On the 7th of August things come to a head.—Led by the department and the municipality, a number of delegates march to the bar of the Convention, and make a confession of Jacobin faith. "Soon," they exclaim, "will search be made on the banks of the Seine for the foul marsh intended to engulf us. Were the royalist and intriguers to die of spite, we will live and die 'Montagnards.'"1134 Applause and embraces.—From thence they betake themselves to the Jacobin Club, where one of them proposes an address prepared beforehand: the object of this is to justify the 31st of May, and the 2nd of June, "to open the eyes" of provincial France, to declare "war against the federalists."1135 "Down with the infamous libelers who have calumniated Paris!.... We cherish but one sentiment, our souls are all melted into one... We form here but one vast, terrible mountain, about to vomit forth its fires on the royalists and supporters of tyranny." Applause and cheers.—Robespierre declares that they are there to save the country.1136 On the following day, August 8th, this address is presented to the Convention and Robespierre has a resolution adopted, ordering it to be sent to the armies, to foreign powers and all the Communes. More applause, more embraces, and more cheers.—On the 9th of August,1137 by order of the Convention, the delegates meet in the Tuileries garden, where, divided into as many groups as there are departments, they study the program drawn up by David, in order to familiarize themselves with the parts they are to play in the festival of the following day.
What an odd festival and how well it expresses the spirit of the time! It is a sort of opera played in the streets by the public authorities, with triumphant chariots, altars, censers, an Ark of the Covenant, funeral urns, classic banners and other trappings! Its divinities consist of plaster statues representing Nature, Liberty, the People, and Hercules, all of which are personified abstractions, like those painted on the ceiling of a theater. In all this there is no spontaneity nor sincerity; the actors, whose consciences tell them that they are only actors, render homage to symbols which they know to be nothing but symbols, while the mechanical procession,1138 the invocations, the apostrophes, the postures, the gestures are regulated beforehand, the same as by a ballet-manager. To any truth-loving person all this must seem like a charade performed by puppets.—But the festival is colossal, well calculated to stimulate the imagination and excite pride through physical excitement.1139 On this grandiose stage the delegates become quite intoxicated with their part; for, evidently, theirs is the leading part; they represent twenty-six millions of Frenchmen, and the sole object of this ceremony is to glorify the national will of which they are the bearers.—On the Place de la Bastille1140 where the gigantic effigy of nature pours forth from its two breasts "the regenerating water," Hérault, the president, after offering libations and saluting the new goddess, passes the cup to the eighty-seven elders (les doyens) of the eighty-seven departments, each "summoned by sound of drum and trumpet" to step forward and drink in his turn, while cannon belch forth their thunders as if for a monarch. After the eighty-seven have passed the cup around, the artillery roars. The procession them moves on, and the delegates again are assigned the place of honor. The elders, holding an olive-branch in one hand, and a pike in the other, with a streamer on the end of it bearing the name of their department, "bound to each other by a small three-color ribbon," surround the Convention as if to convey the idea that the nation maintains and conducts its legal representative. Behind them march the rest of the eight thousand delegates, likewise holding olive-branches and forming a second distinct body, the largest of all, and on which all eyes are centered. For, in their wake, "their is no longer any distinction between persons and functionaries," all being confounded together, marching pell-mell, executive council, city officials, judges scattered about haphazard and, by virtue of equality, lost in the crowd. At each station, thanks to their insignia, the delegates form the most conspicuous element. On reaching the last one, that of the Champ de Mars, they alone with the Convention, ascend the steps leading to the alter of the country; on the highest platform stands the eldest of all alongside the president of the Convention, also standing; thus graded above each other, the seven thousand, who envelope the seven hundred and fifty, form "the veritable Sacred Mountain." Now, the president, on the highest platform, turns toward the eighty-seven elders; he confides to the Ark containing the Constitutional Act and the list of those who voted for it; they, on their part, then advance and hand him their pikes, which he gathers together into one bundle as an emblem of national unity and indivisibility. At this, shouts arise from every point of the immense enclosure; salvoes of artillery follow again and again; "one would say that heaven and earth answered each other" in honor "of the greatest epoch of humanity."—Certainly, the delegates are beside themselves; their nerves, strained to the utmost, vibrates too powerfully; the millennium discloses itself before their eyes. Already, many among them on the Place de la Bastille, had addressed the universe; others, "seized with a prophetic spirit," promise eternity to the Constitution. They feel themselves "reborn again, along with the human species;" they regard themselves as beings of a new world. History is consummated in them; the future is in their hands; they believe themselves gods on earth.—In this critical state, their reason, like a pair of ill-balanced scales, yields to the slightest touch; under the pressure of the manufacturers of enthusiasm, a sudden reaction will carry them away. They consider the Constitution as a panacea, and they are going to consign it, like some dangerous drug, to this coffer which they call an ark. They have just proclaimed the liberty of the people, and are going to perpetuate the dictatorship of the Convention.
