insurrection, and was said to love wealth and pleasure as much as Danton. But whatever his morals, or his political antecedents, he principally shook off the reign of terror, overthrew Robespierre, and prevented either the remaining terrorists from continuing their execrable rule or their enemies, republican or royalist, from rushing into premature and dangerous reaction. To obviate tyranny, the administration of the police was taken altogether from the committee of public safety, and given to that of public surety. Different committees undertook different ministries, diplomacy and war remaining the sole attributes of the chief or governing body of twelve. Tallien, however, made one great mistake. He allowed the Jacobin club, which had been closed, to resume its sittings after a nominal and unsuccessful epuration. From other revolutionary and sectional bodies the Robespierreites were expelled, but they kept their hold over the Jacobins, which soon became once more the headquarters of an ultra-revolutionary party. It had, however, no longer the terror at its command, and consequently was unable to silence or proscribe its natural opponents. These composed all who had suffered by the extravagance of the revolution in the deaths of their relatives, and in their own properties and prospects. They declared against the maximum and the requisitions, as well as against arbitrary arrests and the guillotine, the one indeed not being possible to maintain without the other. Robert Lindet was charged with drawing up a report and preparing a decree to remedy some of the worst inconveniences of the terrorist system. It was a feeble palliation, but still was welcomed. At the same time a premature attempt on the part of the moderate reactionists to bring such men as Collot and Billaud to trial created much noise and agitation, but was defeated. Lecointre was the accuser. As politician or orator he commanded little respect. His attack alarmed all the members of the Mountain, even those of CHAP. XLI. XLI. CHAP. it, and there were many, who had redescended from it into the Plain, and occupied once more the centre of the assembly.* The accusation was set aside, but the movement towards moderation was evident, when Billaud and Collot, as well as Barère, were replaced at the committee of public safety, now renewed every month. Tallien also withdrew from the committee after an attempt to assassinate him, which fortunately inflicted but a wound in the shoulder.† No doubt it was the arm of some furious Montagnard which had dealt the blow. The fear and the exasperation of the fallen party knew no bounds. Eliminated from government place, and threatened in the convention, their position in the capital was most insecure. But in the provinces the reaction against them was menacing and more serious. As Lyons and Bordeaux, which had risen in behalf of the moderates, were compelled to bow the neck before the terrorists of the capital, so now, when these were stricken down, the provinces resumed a Girondist, if not a royalist, attitude. Commissaries for the convention came no longer to establish revolutionary committees, but to disperse them, and replace the persecutors in the municipal offices by the persecuted. Such changes could not be effected without a struggle. The patriots, as the ultra-revolutionists did not fail to style themselves, resisted. The Jacobin clubs all over the country received encouragement from that of Paris, which itself resumed courage, and once more ventured to complain to the convention of the persecutions directed against the patriots. This audacity produced agitation, and almost an émeute. But it was no longer the mob rising to exaggerate the ideas of the revolution, but the young men of the middle classes, who insulted in the Palais Royal all who professed themselves, or were known to be, Jacobins. The reaction in the press was similar to that in the streets. Reduced to silence during † Moniteur. * Levasseur. Dussaulx, fragment, XLI. the terror, the thermidorians had set it free, chiefly to CHAP. make use of it themselves against the terrorists, whom they denounced. The agitation was increased by the prosecutions which the provinces now commenced against those who had oppressed and massacred their population. Nantes especially clamoured against Carrier. But what alarmed and enraged the Jacobins even more than this was the proposal made in the convention to restore to their seats the seventy-three deputies who had protested against the expulsion of the Girondists, as well as the survivors of the Gironde itself, and for whose heads the Hébertists had incessantly asked. The debates on this question raised a fierce quarrel, even the moderate Cambaceres taking the opportunity to accuse Tallien.* The latter, indeed, was in a difficult position. Denounced, and indeed expelled from the Jacobins, his chief support must necessarily be in the newly-formed or re-formed centre of the convention. But many of these had concurred in the expulsion of the Gironde. Cambon was of the number. Others, whilst denouncing Robespierre, professed a reverence for Marat. Tallien, to conciliate them, went so far as to sanction the transference of the remains of this personage to the Pantheon. He was also obliged to pass an encomium on the revolution of the 31st of May, whilst exerting himself to restore to the convention those whom that revolution had proscribed. These vacillations of the thermidorians encouraged the Jacobins, in whose tribune BillaudVarennes himself reappeared to denounce the reaction. "The aristocrats were liberated," he complained, "whilst the patriots were arrested and prosecuted. But their awakening would be that of the lion." The governing committees hesitated to repress this daring. But the anti-terrorist youth of Paris, the jeunesse dorée, as they were called, began to surround the hall of the Jacobins XLI. CHAP. during the evening sitting, with the intention of insulting, if they could not silence, the members. They threw stones at the windows and into the hall; and when the Jacobins came forth to resist, they met with harsh treatment. The women who frequented the galleries, the furies of the guillotine, as they were called, experienced even more severe usage. When they could be caught in the courts, they were flogged, and their lamentations increased the ire and terror of the Jacobins. These series of tumults and disorders, repeated for several nights, gave the governing committee full pretext to intervene. They were not very severe against the young men, who were the original cause of the tumult, whilst they closed the club of the Jacobins, locked the doors, and solemnly deposited the keys on the table of the convention (Nov. 11, 1794). Thus was extinguished the great focus of popular agitation. If the Jacobins were thus put down, it was less the reaction of the youth of the middle classes than the disgust and weariness of the people themselves with the revolution. What destroyed Robespierre was the lukewarmness and desertion of the faubourgs. The same indifference weighed down the arms of the terrorists who survived, who could not prevail or live without a populace almost in insurrection, and who, not having this to inflate their cause, naturally collapsed and fell. The execution of Carrier followed, and the surviving Girondists, as well as the seventy-three expelled for having favoured them, resumed their seats in the convention. Such an increase to the moderate, if not reactionary, party accelerated the passing of reparatory measures, such as the removal of sequestration, and the annulment of confiscations. The relatives of the victims of the revolution were allowed to inherit, and a number of émigrés took the opportunity of returning to their country, not without hopes of being one day restored to their property. The inevitable result was the resuscitation XLI. of the royalist party, which was as threatening to such CHAP. men as Tallien, and even to the members of the Gironde, as these were to the terrorists. The re-appearance of the royalists was a new element of discord, which vastly augmented the difficulties and responsibility of the government. Along with the press and with the expression of middle-class sentiment in the streets reappeared what in France is always influential-society. Female receptions were held, the saloons of Madame Tallien became famous, and she who presided was of course denounced by the Jacobins as all that was vile. Madame de Staël, too, returned and reopened her mansion. The beauty of Madame Récamier vied with the genius of her rival. The theatres, too, came again into vogue, and balls were the rage. The link between the members of this new and gay society was the circumstance of all having lost relatives on the scaffold. It was boasted as an honour. The university opened its schools at the same time, and the long pent-up tide of intellectual instincts and amusements flowed again. In the midst of this resuscitated world, such personages and such countenances as those of Billaud and Collot could not be at home. Those owls of darkness shrieked at the return of light. Already the busts of Marat were everywhere broken, and his remains transferred from the Pantheon to the sewer. In March the report inculpatory of Billaud, Collot, and Barère, was read in the convention. * Amidst all these symptoms of anti-revolutionary tendency, there still remained one fearful and permanent source of disquiet and sedition. This was famine. The reign of terror, with its maximum and its requisitions, had so totally paralysed all supply that Paris was as much starved after a fertile year as after a barren harvest. The maximum had been repealed in Mémoires de Thibaudeau. Periodicals of the time. |