The French Revolution - Volume 3

31169 (return)
[ Carnot, "Mémoires," II. 526. "As his bureau was in a separate place, where none of us set foot, he could retire to it without coming in contact with any of us, as in effect, he did. He even made a pretence of passing through the committee rooms, after the session was over, and he signed some papers; but he really neglected nothing, except our common discussions. He held frequent conferences in his house with the presidents of the revolutionary tribunals, over which his influence was greater than ever."]

31170 (return)
[ Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 563.—Archives Nationales, AF.II., 58. The signature of Robespierre, in his own handwriting, is found affixed to many of the resolutions of the Committee of Public Safety, passed Thermidor 5 and 7, and those of St. Just and Couthon after this, up to Thermidor 3, 6 and 7. On the register of the minutes of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre is always recorded as present at all meetings between Messidor 1 and Thermidor 8, inclusive.]

31171 (return)
[ Archives Nationales, F.7, 4438. Report to the Committee of Public Safety by Herman, Commissioner of the civil and Police administrations and of the Courts, Messidor 3, year II. "The committee charged with a general supervision of the prisons, and obliged to recognize that all the rascals mostly concerned with liberticide plots are.... still in the prisons, forming a band apart, and rendering surveillance very troublesome; they are a constant source of disorder, always getting up attempts to escape, being a daily assemblage of persons devoting themselves wholly to imprecations against liberty and its defenders.... It would be easy to point out in each prison, those who have served, and are to serve, the diverse factions, the diverse conspiracies.... It may be necessary, perhaps, to purge the prisons at once and free the soil of liberty of their filth, the refuse of humanity." The Committee of Public Safety consequently "charges the commission to ascertain in the prisons of Paris... who have been more specially concerned in the diverse factions and conspiracies that the National convention has destroyed." The word "approved" appears at the foot of the resolution in Robespierre's handwriting, then the signature of Robespierre, and lower down, those of Billaud and Barère. A similar resolution providing for the 7th of Messidor, signed by the same parties and five others, is dispatched the same day. (M. de Martel came across and made use of this conclusive document before I did, most of it being quoted in "Les Types Revolutionnaires.")]

31172 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 434.]

CHAPTER II. THE RULERS OF THE COUNTRY.

Let us follow the operations of the new government from top to bottom, from those of its ruling bodies and leaders, to its assemblies, committees, delegates, administrators and underlings of every kind and degree. Like living flesh stamped with a red-hot iron, so will the situation put one their brows the two marks, each with its own different depth and discoloration. In vain do they, too, strive to conceal their scars: we detect under the crowns and titles they assume the brand of the slave or the mark of the tyrant.

I. The Convention.

At the Tuileries, the omnipotent Convention sits enthroned in the theater, converted into an Assembly room. It carries on its deliberations daily, in grand style. Its decrees, received with blind obedience, startle France and upset all Europe. At a distance, its majesty is imposing, more august than that of the Republican senate in Rome. Near by, the effect is quite otherwise; these undisputed sovereigns are serfs who live in trances, and justly so, for, nowhere, even in prison, is there more constraint and less security than on their benches. After the 2nd of June, 1793, their inviolable precincts, the grand official reservoir from which legal authority flows, becomes a sort of tank, into which the revolutionary net plunges and successfully brings out its choicest fish, singly or by the dozen, and sometimes in vast numbers; at first, the sixty-seven Girondist deputies, who are executed or proscribed; then, the seventy-three members of the "Right," swept off in one day and lodged in the prison of La Force; next, the prominent Jacobins:

Osselin, arrested on the 19th of Brumaire, Bazire, Chabot, and Delaunay, accused by decree on the 24th Brumaire, Fabre d'Eglantine, arrested on the 24th of Nivôse, Bernard, guillotined on the 3rd of Pluviôse, Anacharsis Clootz guillotined on the 4th of Germinal, Hérault de Séchelles, Lacroix, Philippeaux, Camille Desmoulins and Danton, guillotined with four others on the 10th of Germinal, Simon, guillotined on the 24th of Germinal, and Osselin, guillotined on the 8th of Messidor.—Naturally, the others take warning and are careful. At the opening of the session they are seen entering the hall, looking uneasy, full of distrust,"3201 like animals driven into a pen and suspicious of a trap.

"Each," writes an eye-witness, "acted and spoke with circumspection, for fear of being charged with some crime: in effect, nothing was unimportant, the seat one took, a glance of the eye, a gesture, a murmur, a smile."

