CHAPTER I.
ROBESPIERRE'S CHARACTER.
We will now jump over a space of nearly three months, and leaving thechateaux of royalist La Vendee, plunge for a short while into the heartof republican Paris. In the Rue St. Honore lived a cabinet-maker, namedDuplay, and in his house lodged Maximilian Robespierre, the leadingspirit in the latter and more terrible days of the Revolution. The timenow spoken of was the beginning of October, 1793; and at no period didthe popularity and power of that remarkable man stand higher.
The whole government was then vested in the Committee of PublicSafety--a committee consisting of twelve persons, members of theConvention, all of course ultra-democrats, over the majority of whomRobespierre exercised a direct control. No despot ever endured ruledwith so absolute and stringent a dominion as that under which this bodyof men held the French nation. The revolutionary tribunal was nowestablished in all its horror and all its force. A law was passed by theConvention, in September, which decreed that all suspected people shouldbe arrested and brought before this tribunal; that nobles, lawyers,bankers, priests, men of property, and strangers in the land, should besuspected unless known to be acting friends and adherents of theultra-revolutionary party; that the punishment of such persons shouldbe death; and that the members of any revolutionary tribunal which hadomitted to condemn any suspected person, should themselves be tried, andpunished by death. Such was the law by which the Reign of Terror wasorganized and rendered possible.
At this time the Girondists were lying in prison, awaiting their trialand their certain doom. Marie Antoinette had been removed from theTemple to the Conciergerie, and her trial was in a day or two about tocommence. Her fate was already fixed, and had only to be pronounced.Danton had retired from Paris to his own province, sick with theshedding of so much blood, jealous of the pre-eminence which Robespierrehad assumed; watching his opportunity to return, that he might sell therepublic to the royalists; equally eager, let us believe, to save hiscountry as to make his fortune, but destined to return, only that healso might bend his neck beneath the monster guillotine. Marat, thefoulest birth of the revolution, whose licentious heat generated venomand rascality, as a dunghill out of its own filth produces adders'eggs--Marat was no more. Carnot, whose genius for war enabled the Frenchnation, amidst all its poverty and intestine contests, even in the pangsand throes of that labour in which it strove to bring forth aconstitution, to repulse the forces of the allied nations, and preparethe way for future conquests, was a member of the all-powerfulCommittee, and we cannot suppose that he acted under the dictation ofRobespierre; but if he did not do so, at any rate he did not interferewith him. The operations of a campaign, in which the untaught andill-fed army of republican France had to meet the troops of England,Flanders, Prussia, Austria, Sardinia, and Spain, besides those ofroyalist France, were sufficient to occupy even the energies of Carnot.
Robespierre, in the Convention and in the Committee, was omnipotent; buthe also had his master, and he knew it. He knew that he could only act,command, and be obeyed, in union with, and dependence on, the will ofthe populace of Paris; and the higher he rose in that path of life whichhe marked out for himself with so much precision, and followed with somuch constancy, the more bitterly his spirit chafed at the dependence.He knew it was of no avail to complain of the people to the people, andhe seldom ventured to risk his position by opposing the wishes of thefearful masters whom he served, but at length he was driven to do so,and at length he fell.
Half a century has passed since Robespierre died, and history has becomepeculiarly conversant with his name. Is there any one whose charactersuffers under a more wide-spread infamy? The abomination of whose deedshas become more notorious? The tale of whose death has been oftenertold; whose end, horrid, fearful, agonized, as was that of this man, hasmet with less sympathy? For fifty years the world has talked of,condemned, and executed Robespierre. Men and women, who have barelyheard the names of Pitt and Fox, who know not whether Metternich is aman or a river, or one of the United States, speak of Robespierre as ofa thing accursed. They know, at any rate, what he was--the demon of therevolution; the source of the fountain of blood with which Paris wasdeluged; the murderer of the thousands whose bodies choked the courseof the Loire and the Rhone. Who knows not enough of Robespierre tocondemn him? Who abstains from adding another malediction to those whichalready load the name of the King of the Reign of Terror.
Yet it is not impossible that some apologist may be found for the bloodwhich this man shed; that some quaint historian, delighting to show theworld how wrong has been its most assured opinions, may attempt tovindicate the fame of Robespierre, and strive to wash the blackamoorwhite. Are not our old historical assurances everywhere asserted? Hasit not been proved to us that crooked-backed Richard was a good andpolitic King; and that the iniquities of Henry VIII are fabulous?whereas the agreeable predilections of our early youth are disturbed byour hearing that glorious Queen Bess, and learned King James, were mean,bloodthirsty, and selfish.
