Part 23

Thus in the summer of 1793 France seemed to be falling to pieces. It was saved by the imbecility and disunion of the hostile powers. In the north the French army after the treason of Dumouriez could only attempt to cover the frontier. The Austrians were joined by British, Dutch and Prussian forces. Had the Allies pushed straight upon Paris, they might have ended the war. But the desire of each ally to make conquests on his own account led them to spend time and strength in sieges. When Conde and Valenciennes had been taken, the British went off to assail Dunkirk and the Prussians retired into Luxemburg. In the east the Prussians and Austrians took Mainz at the end of July, allowing the garrison to depart on condition of not serving against the Allies for a year. Then they invaded Alsace, but their mutual jealousy prevented them from going farther. Thus the summer passed away without any decisive achievement of the coalition. Meanwhile the Committee of Public Safety, inspired by Danton, strove to rebuild the French administrative system. In July the Committee was renewed and Danton fell out; but soon afterwards it was reinforced by two officers, Carnot, who undertook the organization of the army, and Prieur of the Cote d'Or, who undertook its equipment. Administrators of the first rank, these men renovated the warlike power of France, and enabled her to deal those crushing blows which broke up the coalition.

The reign of terror.

The Royalist and Girondin insurrections and the critical aspect of the war favoured the establishment of what is known as the reign of terror. Terrorism had prevailed more or less since the beginning of the Revolution, but it was the work of those who desired to rule, not of the nominal rulers. It had been lawless and rebellious. It ended by becoming legal and official. While Danton kept power Terrorism remained imperfect, for Danton, although unscrupulous, did not love cruelty and kept in view a return to normal government. But soon after Danton had ceased to be a member of the Committee of Public Safety Robespierre was elected, and now became the most powerful man in France. Robespierre was an acrid fanatic, and unlike Danton, who only cared to secure the practical results of the Revolution, he had a moral and religious ideal which he intended to force on the nation. All who rejected his ideal were corrupt; all who resented his ascendancy were traitors. The death of Marat, who was stabbed by Charlotte Corday (q.v.) to avenge the Girondins, gave yet another pretext for terrible measures of repression. In Paris the armed ruffians who had long preyed upon respectable citizens were organized as a revolutionary army, and other revolutionary armies were established in the provinces. Two new laws placed almost everybody at the mercy of the government. The Law of the Maximum, passed on the 17th of September, fixed the price of food and made it capital to ask for more. The Law of Suspects, passed at the same time, declared suspect every person who was of noble birth, or had held office before the Revolution, or had any connexion with an _emigre_, or could not produce a card of _civisme_ granted by the local authority, which had full discretion to refuse. Any suspect might be arrested and imprisoned until the peace or sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal. An earlier law had established in every commune an elective committee of surveillance. These bodies, better known as revolutionary committees, were charged with the enforcement of the Law of Suspects. On the 10th of October the new constitution was suspended and the government declared revolutionary until the peace.

Execution of the queen.

The spirit of those in power was shown by the massacres which followed on the surrender of Lyons in that month. In Paris the slaughter of distinguished victims began with the trial of Marie Antoinette, who was guillotined on the 16th. Twenty-one Girondin deputies were next brought to the bar and, with the exception of Valaze who stabbed himself, were beheaded on the last day of October, Madame Roland and other Girondins of note suffered later. In November the duke of Orleans, who had styled himself Philippe Egalite, had sat in the Convention, and had voted for the king's death, went to the scaffold. Bailly, Barnave and many others of note followed before the end of the year. As the bloody work went on the pretence of trial became more and more hollow, the chance of acquittal fainter and fainter. The Revolutionary Tribunal was a mere instrument of state. Knowing the slight foundation of its power the government deliberately sought to destroy all whose birth, political connexions or past career might mark them out as leaders of opposition. At the same time it took care to show that none was so obscure or so impotent as to be safe when its policy was to destroy.

The disastrous effects of the Terror were heightened by the financial mismanagement of the Jacobins. Assignats were issued with such reckless profusion that the total for the three years of the Convention has been estimated at 7250 millions of francs. Enormous depreciation ensued and, although penalties rising to death itself were denounced against all who should refuse to take them at par, they fell to little more than 1% of their nominal value. What were known as revolutionary taxes were imposed at discretion by the representatives on mission and the local authorities. A forced loan of 1000 millions was exacted from those citizens who were reputed to be prosperous. Immense supplies of all kinds were requisitioned for the armies, and were sometimes allowed to rot unused. Anarchy and state interference having combined to check the trade in necessaries, the government undertook to feed the people, and spent huge sums, especially on bread for the starving inhabitants of Paris. As no regular budget was attempted, as accounts were not kept, and as audit was unknown, the opportunities for fraud and embezzlement were endless. Even when due allowance has been made for the financial disorder which the Convention inherited from previous assemblies, and for the war which it had to wage against a formidable alliance, it cannot be acquitted of reckless and wasteful maladministration.