Hence, they flock instinctively to the side which is best sheltered, the left side.

"The tide flowed towards the summit of the Mountain; the right side was deserted.... Many took no side at all, and, during the session, often changed their seats, thinking that they might thus elude the spy by donning a mixed hue and keeping on good terms with everybody. The most prudent never sat down; they kept off the benches, at the foot of the tribune, and, on matters getting to be serious, slipped quietly out of the hall."

Most of them took refuge in their committee-rooms; each tries to be over-looked, to be obscure, to appear insignificant or absent.3202 During the four months following the 2nd of June, the hall of the Convention is half or three-quarters empty; the election of a president does not bring out two hundred and fifty voters;3203 only two hundred, one hundred, fifty votes, elect the Committees of Public Safety and General Security; about fifty votes elect the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal; less than ten votes elect their substitutes;3204 not one vote is cast for the adoption of the decree indicting the deputy, Dulaure;3205 "no member rises for or against it; there is no vote;" the president, nevertheless, pronounces the act passed and the Marais lets things take their course."—"Marais frogs"3206 is the appellation bestowed on them before the 2nd of June, when, amongst the dregs of the "Center," they "broke" with the "Mountain;" now, they still number four hundred and fifty, three times as many as the "Montagnards;" but they purposely keep quiet; their old name "renders them, so to say, soft; their ears ring with eternal menaces; their hearts shrivel up with terror;3207 while their tongues, paralyzed by habitual silence, remain as if glued to the roofs of their mouths. In vain do they keep in the back-ground, consent to everything, ask nothing for themselves but personal safety, and surrender all else, their votes, their wills and their consciences; they feel that their life hangs by a thread. The greatest mute among them all, Siéyès, denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: "That Siéyès! I know him. He don't meddle with politics. He does nothing but read his book. I make his shoes and will answer for him."3208

Of course, previous to the 9th of Thermidor, none of them open their mouths; it is only the "Montagnards" who make speeches, and on the countersign being given. If Legendre, the admirer, disciple and confidential friend of Danton, dares at one time interfere in relation to the decree which sends his friend to the scaffold, asking that he may first be heard, it is only to retract immediately; that very evening, at the Jacobin club, for greater security, "he wallows in the mud;"3209 he declares "that he submits to the judgment of the revolutionary Tribunal," and swears to denounce "whoever shall oppose any obstacle to the execution of the decree."3210 Has not Robespierre taught him a lesson, and in his most pedantic manner? What is more beautiful, says the great moralist, more sublime, than an Assembly which purges itself?3211—Thus, not only is the net which has already dragged out so many palpitating victims still intact, but it is enlarged and set again, only, the fish are now caught on the "Left" as well as on the "Right," and preferably on the topmost benches of the "Mountain."3212 And better still, through the law of Prairial 22, its meshes are reduced in size and its width increased; with such admirable contraption, the fishpond could not fail to be exhausted. A little before the 9th of Thermidor, David, who was one of Robespierre's devoted adherents, himself exclaimed: "Will twenty of us be left on the Mountain?" About the same time, Legendic, Thuriot, Léonard Bourdon, Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, and others, each has a spy all day long at his heels. There are thirty deputies to be proscribed and their names are whispered about; whereupon, sixty stay out all night, convinced that they will be seized the next morning before they can get up.3213

Subject to such a system, prolonged for so many months, people sink down and become discouraged. "Everybody made themselves small so as to pass beneath the popular yoke.3214 Everybody became one of the low class.... Clothes, manners, refinement, cleanliness, the conveniences of life, civility and politeness were all renounced."—People wear their clothes indecently and curse and swear; they try to resemble the sans-culottes Montagnards "who are profane and dress themselves like so many dock-loafers;"3215 at Armonville, the carder, who presides (at a meeting) wears a woolen cap, and similarly at Cusset, a gauze-workman, who is always drunk. Only Robespierre dares appear in neat attire; among the others, who do not have his influence, among the demi-suspects with a pot-belly, such a residue of the ancient régime might become dangerous; they do well not to attract the attention of the foul-mouthed spy who cannot spell;3216 especially is it important at a meeting to be one of the crowd and remain unnoticed by the paid claqueurs, drunken swaggerers and "fat petticoats" of the tribunes. It is even essential to shout in harmony with them and join in their bar-room dances. The deputations of the popular clubs come for fourteen months to the bar of the house and recite their common-place or bombastic tirades, and the Convention is forced to applaud them. For nine months,3217 street ballad-singers and coffee-house ranters attend in full session and sing the rhymes of the day, while the Convention is obliged to join in the chorus. For six weeks,3218 the profaners of churches come to the hall and display their dance-house buffooneries, and the Convention has not only to put up with these, but also to take part in them.—Never, even in imperial Rome, under Nero and Heliogabalus, did a senate descend so low.