I am not the bold man who will dare to face the opinion of the world,and attempt to prove that Robespierre has become infamous throughprejudice. He must be held responsible for the effects of the wordswhich he spoke, and the things which he did, as other men are. He madehimself a scourge and a pestilence to his country; therefore, beyond allother men, he has become odious, and therefore, historian afterhistorian, as they mention his name, hardly dare, in the service oftruth, to say one word to lessen his infamy.
Yet Robespierre began his public life with aspirations of humanity,which never deserted him; and resolutions as to conduct, to which headhered with a constancy never surpassed. What shall we say are thequalifications for a great and good man?--Honesty. In spite of hisinfamy, Robespierre's honesty has become proverbial. Moral conduct--thelife he led even during the zenith of his power, and at a time whenlicentiousness was general, and morality ridiculous, was characterizedby the simplicity of the early Quakers. Industry--without payment fromthe State, beyond that which he received as a member of the Convention,and which was hardly sufficient for the wants of his simple existence,he worked nearly night and day in the service of the State. Constancyof purpose--from the commencement of his career, in opposition at firstto ridicule and obscurity, then to public opinion, and lastly to thecombined efforts of the greatest of his countrymen, he pursued one onlyidea; convinced of its truth, sure of its progress, and longing for itssuccess. Temperance in power--though in reality governing all France,Robespierre assumed to himself none of the attributes or privileges ofpolitical power. He took to himself no high place, no public situationof profit or grandeur. He was neither haughty in his language, norimperious in his demeanour. Love of country--who ever showed a moredevoted love? For his country he laboured, and suffered a life whichsurely in itself could have had nothing attractive; the hope of thefuture felicity of France alone fed his energies, and sustained hiscourage. His only selfish ambition was to be able to retire into privatelife and contemplate from thence the general happiness which he hadgiven to his country. Courage--those who have carefully studied hisprivate life, and have learnt what he endured, and dared to do inovercoming the enemies Of his system, can hardly doubt his courage.Calumny or error has thrown an unmerited disgrace over his last wretcheddays. He has been supposed to have wounded himself in an impotentattempt to put an end to his life. It has been ascertained that such wasnot the fact, the pistol by which he was wounded having been fired byone of the soldiers by whom he was arrested. He is stated also to havewanted that firmness in death which so many of his victims displayed.They triumphed even in their death. Louis and Vergniaud, MarieAntoinette, and Madame Roland, felt that they were stepping from lifeinto glory, and their step was light and elastic. Robespierre wassinking from existence into infamy. During those fearful hours, in whichnothing in life was left him but to suffer, how wretched must have beenthe reminiscences of his career! He, who had so constantly pursued oneidea, must then have felt that that idea had been an error; that he hadall i
n all been wrong; that he had waded through the blood of hiscountrymen to reach a goal, which, bright and luminous as it hadappeared, he now found to be an ignis fatuus. Nothing was then left tohim. His life had been a failure, and for the future he had no hope. Hisbody was wounded and in tortures; his spirit was dismayed by the insultsof those around him, and his soul had owned no haven to which deathwould give it an escape. Could his eye have been lit with animation ashe ascended the scaffold! Could his foot have then stepped withconfidence! Could he have gloried in his death! Poor mutilated worm,agonised in body and in soul. Can it be ascribed to want of courage inhim, that his last moments were passed in silent agony and despair?
Honesty, moral conduct, industry, constancy of purpose, temperance inpower, courage, and love of country: these virtues all belonged toRobespierre; history confesses it, and to what favoured hero doeshistory assign a fairer catalogue? Whose name does a brighter galaxyadorn? With such qualities, such attributes, why was he not theWashington of France? Why, instead of the Messiah of freedom, which hebelieved himself to be, has his name become a bye-word, a reproach, andan enormity? Because he wanted faith! He believed in nothing buthimself, and the reasoning faculty with which he felt himself to beendowed. He thought himself perfect in his own human nature, and wishingto make others perfect as he was, he fell into the lowest abyss of crimeand misery in which a poor human creature ever wallowed. He seems almostto have been sent into the world to prove the inefficacy of human reasonto effect human happiness. He was gifted with a power over commontemptation, which belongs to but few. His blood was cool and temperate,and yet his heart was open to all the softer emotions. He had noappetite for luxury; no desire for pomp; no craving for wealth. Amongthousands who were revelling in sensuality, he kept himself pure andimmaculate. If any man could have said, I will be virtuous; I, ofmyself, unaided, trusting to my own power, guarding myself by the lightof my own reason; I will walk uprightly through the world, and will shedlight from my path upon my brethren, he might have said so. He attemptedit, and history shows us the result. He attempted, unassisted, to beperfect among men, and his memory is regarded as that of a loathsomeplague, defiling even the unclean age in which he lived.
