CHAP. XLI. them the Parisian mob, too far implicated to draw back or feel compunction, but would have encouraged the resuscitation of the middle, moderate, and clement party in the convention, the first act of which would have been the deposition of Robespierre and the elevation of Danton. It was necessary therefore for the governing committee not only to keep down Danton, but to disown the indulgents, and to profess, solemnly, that they were determined to persevere in revolutionary policy. Robespierre did this at the Jacobins, which formed in fact his organ and his press. The opportunity was afforded him by Phelippeaux, a commissary, who returned from La Vendée full of contempt and indignation for the part played there by Ronsin and Rossignol. He accused them in a pamphlet of incapacity and cowardice, as well as cruelty, and of having lain hid in safety when the soldiers, whom they pretended to lead, were surprised and massacred. The convention and the committee had supported as well as appointed these men, so that Phelippeaux' diatribe fell upon Robespierre and the committee as well as upon Ronsin. The Dantonists nevertheless supported Phelippeaux, and Camille Desmoulins lauded his pamphlet to the skies. The dispute came as usual before the Jacobins, where Robespierre began by counselling Phelippeaux to observe moderation. No one listened to such advice, the moderates themselves as little as their opponents. Moderantisin itself was violent. Desmoulins had attacked Hébert outrageously, and with him the ministry, by declaring and offering to prove that Hébert had received 200,000 francs from the minister of war, Bouchotte, as the pretended price of the numbers of the Père Duchêne sent to the army. Robespierre, whilst denouncing Desmoulins' writings as delighting the enemies of the government and the aristocrats, excused the writer himself. Him he would pardon, his writings he would burn. "To burn is not to answer," exclaimed Camille. "Well then," rejoined Robespierre, "let your writings be read, and let the Jacobins pass judgment on them and you." However successful was Robespierre in parrying the attacks of the Hébertists or ultra-revolutionists on one side, and the Dantonists, or indulgents on the other, the committee could not at once punish or even silence them. It was obliged to set Vincent and Ronsin at liberty. Steps, however, were taken to strengthen the power of the government, both in province and capital, subjecting the revolutionary committees to the central authority, establishing the Bulletin des Loix or official gazette, and sensibly restricting the power of the Paris commune as well as of others. Yet to prevent the accusation of being lukewarm to the revolution or neglecting its supporters, the convention was made to pass a decree, giving the committee power to liberate such of the suspects as were proved to be really patriots, but at the same time to confiscate the property of all who were not such, for the benefit of those who were. This was in fact decreeing and accomplishing by law that revolution of property which the proconsuls had begun and acted upon. Meantime the party of Vincent and Ronsin received a powerful auxiliary. Carrier, the terrible proconsul of Nantes, author of the noyades, or drownings of the Loire, had been recalled through the influence of Robespierre. He came naturally fearful of punishment, if clemency should prevail in the convention or the committees. Collot d'Herbois associated with his brother proconsul, and both addressed the Cordeliers club with furious eloquence, demanding no less than a fresh popular insurrection. Robespierre was confined to his house with illness, and Collot, who governed the Jacobins in his absence, made that club fraternize with the Cordeliers. The policy which the latter proposed to revive СНАР. XLI. CHAP. XLI. was that of Marat. In support of Carrier, Hébert appeared at the Cordeliers, asked pardon for his moderation during the last months, and burst forth anew in his old character of Père Duchêne. What he especially insisted on was the guillotining of the seventy-three deputies expelled from the convention. The Cordeliers ordained that their statues of liberty and declarations of the rights of man should be covered with a black crape, till the extermination of the enemies of the people had restored liberty and plenty. Some of the club sent to announce this to the commune. But they met, notwithstanding Hébert's words, with lukewarm adherents. Pache, the mayor, was absent, though he was to be the grand judge of the new form of government. Even Chaumette hesitated. Whilst the insurrection thus hung fire during the first week of March, St. Just prepared to act. He drew up, as usual, a report, and read it in the convention on the 13th, denouncing a plot of foreigners to starve the capital, and destroy the