THE French Revolution is apt to present itself to the eye as a hideous spectre. We behold and tremble. We are appalled by its monstrous aspect, and too deeply stricken with horror to regard it fixedly, with scrutiny and patience. Could we but do so, the phantom would lose much of its shadowy character; and although nought can wash away its crimes and blood, it would at least appear but an earthly and human phenomenon, the nature and causes of which we might perceive and store up as the precious materials of wisdom. Hitherto, however, the Revolution has been treated as the spectre, and considered beyond the pale of humanity. The imagination alone has seized upon its prominent horrors. Even those who have deigned to seek for a cause have found it in some collateral or subordinate circumstance. Philosophy in the opinion of some, the duke of Orleans or Pitt in that of others, prepared and brought about the great catastrophe; whilst others again are satisfied to cast the entire blame on the fickleness and cruelty of man born upon the French soil. Scarcely has a distinction been made betwixt the Revolution and its excesses. Freedom itself has been included in the general stigma, and made answerable for that mass of guilt and folly which its enemies were mainly influential in producing. Had The most fatal circumstance of the epoch was foreign interference, fatal alike in the hopes and the fears which it occasioned. Reliance on foreign support caused the emigration of the noblesse, as well as the temporising and at intervals the insincere policy of the unfortunate Louis XVI. king and aristocracy been obliged to confine their views to France, they would either have submitted frankly from the first, in which case power could never have descended lower than the ranks and opinions of the constitutionalists; or they would have stood forth in open and civil war, an alternative preferable to flight, conspiracy, and massacre. The monarch, obedient to the moderation of his character, pursued an uncertain career, a kind of medium between the extremes by which he excited irritation and popular hatred, and compelled the successive parties, which in the assembly advocated the cause of freedom, to call in the popular force, first to their support, and then to their mastery. 297 ww [1793 A.D.] Of the evils which so often attend revolution, the overthrow of all government and annihilation of all law are not the worst; it destroys, likewise, those finer and unseen ligaments which hold society together. Honour, a certain measure of good-will towards our fellows, with confidence in its reciprocity; certain bounds put to the desires of ambition, self-interest and enthusiasm, by that general feeling which can force itself to be respected by censure or ridicule; the general influence of domestic or amicable ties - all these various motives and persuasives, that secure the peace and well-being of society more than codes, are completely lost sight of in the effervescence of a revolution. Man, by that shock, is thrown back into a state of nature. He must go armed in mistrust at least, find no friend except in the ally who fights side by side with him in the mortal combat; he must neither expect mercy, nor be weak enough to show it. The French Revolution in its present advanced state offers this picture exactly; or rather, that of an arena of wild beasts struggling for mastery, knowing no safety but in complete victory, and not even in that victory, unless it be sealed by the blood of the vanquished. The Girondists had the misfortune of not understanding the position in which they were placed. At first masters, they stood by like lions in the magnanimity of strength, and not unlike the king of the forest in character. A little violence and blood had satisfied their appetites; nor were they prepared, like the Jacobin tigers, to destroy for mere destruction's sake. Their forbearance, however, proved but weakness; and they soon found that, having failed to crush, they must inevitably themselves be crushed. After the execution of Louis the discord thickened. Such beings as Marat, Robespierre, and Danton could not exist save in the fearful atmosphere of sedition that they had created for themselves. Indeed their personal security demanded this; for a return to order such as the Girondists sought to establish would inevitably bring them to punishment for their crimes. Already the Gironde had succeeded in proving them to be implicated in the horrors of September, and a judgment was about to be passed on several of the inferior leaders, when the Mountain persuaded the convention to quash the proceedings. In partial exculpation of Robespierre and the Jacobins, however (if the word exculpation can be applied to such men), it must be allowed that at this epoch an insurrectionary spirit broke out in the capital independent of their intrigues. Its cause lay in the general distress, in the dearness of bread and of all necessaries, aggravated by the recent declaration of war against England and Holland. A revolution such as the present, which had swept the rich from the face of the land, and converted even the moderately wealthy into trembling misers, necessarily threw all the population hitherto dependent on the expenses of these classes into indigence. Up to this moment the commune had paid them the produce of its plunders as the price of insurrection. This fund was now exhausted. Universal war made such a large demand that the commune could no longer obtain funds from the convention, somewhat jealous of it, whilst the depreciation of assignats or republican paper rendered aid illusory, and left the people utterly without the means of procuring even bread. They