This volteface has, of course, to appear spontaneous and the hand of the titular rulers remain invisible: the Convention, as usual with usurpers, is to simulate reserve and disinterestedness.—Consequently, the following morning, August 11, on the opening of the session, it simply declares that "its mission is fulfilled:"1141 on the motion of Lacroix, a confederate of Danton's, it passes a law that a new census of the population and of electors shall be made with as little delay as possible, in order to convoke the primary assemblies at once; it welcomes with joy the delegates who bring to it the Constitutional Ark; the entire Assembly rises in the presence of this sacred receptacle, and allows the delegates to exhort it and instruct it concerning its duties.1142 But in the evening, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre, after a long and vague discourse on public dangers, conspiracies, and traitors, suddenly utters the decisive words:
"The most important of my reflections was about to escape me1143... The proposition made this morning will only facilitate the replacement of the purified members of this Convention by the envoys of Pitt and Cobourg."
Dreadful words in the mouth of a man of principles! They are at once understood by the leaders, great and small, also by the selected fifteen hundred Jacobins then filling the hall. "No! no! shouts the entire club." The delegates are carried away:
"I demand," exclaims one of them, "that the dissolution of the Convention be postponed until the end of the war."—
At last, the precious motion, so long desired and anticipated, is made: the calumnies of the Girondins now fall the ground; it is demonstrated that the Convention does not desire to perpetuate itself and that it has no ambition; if it remains in power it is because it is kept there; the delegates of the people compel it to stay.
And better still, they are going to mark out its course of action.—The next day, the 12th of August, with the zeal of new converts, they spread themselves through the hall in such numbers that Assembly, no longer able to carry on is deliberations, crowds toward the left and yields the whole of the space on the right that they may occupy and "purify" it.1144 All the combustible material in their minds, accumulated during the past fortnight, takes fire and explodes; they are more furious than the most ultra Jacobins; they repeat at the bar of the house the extravagances of Rose Lacombe, and of the lowest clubs; they even transcend the program drawn up by the "Mountain." "The time for deliberation is past," exclaims their spokesman, "we must act1145... Let the people rouse themselves in a mass... it alone can annihilate its enemies... We demand that all 'suspects' be put under arrest; that they be dispatched to the frontiers, followed by the terrible mass of sans-culottes. There, in the front ranks, they will be obliged to fight for that liberty which they have outraged for the past four years, or be immolated on the tyrants' cannon.... Women, children, old men and the infirm shall be kept as hostages by the women and children of sans-culottes." Danton seizes the opportunity. With his usual lucidity he finds the expression which describes the situation:
"The deputies of the primary assemblies," he says, "have just begun to practice among us the initiative of terror."
He moreover reduces the absurd notions of the fanatics to a practical measure: "A mobilization en masse, yes, but with order" by at once calling out the first class of conscript, all men from eighteen to twenty-five years of age; the arrest of all 'suspects', yes, but not to lead them against the enemy; "they would be more dangerous than useful in our armies; let us shut them up; they will be our hostages."—He also proposes employment for the delegates who are only in the way in Paris and might be useful in the provinces. Let us make of them "various kinds of representatives charged with animating citizens... Let them, along with all good citizens and the constituted authorities, take charge of the inventories of grain and arms, and make requisitions for men, and let the Committee of Public Safety direct this sublime movement.... All will swear that, on returning to their homes, they will give this impulse their fellow citizens." Universal applause; the delegates exclaim in one voice, "We swear!" Everybody springs to his feet; the men in the tribunes wave their hats and likewise should the same oath.—The scheme is successful; a semblance of popular will has authorized the staff of officials, the policy, the principles and the very name of Terror. As to the instruments for the operation they are all there ready to be back into action. The delegates, of whose demands and interference the "Mountain" is still in dread, are sent back to their departmental holes, where they shall serve as agents and missionaries.1146 There is no further mention of putting the Constitution into operation; this was simply a bait, a decoy, contrived for fishing in turbid waters: the fishing ended, the Constitution is now placed in a conspicuous place in the hall, in a small monument for which David furnished the design.1147—The Convention, now, says Danton, "will rise to a sense of its dignity, for it is now invested with the full power of the nation." In other words, artifice completes what violence has begun. Through the outrages committed in May and June, the Convention had lost its legitimacy; through the maneuvers of July and August it recovered the semblance of it. The Montagnards still hold their slave by his lash, but they have restored his prestige so as to make the most of him to their own profit.
