotel de Ville:

"Brothers and friends! the country is in imminent danger! The wicked have mastered the Convention, where they hold in chains the virtuous Robespierre. To arms! to arms! Let us not lose the fruits of the 18th of August and the 2d of June."

Henriot, waving his sword, swore that he would drag the scoundrels who voted the arrest of Robespierre through the streets tied to the tail of his horse. This brutal man was now in such a state of intoxication as to be incapable of decisive action. Flourishing a pistol, he mounted his horse, and, with a small detachment of troops, galloped to the Luxembourg to rescue his friend. He was met on the way by the troops of the Convention, who had been ordered to arrest him. They seized him, dragged him from his horse, bound him with their belts, and threw him into a guard-house, almost dead-drunk. In the mean time the populace rescued all the prisoners, and carried them in triumph to the mayor's room at the Hotel de Ville. Robespierre, however, notwithstanding the most earnest entreaties of the Jacobins and the municipal government, refused to encourage or to accept the insurrection, or to make escape from arrest. "Made prisoner," writes Lamartine, "by command of his enemies, he resolved either to triumph or fall submissive to the law only; added to which, he firmly believed the Revolutionary Tribunal would acquit him of all laid to his charge; or, if not, and if even condemned to death, 'the death of one just man,' said he, 'is less hurtful to the Republic than the example of a revolt against the national representation.'"

News was brought to the Hotel de Ville of the arrest of Henriot. Coffinhal, Vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, immediately rallied the mob, rushed to the Tuileries, released Henriot, who was by this time somewhat sobered, and brought him back to the Hotel de Ville. Henriot, exasperated by his arrest, placed himself at the head of his troops and marched with a battery against the Convention. At this stage of the affair no one could judge which party would be victorious. The city government, with the populace at its disposal, was on one side; the Convention, with its friends, on the other.[427]

It was now seven o'clock in the evening, and the deputies of the Convention, fully conscious of their peril, seemed almost speechless with terror. Robespierre and his confederates were rescued and protected by the city government; the mob was aroused, and the National Guard, under their leader, Henriot, were marching against the Convention. The Revolutionary Tribunal, which alone could condemn Robespierre, it was feared would acquit him by acclamation. He would then be led back in triumph to the Convention, and his foes would be speedily dragged to the guillotine. The dismal tolling of the tocsin now was heard; in the Jacobin Club the oath was taken to live or die with Robespierre; the rallying masses were crowding in from the faubourgs; cannon were pointed against the Convention; and three thousand young students seized their arms and rendezvoused as a body-guard for Robespierre.

In this critical hour the Convention, nerved by despair, adopted those measures of boldness and energy which could alone save them from destruction. As they were deliberating, Henriot placed his artillery before their doors and ordered them to be blown open. The deputies remained firmly in their seats, saying, "Here is our post, and here we will die." The friends of the Convention, who crowded the galleries, rushed out and spread themselves through the streets to rally defenders for the laws. Several of the deputies also left the hall, threw themselves among the soldiers, and, remonstrating with them, pointed to Henriot, and said,

"Soldiers! look at that drunken man! who but a drunkard would ever point his arms against his country or its representatives? Will you, who have ever deserved so much from your country, cast shame and dishonor on her now?"

The Convention had outlawed Henriot and appointed Barras to the command of the National Guard in his place. The soldiers began to waver. Henriot, affrighted, put spurs to his horse and fled. Barras, an energetic man, was now in command, and the tide had thus suddenly and strongly turned in favor of the Convention. It was now night, and the gleam of ten thousand torches was reflected from the multitudes surging through the streets. Barras, on horseback, with a strong retinue, traversed the central quarters of Paris, rallying the citizens to the defense of the Convention. Eighteen hundred bold, well-armed men were soon marshaled before the doors. With two other bands he marched along parallel streets to the Place de Greve, where he drove off the disorderly crowd and secured all the approaches to the Hotel de Ville. Robespierre was still in one of the rooms of the Hotel de Ville, surrounded by his confederates and by the members of the city government. They implored him to authorize an insurrection, assuring him that his name would rally the populace and rescue them all from inevitable death. But Robespierre persistently refused, declaring that he would rather die than violate the laws established by the people.

A detachment of soldiers, sent by Barras, cautiously ascended the steps, and entered the _Salle de l'Egalite_ to rearrest the rescued prisoners. As they were ascending the stairs Lebas discharged a pistol into his heart and fell dead. The younger Robespierre leaped from the window into the court-yard, breaking his leg by his fall. Coffinhal, enraged in contemplating the ruin into which the drunken imbecility of Henriot had involved them, seized him and threw him out of a window of the second story upon a pile of rubbish, exclaiming,

"Lie there, wretched drunkard! You are not worthy to die on a scaffold!"