II. Its participation in crime.

Observe one of their parades, that of Brumaire 20th, 22nd or 30th, which masquerade often occurs several times a week and is always the same, with scarcely any variation.—Male and female wretches march in procession to the doors of the deputies' hall, still "drunk with the wine imbibed from chalices, after eating mackerel broiled in patens," besides refreshing themselves on the way. "Mounted astride of asses which they have rigged out in chasuble and which they guide with a stole," they halt at each low smoking-den, holding a drinking cup in their hand; the bartender, with a mug in his hand, fills it, and, at each station, they toss off their bumpers, one after the other, in imitation of the Mass, and which they repeat in the street in their own fashion.—On finishing this, they don copes, chasubles and dalmatica, and, in two long lines, file before the benches of the Convention. Some of them bear on hand-barrows or in baskets, candelabra, chalices, gold and silver salvers, monstrances, and reliquaries; others hold aloft banners, crosses and other ecclesiastical spoils. In the mean time "bands play the air of the carmagnole and 'Malbrook.'... On the entry of the dais, they strike up 'Ah! le bel oiseau;'"3219 all at once the masqueraders throw off their disguise, and, mitres, stoles, chasubles flung in the air, "disclose to view the defenders of the country in the national uniform." Peals of laughter, shouts and enthusiasm, while the instrumental din becomes louder! The procession, now in full blast, demands the carmagnole, and the Convention consents; even some of the deputies descend from their benches and cut the pigeon-wing with the merry prostitutes.—To wind up, the Convention decrees that it will attend that evening the fête of Reason and, in fact, they go in a body. Behind an actress in short petticoats wearing a red cap, representing Liberty or Reason, march the deputies, likewise in red caps, shouting and singing until they reach the new temple, which is built of planks and pasteboard in the choir of Notre Dame. They take their seats in the front rows, while the Goddess, an old frequenter of the suppers of the Duc de Soubise, along with "all the pretty dames of the Opera," display before them their operatic graces.3220 They sing the "Hymn to Liberty," and, since the Convention has that morning decreed that it must sing, I suppose that it also joined in.3221 After this there follows dancing; but, unfortunately, the authorities are wanting for stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel," writhe and stamp, "howling the carmagnole." In the side chapels, which are "shut off by high tapestries, prostitutes with shrill voices" pursue their avocation.3222—To descend to this low level so barefacedly, to fraternise with barrier sots, and wenches, to endure their embraces and hiccoughs, is bad enough, even for docile deputies. More than one half of them loathed it beforehand and remained at home; after this they do not feel disposed to attend the Convention.3223—But the "Mountain sends for them, and an officer brings them back;" it is necessary that they should co-operate through their presence and felicitations in the profanations and apostasies which follow;3224 it is necessary that they should approve of and decree that which they hold in horror, not alone folly and nonsense, but crime, the murder of innocent people, and that of their friends.—All this is done. "Unanimously, and with the loudest applause," the Left, united with the Right, sends Danton to the scaffold, its natural chieftain, the great promoter and leader of the Revolution.3225 "Unanimously, and with the loudest applause," the Right, united with the Left, votes the worse decrees of the Revolutionary government.3226 "Unanimously," with approving and enthusiastic cheers, manifesting the warmest sympathy for Collot d'Herbois, Couthon, and Robespierre,3227 the Convention, through multiplied and spontaneous re-elections, maintains the homicidal government which the Plain detests, because it is homicidal, and which the Mountain detests, because it is decimated by it. Plain and Mountain, by virtue of terror, majority after majority, end in consenting to and bringing about their own suicide: on the 22nd of Prairial, the entire Convention has stretched out its neck;3228 on the 8th of Thermidor, for a quarter of an hour after Robespierre's speech,3229 it has again stretched this out, and would probably have succumbed, had not five or six of them, whom Robespierre designated or named, Bourdon de l'Oise, Vadier, Cambon, Billaud and Panis, stimulated by the animal instinct of self-preservation, raised their arms to ward off the knife. Nothing but imminent, personal, mortal danger could, in these prostrated beings, supplant long-continued fear with still greater fear. Later on, Siéyès, on being asked how he acted in these times, replied, "I lived." In effect, he and others are reduced to that; they succeeded in doing this, at all costs, and at what a price!3230 His secret notes, his most private sketches confirm this3231...