With the same blow, and amongst the same playacting, they have nearly disarmed their adversaries.—On learning the events of May 31 and June 2, a loud cry of indignation arose among republicans of the cultivated class in this generation, who, educated by the philosophers, sincerely believed in the rights of man.1148 Sixty-nine department administrations had protested,1149 and, in almost all the towns of the west, the south, the east and the center of France, at Caen, Alençon, Evreux, Rennes, Brest, Lorient, Nantes and Limoges, at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nîmes and Marseilles, at Grenoble, Lyons, Clermont, Lons-le-Saunier, Besançon, Mâcon and Dijon,1150 the citizens, assembled in their sections, had provoked, or maintained by cheering them on, the acts of their administrators. Rulers and citizens, all declared that, the Convention not being free, its decrees after the 31st of May, no longer had the force of law; that the troops of the departments should march on Paris to deliver that city from its oppressors, and that their substitutes should be called out and assemble at Bourges. In many places words were converted into acts. Already before the end of May, Marseilles and Lyons had taken up arms and checkmated their local Jacobins. After the 2nd of June, Normandy, Brittany, Gard, Jura, Toulouse and Bordeaux, had also raised troops. At Marseilles, Bordeaux and Caen representatives on mission, arrested or under guard, were retained as hostages.1151 At Nantes, the national Guard and popular magistrates who, a week before, had so bravely repulsed the great Vendéan army, dared to more than this; they limited the powers of the Convention and condemned all meddling: according to them, the sending of representatives on mission was "an usurpation, an attack on national sovereignty;" representatives had been elected
"to make and not to execute laws, to prepare a constitution and regulate all public powers, and not to confound these together and exercise them all at once; to protect and maintain intermediary powers which the people have delegated, and not to encroach upon and annihilate them."1152
With still greater boldness, Montpellier enjoined all representatives everywhere to meet at the headquarters of their respective departments, and await the verdict of a national jury. In short, in accordance with the very democratic creed, "nothing was visible amid the ruins of the Convention," mutilated and degraded, but interloping "attorneys." "The people's workmen" are summoned "to return to obedience and do justice to the reproaches addressed to them by their legitimate master;"1153 the nation canceled the pay of its clerks at the capital, withdrew the mandate they had misused, and declared them usurpers if they persisted in not yielding up their borrowed sovereignty "to its inalienable sovereignty."—To this stroke, which strikes deep, the "Mountain" replies by a similar stroke; it also renders homage to principles and falls back on the popular will. Through the sudden manufacture of an ultra-democratic constitution, through a convocation of the primary assemblies, and a ratification of its work by the people in these assemblies, through the summoning of delegates to Paris, through the assent of these converted, fascinated, or constrained delegates, it exonerates and justifies itself, and thus deprives the Girondins of the grievances to which they had given currency, of the axioms they had displayed on their standards, and of the popularity they thought they had acquired.1154—Henceforth, the ground their opponents had built on sinks under their feet; the materials collected by them disintegrate in their hands; their league dissolves before it is completed, and the incurable weakness of the party appears in full daylight.
Firstly, in the departments, as at Paris,1155 the party has no roots. For the past three years all the sensible and orderly people, occupied with their own affairs, who has no taste or interest in politics, nine-tenths of the electors, abstain from voting and in this large mass the Girondins have no adherents. As they themselves admit,1156 this class remains attached to the institutions of 1791, which they have overthrown; if it has any esteem for them, it is as "extremely honest madmen." Again, this esteem is mingled with aversion: it reproaches them with the violent decrees they have passed in concert with the "Mountain;" with persecutions, confiscations, every species of injustice and cruelty; it always sees the King's blood on their hands; they, too, are regicides, anti-Catholics, anti-Christians, demolishers and levelers.1157—Undoubtedly they are less so than the "Mountain;" hence, when the provincial insurrection breaks out, many Feuillants and even Royalists follow them to the section assemblies and join in their protests. But the majority goes no further, and soon falls back into is accustomed inertia. It is not in harmony with its leaders:1158 its latent preferences are opposed to their avowed program; it does not wholly trust them; it has only a half-way affection for them; its recent sympathies are deadened by old animosities: everywhere, instead of firmness there is only caprice. All this affords no assurance of steadfast loyalty and practical adhesion. The Girondin deputies scattered through the provinces relied upon each department arousing itself at their summons and forming a republican Vendée against the "Mountain:" nowhere do they find anything beyond mild approval and speculative hopes.