At about five o'clock in the afternoon on an October day, in 1793,Robespierre was sitting alone in a small room in the house of hisfriend, Simon Duplay, the cabinet-maker. This room, which was thebed-chamber, reception-room, and study of the arbitrary Dictator, wasa garret in the roof of Duplay's humble dwelling. One small window,opening upon the tiles, looked into the court-yard in which were storedthe planks or blocks necessary to the cabinet-maker's trade. A smallwooden bedstead, a long deal table, and four or five rush-bottomedchairs, constituted the whole furniture of the apartment.
A deal shelf ran along the wail beneath the slanting roof, and held hissmall treasure of books; and more than half of this humble row weremanuscripts of his own, which he had numbered, arranged, and bound withthat methodical exactness, which was a part of his strange character.He was sitting at a table covered with papers, on which he had now beenlaboriously preparing instructions for those who, under him, carried onthe rule of terror; and arranging the measured words with which, at theJacobins, he was to encourage his allies to uphold him in the bloodydespotism which he had seized.
The weight upon his mind must have been immense, for Robespierre was nota thoughtless, wild fanatic, carried by the multitude whether theypleased: he led the people of Paris, and led them with a fixed object.He was progressing by one measure deeply calculated to the age ofreason, which he was assured was coming; and that one measure was theextermination of all who would be likely to oppose him. The extent ofhis power, the multiplicity of his cares, the importance of his everyword and act, and the personal danger in which he lived, might haveruffled the equanimity of a higher-spirited man than he is supposed tohave been; but yet, to judge from his countenance, his mind was calm;the traces of thought were plain on his brow, but there was none of theimpatience of a tyrant about his mouth, nor of the cruelty of anhabitual blood-shedder in his eyes. His forehead showed symptoms ofdeep thought, and partially redeemed the somewhat mean effect of hisother features. The sharp nose, the thin lips, the cold grey eyes, thesallow sunken cheeks, were those of a precise, passionless,self-confident man, little likely to be led into any excess of love orhatred, but little likely also to be shaken in his resolve either forgood or evil. His face probably was a true index to his character.Robespierre was not a cruel man; but he had none of that humanity, whichmakes the shedding of blood abominable to mankind, and which, had hepossessed it, would have made his career impossible.
His hair was close curled in rolls upon his temples, and elaboratelypowdered. The front and cuffs of his shirt were not only scrupulouslyclean, but starched and ironed with the most exact care. He wore a bluecoat, a white waistcoat, and knee-breeches. His stockings, like hisshirt, were snow-white, and the silver buckles shone brightly in hisshoes. No one could have looked less like a French republican of 1793than did Robespierre.
He had just completed a letter addressed jointly to Thurreau andLechelle, the commissioners whom he had newly appointed to the horridtask of exterminating the royalists of La Vendee. Santerre hadundertaken this work, and had failed in it, and it was now said that hewas a friend and creature of Danton's; that he was not to be trusted asa republican; that he had a royalist bias; that it would be a good thingthat his head should roll, as the heads of so many false men had rolled,under the avenging guillotine. Poor Santerre, who, in the service of theRepublic, had not shunned the infamy of presiding at the death of Louis.He, however, contrived to keep his burly head on his strong shoulders,and to brew beer for the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire.
Thurreau and Lechelle, it was correctly thought, would be surer handsat performing the work to be done. They had accepted the commission withalacrity, and were now on the road to commence their duties. That dutywas to leave neither life nor property in the proscribed district. "LetLa Vendee become a wilderness, and we will re-populate it with patriots,to whom the fertility of fields, rich with the blood of traitors, shallbe a deserved reward." Thus had Robespierre now written; and as hecalmly read over, and slowly copied, his own despatch, he saw nothingin it of which he could disapprove, as a reasoning being animated witha true love of his country. "Experience has too clearly proved to usthat the offspring of slaves, who willingly kiss the rod of tyrants,will have no higher aspiration than their parents. In allowing them toescape, we should only create difficulties for our own patriot children.Hitherto the servants of the Convention have scotched the snake, buthave not killed it; and the wounded viper has thus become more furiouslyvenomous than before. It is for you, citizens, to strike a death-blowto the infamy of La Vendee. It will be your glory to assure theConvention that no royalist remains in the western provinces to disturbthe equanimity of the Republic." Such were the sentiments he had justexpressed, such the instructions he had given, calmly meditating on hisduty as a ruler of his country; and when he had finished his task, andseen that no expression had escaped him of which reason or patriotismcould disapprove, he again placed the paper before him, to write wordsof affection to the brother of his heart.
