eighty-seven commissioners of the departments had carried each a pike; they now approached the president, and deposited the pikes in his hand, and the president formed of them one bundle, which he tied together with a riband of the colours of the nation. On the summit of a rock stood a colossal statue of the French people. With one hand the figure was securing a bundle of rods, which represented the departments; while a monster, whose tail was that of a sea-dragon, was issuing from the reeds of a fetid marsh and making an effort to crawl up to and break the bundle of rods. Last of all, the due honours were paid to the FrenchThe giant, trampling on the breast of the monster, held men who had died in fighting for the Republic. The a club suspended over his head, to strike a mortal urn which contained these cherished remains was rewound. "French people," exclaimed the president, moved to the vestibule of the funeral temple, erected "here you are represented before your own eyes under at one end of the Champ-de-Mars. The president, an emblem rich in instructive lessons: this giant-embracing the urn with one hand, while with the other whose powerful hand unites and fastens in a single he showed to the people the crown of laurel destined bundle the departments in which consists your grandeur for the martyrs who founded liberty, bade a solemn and your strength,-this giant is You: this monster, farewell to their brethren who had fallen in the combats. whose criminal hand would break the bundle and separate that which Nature has united-it is Federalism." The last halt was in the Champ-de-Mars, where the president, in the midst of an assemblage which filled all the place, ascended to the summit of the altar of the country, accompanied by the oldest man among the commissioners from the departments; and "from this elevation, as from the true Holy Mount, published the result of the votes of the primary Assemblies of the Republic, and proclaimed the Constitution." He then deposited the constitutional act and the table of votes in the ark which rested on the altar. The salvos of artillery and the shouts of the spectators shook all around: "heaven and earth responded to this proclamation of the only constitution, since man has existed, which has given to a great empire a liberty founded on equality, and which has made of fraternity a political dogma." * During the procession the The Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12th, 1776, contains all that the French Declaration does, and it came from the same hand as the Declaration of the American Congress, July 4, 1776. The Virginia Declaration declares, (1) "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." (5) "That no free government or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." (16) "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, and not by force and violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other." This goes far beyond the French Declaration, and comes nearer to the true foundations of society. This Declaration Such was the fête in the Champ-de-Mars on the 10th of August, 1793, when a republican constitution was proclaimed for France, and brotherhood was declared to be a political principle. The four years which had passed since the capture of the Bastile had been presented to the eyes of the people by symbols borrowed from the heathenism of Greece and Rome, instead of those which were appropriate to the age and to the Christian principle of brotherhood. But though ill understood, the sentiment was real, or the pomp would have appeared ridiculous; and it was not ridiculous, only because the people were in earnest.* was made in a country where slavery existed; and it was retained in the amended Virginia Constitution of 1830, under which slavery still exists. * After getting so far in the History of the French Revolution, a man may well ask, What was it? There is no answer to the question among the English writers who have treated of the French Revolution; nor is the answer easy. Much of what has been written on the causes of the French Revolution, and its real significance, is too puerile to deserve any notice. Those who wish to see the spirit in which it ought to be considered, may read the Explication de la Révolution Française,' prefixed to the two small volumes of Poujoulat's 'Histoire de la Révolution Française,' which will show that the Revolution was a catastrophe, which had been preparing for centuries, and was hastened by the corrupt morals of the upper classes and the state of the finances. The cahiers of 1789 showed what progress the French had made in political knowledge; and the objects of many good men was to make a wise and salutary reform. But there was no clear acknowledgment of Christianity among them : all they possessed of Christian principles was borrowed from Rousseau, who took it from the Gospel. The leading Jacobins maintained the faith which they learned from Rousseau, but without a distinct recognition of its divine origin: and in the tempest of the Revolution the doctrines of Liberty and Equality became a sword, and not peace. Yet their doctrines have not been without effect: and the doctrines of the Jacobins, not their practice, are preferable to the materialism of the Gironde. CHAPTER XLIII. THE REIGN OF TERROR, THE defeat of the Gironde and the death of Marat left the power of opinion at the disposal of two men, Danton and Robespierre. But Danton had lost his revolutionary energy; Robespierre's was inexhaustible. The fall of the Gironde had been accomplished by an insurrection, like that which drove Louis from the Tuileries on the 10th of August; and this new movement required to be directed. There was a man ready to direct, a man of unwearied industry, of stedfast purpose, who could bear no equal or