There remains to support them the élite of the republican party, the scholars and lovers of literature, who are honest and sincere thinkers, who, worked upon by the current dogmas, have accepted the philosophical catechism literally and seriously. Elected judges, or department, district, and city administrators, commanders and officers of the National Guard, presidents and secretaries of sections, they occupy most of the places conferred by local authority, and hence their almost unanimous protest seems at first to be the voice of France. In reality, it is only the despairing cry of a group of staff-officers without an army. Chosen under the electoral pressure with which we are familiar, they possess rank, office and titles, but no credit or influence; they are supported only by those whom they really represent, that is to say, those who elected them, a tenth of the population, and forming a sectarian minority. Again, in this minority there are a good many who are lukewarm; with most men the distance is great between conviction and action; the interval is filled up with acquired habits, indolence, fear and egoism. One's belief in the abstractions of the "Contrat-social" is of little account; no one readily bestirs oneself for an abstract end. Uncertainties beset one at the outset; the road one has to follow is found to be perilous and obscure, and one hesitates and postpones; one feels himself a home-body and is afraid of engaging too deeply and of going too far. Having expended one's breath in words one is less willing to give one's money; another may open his purse but he may not be disposed to give himself, which is as true of the Girondins as it is of the Feuillants.
"At Marseilles,1159 at Bordeaux," says a deputy, "in nearly all the principal towns, the proprietor, slow, indifferent and timid, could not make up his mind to leave home for a moment; it was to mercenaries that he entrusted his cause his arms."
Only the federates of Mayenne, Ile-et-Vilaine, and especially of Finisterre, were "young men well brought up and well informed about the cause they were going to support." In Normandy, the Central Committee, unable to do better, has to recruit its soldiers, and especially gunners, from the band of Carabots, former Jacobins, a lot of ruffians ready for anything, pillagers and runaways at the first canon-shot. At Caen, Wimpffen, having ordered the eight battalions of the National Guard to assemble in the court, demands volunteers and finds that only seventeen step forth; on the following day a formal requisition brings out only one hundred and thirty combatants; other towns, except Vire, which furnishes about twenty, refuse their contingent. In short, a marching army cannot be formed, or, if it does march, it halts at the first station, that of Evreux before reaching Vernon, and that of Marseilles at the walls of Avignon.
On the other hand, by virtue of being sincere and logical, those who have rebelled entertain scruples and themselves define the limits of their insurrection. The fugitive deputies at their head would believe themselves guilty of usurpation had they, like the "Mountain" at Paris, constituted themselves at Caen en sovereign assembly1160: according to them, their right and their duty is reduced to giving testimony concerning the 31st of May and the 1st of June, and to exhorting the people and to being eloquent. They are not legally qualified to take executive power; it is for the local magistrates, the élus(elected) of the sections, and better still, the department committees to command in the departments. Lodged as they are in official quarters, they are merely to print formal statements, write letters, and, behaving properly, wait until the sovereign people, their employer, reinstates them. It has been outraged in their persons; it must avenge itself for this outrage; since it approves of its mandatories, it is bound to restore them to office; it being the master of the house, it is bound to have its own way in the house.—As to the department committees, it is true that, in the heat of the first excitement, they thought of forming a new Convention at Bourges,1161 either through a muster of substitute deputies, or through the convocation of a national commission of one hundred and seventy members. But time is wanting, also the means, to carry out the plan; it remains suspended in the air like vain menace; at the end of a fortnight it vanishes in smoke; the departments succeed in federating only in scattered groups; they desist from the formation of a central government, and thus, through this fact alone, condemn themselves to succumb, one after the other, in detail, and each at home.—What is worse, through conscientiousness and patriotism, they prepare their own defeat: the refrain from calling upon the armies and from stripping the frontiers; they do not contest the right of the Convention to provide as it pleases for the national defense. Lyons allows the passage of convoys of cannon-balls which are to be subsequently used in cannonading its defenders1162. The authorities of Puy-de-Dome aid by sending to Vendée the battalion that they had organized against the "Mountain." Bordeaux is to surrender Chateau-Trompette, its munitions of war and supplies, to the representatives on mission; and, without a word, with exemplary docility, both the Bordeaux battalions which guard Blaye suffer themselves to be dislodged by two Jacobin battalions.1163 Comprehending the insurrection in this way, defeat is certain beforehand.