were numerous and armed. They crowded to the convention, and demanded that corn should nowhere be sold for more than twenty-five livres the sack, under penalty to the vendor of being sent to the galleys. Marat himself exclaimed in the convention against the maximum, as this measure was called. Robespierre made similar efforts in the Jacobins. [1793 A.D.] Danton alone held back, and still kept his club of Cordeliers true to the prevailing spirit of the populace. His brother anarchists soon acknowledged his wisdom, and shuffled round once more to head the popular cry. Marat in some ten days after, having opposed the maximum, recommended the mob in his journal to pillage a few magazines, and hang the monopolisers. He was accused of this by the Gironde, and new tumults arose in the assembly. The Parisian populace adopted the advice of Marat. After the dearness of bread, that of sugar, candles, and such necessaries was most felt since the war with England. Crowds of women accordingly proceeded to the grocers' shops, demanded these articles at the old prices, and soon at no price at all. A scene of plunder ensued, which was at length put a stop to by the federals of Brest, and some national guards. When each difficulty of these dreadful times approached its crisis, evil tidings from the armies were wont to arrive, superadd a panic fear to all the evil passions of the hour, and thus precipitate the catastrophe. Now came the news of reverses in Belgium, the advance of the Austrians, their having defeated the French near Aachen, the utter failure of Dumouriez's invasion of Holland, and dire suspicions at the same time of the fidelity of that general. His conduct gave full scope for this. He openly spoke in contempt of the convention, and insulted its emissaries, who, he observed with truth, had spoiled his conquest by anarchy and spoliation. b THE FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS (JUNE, 1793) In the provinces of the west, where the influence of the two orders whose privileges the Revolution had destroyed reigned without a rival, the agitation had begun very early. By degrees it attained Maine, Anjou, and Brittany where the insurgents were designated under the name of Chouans.1 As early as October, 1791, it had been found necessary to send troops against them. But the Vendean peasants did not begin the civil war in the name of throne and altar until after the king's death and when the convention had decreed, in March, 1793, a levy of 300,000 men. At the same time that this danger manifested itself in the interior, reverses began abroad. The English had fallen upon the French colonies and had seized Tobago and Pondicherry. Dumouriez, defeated at Neerwinden after an abortive invasion of Holland, evacuated Belgium and declared against the convention. His soldiers refused to follow him and he found himself obliged to flee to the Austrian camp (April 3rd). None the less the republic had lost its best general. He was the second to abandon his troops, La Fayette having preceded him. Already almost all the noble officers had emigrated. The soldiers' first distrust of their leaders returned; the army once more became disorganised and the northern frontier was endangered. The convention made head in all directions. Against internal enemies a committee of the General Security was created for the purpose of seeking out not only culprits but suspects, and a revolutionary tribunal was erected to punish them. A committee of the Public Safety, a kind of dictatorship of nine persons, exercised the public authority in sovereign fashion, in order to bring the most energetic activity to bear on the question of national defence (April 6th); and, for fear lest the inviolability of the members of the assembly should hamper this new judicial power, the convention 1 The Chouans were so-called from their leader Jean Cottereau, called the Chouan or ChatHuant (screech-owl), who had been a smuggler and had adopted the cry of the screech-owl as a rallying-cry. [1793 A.D.] renounced that privilege. Since Dumouriez's defection suspicion was everywhere Robespierre firmly believed that the Girondins wished to dismember France and open it to the foreigners; the Girondins, that Marat, Robespierre, and Danton wished to make the duke of Orleans king, then assassinate him and found a triumvirate from which Danton would have hurled his two colleagues that he might reign alone. Each in good faith attributed absurd designs to his adversaries. Hence all this distrust, fear, that terrible counsellor, and the axe suspended and falling on all heads. The decree which did away with the inviolability of the deputies was soon put in execution. Since the king's trial the Girondins and the Mountainists had been carrying on a fierce contest in the convention: the first desiring to arrest the Revolution, the others to precipitate its course, though it should advance henceforth only through tracks of blood. The most atrocious of the fanatics was Marat, who reasoned thus: the public safety is the supreme law; now 270,000 nobles and priests with their partisans are endangering the state, therefore these 270,000 heads must fall; and every morning he demanded them. Carrying the cynicism of his thought into his costume he came to take his seat in the convention in sabots, the red cap on his head and dressed in the carmagnole. The Girondins, whom he accused of the crime of moderantism, attacked him. They obtained his accusation and succeeded in having him brought before the revolutionary tribunal. That tribunal which judged without appeal, and punished with death for a word, for a regret, for the mere name a man bore, dismissed Marat, acquitted. The populace