rival, Robespierre in the Convention, and Robespierre at the Jacobins. Danton has been aptly described as a man of passion, not a man of theory. He had no strong convictions, nor personal animosities; he had not the faith or the fanaticism which overpowers all resistance. The blood of September was on his conscience, and there was remorse in his bosom. His first wife was dead, and he had recently married a young woman, with whom he enjoyed the happiness of domestic life. Hébert had attacked Danton in the Père Duchesne; and on the 26th of August, Danton defended himself at the Jacobins. His defence was not in his usual vigorous style. He replied to certain vague charges against him as to his second marriage and the settlement that he had made on his wife, which was only 40,000 livres, the produce of his indemnification for an office which he had held, and of his labour: "he was proud of having been born a sans-culotte, and having received from nature sufficient strength to provide for his own subsistence." At the urgent entreaty of his wife and her family, he soon retired from Paris to his native place of Arcis-sur-Aube, to seek in this rural retreat the tranquillity which he could not find in the turbulence of the capital. Before leaving Paris he had an interview with Robespierre, who promised to defend him against any attacks upon his patriotism. They parted in appearance good friends: Robespierre glad to be rid of a rival; Danton perhaps in the expectation that Robespierre would be swept away by the tempest which he was attempting to control, and leave the field open to him. Robespierre had the confidence of the great mass of the people, because he acknowledged their sovereignty in the most unlimited terms. He had declared war against all parties who were obstacles to the consolidation of the Republic. Unlike his rival, he had a character on which there was not even a suspicion of corruption; and his austerity and simple mode of life were in harmony with the doctrines which he professed. On the 17th of July, 1791, after the massacre in the Champ-de-Mars," the Jacobins in alarm quitted their place of meeting; and Robespierre among them. He was greatly alarmed, and his fears magnified his danger. A carpenter, named Duplay, who lived in the Rue St. Honoré, saw Robespierre as he was coming along, and being anxious for his safety, took him by the hand and forced him into his house. He stayed there that evening, for he was afraid to go to his residence in the quarter called the Marais; and on the morrow his host would not let him go. From this time Robespierre lived with Duplay and his family, which consisted of Duplay's wife, a son and four daughters, of whom the eldest was twenty-five, and the youngest eighteen years of age.* Robespierre's income was derived from the rent of a small property in Artois, which belonged to him, his brother and his sister, and from his pay as a member of the Convention. But his wants were few he ate at Duplay's table, and lived in the same homely style as the carpenter's family. Between Eleonora, the eldest daughter of Duplay, and Robespierre, an attachment was formed, stronger on her part than his, for it was mingled with admiration. But the intercourse of daily life had established in Robespierre an affection founded on respect, and strengthened by habit; for it cannot be conceived that a man of Robespierre's character, absorbed in the Revolution, could find room in his bosom for the passion of love. Duplay approved of the attachment, and Robespierre and Eleonora, to whom the name of Cornelia had been given, were to be married when the Revolution was terminated and secured. The youngest sister, Elizabeth, married Lebas, one of Robespierre's colleagues. Robespierre had a chamber in Duplay's house, which contained a bed, a table, and four straw chairs. This chamber was both his sleeping and working room. Some pine shelves fixed against the wall contained his papers, reports, and the manuscripts of his numerous discourses, written in a fair hand, with many erasures, the evidence of the care with which he laboured his compositions. A few select books composed his library, and a volume of J. J. Rousseau or of Racine was generally open on his table. Here he spent the greatest part of his time, and he seldom went out except in the morning to the Assembly, and in the evening to the Jacobins. He kept the same kind of dress from first to last, and did not neglect propriety and neatness of costume, when propriety and neatness were no longer the fashion. A small number of select friends visited at Duplay's, who varied however with the times: Merlin de Thionville, and Fouché, who is said to have loved Robespierre's sister, though Robes pierre did not love him: Taschereau, Panis, Sergent; among the regular visitors were Lebas, St. Just, Couthon, David, and Camille Desmoulins; and "lastly, Madame de Chalabre, a wealthy lady of noble family, * Michelet, 'Hist. de la Rév. Française,' iii., p. 162. an enthusiastic admirer of Robespierre, who devoted herself to him like the widows of Corinth or Rome to the apostles of the new worship, offering him her fortune to further the popularisation of his ideas, and seeking the friendship of the wife and daughters of Duplay in order to merit a look from Robespierre.