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 3 1924 013 584 887 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013584887 
 
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D 
 
 ANTON 
 
 A STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 HILAIRE BELLOC, B.A. 
 
 LATE BRACKENBURY SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, 
 OXFORD 
 
 Hew l^orR 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 191 1 
 
6 DO 3 
 
 
TO 
 
 ANTHONY HENLEY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 An historian of just pre-eminence in his university and 
 college, in a little work which should be more widely 
 known, has summed up the two principal characters of 
 the Eevolution in the following phrases : " the cold and 
 ferocious Robespierre, the blatant Danton." ^ The judg- 
 ment is precipitate and is tinged with a certain bias. 
 
 An authority of still greater position prefaces his note- 
 book on the Revolution by telling us that he is going 
 to describe the beast.* The learned sectarian does not 
 conceal from his readers the fact that a profound analysis 
 had led to a very pronounced conviction. So certain Ls 
 he of his ground, that he treats with equal consideration 
 the evidence of printed documents, of autograph letters, 
 and of a chance stranger speaking in a country inn of 
 a thing that had happened forty years before. 
 
 The greatest of French novelists and a principal poet 
 has given us in " Quatre-vingt-treize " a picture moving 
 and living. Yet even in that work much is admitted, for 
 the sake of contrast and colour, which no contemporary 
 saw. The dialogue between Danton and Marat, with its 
 picturesque imtruths, is an example.* 
 
 If facts so conflicting be stated as true by men of 
 such various cahbre, it would seem a very difficult task 
 to write history at aU, Yet there is a method which 
 
 ^ C. W. Oman, "History of England," p. 581. 
 
 • Taine, " La Revolution," preface. 
 
 • Victor Hugo, "Quatre-vingt-treize." Illustrated edition of 1877. 
 Paris, pp. 136-150. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 neither excludes personal conviction, nor necessitates the 
 art of deceit, nor presupposes a primitive ignorance. 
 
 It is to ascertain what is positively known and can be 
 proved, and with the facts so gathered — only with these — 
 to paint a picture as vivid as may be; on a series of 
 truths — with research it grows to respectable proportions — 
 to base a conviction, general, wide, and capable of constant 
 application, as to the character of a period or of a man. 
 
 Such was the method of Fustel de Coulanges, and on 
 his model there has arisen from the minute, the some- 
 times pedantic accuracy of French scholars, a school 
 which is the strongest in Europe. 
 
 The method I have been describing has also this 
 advantage, that the least learned may enter upon such a 
 path without confusion and may progress, and that a 
 book of no pretensions can yet, by following these rules, 
 at least avoid untruth. With inferior tools, and on an 
 over-rough plan, I shall yet attempt in this life of Danton 
 to follow the example. 
 
 The motto which is printed at the head of this book, 
 and which is borrowed from the most just of biographers, 
 must give a note to the whole of my description. What 
 was the movement which founded oxir modem society? 
 what were its motives, its causes of action, its material 
 surroundings ? And what was the man who, above all 
 others, represented that spirit at its most critical moment ? 
 
 To find a right answer to such questions it is necessary 
 to do two things. 
 
 First, we must make the sequence of cause and effect 
 reasonable. In giving an explanation or in supposing a 
 motive, we must present that which rational men, un- 
 biassed, will admit. To put in the same character irre- 
 concilable extremes is to leave no picture. To state a 
 number of facts so that no thread connects them, so that 
 they surprise by contrast but leave only confusion in the 
 mind, is a kind of falsehood. It is the method most 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 adopted by partisans; they frame a theory upon the 
 lines of which such and such facts will lie, but they omit, 
 or only mention as anomalies, facts which are equally 
 true, but which would vitiate their conclusions. We must 
 (to use a mathematical metaphor) integrate the differen- 
 tials of history ; make a complete and harmonious whole 
 of a hundred aspects ; strike a curve which shall unite in 
 a regular fashion what has appeared as a number of 
 scattered points. Till we can say, " This man — seeing all 
 his character and innumerable known acts— comW not have 
 acted as such and such a report would have us believe ; " 
 or again, till we can say, " This epoch, with its convictions, 
 its environment, its Hterature, andd not have felt the 
 emotions which such and such an historian lends it," — 
 till we can say this, we do not understand a personality 
 or a period. 
 
 In the second place, we must recognise in aU repeated 
 and common expressions of conviction, and in aU the 
 motives of a time of action, some reaUy existing ideal. 
 There was a conviction common to many thousands of 
 Parhamentarians in the earher stages of the English Civil 
 War. There was a genuine creed in the breasts of the 
 well-paid Ironsides of its later period. There was a real 
 loyalty and an exphcable theory of kingship in the camp 
 of Charles the First. 
 