"On the Committee of March 20, "Paillasse, half drunk, gives a dissertation on the way to carry on the war, and interrogates and censures the Minister. The poor Minister evades his questions with café gossip and a review of campaigns. These are the men placed at the head of the government to save the Republic!"—"H...., in his distraction, had the air of a sly fox inwardly smiling at his own knavish thoughts. Ruit irrevocabile vulgus... Jusque Datum sceleri."—"Are you keeping silent?"—"Of what use is my glass of wine in this torrent of ardent spirits?"—

All this is very well, but he did not merely keep silent and abstain. He voted, legislated and decreed, along with the unanimous Convention; he was a collaborator, not only passively, through his presence, but also through his active participation in the acts of the government which he elected and enthroned, re-elected twelve times, cheered every week, and flattered daily, authorizing and keeping on to the end its work of spoliation and massacre.

"Everybody is guilty here," said Carrier in the Convention, "even to the president's bell."

In vain do they constantly repeat to themselves that they were forced to obey under penalty of death: the conscience of the purest among them, if he has any, replies:

"You too, in spite of yourself, I admit; less than others, if you please, but you were a terrorist, that is to say, a brigand and an assassin."3232

III. The Committee of Public Safety.

On a man becoming a slave, said old Homer, the Gods take away the half of his soul; the same is true of a man who becomes a tyrant.—In the Pavilion de Flore, alongside of and above the enslaved Convention, sit the twelve kings it has enthroned, twice a day,3233 ruling over it as well as over France.3234 Of course, some guarantee is required from those who fill this place; there is not one of them who is not a revolutionary of long standing, an impenitent regicide, a fanatic in essence and a despot through principle; but the fumes of omnipotence have not intoxicated them all to the same degree.—Three or four of them, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon St. André, Prieur de la Côte-d'Or and Carnot, confine themselves to useful and secondary duties; this suffices to keep them partially safe. As specialists, charged with an important service, their first object is to do this well, and hence they subordinate the rest to this, even theoretical exigencies and the outcries of the clubs.

Lindet's prime object is to feed the departments that are without wheat, and the towns that are soon to be short of bread.

Prieur's business is to see that biscuits, brandy, clothes, shoes, gunpowder and arms are manufactured.3235

Jean Bon, that vessels are equipped and crews drilled.

Carnot, to draw up campaign plans and direct the march of armies: the dispatch of so many bags of grain during the coming fortnight to this or that town, or warehouse in this or that district; the making up of so many weekly rations, to be deported during the month to certain places on the frontier; the transformation of so many fishermen into artillerymen or marines, and to set afloat so many vessels in three months; to expedite certain Corps of Cavalry, infantry and artillery, so as to arrive by such and such roads at this or that pass—