Revolutionary legislation. The new calendar.

Notwithstanding the disorder of the time, the mass of new laws produced by the Convention was extraordinary. A new system of weights and measures, a new currency, a new chronological era (that of the Republic), and a new calendar were introduced (see the section _Republican Calendar_ below). A new and elaborate system of education was decreed. Two drafts of a complete civil code were made and, although neither was enacted, particular changes of great moment were decreed. Many of the new laws were stamped with the passions of the time. Such were the laws which suppressed all the remaining bodies corporate, even the academies, and which extinguished all manorial rights without any indemnity to the owners. Such too were the laws which took away the power of testation, placed natural children upon an absolute equality with legitimate, and gave a boundless freedom of divorce. It would be absurd, however, to dismiss all the legislative work of the Convention as merely partisan or eccentric. Much of it was enlightened and skilful, the product of the best minds in the assembly. To compete for power or even to express an opinion on public affairs was dangerous, and wholly to refrain from attendance might be construed as disaffection. Able men who wished to be useful without hazarding their lives took refuge in the committees where new laws were drafted and discussed. The result of their labours was often decreed as a matter of course. Whether the decree would be carried into effect was always uncertain.

Overthrow of the Paris Commune. Fall of the Dantonists.

The ruling faction was still divided against itself. The Commune of Paris, which had overthrown the Girondins, was jealous of the Committee of Public Safety, which meant to be supreme. Robespierre, the leading member of the committee, abhorred the chiefs of the Commune, not merely because they conflicted with his ambition but from difference of character. He was orderly and temperate, they were gross and debauched; he was a deist, they were atheists. In November the Commune fitted up Notre Dame as a temple of Reason, selected an opera girl to impersonate the goddess, and with profane ceremony installed her in the choir. All the churches in Paris were closed. Danton, when he felt power slipping from his hands, had retired from public business to his native town of Arcis-sur-Aube. When he became aware of the feud between Robespierre and the Commune, he conceived the hope of limiting the Terror and guiding the Revolution into a sane course. He returned to Paris and joined with Robespierre in carrying the law of 14 Frimaire (December 4), which gave the Committee of Public Safety absolute control over all municipal authorities. He became the advocate of mercy, and his friend Camille Desmoulins pleaded for the same cause in the _Vieux Cordelier_. Then the oppressed nation took courage and began to demand pardon for the innocent and even justice upon murderers. A sharp contest ensued between the Dantonists and the Commune, Robespierre inclining now to this side, now to that, for he was really a friend to neither. His friend St Just, a younger and fiercer man, resolved to destroy both. Hebert and his followers in despair planned a new insurrection, but they were deserted by Hanriot, their military chief. Their doom was thus fixed. Twenty leaders of the Commune were arrested on the 17th of March 1794 and guillotined a week later. It was then Danton's turn. He had several warnings, but either through over-confidence or weariness of life he scorned to fly. On the 30th he was arrested along with his friends Desmoulins, Delacroix, Philippeaux and Westermann. St Just read to the Convention a report on their case pre-eminent even in that day for its shameless disregard of truth, nay, of plausibility. Before the Revolutionary Tribunal Danton defended himself with such energy that St Just took means to have him silenced. Danton and his friends were executed on the 5th of April.

Supremacy of Robespierre.

For a moment the conflict of parties seemed at an end. None could presume to challenge the authority of the Committee of Public Safety, and in the committee none disputed the leadership of Robespierre. Robespierre was at last free to establish the republic of virtue. On the 7th of May he persuaded the Convention to decree that the French people acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. On the 4th of June he was elected president of the Convention, and from that time forward he appeared to be dictator of France. On the 8th the festival of the Supreme Being was solemnized, Robespierre acting as pontiff amid the outward deference and secret jeers of his colleagues. But Robespierre knew what a gulf parted him from almost all his countrymen. He knew that he could be safe only by keeping power and powerful only by making the Terror more stringent. Two days after the festival his friend Couthon presented the crowning law of the Terror, known as the Law of 22 Prairial. As the Revolutionary Tribunal was said to be paralysed by forms and delays, this law abolished the defence of prisoners by counsel and the examination of witnesses. Thenceforward the impressions of judges and jurors were to decide the fate of the accused. For all offences the penalty was to be death. The leave of the Convention was no longer required for the arrest of a member. In spite of some murmurs even this law was adopted. Its effect was fearful. The Revolutionary Tribunal had hitherto pronounced 1200 death sentences. In the next six weeks it pronounced 1400. With Robespierre's approval St Just sketched at this time the plan of an ideal society in which every man should have just enough land to maintain him; in which domestic life should be regulated by law and all children over seven years should be educated by the state. Pending this regeneration of society St Just advised the rule of a dictator.