 So in the period of which we deal there was a clear 
 doctrine of pohtical right, held by probably the strongest 
 intellects, and defended by certainly the most sustained 
 and enthusiastic courage that ever adorned a European 
 nation. We must recognise the soul of a time. For 
 were there not a real necessity for sympathy with a 
 period which we study, were it possible for us to see 
 entirely from without, with no attempt to apprehend 
 from within, then of many stupendous passages in history 
 we should have to assert that all those who led were 
 scoundrels, that all their lives were (every moment of 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 them) a continuous piece of consummate acting; that 
 our enemies, in fine, were something greater and more 
 wicked than men. We should have to premise that all 
 the vigour belonged to the bad, and all the ineptitude to 
 the good, and separate humanity into two groups, one of 
 righteous imbeciles, and the other of genius sold to hell. 
 No one would wish, or would be sincerely able to place 
 himself in either category. 
 
 We must postulate, then, of the Revolution that which 
 Taine ridiculed, that for which Michelet Hved, and that 
 which Carlyle never grasped — the Revolutionary idea. 
 And we must read into the lives of aU the actors in that 
 drama, and especially of the subject of this book, some 
 general motive which is connected with the creed of the 
 time. We must make his actions show as a consonant 
 whole — as a man's — and then, if possible, determine his 
 place in what was not an anarchic explosion, but a regular, 
 though a vigorous and exceedingly rapid development. 
 
 A himdred difficulties are at once apparent in under- 
 taking a work of this natm:e. It is not possible to give 
 a detailed history of the Revolution, and yet many facts 
 of secondary importance must be alluded to. It is neces- 
 sary to tell the story of a man whose action and interest, 
 nay, whose whole life, so far as we know it, Hes in less 
 than five years. 
 
 Danton's earKer life is but a fragmentary record, col- 
 lected by several historians with extreme care, and only 
 collected that it may supplement our knowledge of his 
 mature career. The most laborious efforts of his bio- 
 graphers have found but a meagre handful of the facts 
 for which they searched; nor does any personal inquiry 
 at his birthplace, from what is left of his family or in 
 his papers, augment the materials : the research has been 
 thoroughly and finally made before this date, and its 
 results, such as they are, I have put together in the 
 second chapter of this book. 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 He does not even, as do Robespierre, Mirabeau, and 
 others, occupy the stage of the Revolution from the first. 
 
 Till the nation is attacked, his r6le is of secondary 
 importance. We have glimpses more numerous indeed, 
 and more important, of his action after than before 1789. 
 But it is only in the saving of France, when the men of 
 action were needed, that he leaps to the front. Then, 
 suddenly, the whole nation and its story becomes filled 
 with his name. For thirteen months, from that loth of 
 August 1792, which he made, to the early autumn of the 
 following year, Danton, his spirit, his energy, his practical 
 grasp of things as they were, formed the strength of 
 France. While the theorists, from whom he so pro- 
 foundly differed, were wasting themselves in a kind of 
 political introspection, he raised the armies. When the 
 orators could only find great phrases to lead the rage 
 against Dumouriez' treason, he formed the Committee to 
 be a dictator for a falling nation. All that was useful in 
 the Terror was his work ; and if we trace to their very 
 roots the actions that swept the field and left it ready 
 for rapid organisation and defence, then at the roots we 
 nearly always find his masterful and sure guidance. 
 
 There are in the Revolution two features, one of 
 which is almost peculiar to itself, the other of which is 
 in common with all other great crises in history. 
 
 The first of these is that it used new men and young 
 men, and comparatively unknown men, to do its best 
 work. If ever a nation called out men as they were, 
 apart from family, from tradition, from wealth, and from 
 known environment, it was France in the Revolution. 
 The national need appears at that time like a captain in 
 front of his men in a conscript army. He knows them 
 ■each by their powers, character, and conduct. But they 
 are in imiform ; he cares nothing for their family or their 
 youth; he makes them do that for which each is best 
 fitted. This feature makes the period unique, and it is 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 due to tMs feature that so many of the Revolutionary 
 men have no history for us before the Revolution. It is 
 this feature which makes their biographies a vividly con- 
 centrated account of action in months rather than in 
 years. They come out of obscurity, they pass through 
 the intense zone of a search-light; they are suddenly 
 eclipsed upon its further side. 
 
 The second of these features is common to all moments 
 of crisis. Months in the Revolution count as years, and 
 this furnishes our excuse for giving as a biography so 
 short a space in a man's hfe. But it is just so to do. 
 In every history a group of years at the most, sometimes 
 a year alone, is the time to be studied day by day. In 
 comparison with the intense purpose of a moment whole 
 centuries are sometimes colourless. 
 
 Thus in the poUtical history of the English thirteenth 
 century, the little space from the Provisions of Oxford 
 to the battle of Evesham is everything; in the study 
 of England's breach with the Continental tradition, the 
 period between the Ridolphi plot and th:: Armada; in 
 the formation of the Enghsh oligarchy, the crisis of AprU 
 to December 1688. 
 
 This second feature, the necessity for concentration, 
 would excuse a special insistence on the two years of 
 Danton's prominence, even if his youth were better known. 
 The two conditions combined make imperative such a 
 treatment as I have attempted to foUow. 
 