*" On the 11th of August, Lacroix (d'Eure et Loir) moved, and his motion was carried, that the Convention should take the proper measures for electing a new Assembly. But Robespierre, at the Jacobins, declared that nothing could save the Republic, if the Convention should separate, and a legislative assembly should be substituted for it. Called against his inclination to the Committee of Public Safety, he had witnessed things which he could never have suspected -" since he had seen the government nearer than he ever had before, he had been able to discover all the crimes which were daily committed." On the 14th, Robespierre again spoke at the Jacobins on the means of safety, or rather salvation; they were to cashier the generals, and to prevent knaves from being appointed in their places; to turn out all who were employed in administration, and to put honest men in their place; "to fall on all those odious journalists, every stroke of whose pen is an additional crime, and whose existence becomes daily more pernicious to society." One of Robespierre's measures of salvation was to destroy the liberty of the press. He concluded with a recommendation that the forty-eight sections should be requested to send delegates to the Jacobins to concert with them, with the delegates named by the Convention, and the federates, the measures best adapted to operate the great crisis which was to save the State. The meeting took place, an address was agreed upon (16th of August), and immediately presented to the Convention. It called for a general summons for every man to take arms, with the exception of those who were necessary for the cultivation of the earth. The address was referred to the Committee of Public Safety, and Barrère reported upon it in the same sitting; but the final decree was not proposed till the 23rd, when it was adopted. It declared that from that time until the enemy should be driven from the French territory, every Frenchman should be permanently in requisition for the service of the armies: Senart, Lamartine, ‘Hist. des Girondins,' Liv. xxx., 9, &c., has drawn a picture of Robespierre's domestic life. 'Révélations puisées dans les Cartons des Comités de Salut Public et de Sûreté générale,' calls Madame Chalabre " the infamous Chalabre, the cerberus of Robespierre, a female like a harpy." Between the widows of Corinth and a harpy there is a wondrous difference. Sénart's Mémoires, as the book is sometimes called, contains many curious facts, which he had good means of knowing; but judgment and moderation are totally wanting in it. There are a few letters from Mde. Chalabre to Robespierre in the Papiers Inédits,' &c.; which also contain (i., p. 155) some curious notes on Robespierre, by Fréron. He is charged with drinking wine and liqueurs to excess, except during the last few months of his life, when he drank only water. "the young men will go to the field of battle; the married men will make arms and convey provisions; the women will make tents, clothes, and serve in the hospitals; the children will turn the old linen into lint; the old men will be carried to the public places to strengthen the courage of the warriors, hatred of kings, and the unity of the Republic." The national buildings were to be turned into barracks, the public places into workshops for arms, and the earth of the cellars to be lixiviated to extract saltpetre from it: saddlehorses were to be taken for the cavalry; and drafthorses, except those employed in agriculture, for the conveyance of artillery and provisions: the Committee of Public Safety received full powers to cause all kinds of arms to be fabricated; and the representatives of the people, who were sent to execute the law, were to have the same power in their arrondissemens, acting in concert with the Committee of Public Safety: the levy of men was general; and the unmarried men and widowers without children, from eighteen to twentyfive years of age, were to march first, and to repair to the chief place of their district, where they were to be drilled daily until they received the order to set out.* The Convention called all France to arms, men, women, and children. It was not an army that was raised to defend the country: it was a whole nation. The finances were in a deplorable condition. The decree which declared the property of the princess de Lamballe, who perished in the massacres of September, to belong to the nation, was but a trifle, and merely a sample of the unscrupulous conduct of the Convention. The formation of the Grand Livre is an instance of their vigour and boldness. The public debt was a perfect chaos, consisting of obligations contracted before 1789 and since, of obligations varying in kind and degree; a whole so complicated that it required great skill and experience to understand any part, and left room for jobbing and speculation without end. Cambon's plan was to form a book consisting of one or many volumes, called Le Grand Livre de la dette publique,' in which all the obligations to the creditors of the State were to be entered; and the different titles of all the creditors were to be reduced to one uniform title, which would be the entries in the Grand Livre. · The public debt (la dette publique non viagère) consisted of the dette constituée, of the debt due at a fixed time, of the debt due and arising from the liquidation, and of the debt arising from the various creations of assignats. An explanation of these different debts could not be made in fewer words than those of Cambon's Report. The annual payments on account of the dette constituée amounted to 89,888,335 livres on the 1st of January, 1793. The debt payable at a fixed time consisted (1) of sums payable at Paris, and (2) of loans raised in foreign countries, the repayment of which was to be made in foreign money: * The decree of the 23rd of August consisted of eighteen articles. 