The Revolutionary War. Republican successes.

The growing ferocity of the Terror appeared more hideous as the dangers threatening the government receded. The surrender of Toulon in December 1793 closed the south of France to foreign enemies. The war in La Vendee turned against the insurgents from the time when the veteran garrison of Mainz came to reinforce the Republican army. After a severe defeat at Cholet on the 16th of October the Royalists determined to cross the Loire and raise Brittany and Anjou, where the Chouans, or Royalist

## partisans, were already stirring. They failed in an attempt on the

little seaport of Granville and in another upon Angers. In December they were defeated with immense loss at Le Mans and at Savenay. The rebellion would probably have died out but for the measures of the new Republican general Turreau, who wasted La Vendee so horribly with his "infernal columns" that he drove the peasants to take up arms once more. Yet Turreau's crimes were almost surpassed by Carrier, the representative on mission at Nantes, who, finding the guillotine too slow in the destruction of his prisoners, adopted the plan of drowning them wholesale. In the autumn of 1793 the war against the coalition took a turn favourable to France. The energy of Danton, the organizing skill of Carnot, and the high spirit of the French nation, resolute at all costs to avoid dismemberment, had well employed the respite given by the sluggishness of the Allies. In Flanders the English were defeated at Hondschoote (September 8) and the Austrians at Wattignies (October 15). In the east Hoche routed the Austrians at Weissenburg and forced them to recross the Rhine before the end of 1793. The summer of 1794 saw France victorious on all her frontiers. Jourdan won the battle of Fleurus (June 25), which decided the fate of the Belgian provinces. The Prussians were driven out of the eastern departments. Against the Spaniards and the Sardinians the French were also successful.

Fall of Robespierre. The 9th Thermidor.

Under these circumstances government by terror could not endure. Robespierre was not a man of action; he knew not how to form or lead a party; he lived not with his fellows but with his own thoughts and ambitions. He was hated and feared by most of the oligarchy. They laughed at his religion, resented his puritanism, and felt themselves in daily peril. His only loyal friends in the Committee of Public Safety, Couthon and St Just, were themselves unpopular. Robespierre professed consideration for the deputies of the Plain, who were glad to buy safety by conforming to his will; but he could not reckon on their help in time of danger. By degrees a coalition against Robespierre was formed in the Mountain. It included old followers of Danton like Taillen, independent Jacobins like Cambon, some of the worst Terrorists like Fouche, and such a consummate time-server as Barere. In the course of July its influence began to be felt. When St Just proposed Robespierre to the committees as dictator, he found no response. On the 8th Thermidor (26th of July) Robespierre addressed the Convention, deploring the invectives against himself and the Revolutionary Tribunal and demanding the purification of the committees and the punishment of traitors. His enemies took the speech as a declaration of war and thwarted a proposal that it should be circulated in the departments. Robespierre felt his ascendancy totter. He repeated his speech with more success to the Jacobin Club. His friends determined to strike, and Hanriot ordered the National Guards to hold themselves in readiness. Robespierre's enemies called on the Committee of Public Safety to arrest the traitors, but the committee was divided. On the morning of the 9th Thermidor St Just was beginning to speak in the Convention when Tallien cut him short. Robespierre and all who tried to speak in his behalf were shouted down. The Plain was deaf to Robespierre's appeal. Finally the Convention decreed the arrest of Robespierre, of his brother Augustin, of Couthon and of St Just. But the Commune and the Jacobin Club were on the alert. They sounded the tocsin, mustered their partisans, and released the prisoners. The Convention outlawed Robespierre and his friends and sent out commissioners to rally the citizens. It named Barras, a deputy who had served in the royal army, to lead its forces. Had Robespierre possessed Danton's energy, the result might have been doubtful. He did nothing himself and benumbed his followers. Without an effort Barras captured the Hotel de Ville. Robespierre, whose jaw had been shattered by a pistol shot, was left in agony for the night. On the next morning he was beheaded along with his brother, Couthon, St Just, Hanriot and seventeen more of his adherents. On the day after seventy-one members of the Commune followed them to the scaffold. Such was the revolution of the 9th Thermidor (27th of July 1794) which ended the Reign of Terror.