 As to authorities, three men claim my especial grati- 
 tude, for the work in this book is merely a rearrangement 
 of the materials they have collected. They are Dr. Bou- 
 geart, who is dead (and his clear Repubhcanism brought 
 upon him exile and persecution) ; M. Aulard, the greatest 
 of our Uving writers on the Revolutionary period ; and 
 Dr. Robinet, to whose personal kindness, interest, and 
 fruitful suggestion I largely owe this book. The keeper 
 of the Carnavalet has been throughout his long and 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 laborious life tlie patient biographer of Danton, and little 
 can now be added to the research which has been the 
 constant occupation of a just and eminent career. 
 
 We must hope, in spite of his great age, to have from 
 his hands some further work; for he is one of those 
 many men who have given to the modem historical 
 school of France, amid all our modem verbiage and com- 
 promise, the strength of a voice that speaks the simple 
 truth. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 tHAP. ptOK 
 
 PKEPACK vii 
 
 I. THE REVOLUTION I 
 
 n. THE TOUTH OF DANTON 40 
 
 in. DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS ..... 57 
 
 rV. THE PALL OP THE MONAEOHY 1 14 
 
 V. THE REPUBLIC I7I 
 
 TL THE TERROR 211 
 
 VIL THE DEATH OP DANTON 249 
 
 Vm. ROBESPIERRE 282 
 
 APPENDICES— 
 
 I. NOTE ON THE CORDELIERS 321 
 
 n. NOTE ON CERTAIN SITES MENTION«D IN THIS BOOK 327 
 
 III. NOTE ON THE SUPPOSED VENALITY OP DANTON . 33 1 
 
 IV. NOTE ON DANTON's RESPONSIBILITY POR THE MAS- 
 
 SACRES OP SEPTEMBER 34O 
 
 V. SHORT MEMOIR BY A. R. C. DE ST. ALBIN . . 347 
 VI. EXTRACTS SHOWING REIMBURSEMENT OP DANTON'S 
 
 OPPICE 365 
 
 VII. EXTRACTS CONCERNING DANTON's HOUSEHOLD. . 373 
 
 Vin. CATALOGUE OP DANTON'S LIBRARY .... 380 
 IX. EXTRACTS PROM THE MEMOIR WRITTEN IN 1 846 BY 
 
 THE SONS OP DANTON 384 
 
 X. NOTES OP TOPINO-LEBRUN, JUROR OP THE REVOLU- 
 TIONARY TRIBUNAL 395 
 
 XL REPORT OP THE PIR8T COMMITTEE OP PUBLIC 
 
 SAFETY 403 
 
 INDEX. 430 
 
 XV 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE REVOLUTION 
 
 Bkfoee writing a life of Danton in English it is necessary 
 to do three things. First, to take a definite point of 
 view with regard to the whole revolutionary movement; 
 secondly, to explain, so far as is possible, the form which 
 it took in France; thirdly, to show where Danton stood 
 in the scheme of events, the nature of his personality, 
 the effects of his brief action. This triple task is neces- 
 sary to a book which, but for it, would be only a string 
 of events, always confused, often without meaning. 
 
 What was the Revolution ? It was essentially a 
 reversion to the normal — a sudden and violent return to 
 those conditions which are the necessary bases of health 
 in any poUtical community, which are clearly apparent in 
 every primitive society, and from which Europe had been 
 estranged by an increasing complexity and a spirit of 
 routine. 
 
 It has never been denied that the process of gradual 
 remoulding is a part of living, and aU admit that the 
 State (which lives like any other thing) must suffer 
 such a process as a condition of health. There is 
 in every branch of social effort a necessity for constant 
 
 A 
 
2 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 reform and check : it is apparent to the administrator of 
 every kind : it is the business of a politician continually 
 to direct and apply such correction : — the whole body of 
 the law of England is a collection of the past results of 
 this guiding force. 
 
 But what are the laws that govern it ? What is the 
 nature of the condition that makes reform imperative ? 
 What distinguishes the good from the bad in the matter 
 of voluntary change, and separates the conservative from 
 the destructive effort ? 
 
 It is in the examination of this problem that we may 
 discover how great a debt the last century owed to nature 
 — a debt which demanded an immediate liquidation, and 
 was often only paid at the expense of violence. 
 
 It would seem that the necessity of reform arises 
 from this, that our ideas, which are eternal, find them- 
 selves expressed in phrases and resvdting in actions which 
 belong to material environment — an environment, there- 
 fore, that perpetually changes in form. It is not to be 
 admitted that the innermost standards of the soul can 
 change ; if they could, the word " reform " would lose all 
 moral meaning, and a thing not being good would cease 
 to be desired. But the meaning of words, the effect 
 on the senses of certain acts, the causes of pleasure 
 and pain in a society, the definition of nationality— all 
 these things of their nature change without ceasing, and 
 must as ceaselessly be brought into accordance with the 
 unchanging mind. 
 