The insurgents are thus conscious of their false position; they have a vague sort of feeling that, in recognizing the military authority of the Convention, they admit its authority in full; insensibly they glide down this slope, from concession to concession, until they reach complete submission. From the 16th of June, at Lyons,1164 "people begin to feel that it ought not break with the Convention." Five weeks later, the authorities of Lyons "solemnly recognize that the Convention is the sole central rallying point of all French citizens and republicans," and decree that "all acts emanating from it concerning the general interests of the republic are to be executed."1165 Consequently, at Lyons and in other departments, the administrations convoke the primary assemblies as the Convention has prescribed; consequently, the primary assemblies accept the Constitution which it has proposed; consequently, the delegates of the primary assemblies betake themselves to Paris according to its orders.—Henceforth, the Girondins' cause is lost; the discharge of a few cannon at Vernon and Avignon disperse the only two columns of soldiery that have set out on their march. In each department, the Jacobins, encouraged by the representatives on mission, raise their heads; everywhere the local club enjoins the local government to submit,1166 everywhere the local governments report the acts they pass, make excuses and ask forgiveness. Proportionately to the retraction of one department, the rest, feeling themselves abandoned, are more disposed to retract. On the 9th of July forty-nine departments are enumerated as having given in their adhesion. Several of them declare that the scales have dropped from their eyes, that they approve of the acts of May 31 and June 2, and thus ensure their safety by manifesting their zeal. The administration of Calvados notifies the Breton fédérés that "having accepted the Constitution it can no longer tolerate their presence in Caen;" it sends them home, and secretly makes peace with the "Mountain;" and only informs the deputies, who are its guests, of this proceeding, three days afterwards, by postings on their door the decree that declares them outlaws.
Disguised as soldiers, the latter depart along with the Breton fédérés; on the way, they are able to ascertain the veritable sentiments of this people whom they believe imbued with their rights and capable of taking a political initiative.1167 The pretended citizens and republicans they have to do with are, in sum, the former subjects of Louis XVI. and the future subjects of Napoleon I., that is to say, administrators and people, disciplined by habit and instinctively subordinate, requiring a government just as sheep require a shepherd and a watch-dog, accepting or submitting to shepherd and dog, provided these look and act the part, even if the shepherd be a butcher and the dog a wolf. To avoid isolation, to rejoin the most numerous herd as soon as possible, to always form masses and bodies and thus follow the impulsion which comes from above, and gather together scattered individuals, such is the instinct of the flock.
In the battalion of federates, they begin by saying that, as the Constitution is now accepted and the convention recognized, it is no longer allowed to protect deputies whom it has declared outlaws: "that would be creating a faction." Thereupon, the deputies withdraw from the battalion, and, in a little squad by themselves, march along separately. As they are nineteen in number, resolute and well armed, the authorities of the market-towns through which they pass make no opposition by force; it would be offering battle, and that surpasses a functionary's zeal; moreover, the population is either indifferent toward them or sympathetic. Nevertheless, efforts are made to stop them, sometimes to surround them and take them by surprise; for, a warrant of arrest is out against them, transmitted through the hierarchical channel, and every local magistrate feels bound to do his duty as gendarme. Under this administrative network, the meshes of which they encounter everywhere, the proscribed deputies can do naught else but hide in caves or escape by sea.—On reaching Bordeaux, they find other sheep getting ready for the slaughter-house. Saige, the mayor, preaches conciliation and patience: he declines the aid of four or five thousand young men, three thousand grenadiers of the National Guard, and two or three hundred volunteers who had formed themselves into a club against the Jacobin club. He persuades them to disband; he sends a deputation to Paris to entreat the Convention to overlook "a moment of error" and pardon their "brethren who had gone astray."—"They flattered themselves," says a deputy, an eye-witness,1168 "that prompt submission would appease the resentment of tyrants and that these would be, or pretend to be, generous enough to spare a town that had distinguished itself more than any other during the Revolution." Up to the last, they are to entertain the same illusions and manifest the same docility. When Tallien, with his eighteen hundred peasants and brigands, enters Bordeaux, twelve thousand National Guards, equipped, armed and in uniform, receive him wearing oak-leaf crowns; they listen in silence to "his astounding and outrageous discourse;" they suffer him to tear off their crowns, cockades and epaulettes; the battalions allow themselves to be disbanded on the spot; on returning to their quarters they listen with downcast eyes to the proclamation which "orders all inhabitants without distinction to bring their arms within thirty-six hours, under the penalty of death, to the glacis of the Chateau-Trompette; before the time elapses thirty thousand guns, swords, pistols and even pocket-knives are given up."