republican government. It was followed by a decree, declaring traitors to the country all who should endeavour to shake the government, create anxieties as to subsistence, or corrupt citizens. This was acted upon by the arrest of Hébert, Vincent, and Ronsin. Chaumette was at the same time imprisoned notwithstanding his caution, as well as the ex-Archbishop Gobel and Anacharsis Clootz. In a week after their arrest, on the 20th, the Hébertists appeared before the revolutionary tribunal. Koch, the Dutch banker, and Proly, natural son of the Austrian minister Thugut, were included in the indictment. The English government was represented as at the bottom of the affair. Legendre was the chief witness. There came forth many proofs of discontent, but of any plot there was not a trace. On the 24th, the nineteen perished under the guillotine, one alone, who had acted as agent of the police, being acquitted. No man ever died on a public scaffold who more fully deserved his fate than Hébert, whose cruelty and filth in persecuting and immolating Marie Antoinette and Madame Elizabeth scarcely bear narrating. Anacharsis Clootz is pitied by some as a philosopher in advance of his age, professing pantheism. He died with signal courage, which the worshipper of the goddess Reason did not. The members of the governing committee, that of public safety, were much in the position of the Roman triumvirate, obliged to hold together if they would not succumb, and, in order to do this, compelled to make the sacrifice of the lives of their own friends to the exigencies of their colleagues. Collot d'Herbois was the friend of Ronsin and of many of the Hébertists, yet he consented to their destruction, nay, aided personally in their defeat at the Jacobins and Cordeliers. But if he and Billaud-Varennes made these concessions to Robespierre, the latter was compelled in turn to abandon to them Danton and Camille Desmoulins. St. Just hated even more than Robespierre the superiority of Danton. He and Barère had writhed under the writings of Camille Desmoulins. Robespierre would probably have saved the latter, if he could; but his notes, which survive, and which formed the basis of St. Just's report against Danton, showed how inveterately vindictive he was towards his principal rival.* It was a great triumph for Danton when the Hébertists fell. He could scarcely believe that his own turn was next, and his fate at hand. To those who warned him he observed, "They durst not." He was exhorted to fly. But whither could a terrorist fly? Or, as he expressed it, * Croker Collection.-For all that can be said in favour of Robespierre, consult M. Louis Blanc, Hist. de la Révolution. He proves that Robespierre shrunk at first from the sacrifice of Danton. But on having consented to it, he was as ferociously hard as VOL. IV. any. See Daubigny's Letters to Billaud For Camille Desmoulins, his ge- TT CHAP. XLI. CHAP. Could a man carry his country with him like the soles of his shoes? To On the night of the 30th of March, about a week after the execution of Hébert, were arrested Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Lacroix, and Phelippeaux. HéraultSéchelles was already in prison, sent there by St. Just, because he had harboured an émigré. The news of the arrest of the Dantonists, immediately after the execution of the Hébertists, filled the convention with alarm. No one seemed safe. Whose turn would it be next? an audience thus impressed, Legendre, Danton's friend, arose to demand that the members just arrested should be heard in their defence at the bar of the assembly. Robespierre could not admit this. He insinuated that to allow Danton to speak in defence of his life would be to create a privilege, and prefer the interests of an individual to that of the state. The arrest of such a man might cause some to tremble, but whoever trembled was guilty. The guilty in the present case were, however, few. For the government could always distinguish weakness from crime. St. Just, as usual, followed with his requisition of blood. Danton had always conspired. He had been the accomplice of Mirabeau, of D'Orleans, of Dumouriez, of Brissot. Besides, he hated Marat! He dined with Englishmen! What other proof was wanting to the crime of which he was charged, that of having plotted to restore the monarchy? His enemies were in haste to dispose of Danton. Two days after the arrest he was brought to trial, not only with Desmoulins, Lacroix, Phelippeaux, and Hérault, but with Chabot and Bazire, with Fabre d'Eglantine and Westerman, with Gusman and Dietrichsen and the Freys, all foreigners. The latter were brothers-in-law of Desmoulins. The act of accusation was as confused a jumble as the collection of accused. It could easily be proved that Chabot and Fabre had forged, and that Bazire, though he refused to participate in the act, had |