 What test can be applied by which we may know 
 whether a reform is working towards this rectification 
 or not ? None, except the general conviction of a whole 
 generation that this or that survival obstructs the way 
 of right living, the mere instinct of justice expressed in 
 concrete terms on a particular point. It is by this that 
 the just man of any period feels himself bound. This 
 js not a formula : it seems a direction of the loosest and 
 
THE REVOLUTION 3 
 
 of the most useless kind ; and yet to observe it is to keep 
 the State sane, to neglect it is to bring about revolution. 
 This much is sure, that where there exists in a State a 
 body of men who are determined to be guided by this 
 vague sense of justice, and who are in sufficient power 
 to let it frame their reforms, then these men save a State 
 and keep it whole. When, on the contrary, those who 
 make or administer the laws are determined to abide by 
 a phrase or a form, then the necessities accumulate, the 
 burden and the strain become intolerable, and the gravi- 
 tation towards the normal standard of living, which should 
 act as a slight but permanent force, acts suddenly at a 
 high potential and with destructive violence. 
 
 As an example of the time when the former and the 
 better conditions prevailed, I would cite the period be- 
 tween the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, when a 
 change of the most fundamental kind passed over the 
 society of Europe, indeed a change from barbarism to 
 civiUsation, and yet the whole went well. Keform, being 
 continual, was easy. New institutions, the Parliaments, 
 the Universities, the personal tax, rose as they were 
 demanded, and the great transition was crowned with 
 the security and content that surrounded St. Louis. 
 Simplicity, that main condition of happiness, was the 
 governing virtue of the time. The kiug ruled, the knight 
 fought, the peasant dug in his own ground, and the priest 
 believed. 
 
 It is the lack of simplicity that makes of the three 
 centuries following the fifteenth (with vices due perhaps 
 to the wickedness of the fifteenth) an opposite example. 
 Every kind of phrase, emblem, or cloak is kept; every 
 kind of living thing is sacrificed. Conditions cease to 
 be flexible, and the body of Europe, which after all still 
 breathes, is shut in with the bonds of the lawyers, and all 
 but stifled. 
 
 In the sixteenth century one would say that the 
 
4 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 political quarrels of the princes were a mere insult to 
 nature, but the people, though they are declining, show 
 that they still exist; the passions of their religions 
 enhven the dead game of the Tudors and the Valois. 
 In the seventeenth the pedants give their orders, the 
 upper classes fight the princes, the people are all but 
 silent. Where were they in the Fronde, or in that less 
 heroic struggle the Parliamentary Wars ? As the 
 eighteenth century falls further and further into decay 
 all is gone ; those who move in comfort above the souls 
 which they have beneath them for a pavement, the rich 
 and the privileged, have even ceased to enjoy their 
 pohtical and theological amusements ; they are concerned 
 only with maintaining their ease, and to do this they 
 conjure with the name of the people's memories. 
 
 They build ramparts of sacred tombs, and defend 
 themselves with the bones of the Middle Ages, with the 
 relics of the saint and the knight. 
 
 It is this which necessitates and moulds the Revolu- 
 tion. The privileged men, the lawyers especially, held to 
 the phrase. They excused themselves in a time most 
 artificial by quoting the formulae of a time when life was 
 most natural and when the soul was nearest the surface. 
 They used the name of the Middle Ages precisely because 
 they thought the Middle Ages were dead, when suddenly 
 the spirit of the Middle Ages, the spirit of enthusiasm 
 and of faith, the Crusade, came out of the tomb and 
 routed them. 
 
 I say, then, that the great disease of the time preced- 
 mg the Revolution came from the fact that it had kept 
 the letter and forgotten the spirit. It continued to do 
 the same things as Europe at its best — it had entirely 
 neglected to nourish similar motives. Let me give an 
 extreme example. There are conditions under which to 
 burn a man to death seems admissible and just. When 
 offences often occur which society finds heinous beyond 
 
THE REVOLUTION 5 
 
 words, then no punisliment seems sufficient for the satis- 
 faction of the emotion which the crime arouses. Thus 
 during the Middle Ages (especially in the latter part 
 of their decay), and sometimes in the United States 
 to-day, a man is burned at the stake. But there are 
 other conditions under which a society shrinks with 
 the greatest horror from such a punishment. Security 
 is so well established, conviction in this or that so 
 much less firm, the danger from the criminal so much 
 less menacing, that the idea of such an extreme agony 
 revolts all men. Then to burn is wrong, because it is 
 unnecessary and undesired. But let us suppose the 
 lawyers to be bent on a formula, tenacious from habit 
 and become angrily tenacious from opposition, saying that 
 what has been shall be ; and what happens ? The Parlia- 
 ment of Strasbourg condemns a man to be burnt while 
 the States General are actually in session in 1789 ! 
 
 Again, take the example of the land. There was a 
 time when the relations of lord and serf satisfied the 
 heart. The village was a co-operative community: it 
 needed a protector and a head. Even when such a need 
 was not felt, the presence of a political personage, at the 
 cost of a regular and slight tax, the natural affection which 
 long habit had towards a family and a name — these made 
 the relation not tolerable, but good. But when change 
 had conquered even the permanent manorial unit, and the 
 serf owned severally, tilling his private field ; when the 
 pohtical position of the lord had disappeared, and when 
 the personal tie had been completely forgotten — then the 
 tax was folly. It was no longer the symbol of tenure 
 drawn in a convenient fashion, taken right out of the corn- 
 field from a primitive group of families ; it had become an 
 arbitrary levy, drawn at the most inconvenient time, 
 upsetting the market and the harvest, and falling on a 
 small farmer who worked painfully at his own plot of 
 ground. 
 