'Hist. Parl.,' xxviii., 469. be accepted in payment for national domains until two years after peace was established; this was to make people "abandon their inert resistance, or the causing of internal troubles." The loan was to carry no inte "the titles on which the second part of the debt is | The forced loan was only to be repaid in national profounded," says the Report, "must be considered perty which remained on sale, and the loan could only sacred payment must be made in specie, and not in assignats." The debt "due and arising from liquidation" owed its origin to the Revolution, which, while it abolished many privileges and vexatious offices, gave the holders of such offices compensation. rest, which would be equivalent to an extraordinary The fourth head of debt was the assignats, of which 5,100,000,040 livres had been ordered to be fabricated by the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative, and the Convention. On the 1st of August, 1793, 484,153,987 livres were in the treasury or in course of fabrication. The amount that had been put in circulation was 4,615,846,053 livres, of which there had been paid in or burnt 840,000,000 livres arising from payments made on the purchase of national domains. The assignats in circulation on the 1st of August, 1793, amounted to 3,775,846,053 livres. The Convention had already diminished, by 558,624,000 livres the amount of assignats which were in circulation as money. This was effected by a decree which declared that all assignats with the king's head upon them, which were for more than 100 livres, should no longer circulate as money, but merely as notes payable to the bearer. Consequently the debt in assignats, which did not circulate as money, was a total of 558,624,000 livres; and that in assignats which circulated as money, was a total of 3,217,222,053 livres. The assignats which had been deprived of the character of money were receivable either as payment for taxes or as payment for national domains, up to the 1st of January, 1794, after which date they would have no value. The assignats with the royal face upon them were said or supposed to be in the hands of counter-revolutionary speculators; and it was considered to be prudent to adopt a measure which should compel people to pay them into the treasury. The dette constituée, as already observed, was represented by an annual payment of 89,888,333 livres. The debt due at a fixed time and payable in France, was a principal sum of 415,945,312 livres; and that payable in foreign countries and in foreign money, was a principal sum of 11,956,003 livres. The debt due and arising from the liquidation was a principal sum of 625,706,309 livres. Cambon's plan, which was to change all the titles of the creditors of the State into uniform inscriptions or entries in the Grand Livre, transformed the capital of every debt into a perpetual annual payment or rente. The principal sums due to each person were not entered in the Grand Livre, but only the rente or annual payment; but no rente under 50 livres was entered, in order to avoid increasing the number of creditors. The rentes were to be paid annually at the chief places of the several districts in France, instead of being payable at Paris only as before. The second part of Cambon's plan was to withdraw the assignats from circulation, and the basis of this part of his scheme was the forced loan of a milliard. tax during the war, and everybody would thus have an interest in seeing the war ended. The receipts or acknowledgments for the forced loans were not to be transferable: this was to prevent jobbing in them. If the loans were not paid at the times fixed, they were to be converted into a tax, and were not to be repaid. But the opportunity was allowed to good citizens of exempting themselves from the forced loan, by voluntarily lending the assignats which circulated as money, for it was necessary to diminish this enormous amount as much as possible. Accordingly such citizens could exchange their assignats for an inscription in the Grand Livre, which inscription would give them a title to a rente of five livres for every hundred paid into the treasury; but no loan of less than a thousand livres would be taken. The committee thought that voluntary loans would bring a milliard of assignats to the treasury before the 1st of December, 1793, and would thus reduce the circulation to 2,217,222,053. It was estimated that the whole amount of the annual rentes or interest payable upon the inscriptions in the Grand Livre would form a total of 200,000,000 livres; but this amount was to be subject to a deduction of 40,000,000, the amount of tax levied upon it, on the same footing as the tax on immoveable property; and thus the annual payments would be reduced to 160,000,000 livres. This measure had the advantage of bringing the public debt of France from disorder into order, and of simplifying and rendering clear what had been complicated and unintelligible, and required a science to understand."* The Jacobins were not satisfied with the Convention: it was not vigorous enough or severe enough for them. The Convention, however, had been pretty active during the month of August, and Robespierre had carried many of his propositions; but he had failed also in many of his proposed measures, and he now remained quiet, and let the Jacobins attack the Convention. There was great indignation against those who had signed the capitulation of Mainz, for it was said that the place had provisions for eight days, and that if it had held out two or three days more, it would have been saved. The Committee of General Security was attacked; but still more the Revolutionary Tribunal. Custine had been charged on the 28th of July: it was now the 26th, and he was not yet condemned. This delay was intolerable. Robespierre could no longer endure it. On the 25th of August he brought certain plans before the Jacobin club, which were adopted, and soon produced a new law for the was now extinguished, except in Lyon. The siege of reorganization of the Revolutionary Tribunal. "From Lyon began on the 8th of August, and lasted to the the summit of the Mountain," said Robespierre, "I 9th of October. It forms the most striking of all will give the signal