Here, as at Paris, on the 20th of June, 10th of August, 2nd of September, 3rd of May and 2nd of June, as at every critical moment of the Revolution in Paris and the provinces, habits of subordination and of amiability, stamped on a people by a provident monarchy and a time-honored civilization, have blunted in man the foresight of danger, his aggressive instinct, his independence and the faculty of depending upon himself only, the willingness to help one another and of saving himself. Inevitably, when anarchy brings a nation back to the state of nature, the tame animals will be eaten by the savage ones,—these are now let loose and immediately they show their true nature.
If the men of the "Mountain" had been statesmen, or even sensible men, they would have shown themselves humane, if not for the sake of humanity, at least through calculation; for in this France, so little republican, all the republican strength is not too great for the founding of the Republic, while, through their principles, their culture, their social position and their number, the Girondins form the élite and the force, the flower and the sap of the party.—The death-cry of the "Mountain" against the insurgents of Lozére1169 and Vendée can be understood: they had raised the king's white flag; they accepted leaders and instructions from Coblentz and London. But neither Bordeaux, Marseilles nor Lyons are royalist, or in alliance with the foreigner.
"We, rebels!" write the Lyonnese;1170 "Why we see no other than the tri-color flag waving; the white cockade, the symbol of rebellion, has never been raised within our walls. We, royalists! Why, shouts of 'Long live the Republic' are heard on all sides, and, spontaneously (in the session of July 2nd) we have all sworn to fall upon whoever should propose a king.... Your representatives tell you that we are anti-revolutionaries, we who have accepted the Constitution. They tell you that we protect émigrés when we have offered to surrender all those that you might indicate. They tell you that our streets are filled with refractory priests, when we have not even opened the doors of Pierre-en-Cize (prison) to the thirty-two priests confined there by the old municipality, without indictment, without any charge whatever against them, solely because they were priests."
Thus, at Lyons, the pretended aristocrats were, then, not only republicans but democrats and radicals, loyal to the established régime, and submissive to the worst of the revolutionary laws, while the same state of things prevailed at Bordeaux, at Marseilles and even at Toulon.1171 And furthermore, they accepted the outrages of May 31 and June 2;1172 they stopped contesting the usurpations of Paris; they no longer insisted on the return of the excluded deputies. On the 2nd of August at Bordeaux, and the 30th of July at Lyons, the Committee-Extraordinary of Public Safety resigned; there no longer existed any rival assembly opposed to the Convention. After the 24th of July,1173 Lyons solemnly recognized the supreme and central authority, reserving nothing but its municipal franchises.—And better still, in striking testimony of political orthodoxy, the Council-General of the department prescribed a civic festival for the 10th of August analogous to that of Paris. The Lyonnese, already blockaded, indulged in no hostile manifestation; on the 7th of August they marched out of their advanced positions to fraternize with the first body of troops sent against them.1174 They conceded everything, save on one point, which they could not yield without destruction, namely, the assurance that they should not be given up defenseless to the arbitrary judgment of their local tyrants, to the spoliation, proscriptions and revenge of the Jacobin rabble. In sum, at Marseilles and Bordeaux, especially at Lyons and Toulon, the sections had revolted only on that account; acting promptly and spontaneously, the people had thrust aside the knife which a few ruffians aimed at their throats; they had not been, and were not now, willing to be "Septemberised," that was their sole concern. Provided they were not handed over to the butchers bound hand and foot, they would open their gates. On these minimum terms the "Mountain" could terminate the civil war before the end of July. It had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the home of Buzot, at Caen the home of Charlotte Corday and the central seat of the fugitive Girondins, established permanent obedience through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.1175 The measures that had pacified the most compromised province would have brought back the others, and through this policy, Paris, without striking a blow, would have secured the three largest cities in France, the capital of the South-west, that of the South, and the capital of the Center.