6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 It is difficult to explain to English readers how far 
 this deadening conservatism had been pushed on the 
 Continent. The constitution of England and the habits 
 of her lawyers and politicians were stiU, for all their vices, 
 the most flexible in Europe. Even Pitt could tinker at 
 the representative system, and an abominable penal code 
 could be softened without upsetting the whole scheme of 
 English criminal law. To this day we notice in England 
 the most fundamental changes introduced, so to speak, 
 into an unresisting medium : witness those miniature 
 revolutions, the Income Tax and Employers' Liability, 
 which are so sUent, and which yet produce results so 
 immeasurable. 
 
 It has always been a difficulty in writing of the 
 Revolution for English readers, that in England the 
 tendency to reform, though strong, was not irresistible. 
 It was a desire, but it was not a necessity, and that on 
 account of the quaUty which has just been mentioned, 
 the lack of form and definition in the Enghsh constitu- 
 tion and legal habit. 
 
 But if we go a little deeper we shall see a further 
 cause. Nothing will so deaden the common sense of 
 justice in a legislator or a lawyer, nothing will separate 
 him so much from the general feeling of his time, as 
 distinction of class from class. When a man cannot fre- 
 quently meet and sympathise with every kind of man 
 about him, then the State lacks homogeneity ; the general 
 sentiment is unexpressed, because it has no common organ 
 of expression, and you obtain in laws and legal decisions 
 not the living movement of the citizens, but the dead 
 traditions of a few. 
 
 Now by a pecuhar bent of history, the stratification 
 of society which is so natural a result of an old civilisa- 
 tion, was less marked in England than elsewhere in 
 Europe. The society of the Continent is not more homo- 
 geneous to-day, as contrasted with that of modern Eng- 
 
THE REVOLUTION 7 
 
 land, than was the society of England a hundred years 
 ago, as contrasted with that of the Continent then ; and 
 any English traveller who is wise enough to note in our 
 time the universal type of citizen in France, will ex- 
 perience something of the envy that Frenchmen felt 
 when they noted the sohd England of the eighteenth 
 century. There great lawyers were occasionally drawn 
 from the people ; there a whole mass of small proprietors 
 in land or capital — haK the people perhaps — kept the 
 balance of the State, and there a fluctuating political 
 system could, for all its corruption, find a place for the 
 young bourgeois Wolfe to defeat the great gentleman 
 Montcalm. 
 
 But while in England reform was possible (though 
 perhaps it has been fatally inadequate), in the rest of 
 Europe it was past all hope. Everywhere there must be 
 organs of government, and these on the Continent could 
 no longer be changed, whether for better or worse : they 
 had become stiff with age, and had to be supplanted. 
 Now to supplant the fundamental organs of govern- 
 ment, to make absolutely new laws and to provide an 
 absolutely new machinery — all this is to produce a violent 
 revolution. 
 
 You could not reform such a body as the Ch§,telet, 
 nor replace by a series of statutes or of decisions such a 
 mass as the local coutumes. Not even a radical change 
 in the system of taxation would have made the noblesse 
 tolerable ; no amount of personal energy nor any excellence 
 of advisers could save a king enveloped with the mass 
 of etiquette at VersaUles. These numerous sjmaptoms of 
 the lethargy that had overtaken European society, even 
 the disease itself, might have been swept away by a sharp 
 series of vigorous reforms. Indeed, some of these reforms 
 were talked of, and a few actually begun in the garrulous 
 courts of Berlin and of St. Petersburg. Such reforms 
 would have merited, and would have obtained, the nam© 
 
8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 of Revolution, but they might have passed without that 
 character of accompanying excess which has delayed upon 
 every side the liberties of Europe. We should be talking 
 of the old regime and of the Revolution as we do now, 
 but the words would have called up a struggle between 
 old Parhaments and young legists, between worn-out 
 customs and new codes, between the kings of etiquette 
 and the kings of originality, between sleep and the new 
 science; the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries 
 would have been united by some curious bridge — not 
 separated by an abyss. 
 
 As it is, the word Revolution recalls scenes almost as 
 violent as those which marked the transition of Rome 
 from the Repubhc to the Empire, We remember the 
 name not of Condorcet but of Marat: in place of the divided 
 Europe and complicated struggle which (on the analogy 
 of the Reformation) should have attended a movement 
 upon which sympathy was so evenly divided, in place 
 of a series of long, desultory campaigns, you have a 
 violent shock of battle between the French and every 
 government in Eiu-ope ; you have the world outlawing 
 a people; you have, as a direct consequence of such a 
 pressure, the creation of a focus from whose extreme heat 
 proceeds the conquering energy of Napoleon. Blows 
 terrible and unexpected are struck in the first four years 
 of the war, and there appears in 1796 a portent — the 
 Bword that was not broken imtil it had cut down and 
 killed the old society of the West. 
 