to the people, and I will say to the revolutionary episodes. The town was summoned them, there are your enemies; strike." On the 27th to surrender unconditionally by Dubois Crancé and of August, Custine was tried before the Revolution- Gautier, the representatives of the people with the army ary Tribunal for treason. His alleged treasonable of the Alps, and by Kellermann, commander-in-chief of acts consisted in correspondence with the enemies of the army. The Lyonnais refused to surrender, and France, and having by these means facilitated the accused the republicans of firing before the time allowed entrance of the enemy on the territory of the Republic, for answering the summons had expired. Kellermann and of having delivered up to them towns, fortresses, affirmed that the Lyonnais fired first, and that the comstores, and arsenals belonging to the Republic. The mandant of the post in advance of the Croix Rousse, jury found him guilty, and he was condemned to who had asked for three hours to reply to the sumdeath. After his devotion to the revolutionary cause, mons, fired grape on Kellermann's men before the time he did not expect such a reward. He hoped to escape; was out. Kellermann may be believed on this point, and his condemnation utterly confounded him. There for he was averse to the attack on Lyon, and deferred was no doubt of his bravery on the field of battle, but it as long as he could. to be summoned from the command of an army to march to the scaffold was a reverse that required more fortitude than Custine possessed. On retiring from the court, he threw himself on his knees, and remained in this attitude for two hours. He entreated his confessor to pass the night before the execution with him, and he wrote to his son to enjoin him to defend his father's character and good name. He was attended to the scaffold by a priest, who held a crucifix which Custine embraced. The condemned general gazed on the crowd with strong emotions depicted in his countenance; and the crowd responded by shouts of joy. From earth he turned his eyes to heaven, moistened with tears. He kneeled in prayer at the foot of the ladder, rose and cast a glance on the fatal axe, and ascended the scaffold with firmness.* The war in La Vendée was a succession of bloody combats on a narrow theatre. On the 13th of August the royalists were routed at Luçon. Rossignol, commander-in-chief in La Vendée, had been deprived by Bourdon de l'Oise and Goupilleau, the representatives who were with the army. Tallien said in the Convention, "I shall not inquire if Rossignol drinks, or if he has pillaged, but whether your commissioners had the right to suspend him; and what do I care for a few acts of pillage?" Rossignol was restored to his command, and he appeared at the bar of the Convention. Robespierre, who was president, congratulated him on "having walked in the narrow path of patriotism.” Robespierre despised Rossignol, but he looked on him as a useful instrument. On the same day, a deputation of teachers appeared at the bar, praying that national Bor-education might be compulsory and gratuitous; and one of the children, who accompanied the deputation, requested that instead of preaching to them in the name of a self-styled God, they would instruct them. in the principles of equality, the rights of man, and the constitution. An explosion of indignation from the Convention saved Robespierre the necessity of a reply, which would certainly have been a rebuke. The Convention was recovering its authority. deaux submitted, and on the 30th of August commissioners from the twenty-four sections of that city appeared at the bar of the Convention, and asked for pardon, and the repeal of the decree which placed out of the pale of the law the members of the popular commission, which, they said, the people themselves had established. Their prayer was not granted. At the Jacobins they were worse received. Robespierre said, "that to be indulgent towards traitors would be to show themselves more cruel, more criminal towards the people than the traitors themselves: the people called for vengeance; and vengeance was due, and the law ought not to refuse it." Marseille was compelled to yield. On the 31st of August news reached Paris that general Cartaux had entered that city, after defeating a body of Marseillais on the 24th of August, and making many prisoners. On the motion of Danton it was decreed that the committees of legislation and of public safety should prepare a report on the mode of making the counter-revolutionists of Marseille pay the expences of the war, and on the mode "of applying the law which was to cause the heads of these villains to fall." Rebellion, or Federalism, as it was called, The Reign of Terror had now commenced: but what was the Reign of Terror in France? The atrocities and butcheries of many innocent persons, and the cruelty of their murderers are the prominent facts. But Terror was not established simply because some sanguinary men wished to overthrow what remained of law and order. Terror was a re-action, which owed its origin to the invasion of enemies from without, and the fear of enemies real and imaginary within. No man felt fear more than Robespierre, and fear is of all passions the most cruel. Fear then begot the system of Terror, and Terror had its terrific agents.* This is Marseille on the 23rd and 24th of August. taux, made a report to the Convention of what took place at 'Hist. Parl.,' xxix., 494-497. *There are some good observations in the Mémoires sur la Convention et le Directoire, par A. C. Thibaudeau,' (vol. i., chap. 5, La Terreur.) Terror was not the device of a single The representatives of the people, who were with Car-man or of a set of men. It grew up by degrees, and it * Procès de Custine, Hist. Parl.,' xxix., 253-338. |