Part 21

"I would rather," said he, "be guillotined than be a guillotiner; besides, my life is not worth the trouble, and I am sick of the world!"

"Well, then, thou shouldst depart."

"Depart!" he repeated, curling his lip disdainfully, "Depart! Can we carry your country away on the sole of our shoe?"

On Germinal 10, as the revolutionary calendar went (March 31, 1796), he was informed that his arrest was being discussed in the Committee of Public Safety. His arrest gave rise to general excitement, to a sombre anxiety. Danton and the rest of the accused were brought before the revolutionary tribunal. They displayed an audacity of speech and a contempt of their judges wholly unusual. They were taken to the Conciergerie, and thence to the scaffold.

They went to death with the intrepidity usual at that epoch. There were many troops under arms, and their escort was numerous. The crowd, generally loud in its applause, was silent. Danton stood erect, and looked proudly and calmly around. At the foot of the scaffold he betrayed a momentary emotion. "Oh, my best beloved--my wife!" he cried. "I shall not see thee again!" Then suddenly interrupting himself: "No weakness, Danton!"

Thus perished the last defender of humanity and moderation; the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time no voice was raised against the dictatorship of terror. During the four months following the fall of the Danton party, the committee exercised their authority without opposition or restraint. Death became the only means of governing, and the republic was given up to daily and systematic executions.

Robespierre, who was considered the founder of a moral democracy, now attained the highest degree of elevation and of power. He became the object of the general flattery of his party; he was the great man of the republic. At the Jacobins and in the Convention his preservation was attributed to "the good genius of the republic" and to the Supreme Being, Whose existence he had decreed on Floréal 18, the celebration of the new religion being fixed for Prairial 20.

But the end of this system drew near. The committees opposed Robespierre in their own way. They secretly strove to bring about his fall by accusing him of tyranny.

Naturally sad, suspicious, and timid, he became more melancholy and mistrustful than ever. He even rose against the committee itself. On Thermidor 8 (July 25, 1794), he entered the Convention at an early hour. He ascended the tribunal, and denounced the committee in a most skilful speech. Not a murmur, not a mark of applause welcomed this declaration of war.

The members of the two committees thus attacked, who had hitherto remained silent, seeing the Mountain thwarted and the majority undecided, thought it time to speak. Vadier first opposed Robespierre's speech and then Robespierre himself. Cambon went further. The committees had also spent the night in deliberation. In this state of affairs the sitting of Thermidor 9 (July 27) began.

Robespierre, after attempting to speak several times, while his voice was drowned by cries of "Down with the tyrant!" and the bell which the president, Thuriot, continued ringing, now made a last effort to be heard. "President of assassins," he cried, "for the last time, will you let me speak?"

Said one of the Mountain: "The blood of Danton chokes you!" His arrest was demanded, and supported on all sides. It was now half-past five, and the sitting was suspended till seven. Robespierre was transferred to the Luxembourg. The commune, after having ordered the gaolers not to receive him, sent municipal officers with detachments to bring him away. Robespierre was liberated, and conducted in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville. On arriving, he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. "Long live Robespierre! Down with the traitors!" resounded on all sides. But the Convention marched upon the Hôtel de Ville.

The conspirators, finding they were lost, sought to escape the violence of their enemies by committing violence on themselves. Robespierre shattered his jaw with a pistol shot. He was deposited for some time at the Committee of Public Safety before he was transferred to the Conciergerie; and here, stretched on a table, his face disfigured and bloody, exposed to the looks, the invectives, the curses of all, he beheld the various parties exulting in his fall, and charging upon him all the crimes that had been committed.

On Thermidor 10, about five in the evening, he ascended the death-cart, placed between Henriot and Couthon, mutilated like himself. His head was enveloped in linen, saturated with blood; his face was livid, his eyes were almost visionless. An immense crowd thronged round the cart, manifesting the most boisterous and exulting joy. He ascended the scaffold last. When his head fell, shouts of applause arose in the air, and lasted for some minutes.