These are precise combinations which purge the brain of dogmatic phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the great American convoy; Carnot, at Watignies, orders Jourdan to make a decisive move, and, shouldering his musket, marches along with the attacking column.3236 Naturally, they have no leisure for speechmaking in the Jacobin club, or for intrigues in the Convention: Carnot lives in his own office and in the committee-room; he does not allow himself time enough to eat with his wife, dines on a crust of bread and a glass of lemonade, and works sixteen and eighteen hours a day;3237 Lindet, more overtasked than any body else, because hunger will not wait, reads every report himself, and passes days and nights at it;"3238 Jean Bon, in wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of coarse bread and a glass of bad beer,3239 writes and dictates until his strength fails him, and he has to lie down and sleep on a mattress on the floor.—Naturally, again, when interfered with, and the tools in their hands are broken, they are dissatisfied; they know well the worth of a good instrument, and for the service, as they comprehend it, good tools are essential, competent, faithful employees, regular in attendance at their offices, and not at the club. When they have a subordinate of this kind they defend him, often at the risk of their lives, even to incurring the enmity of Robespierre. Cambon,3240 who, on his financial committee, is also a sort of sovereign, retains at the Treasury five or six hundred employees unable to procure their certificate of civism, and whom the Jacobins incessantly denounce so as to get their places. Carnot saves and employs eminent engineers, D'Arcon, de Montalembert, d'Obenheim, all of them nobles, and one of them an anti-Jacobin, without counting a number of accused officers whom he justifies, replaces, or maintains.3241—Through these courageous and humane acts, they solace themselves for their scruples, at least partially and for the time being; moreover, they are statesmen only because the occasion and superior force makes it imperative, more led by others than leading, terrorists through accident and necessity, rather than through system and instinct. If, in concert with ten others, Prieur and Carnot order wholesale robbery and murder, if they sign orders by twenties and hundreds, amounting to assassinations, it is owing to their forming part of a body. When the whole committee deliberates, they are bound, in important decrees, to submit to the preponderating opinion of the majority, after voting in the negative. In relation to secondary decrees, in which there has been no preliminary discussion in common, the only responsible member is the one whose signature stands first; the following signatures affixed, without reading the document, are simply a "formality which the law requires," merely a visa, necessarily mechanical; with "four or five hundred business matters to attend to daily," it is impossible to do otherwise. To read all and vote in every case, would be "a physical impossibility."3242—Finally, as things are, "is not the general will, at least the apparent general will, that alone on which the government can decide, itself ultra-revolutionary?"3243 In other words, should not the five or six rascals in a State who vociferate, be listened to, rather than a hundred honest folks who keep their mouths shut? With this sophism, gross as it is, but of pure Jacobin manufacture, Carnot ends by hoodwinking his honor and his conscience; otherwise intact, and far more so than his colleagues, he likewise undergoes moral and mental mutilation; constrained by the duties of his post and the illusions of his creed, he succeeded in an inward decapitation of the two noblest of human faculties, common-sense, the most useful, and the moral sense, the most exalted of all.

IV. The Statesmen.

If such are the ravages which are made in an upright, firm and healthy personality, what must be the havoc in corrupt or weak natures, in which bad instincts already predominate!—And note that they are without the protection provided by a pursuit of some specific and useful objective. They are "government men," also "revolutionaries" or "the people in total control;"3244 they are in actual fact men with an overall concept of things, also direct these. The creation, organization and application of Terror belongs wholly to them; they are the constructors, regulators and engineers of the machine,3245 the recognized heads of the party, of the sect and of the government, especially Billaud and Robespierre, who never serve on missions,3246 nor relax their hold for a moment on the central motor. The former, an active politician, with Collot for his second, is charged with urging on the constituted authorities, the districts, the municipalities, the national agents, the revolutionary committees, and the representatives on mission in the interior.3247 The latter, a theologian, moralist, titular doctor and preacher, is charged with ruling the Convention and indoctrinating the Jacobins with sound principles; behind him stands Couthon, his lieutenant, with Saint-Just, his disciple and executor of works of great importance; in their midst, Barère, the Committee's mouthpiece, is merely a tool, but indispensable, conveniently at hand and always ready to start whatever drum-beating is required on any given theme in honor of the party which stuffs his brain. Below these comes the Committee of General Security, Vadier, Amar, Vouland, Guffroy, Panis, David, Jagot and the rest, those who undertook, reported on, and acted in behalf of universal proscription. All these bear the imprint of their service; they could be recognized by "their pallid hue, hollow and bloodshot eyes,"3248 habits of omnipotence stamped "on their brows, and on their deportment, something indescribably haughty and disdainful. The Committee of General Security reminded one of the former lieutenants of police, and the Committee of Public Safety, of the former ministers of state." In the Convention, "it is considered an honor to talk with them, and a privilege to shake hands with them; one seems to read one's duty on their brows." On the days on which their orders are to be converted into laws "the members of the Committee and the reporter of the bill, keep people waiting, the same as the heads and representatives of the former sovereign power; on their way to the Assembly hall, they are preceded by a group of courtiers who seem to announce the masters of the world."3249—In fact, they reign—but observe on what conditions.

"Make no complaints," said Barère,3250 to the composer of an opera, the performance of which had just been suspended: "as times go, you must not attract public attention. Do we not all stand at the foot of the guillotine, all, beginning with myself?" Again, twenty years later, in a private conversation, on being interrogated as to the veritable object, the secret motive of the Committee of Public Safety, he replied:

"As we were animated by but one sentiment,3251 my dear sir, that of self-preservation, we had but one desire, that of maintaining an existence which each of us believed to be menaced. You had your neighbor guillotined to prevent your neighbor from guillotining you."3252

The same apprehension exists in stouter souls, although there may have been, along with fear, motives of a less debased order.