In a period of fifteen months, it has been calculated, about 17,000 persons had been executed in France under form of law. The number of those who were shot, drowned or otherwise massacred without the pretence of a trial can never be accurately known, but must be reckoned far greater. The number of persons arrested and imprisoned reached hundreds of thousands, of whom many died in their crowded and filthy jails. The names on the list of _emigres_ at the close of the Terror were about 150,000. Of these a small proportion had borne arms against their country. The rest were either harmless fugitives from destruction or had never quitted France and had been placed on the list simply in order that they might incur the penalties of emigration. Every one of this multitude was liable to instant death if found in French territory. Their relatives were subjected to various pains and penalties. All the property of those condemned to death and of _emigres_ was confiscated. The carnage of the Terror spread far beyond the clergy and the nobility, beyond even the middle class, for peasants and artisans were among the victims. It spread far beyond those who could conspire or rebel, for bedridden old men and women and young boys and girls were often sacrificed. It made most havoc in the flower of the nation, since every kind of eminence marked men for death. By imbuing Frenchmen with such a mutual hatred as nothing but the arm of despotic power could control the Reign of Terror rendered political liberty impossible for many years. The rule of the Terrorists made inevitable the reign of Napoleon.

Reaction after the Terror.

The fall of Robespierre had consequences unforeseen by his destroyers. Long kept mute by fear, the mass of the nation found a voice and demanded a total change of government. When once the reaction against Jacobin tyranny had begun, it was impossible to halt. Great numbers of prisoners were set at liberty. The Commune of Paris was abolished and the office of commandant of the National Guard was suppressed. The Revolutionary Tribunal was reorganized, and thenceforwards condemnations were rare. The Committees of Public Safety and General Security were remodelled, in virtue of a law that one-fourth of their number should retire at the end of every month and not be re-eligible until another month had elapsed. Somewhat later the Convention declared itself to be the only centre of authority, and executive business was parcelled out among sixteen committees. Most of the representatives on mission were recalled, and many office-holders were displaced. The trial of 130 prisoners sent up from Nantes led to so many terrible disclosures that public feeling turned still more fiercely against the Jacobins; Carrier himself was condemned and executed; and in November the Jacobin Club was closed. In December 73 members of the Convention who had been imprisoned for protesting against the violence done to the Girondins on the 2nd of June 1793 were allowed to resume their seats, and gave a decisive majority to the anti-Jacobins. Soon afterwards the law of the Maximum was repealed. A decree was passed in February 1795 severing the connexion of church and state and allowing general freedom of worship. At the beginning of March those Girondin deputies who survived came back to their places in the Convention.

## Parties in the Assembly after Thermidor.

But the return to normal life after the Jacobin domination was not destined to be smooth or continuous. Beside the remnant of Terrorists, such as Billaud Varennes and Collot d'Herbois, who had joined in the revolt against Robespierre, there were in the Convention at that time three principal factions. The so-called Independents, such as Barras and Merlin of Douai, who were all Jacobins, but had stood aloof from the internal conflicts of the party, hated Royalism as much as ever and desired the continuance of the war which was essential to their power. The Thermidorians, the immediate agents in Robespierre's overthrow, such as Tallien, had loudly professed Jacobinism, but wanted to make their peace with the nation. They sought for an understanding with the Girondins and Feuillants, and some went so far as to correspond with the exiled princes. Lastly, those members who had never been Jacobins wanted a speedy return to legal government at home and therefore wished for peace abroad. While bent on preserving the civil equality introduced by the Revolution, many of these men were indifferent as between constitutional monarchy and a republic. The government, mainly Thermidorian, trimmed between Moderates and Independents, and for this reason its actions were often inconsistent.

Progress of the reaction.

The Jacobins were strong enough to carry a decree for keeping the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI. as a national festival. They could count on the populace, because work was still scarce, food was still dear, and a multitude of Parisians knew not where to find bread. A committee having recommended the indictment of Collot d'Herbois and three other Terrorists, there ensued the rising of the 12th Germinal (April 1). The mob forced their way into the hall of the Convention and remained there until the National Guards of the wealthy quarters drove them out. By a decree of the Convention the four accused persons were deported to Cayenne, a new mode of dealing with political offenders almost as effective as the guillotine, while less apt to excite compassion. The National Guard was reorganized so as to exclude the lowest class. The property of persons executed since the 10th of March 1793 was restored to their families. The signs of reaction daily became more unmistakable. Worshippers crowded to the churches; the _emigres_ returned by thousands; and Anti-Jacobin outbreaks, followed by massacre, took place in the south. The despair of the Jacobins produced a second rising in Paris on the 1st Prairial (May 20). Again the mob invaded the Convention, murdered a deputy named Feraud who attempted to shield the president, and set his head on a pike. The ultra-Jacobin members took possession and embodied their wishes in decrees. Again the hall was cleared by the National Guards, but order was restored in Paris only by employing regular troops, a new precedent in the history of the Revolution. Paris was disarmed, and several leaders of the insurrection were sentenced to death. The Revolutionary Tribunal was suppressed. Toleration was proclaimed for all priests who would declare their obedience to the laws of the state. Royalists began to count upon the restoration of young Louis the Dauphin, otherwise Louis XVII.; but his health had been ruined by persevering cruelty, and he died on the 10th of June.

Progress of the war.