conducted him back to the convention in triumph. This ill-managed business was a double imprudence on the part of the Girondins: the check they received showed their weakness, and by destroying the inviolability of the deputies they gave their enemies a weapon against themselves. An attack on Robespierre succeeded no better and alienated Danton, who contended against them on the 31st of May, and in particular on the 2nd of June, 1793. The Mountain, mistress, through the commune and the Jacobins, of the Paris sections, armed them against the convention. Surrounded, terrified, the latter, under pressure of the revolt, signed the order for the arrest of thirty-one Girondins. Some, like Vergniaud and Gensonné, waited to stand their trial; others, like Pétion and Barbaroux, escaping from their persecutors, endeavoured to rouse the depart ments.c REACTION OF THE PROVINCES Robespierre was an extraordinary personage. He was the very perfection, the type of triumphant mediocrity. Talents he had none — nor ideas, although by dint of exertion he acquired the semblance of the one, and purloined the others notoriously from all around him. His speeches were written for him; and the debates of the Jacobin clubs, at first philosophical and given to the discussion of principles, supplied him with a political vocabulary at least. Thus his friends, his future enemies being included in that class, lent to this hawk the feathers that imped his wing, and taught him at length to He was totally without passion, unless vanity deserve the name; but his vanity was wise, and wore all the loftiness of pride. Then he had honesty and consistency, two qualities that cannot be denied him, however he might have adopted them in calculation. From his first vote in the constituent assembly he had been the rank democrat that he ever was, professing all those extreme opinions to which others tended. His private morals were soar. [1793 A.D.] irreproachable. He held to his condition, lodged to the last with the same humble carpenter's family that at first housed him. Unlike his colleague Danton, no bribe, no peculation, no expense, no licentiousness, considered as such in that day at least, could be laid to his charge. No petty ambition distracted his views, or blemished his character for disinterestedness. He was never minister, nor even commissary. After the fall of the Gironde, when he was all-powerful, he did not become member of the sovereign committee till it pleased the convention and the Jacobins of their own accord to appoint him. With this there was no affectation in his sansculottism. He neither shaved his head, nor wore tattered garments, nor mounted the red nightcap. Robespierre alone wore powder, and preserved the dress and demeanour of respectability. Political courage he certainly did not want, though physically he was, with Marat, the most arrant of cowards. Ruthless as a tiger, at first reckless, then greedy of blood-such was the tyrant of the day. The Gironde had now fallen before the party of Robespierre and the Parisians. The dignity of the national assembly had been violated, and its freedom destroyed. It remained for the provinces to fulfil their menaces, support and avenge the Girondists, and resist the tumultuous tyranny of the capital. To this resistance many were previously disposed and partially prepared. The escape of some of the proscribed deputies, and their appearance in the provinces, communicated enthusiasm and gave leaders to the revolt, that now became general. The northern departments, with those immediately around Paris, alone remained true to the convention. The former, menaced by the foreign enemy, and occupied by the republican armies, had neither power nor leisure to rise. But Normandy, whither most of the fugitive Gironde had bent their steps, at once declared against the anarchists. The province summoned a representative assembly to meet at Caen, raised an army, appointed General Wimpfen to the command, and pushed forward its advanced post to Évreux, within a day's journey of the capital. Brittany strove to imitate La Vendée; whilst the victorious insurgents of this region were at this moment marching upon Nantes, in order to procure themselves a stronghold and a seaport. Nantes, though Girondist, prepared to resist the royalists to the last; and, in the middle of June, a gallant and general attack upon the town by the Vendeans was repulsed. Both parties were, however, equally hostile to the convention. Continuing the circuit of France, Bordeaux was naturally indignant at the arrest of its deputies. It instantly despatched a remonstrance to Paris, and began to levy an army to support it. Toulouse followed the example. Marseilles, the hyper-revolutionary Marseilles, had anticipated the crisis. The Jacobins and moderate republicans had come to blows, and the former had succumbed. Lyons presented the same scene, save that the struggle was more fierce. Lyons from its manufacture of silk, gold, and silver embroidery, and other articles of high luxury, had depended on the rich. It therefore contained an aristocratic and royalist party, which naturally generated the other extreme, a Jacobin club; and this club had its Marat in Chalier. The parties fought; the Jacobins were beaten, their club was destroyed; and Chalier, after a time, was tried and executed. Thus did the exaggerated mutual reproaches of the Mountain and the Gironde realise each other. Robespierre, accused of aspiring to the dictatorship, became marked as fit for this supremacy, and attained it. The moderates, accused of aiming at feudalism, and projecting to organise the provinces separately and independently of the capital, were driven at length to attempt |