 To all these accidents which flow from the form the 
 Revolution took, one more must be added, and that the 
 most important. The shock was of such violence that 
 all the old bonds broke. I mean the permanent things 
 which hold society together, not the dead relics, which 
 would in any case have disappeared. 
 
 Many great changes have passed over Europe and 
 have left the fundamentals untouched; the Revolution. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 9 
 
 which might so easily have remoulded the shape of 
 society, did more and possibly worse : it rebuilt from the 
 foundations. How many unquestioned dogmas were 
 suddenly brought out into broad daylight! All our 
 modem indecision, our confused philosophies, our in- 
 numerable doubts, spring from that stirring of the 
 depths. Is property a right ? May men own land ? Is 
 marriage sacred ? Have we duties to the State, to the 
 family? All these questions begin to be raised. A 
 German Pole has denied the sequence of cause and effect. 
 Occasionally a man suddenly rises and asks, " Is there a 
 God ? " There is nothing left in reserve for the amuse- 
 ment of posterity. 
 
 Well, this unexampled violence, which, like the 
 wind on the Red Sea, has bared for a moment things 
 that had lain hidden for centuries — this war of twenty 
 years and its results were due to the fact that the 
 Revolution, which might have started in a different 
 form from almost any European centre, started as fact 
 from France. 
 
 That France was the agent of the reform is the 
 leading condition of the whole story, for it was her 
 centraHsation that made the change so rapid and so 
 effectual, her temperament that framed the abstract for- 
 mulae which could spread like a religion, her political 
 position in Europe that led to the crusade against her; 
 and this war in its turn (acting on a Paris that led and 
 governed the nation) produced all the further conse* 
 quences of the Revolution from the Terror to Waterloo. 
 
 Let us examine the conditions of the Revolution as a 
 purely French thing, see what it was that made it break 
 out when it did, what guided its course, what gave Paris 
 its position, what led to the wars and the Terror. 
 
 In the first place, the causes of the Revolutionary 
 movement in France. They were two : First, the imme- 
 diate material necessity for reform which coincided with 
 
lo THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the Revolutionary period ; secondly, the philosophy which 
 had permeated society for a generation, and which, when 
 once a change was undertaken, guided and controlled the 
 deTelopment of that change. 
 
 As for the material circumstances that led to so 
 urgent a necessity for reform, they may be stated as 
 follows: — The governmental machinery, which had been 
 growing more and more inefficient, had finally broken 
 down ; and this failure had been accelerated by a series 
 of natural accidents, the most promiuent among them 
 beiag two successive years of scarcity. 
 
 Now why was France alone in such a deplorable 
 condition ? Why was she all but bankrupt, her navy in 
 rapid decay, her armies ill-clothed, Hi-fed, in arrears of 
 pay ? Why could Arthur Young, observant, honest, and 
 inept, make his tour through France (in which the mass 
 of accurate detail is balanced by so astounding a mis- 
 conception of French society*), and in that book describe 
 the land going out of cultivation, the peasant living on 
 grass, the houses falling down, the roads impassable ? 
 The answer is discovered in the very causes that led to 
 the past greatness of the country. Because France alone 
 in Europe was a vast centralised body — a quality which 
 had made the reign of Louis XIV.; because centraHsation 
 could not continue to work under the old regime — a 
 condition which led to the abrupt wreck of 1788 and 
 1789. 
 
 The government of France, in the century preceding 
 the Revolution, might be compared to a great machine 
 made with admirable skill out of the disjointed parts of 
 smaller engines ; a machine whose designer had kept but 
 a single end in view — the control of all the works by one 
 lever in the hand of one man. But (to continue the 
 
 ' E.g. he says the "gentry" of France should imitate the gentry of 
 England. But to do this it is necessary to own the houses of the 
 peasantry ; and even then the system does not always suit the Celtic 
 tempeiameut, they sar. 
 
THE REVOLUTION ii 
 
 metaphor) the materials to which his effort had been 
 confined forbade simpUcity ; the parts would be repaired 
 with difficulty, or sometimes not at all ; the cleaning and 
 oiling of the bearings was neglected, of necessity, on 
 account of their position; and after two generations of 
 work the machine had ceased its functions. It was 
 clogged upon every side and rusty — still dependent upon 
 one lever, but incapable of movement. 
 
 France had become a despotism, but a despotism 
 which lacked organisation ; all centred in the king, with 
 the result that none could act but he, and yet, when ha 
 strove to act, the organs of action were useless. All had 
 been made dependent upon one fountain-head, yet every 
 charmel was stopped up. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance in studying the 
 Revolution to appreciate this fact : that nearly every 
 part of the national life was sound, with the exception 
 of the one supreme fimction of government. I do not 
 mean that France and the world needed no new ideas, 
 nor that a material change in the form of the executive 
 would have sufficed for society. But I mean that, more 
 than is usually the case in a time of crisis, a political act 
 was the supreme need of the moment. 
 