"How many times," says Carnot,3253 "we undertook some work that required time, with the conviction that we should not be allowed to complete it!"—"It was uncertain3254 whether, the next time the clock struck the hour, we should not be standing before the revolutionary Tribunal on our way to the scaffold without, perhaps, having had time to bid adieu to our families.... We pursued our daily task so as not to let the machine stand still, as if a long life were before us, when it was probable that we should not see the next day's sun."

It is impossible to count on one's life, or that of another, for twenty-four hours; should the iron hand which holds one by the throat tighten its grasp, all will be over that evening.

"There were certain days so difficult that one could see no way to control circumstances; those who were directly menaced resigned themselves wholly to chance."3255—"The decisions for which we are so much blamed," says another,3256 "were not generally thought of two days, or one day, beforehand; they sprung out of the crisis of the moment. We did not desire to kill for the sake of killing... but to conquer at all hazards, remain masters, and ensure the sway of our principles."—That is true,—they are subjects as well as despots. At the Committee table, during their nocturnal sessions, their sovereign presides, a formidable figure, the revolutionary Idea which confers on them the right to slay, on condition of exercising it against everybody, and therefore on themselves. Towards two o'clock, or three o'clock in the morning, exhausted, out of words and ideas, not knowing where to slay, on the right or on the left, they anxiously turn to this figure and try to read its will in its fixed eyes.

"Who shall fall to-morrow?"—

Ever the same reply steadily expressed on the features of the impassable phantom: "the counter-revolutionaries," under which name is comprised all who by act, speech, thought or inmost sentiment, either through irritation or carelessness, through humanity or moderation, through egoism or nonchalance, through passive, neutral or indifferent feeling, serve well or ill the Revolution.3257—All that remains is to add names to this horribly comprehensive decree. Shall Billaud do it? Shall Robespierre do it? Will Billaud put down Robespierre's name, or Robespierre put down Billaud's, or each the name of the other, with those he chooses to select from among the two Committees? Osselin, Chabot, Bazire, Julien de Toulouse, Lacroix, Danton, were on them, and when they left, their heads fell.3258 Hérault-Séchelles, again, was on them, maintained in office with honor through the recent approbation of the Convention,3259 one of the titular twelve, and on duty when an order issued by the other eleven suddenly handed him over to the revolutionary Tribunal for execution.—Whose turn is it now among the eleven? Seized unawares, the docile Convention unanimously applauding, after three days of a judicial farce, the cart will bear him to the Place de la Révolution; Samson will tie him fast, shouters at thirty sous a day will clap their hands, and, on the following morning, the popular politicians will congratulate each other on seeing the name of a great traitor on the bulletin of the guillotined.3260 To this end, to enable this or that king of the day to pass from the national Almanac to the mortuary list, merely required an understanding among his colleagues, and, perhaps, this is already arrived at. Among whom and against whom?—It is certain that, as this idea occurs to the eleven, seated around the table, they eye each other with a shudder they calculate the chances and turn things over in their minds; words have been uttered that are not forgotten. Carnot often made this charge against Saint-Just: "You and Robespierre are after a dictatorship."3261 Robespierre replied to Carnot: "I am ready for you on the first defeat."3262 On another occasion, Robespierre, in a rage, exclaimed: "The Committee is conspiring against me!" and, turning to Billaud, "I know you, now!" Billaud retorted, "I know you too, you are a counter-revolutionary!"3263 There are conspirators and counter-revolutionaries, then, on the committee itself; what can be done to avoid this appellation, which is a sentence of death?—Silently, the fatal phantom enthroned in their midst, the Erinyes3264 through which they rule, renders his oracle and all take it to heart:

"All who are unwilling to become executioners are conspirators and counter-revolutionaries."

V. Official Jacobin organs.

Thus do they march along during twelve months, goaded on by the two sharp thongs of theory and fear, traversing the red pool which they have created, and which is daily becoming deeper and deeper, all together and united, neither of them daring to separate from the group, and each spattered with the blood thrown in his face by the others' feet. It is not long before their eyesight fails them; they no longer see their way, while the degradation of their language betrays the stupor of their intellect.—When a government brings to the tribune and moves the enactment of important laws, it confronts the nation, faces Europe, and takes a historical position. If it cares for its own honor it will select reporters of bills that are not unworthy, and instruct them to support these with available arguments, as closely reasoned out as possible; the bill, discussed and adopted in full council, will show the measure of its capacity, the information it possesses and its common-sense.