Robespierre sat calmly at a table, awaiting his fate. One of the _gens d'armes_ discharged a pistol at him. The ball entered his left cheek, fracturing his jaw and carrying away several of his teeth. His head dropped upon the table, deluging with blood the papers which were before him. The troops of the Convention now filled the Hotel de Ville, arresting all its inmates. The day was just beginning to dawn as the long file of prisoners were led out into the Place de Greve to be conducted to the hall of the Convention.[428]

First came Robespierre, borne by four men on a litter. His fractured jaw was bound up by a handkerchief, which was steeped in blood. Couthon was paralytic in his limbs. Unable to walk, he was also carried in the arms of several men. They had carelessly let him fall, and his clothes were torn, disarranged, and covered with mud. Robespierre the younger, stunned by his fall and with his broken limb hanging helplessly down, was conveyed insensible in the arms of two men. The corpse of Lebas was borne next in this sad train, covered with a table-cloth spotted with his blood. Then followed St. Just, bareheaded, with dejected countenance, his hands bound behind him. Upward of eighty members of the city government, bound two and two, completed the melancholy procession.

It was five o'clock in the morning when the captives were led to the Tuileries. In the mean time Legendre had marched to the assembly-room of the Jacobins, dispersed them, locked their doors, and brought the keys to the President of the Convention.[429]

Robespierre was laid upon a table in an anteroom, while an interminable crowd pressed in and around to catch a sight of the fallen dictator. The unhappy man was overwhelmed with reproaches and insults, and feigned death to escape this moral torture. The blood was freely flowing from his wound, coagulating in his mouth, and choking him as it trickled down his throat. The morning was intensely hot; not a breath of pure air could the wounded man inhale; insatiable thirst and a burning fever consumed him; and thus he remained for more than an hour, enduring the intensest pangs of bodily and mental anguish. By order of the Convention, he and his confederates were then removed to the Committee of General Safety for examination; from which tribunal they were sent to the Conciergerie, where they were all thrown into the same dungeon to await their trial, which was immediately to take place before the Revolutionary Tribunal.

A few hours of pain, anguish, and despair passed away, when at three o'clock in the afternoon the whole party were conveyed to that merciless court which was but the last stepping-stone to death. The trial lasted but a few moments. They were already condemned, and it was only necessary to prove their identity. The Convention was victorious, and no man of the Revolutionary Tribunal dared to resist its will. Had the Commune of Paris conquered in this strife, the obsequious Tribunal, with equal alacrity, would have consigned the Deputies to the guillotine.

At five o'clock the carts of the condemned received the prisoners.[430] The long procession advanced through the Rue St. Honore to the Place de la Revolution. The fickle crowd thronged the streets, heaping imprecations upon the man to whom they would have shouted hosanna had he been a victor. Robespierre, his brother, Couthon, Henriot, all mangled, bleeding, and with broken bones, were thrown into the first cart with the corpse of Lebas. As the cart jolted over the pavement shrieks of anguish were extorted from the victims. At six o'clock they reached the steps of the guillotine. Robespierre ascended the scaffold with a firm step; but, as the executioner brutally tore the bandage from his inflamed wound, he uttered a shriek of torture which pierced every ear. The dull sullen sound of the falling axe was heard, and the head of Robespierre fell ghastly into the basket. For a moment there was silence, and then the crowd raised a shout as if a great victory had been achieved and the long-sought blessings of the Revolution attained.[431]

Thus died Robespierre, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. His character will probably ever remain a mystery. "His death was the date and not the cause of the cessation of terror. Deaths would have ceased by his triumphs, as they did by his death. Thus did Divine justice dishonor his repentance, and cast misfortune on his good intentions, making of his tomb a gulf filled up. It has made of his memory an enigma of which history trembles to pronounce the solution, fearing to do him injustice if she brand it as a crime, or to create horror if she should term it a virtue. This man was, and must ever remain, shadowy and undefined."[432]

Twenty-two were beheaded with Robespierre. The next day seventy who were arrested at the Hotel de Ville were sent to the guillotine. The following day twelve more bled upon the scaffold. In three days one hundred and fourteen perished, untried, by that tyranny which had supplanted the tyranny of Robespierre.[433]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 419: "Mr. Alison gives currency to an atrocious slander against Robespierre, for which he has adduced no authority, and which is contradicted by the whole evidence of Robespierre's life. 'He (Philippe Egalite) was detained,' says Alison, 'above a quarter of an hour in front of the Palais Royal, by order of Robespierre, who had asked in vain for the hand of his daughter in marriage, and had promised, if he would relent in that extremity, to excite a tumult which would save his life.'"--_Life of Robespierre, by G.H. Lewes_, p. 265.]