 Capital was not well distributed, but at least it was 
 aot centralised as it is in our modem industrial societies. 
 All men owned; the peasant was miserable beyond 
 words, but his misery was not the result of an " Economic 
 Law ; " it was due to that much more tangible thing, mis- 
 government. The citizen was apathetic, but potentially 
 he was vigorous and alert. If he knew nothing of the 
 jury or of public discussion, it was the system oppressing 
 the man, not the man creating, or even permitting, the 
 system. In a word, the vices or the misfortunes of 
 France were not to be traced to the character of the 
 social system or of the national temper. They were to 
 be found in an artificial centre, the Government. 
 
12 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Now of all governments a pure despotism can most 
 quickly establish reforms. In Kussia the serfs were 
 freed, the Jews expelled, by a stroke of the pen; in 
 India you may see great financial experiments, great 
 military groups, come into being almost simultaneously 
 with the decision that creates them. Why could not 
 the central government have saved France ? Because on 
 every side its action was deadened by dead things, which 
 it pretended were alive; because throughout the pro- 
 vinces and towns there lay thick the corpses of what had 
 once been local institutions, and because so far from the 
 Crown removing these, it had left to them the privileges 
 which at one time were the salaries of their activity, 
 but which had now become a kind of bribe to continue 
 inactive. 
 
 How had this come about ? How had a government 
 been developed whose note was centralisation and despo- 
 tism, and which yet carefully preserved the fossils of local 
 administration ? 
 
 To answer that question it is necessary to consider 
 the original matter of which French society was com- 
 posed and the influences that modified without destroy- 
 ing this matter in the course of the Middle Ages. The 
 French, like every other national group in Western 
 Europe, may be said to have differentiated from the 
 mere ruins of the Empire in that dark period which 
 follows the death of Charlemagne; until that epoch 
 some shadow of unity remained, and certainly the forces 
 working against unity had not yet begun to be national. 
 The order of Rome, which had remained as an accepted 
 ideal for five hundred years, takes under Charlemagne a 
 certain substance and reality, as mystical and as strange, 
 as full of approaching doom and yet as actual as a 
 momentary resurrection from the dead. It ceases with 
 the close of his reign, and what Dr. Stubbs has well 
 called " the darkness of the ninth century " comes doym. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 13 
 
 The northern pirates fall on the north and west, and 
 cut off the islands from the mainland, giving us in Eng- 
 land the barrier of the Danish invasions, beyond which 
 Anglo-Saxon history grows dim; they crush out the 
 customs, and even the religion, of the coasts of the 
 Continent. The Hungarian certainly, the heathen Slavs 
 of the Baltic presumably, cut in streams through the 
 Germanic tribes. The Saracens held the Mediterranean. 
 Society fell back upon its ultimate imits; in all that 
 mechanical disintegration the molecules of which it is 
 composed remained. The village community, self-suffi- 
 cing, self-contained, alone preserved an organisation and 
 a life. 
 
 For more than a century it hung upon a thread 
 whether the Koman tradition should survive, or whether 
 our civilisation should fall into the savagery which has 
 apparently been elsewhere the fate of systems almost as 
 strong. A new thing arose in Europe, destined more 
 than any other factor to deflect the current of its Latin 
 tradition. There was found, when the light began to 
 grow upon this darkness, in nearly every village a little 
 king. Whichever men had in the old times been pos- 
 sessed of power, local officials, large owners of land, 
 leaders in the great armies, emerge from the cataclysm 
 welded into one new class — the nobles; and with the 
 appearance of this caste, with the personal emotions 
 and the strong local feeling that their system developed, 
 Europe becomes a feudal society. But that society 
 contained another element, which was destined to control 
 and at last to destroy the feudaUty. For strangely 
 enough, this period, which had thrown Europe into such 
 anarchy, had produced an idea the very opposite of such 
 a character. The nationalities begin to arise. The kings 
 — weak shadows — nobles, often of small power, but no 
 longer the mere leaders of armies, become symbols of a 
 local unit, separated from the Empire. They stood for 
 
14 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 tlie nation round which the patriotism that you will 
 discover in the old epics was to gather. 
 
 France, more perhaps than any of the new divisions, 
 illustrates all this. A small weak king, one Capet, was 
 elected from among the nobles at the end of the tenth 
 century, and the family which ultimately toppled over 
 from the immensity of its burden, descended from him 
 in direct line from father to son through more than 
 eight hundred years. 
 
 In the early years of that crusading century which is 
 the vigorous opening of the life that was to produce our 
 Europe, a discovery was made which was destined to help 
 this new kingship to take a very different shape. In the 
 loot of Amalfi, in a petty war, the Roman Code of Law 
 was rediscovered. 
 
 It had the effect which might be imagined in a 
 barbarous society which the Normans and Hildebrand 
 had at last aroused. It suddenly gave a text and an 
 accurate guide to those splendid but vague memories of 
 Imperial order and civilisation. 
 
 Everywhere the Universities arise; from Bologna 
 come out the corporation of the lawyers, the students 
 of the code, the men whose decisions were final, who 
 led mediaeval society as the scientists lead ours to-day; 
 and everywhere they tended to the two bases of the 
 Roman idea — absolute sovereignty in the case of the 
 State, absolute ownership in the case of the Individual. 
 