To estimate all this, read the bills put forth in the name of the Committee; weigh the preambles, remark the tone, listen to the two reporters usually chosen, Saint-Just, who draws up the acts of proscription, special or general, and Barère, who draws up all acts indifferently, but particularly military announcements and decrees against the foreigner; never did public personages, addressing France and posterity, use such irrational arguments and state falsehoods with greater impudence.3265

The former, stiff in his starched cravat, posing "like the Holy Ghost," more didactic and more absolute than Robespierre himself, comes and proclaims to Frenchmen from the tribune, equality, probity, frugality, Spartan habits, and a rural cot with all the voluptuousness of virtue;3266 this suits admirably the chevalier Saint-Just, a former applicant for a place in the Count d'Artois' body-guard, a domestic thief, a purloiner of silver plate which he takes to Paris, sells and spends on prostitutes, imprisoned for six months on complaint of his own mother,3267 and author of a lewd poem which he succeeds in rendering filthy by trying to render it fanciful.—Now, indeed, he is grave; he no longer leers; he kills—but with what arguments, and what a style!3268 The young Laubardemont as well as the paid informers and prosecutors of imperial Rome, have less disgraced the human intellect, for these creatures of a Tiberius or a Richelieu still used plausible arguments in their reasoning, and with more or less adroitness. With Saint-Just, there is no connection of ideas; there is no sequence or march in his rhapsody; like an instrument strained to the utmost, his mind plays only false notes in violent fits and starts; logical continuity, the art then so common of regularly developing a theme, has disappeared; he stumbles over the ground, piling up telling aphorisms and dogmatic axioms. In dealing with facts there is nothing in his speech but a perversion of the truth; impostures abound in it of pure invention, palpable, as brazen as those of a charlatan in his booth;3269 he does not even deign to disguise them with a shadow of probability; as to the Girondists, and as to Danton, Fabre d'Eglantine and his other adversaries, whoever they may be, old or new, any rope to hang them with suffices for him; any rough, knotted, badly-twisted cord he can lay his hands on, no matter what, provided it strangles, is good enough; there is no need of a finer one for confirmed conspirators; with the gossip of the club and an Inquisition catechism, he can frame his bill of indictment.—Accordingly, his intellect grasps nothing and yields him nothing; he is a sententious and overexcited declaimer, an artificial spirit always on the stretch, full of affectations,3270 his talent reducing itself down to the rare flashes of a somber imagination, a pupil of Robespierre, as Robespierre himself is a pupil of Rousseau, the exaggerated scholar of a plodding scholar, always rabidly ultra, furious through calculation, deliberately violating both language and ideas,3271 confining himself to theatrical and funereal paradoxes, a sort of "grand vizier"3272 with the airs of an exalted moralist and the bearing of the sentimental shepherd.3273 Were one of a mocking humor one might shrug one's shoulders; but, in the present state of the Convention, there is no room for anything but fear. Launched in imperious tones, his phrases fall upon their ears in monotonous strokes, on bowed heads, and, after five or six blows from this leaden hammer, the stoutest are stretched out stupefied on the ground; discussion is out of the question; when Saint-Just, in the name of the Convention, affirms anything, it must be believed; his dissertation is a peremptory injunction and not an effort of reason; it commands obedience; it is not open to examination; it is not a report which he draws from his coat pocket, but a bludgeon.