Thermidor 9 was the first day of the revolution it which those fell who attacked. This indication alone manifested that the ascendant revolutionary movement had reached its term. From that day the contrary movement necessarily began.

From Thermidor 9, 1794, to the summer of 1795, the radical Mountain, in its turn, underwent the destiny it had imposed on others--for in times when the passions are called into play parties know not how to come to terms, and seek only to conquer. From that period the middle class resumed the management of the revolution, and the experiment of pure democracy had failed.

* * * * *

THOMAS CARLYLE

History of the French Revolution

Carlyle's "History of the French Revolution" appeared in 1837, some three years after the author had established himself in London. Never has the individuality of a historian so completely permeated his work; it is inconceivable that any other man should have written a single paragraph, almost a single sentence, of the history. To Carlyle, the story presents itself as an upheaval of elemental forces, vast elemental personalities storming titanically in their midst, vividly picturesque as a primeval mountain landscape illumined by the blaze of lightning, in a night of storms, with momentary glimpses of moon and stars. Although it was impossible for Carlyle to assimilate all the wealth of material even then extant, the "History," considered as a prose epic, has a permanent and unique value. His convictions, whatever their worth, came, as he himself put it, "flamingly from the heart." (Carlyle, biography: see vol. ix.)

I.---The End of an Era

On May 10, 1774, "with a sound absolutely like thunder," has the horologe of time struck, and an old era passed away. Is it the healthy peace or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France for the next ten years? Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone for ever. There is a young, still docile, well-intentioned king; a young, beautiful and bountiful, well-intentioned queen; and with them all France, as it were, become young. For controller-general, a virtuous, philosophic Turgot. Philosophism sits joyful in her glittering salons; "the age of revolutions approaches" (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy, blessed ones.

But with the working people it is not so well, whom we lump together into a kind of dim, compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the canaille. Singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly. Visible in France is no such thing as a government. But beyond the Atlantic democracy is born; a sympathetic France rejoices over the rights of man. Rochambeaus, Lameths, Lafayettes have drawn their swords in this sacred quarrel; return, to be the missionaries of freedom. But, what to do with the finances, having no Fortunatus purse?

For there is the palpablest discrepancy between revenue and expenditure. Are we breaking down, then, into the horrors of national bankruptcy? Turgot, Necker, and others have failed. What apparition, then, could be welcomer than that of M. de Calonne? A man of indisputable genius, even fiscal genius, more or less; of intrinsically rich qualities! For all straits he has present remedy. Calonne also shall have trial! With a genius for persuading--before all things for borrowing; after three years of which, expedient heaped on expedient, the pile topples perilous.

Whereupon a new expedient once more astonishes the world, unheard of these hundred and sixty years--Convocation of the Notables. A round gross of notables, meeting in February, 1787; all privileged persons. A deficit so enormous! Mismanagement, profusion, is too clear; peculation itself is hinted at. Calonne flies, storm-driven, over the horizon. To whom succeeds Loménie-Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse--adopting Calonne's plans, as Calonne had proposed to adopt Turgot's; and the notables are, as it were, organed out in kind of choral anthem of thanks, praises, promises.

Loménie issues conciliatory edicts, fiscal edicts. But if the Parlement of Paris refuse to register them? As it does, entering complaints instead. Loménie launches his thunderbolt, six score lettres de cachet; the Parlement is trundled off to Troyes, in Champagne, for a month. Yet two months later, when a royal session is held, to have edicts registered, there is no registering. Orleans, "Equality" that is to be, has made the protest, and cut its moorings.

The provincial parlements, moreover, back up the Paris Parlement with its demand for a States-General. Loménie hatches a cockatrice egg; but it is broken in premature manner; the plot discovered and denounced. Nevertheless, the Parlement is dispersed by D'Agoust with Gardes Françaises and Gardes Suisses. Still, however, will none of the provincial parlements register.

Deputations coming from Brittany meet to take counsel, being refused audience; become the Breton Club, first germ of the Jacobins' Society. Loménie at last announces that the States-General shall meet in the May of next year (1789). For the holding of which, since there is no known plan, "thinkers are invited" to furnish one.