Robespierre's brother was much younger than himself; but there was noone whom he more thoroughly trusted with State secrets, and Stateservices of importance; and no one who regarded him with so entire adevotion. Robespierre the elder believed only in himself; Robespierrethe younger believed in his brother, and his belief was fervid andassured, as is always that of an enthusiast. To him, Maximilian appearedto be the personification of every virtue necessary to mankind. Couldhe have been made to understand the opinion which the world would formof his brother's character, he would have thought that it was about tobe smitten with a curse of general insanity. Robespierre's vanity wasflattered by the adoration of his brother, and he loved his worshippersincerely. The young man was now at Lyons, propagating the doctrines ofhis party; and in his letters to him, Robespierre mingled theconfiden
tial greetings of an affectionate brother with those furiousdemands for republican energy, which flooded the streets of the townsof France with blood, and choked the rivers of France with the bodiesof the French.
"I still hope," he wrote, slowly considering the words as they fell fromhis pen, "for the day when this work will have been done--for the happyday when we shall feel that we have prevailed not only against ourenemies, but over our own vices; but my heart nearly fails me, when Ithink how little we have yet effected. I feel that among the friendswhom we most trust, those who are actuated by patriotism alone arelukewarm. Lust, avarice, plunder, and personal revenge, are the motivesof those who are really energetic . . . It is very difficult for me toknow my friends; this also preys heavily on my spirits. The gold of theroyalists is as plentiful as when the wretched woman, who is now aboutto die, was revelling in her voluptuous pride at Versailles. I know thatthe hands of many, who call themselves patriots, are even now graspingat the wages for which they are to betray the people. A day of reckoningshall come for all of them, though the list of their names is a longone. Were I to write the names of those whom I know to be true, I shouldbe unable to insert in it above five or six. . . . I look for yourreturn to Paris with more than my usual impatience. Eleanor's quietzeal, and propriety of demeanour, is a great comfort to me; but evenwith her, I feel that I have some reserve. I blame myself that it is so,for she is most trustworthy; but, as yet, I cannot throw it off. Withyou alone I have none. Do not, however, leave the work undone; rememberthat those who will not toil for us, will assuredly toil against us.There can be none neutral in the battle we are now waging. A man canhave committed no greater crime against the Republic than having donenothing to add to its strength. I know your tender heart grieves at thedeath of every traitor, though your patriotism owns the necessity of hisfall. Remember that the prosperity of every aristocrat has beenpurchased by the infamy of above a hundred slaves! How much better isit that one man should die, than that a hundred men should suffer worsethan death!"
When he had finished his letter, he read it accurately over, and thenhaving carefully wiped his pen, and laid it near his inkstand, he leantback in his chair, and with his hand resting on the table, turned overin his mind the names and deeds of those who were accounted as hisfriends, but whom he suspected to be his enemies. He had close to hishand slips of paper, on which were written notes of the most trivialdoings of those by whom he was generally surrounded; and the very spieswho gave him the information were themselves the unfortunate subjectsof similar notices from others. The wretched man was tortured bydistrust; as he had told his brother, there were not among the wholebody of those associates, by whose aid he had made himself the rulingpower in France, half-a-dozen whom he did not believe to be eager forhis downfall and his death. Thrice, whilst thus meditating, he stopped,and with his pencil put a dot against the name of a republican.Unfortunate men! their patriotism did not avail them; within a fewweeks, the three had been added to the list of victims who perishedunder the judicial proceedings of Fouquier Tinville.
It had now become nearly dark, and Robespierre was unable longer to readthe unfriendly notices which lay beneath his hand, and he therefore gavehimself up entirely to reflection. He began to dream of noblersubjects--to look forward to happier days, when torrents of blood wouldbe no longer necessary, when traitors should no longer find a market fortheir treason, when the age of reason should have prevailed, and France,happy, free, illustrious, and intellectual, should universally own howmuch she owed to her one incorruptible patriot. He thought to himselfof living on his small paternal domain in Artois, receiving nothing fromthe country he had blessed but adoration; triumphant in the success ofhis theory; honoured as more than mortal; evincing the grandeur of hissoul by rejecting those worldly rewards, which to his dispositionoffered no temptation. But before he had long indulged in this happytrain of thought, he was called back to the realities of his troubledlife by a low knock at his door, and on his answering it, a young woman,decently, but very plainly dressed, entered the garret with a candle inher hand; this was Eleanor Duplay; and when Robespierre allowed himselfto dream of a future home, she was the wife of his bosom, and the motherof his children.