On the contrary, should Paris persist in imposing on them the domination of its local Jacobins there was a risk of their being thrown into the arms of the enemy. Rather than fall back into the hands of the bandits who had ransomed and decimated them, Toulon, starved out, was about to receive the English within its walls and surrender to them the great arsenal of the South. Not less famished, Bordeaux might be tempted to demand aid from another English fleet; a few marches would brings the Piedmontese army to Lyons; France would then b cut in two, while the plan of stirring up the South against the North was proposed to the allies by the most clear-sighted of their councilors.1176 Had this plan been carried out it is probably that the country would have been lost.—In any event, there was danger in driving the insurgents to despair: for, between the unbridled dictatorship of their victorious assassins and the musketry of the besieging army, there could be no hesitation by men of any feeling; it was better to be beaten on the ramparts than allow themselves to be bound for the guillotine; brought to a stand under the scaffold, their sole resource was to depend on themselves to the last.—Thus, through its unreasonableness, the "Mountain" condemns itself to a number of sieges or blockades which lasted several months,1177 to leaving Var and Savoy unprotected, to exhausting the arsenals, to employing against Frenchmen1178 troops and munitions needed against foreigners, and all this at the moment the foreigner was taking Valenciennes1179 and Mayence, when thirty thousand royalist were organizing in Lozére, when the great Vendean army was laying siege to Nantes, when each new outbreak of fighting was threatening to connect the flaming frontier with the conflagration in the Catholic countries.1180—With a jet of cold water aptly directed, the "Mountain" could extinguish the fires it had kindled in the great republican towns; otherwise, nothing remained but to let them increase at the risk of consuming the whole country, with no other hope than that they might at last die out under a mass of ruins, and with no other object but to rule over captives and the dead.
But this is precisely the Jacobin aim; for, he is not satisfied with less than absolute submission; he must rule at any cost, just as he pleases, by fair means or foul, no matter over what ruins. A despot by instinct and installation, his dogma has consecrated him King; he is King by natural and divine right, in the name of eternal verity, the same as Philip II., enthroned by his religious system and blessed by his Holy Office. Hence he can abandon no jot or title of his authority without a sacrifice of principle, nor treat with rebels, unless they surrender at discretion; simply for having risen against legitimate authority, they are traitors and villains. And who are greater rascals the renegades who, after three years of patient effort, just as the sect finally reaches its goal, oppose its accession to power!1181 At Nîmes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Toulon, and Lyons, not only have they interfered with or arrested the blow which Paris struck, but they have put down the aggressors, closed the club, disarmed the fanatical and imprisoned the leading Maratists; and worse still, at Lyons and at Toulon, five or six massacreurs, or promoters of massacre, Châlier and Riard, Jassaud, Sylvestre and Lemaille, brought before the courts, have been condemned and executed after a trial in which all the forms were strictly adhered to.—That is the inexpiable crime; for, in this trial, the "Mountain" is involved; the principles of Sylvestre and Châlier are its principles; what is accomplished in Paris, they have attempted in the provinces; if they are guilty, it is also guilty; it cannot tolerate their punishment without assenting to its own punishment. Accordingly,
* it must proclaim them heroes and martyrs,
* it must canonize their memory,1182
* it must avenge their tortures,
* it must resume and complete their assaults,
* it must restore their accomplices to their places,
* it must render them omnipotent,
* it must force each rebel city to accept the rule of its rabble and villains.
It matters little whether the Jacobins be a minority, whether at Bordeaux, they have but four out of twenty-eight sections on their side, at Marseilles five out of thirty-two, whether at Lyons they can count up only fifteen hundred devoted adherents.1183 Suffrages are not reckoned, but weighed, for legality is founded, not on numbers, but on patriotism, the sovereign people being composed wholly of sans-culottes. So much the worse for towns where the anti-revolutionary majority is so great; they are only more dangerous; under the republican demonstrations is concealed the hostility of old parties and of the "suspect" classes, the Moderates, the Feuillants and Royalists, merchants, men of the legal profession, property-owners and muscadins.1184 These towns are nests of reptiles and must be crushed out.