[Footnote 420: "Danton regarded the austere principles of Robespierre as folly. He thought that the Republicans could not maintain their power but by surrounding themselves with the consideration which wealth confers, and he consequently thought it necessary to close their eyes against the sudden acquisition of wealth of certain Revolutionists. Robespierre, on the contrary, flattered himself that he could establish a republic in France based on virtue, and when he was thoroughly persuaded that Danton was an obstacle to that system he abandoned him."--_Biographie Universelle._]

[Footnote 421: Du Broca.]

[Footnote 422: "Robespierre had a prodigious force at his disposal. The lowest orders, who saw the Revolution in his person, supported him as the best representative of its doctrines and interests; the armed force of Paris, commanded by Henriot, was at his command. He had entire sway over the Jacobins, whom he admitted and ejected at pleasure; all important posts were occupied by his creatures; he had formed the Revolutionary Tribunal and the new committee himself."--_Mignet_, p. 256.]

[Footnote 423: Thiers, vol. iii., p. 68, note from Quarterly Review.]

[Footnote 424: Prudhomme, a Republican, who wrote during this period of excitement, has left six volumes of the details of the Reign of Terror. Two of these contain an alphabetical list of all the persons put to death by the Revolutionary Tribunals. He gives the following appalling statement of the victims:

Nobles 1,278
Noble women 750
Wives of laborers and artisans 1,467
Nuns 350
Priests 1,135
Men not noble 13,623
------
Total sent to the guillotine 18,603 18,603
Women who died of premature delivery 3,400
Women who died in childbirth from grief 348
Women killed in La Vendee 15,000
Children killed in La Vendee 22,000
Men slain in La Vendee 900,000
Victims under Carrier at Nantes 32,000
Victims at Lyons 31,000
----------
Total 1,022,351

This list, appalling as it is, does not include those massacred in the prisons, or those shot at Toulon or Marseilles.]

[Footnote 425: The full report of this terrible scene, as contained in the Moniteur of the 11th Thermidor, is one of the most exciting narratives in history. In the conflict Robespierre appears immeasurably superior to his opponents in dignity and argument. But he is overwhelmed and crushed by the general clamor. He struggles valiantly, and falls like a strong man armed.]

[Footnote 426: "In the height of the terrible conflict, when Robespierre seemed deprived by rage of the power of articulation, a voice cried out, '_It is Danton's blood that is choking you_.' Robespierre, indignant, recovered his voice and courage to exclaim, 'Danton! Is it, then, Danton you regret? Cowards! why did you not defend him?' There was spirit, truth, and even dignity in this bitter retort--the last words that Robespierre ever spoke in public."--_Quarterly Review._]

[Footnote 427: The state of the times is illustrated by the fact that Barrere is reported to have gone to the Convention with two speeches in his pocket, one assailing Robespierre and the other defending him. He knew not which party would triumph, and he was prepared to join the strongest.]

[Footnote 428: Though it has generally been represented that Robespierre attempted to commit suicide, the evidence now seems to be conclusive that he did not. See Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. iii., p. 527.]

[Footnote 429: Legendre, the butcher, was a deputy of the Convention. He was a man of extraordinary nerve, and had been one of the most furious members of the society of Jacobins.--_Biog. Universelle._]

[Footnote 430: There is some confusion respecting the dates of these events; but we follow the dates as given by Lamartine.]

[Footnote 431: "Robespierre," said Napoleon, "was by no means the worst character who figured in the Revolution. He opposed trying the queen. He was not an atheist; on the contrary, he had publicly maintained the existence of a Supreme Being in opposition to many of his colleagues. Neither was he of opinion that it was necessary to exterminate all priests and nobles, like many others. Marat, for example, maintained that it was necessary that six hundred thousand heads should fall. Robespierre wanted to proclaim the king an outlaw, and not to go through the ridiculous mockery of trying him. Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing or causing the deaths of others either from personal enmity or a desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast, but one who really believed that he was acting right, and died not worth a sou. In some respects Robespierre may be said to have been an honest man."--_Napoleon at St. Helena_, p. 590.]