The other reporter, Barère, is of quite another stamp, a "patent-right" haranguer, an amusing Gascon, alert, "free and easy," fond of a joke, even on the Committee of Public Safety,3274 unconcerned in the midst of assassinations, and, to the very last, speaking of the reign of Terror as "the simplest and most innocent thing in the world."3275 No man was ever less trammeled by a conscience; in truth, he has several, that of two days ago, that of the previous day, that of the present day, that of the morrow, of the following day, and still others, as many as you like, all equally pliant and supple, at the service of the strongest against the weakest, ready to swing round at once on the wind changing, but all joined together and working to one common end through physical instinct, the only one that lasts in the immoral, adroit and volatile being who circulates nimbly about, with no other aim than self-preservation, and to amuse himself.3276—In his dressing-gown, early in the morning, he receives a crowd of solicitors, and, with the ways of a "dandified minister," graciously accepts the petitions handed to him; first, those of ladies, "distributing gallantries among the prettiest;" he makes promises, and smiles, and then, returning to his cabinet, throws the papers in the fire: "There," he says, my correspondence is done."—He sups twice every decade in his fine house at Clichy, along with three more than accommodating pretty women; he is gay, awarding flatteries and attentions quite becoming to an amiable protector: he enters into their professional rivalries, their spites against the reigning beauty, their jealousy of another who wears a blonde wig and pretends "to set the fashion." He sends immediately for the National Agent and gravely informs him that this head-dress, borrowed from the guillotined, is a rallying point for anti-revolutionaries, whereupon, the next day, wigs are denounced at the Commune-council, and suppressed; "Barère roared with laughter on alluding to this piece of fun." The humor of an undertaker and the dexterity of a commercial drummer: he plays with Terror.—In like manner he plays with his reports, and at this latter exercise, he improvises; he is never embarrassed; it is simply necessary to turn the faucet and the water runs. "Had he any subject to treat, he would fasten himself on Robespierre, Hérault, Saint-Just, or somebody else, and draw them out; he would then rush off to the tribune and spin out their ideas; "they were all astonished at hearing their thoughts expressed as fully as if reflected in a mirror." No individual on the Committee, or in the Convention, equaled him in promptness and fluency, for the reason that he was not obliged to think before he spoke: with him, the faculty of speaking, like an independent organ, acted by itself, the empty brain or indifferent heart contributing nothing to his loquacity. Naturally, whatever issues from his mouth comes forth in ready-made bombast, the current jargon of the Jacobin club, sonorous, nauseous commonplace, schoolboy metaphors and similes derived from the shambles.3277 Not an idea is found in all this rhetoric, nothing acquired, no real mental application. When Bonaparte, who employed everybody, even Fouché, were disposed to employ Barère, they could make nothing out of him for lack of substance, except as a low newsmonger, common spy, or agent engaged to stir up surviving Jacobins; later on, a listener at keyholes, and a paid weekly collector of public rumors, he was not even fit for this vile service, for his wages were soon stopped Napoleon, who, having no time to waste, cut short his driveling verbiage.—It is this verbiage which, authorized by the Committee of Public Safety, now forms the eloquence of France; it is this manufacturer of phrases by the dozen, this future informer and prison-spy under the empire, this frolicking inventor of the blonde-wig conspiracy, that the government sends into the tribune to announce victories, trumpet forth military heroism and proclaim war unto death. On the 7th of Prairial,3278 Barère, in the name of the committee, proposes a return to savage law: "No English or Hanoverian prisoner shall henceforth be made;" the decree is endorsed by Carnot and passes the Convention unanimously. Had it been executed, as reprisals, and according to the proportion of prisoners, there would have been for one Englishman shot, three Frenchmen hung: honor and humanity would have disappeared from the camps; the hostilities between Christians would have become as deadly as among savages. Happily, French soldiers felt the nobleness of their profession; on the order being given to shoot the prisoners, a decent sergeant replied:

"We will not shoot—send them to the Convention. If the representatives delight in killing prisoners—let them do it themselves, and eat them, too, savages as they are!"

The sergeant, an ordinary man, is not on a level with the Committee, or with Barère; and yet Barère did his best in a bill of indictment of twenty-seven pages, full of grand flourishes, every possible ritornello, glaring falsehood and silly inflation, explaining how "the Britannic leopard" paid assassins to murder the representatives; how the London cabinet had armed little Cécile Renault, "the new Corday," against Robespierre; how the Englishman, naturally barbarous, "is unable to deny his origins; how he descends from the Carthaginians and Phenicians, and formerly dealt in the skins of wild beasts and slaves; how his trading occupation is not changed; how Cesar, formerly, on landing in the country, found nothing but a ferocious tribe battling with wolves in the forest and threatening to burn every vessel which would try to land there; and how he still remains like that." A lecture from a fairground surgeon who, using bombastic words, recommends extensive amputations, a fairground-prospectus so crude that it does not even deceive a poor sergeant,—such is the exposition of motives by a government for the purpose of enforcing a decree that might have been drawn up by redskins; to horrible acts he adds debased language, and employs the inept to justify their atrocities.