 The logical end of such a movement should have 
 been the Empire — citizens all equal before the law, the 
 feudal system destroyed, the Church dominated by the 
 State, the will of the prince supreme. But Europe 
 contained a hundred elements beside the lawyers, though 
 these were the most permanent and active force of her 
 civilisation. The Manorial unit was strong; there are 
 places where it survives to-day.i The aristocracy was 
 ' For example, the island of Serque. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 15 
 
 strong. In Poland and England it ended by conquering 
 the Crown and the Roman law. The Church, affected as 
 it was by the new ideas, still had a host of anomalous habits 
 and institutions, grown up since the fall of the Empire. 
 
 In the anarchy of the dark ages the framework 
 of intense local difierences had been constructed ; the 
 village, the guild, the chapter, each had their special 
 customs bom of isolation. Finally, the spirit of secon- 
 dary nationalities was powerful in many places ; notably 
 among the Germans it conquered every other tendency. 
 
 Now France was especially favourable to the growth 
 of the influences of this law ; she was very Roman by 
 tradition, and by tradition Imperial. Charlemagne had 
 left his clothes to Germany, but his spirit to Gaul. The 
 sub-nationalities, Provence, Normandy, the Gascons, had, 
 in spite of their local patriotism, epics in which they 
 harped on " Doulce France Terre Majeure." But though 
 the national forces on the whole inclined towards the 
 lawyers and the Crown, the path by which absolute 
 centraUsation could be reached was tortuous and had 
 to be well chosen. The nobles are slowly bereft of 
 pohtical power, but their privilege remains ; the peasant 
 gradually acquires the land, but many feudal dues lie 
 on a tenure which has lost all its feudal meaning. The 
 Church becomes the king's, but it remains in adminis- 
 tration of its vast possessions : to the last the Crown 
 works through (or attempts to work through) the local 
 organisation that was once supreme and is fast dying. 
 
 You may compare the progress of the Capetians 
 towards absolute power to the action of a gentleman who 
 obtains an estate at the cost of perpetual bribery, and 
 finds himself crippled when he has at last succeeded. 
 
 Finally, the lawyers themselves become sterilised in 
 the general decay which their policy has created. Even 
 the Crown is half-allied to the privileged bodies in prac- 
 tice, and altogether allied in sentiment ; the government 
 
i6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 ■which had for centuries created and sustained the people 
 now found itself remote from them and the source of its 
 power cut off. 
 
 I wUl give but a couple of examples to illustrate the 
 centralisation and the hopeless confusion that accompanied 
 it. The first is from De Tocqueville. A village near Paris 
 wished to raise a small local rate to mend the steeple of 
 the church. They could not do so without appealing to 
 Versailles. The leave was granted after two years, but 
 the steeple had broken down. The second is from the 
 records of the election of '89. In a bailiwick of Cham- 
 pagne it was discovered that no one accurately knew the 
 boundaries of the district, that the next bailiwick was 
 similarly ignorant, and finally an arbitrary line was drawn. 
 This is one out of dozens of cases. The population of 
 Paris was not known; the number of electors in every 
 division was uncertain. 
 
 Such was the France in which reform was necessary. 
 The land, by a continual and misdirected interference with 
 exchange, was going out of cultivation — or rather (for 
 even in the worst cases of depression this symptom ia 
 rare) it was yielding less and less as time went on. 
 
 The classes into which society was divided had become 
 separated by an etiquette as rigorous as a religion, and 
 though the thing has gone, the phrases that described 
 it are vigorous to this day, and lead continually to the 
 gravest misconception. A France where one Frenchman 
 has grown so like another still lets its Hterature run upon 
 some of the old lines. 
 
 Five great divisions should especially be noticed in 
 connection with the Revolution — the peasants, the arti- 
 sans, the middle class, the professionals, the noblesse; 
 and side by side with these, a separate thing, the Church, 
 sharply divided into the higher and lower clergy. Let 
 me, at the risk of some digression, enter into the details 
 of these various groups. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 17 
 
 The peasants were the majority of the nation, as they 
 are to-day. At a rough guess, out of some five million 
 heads of families, three and a half at least were of this 
 class. What were they ? They were more ignorant, more 
 fearful, and more imhappy than ever the iohabitants of 
 French soil had been before. 1 believe it is no exaggera- 
 tion to say that the worst of the barbarian invasions had 
 not produced among them such special and intense misery 
 as had the running down of the governmental machine in 
 the eighteenth centm-y. Their songs had ceased. Search 
 the folk-lore of France, and you will find a kind of gap after 
 the centralisation was complete, and after the lords had left 
 them — after the seventeenth century. It is as though that 
 oldest sign of commimal life, the traditions and the stories 
 of the little circle of the village, had died just before the 
 death of the village itself. As to religion, with which all 
 this natural and fertile love of legend is so closely knit, it 
 lingered, but it lingered hardly. The priest still survived, 
 but his action was cut off by penury; in places the extreme 
 physical needs of the peasantry, whose lot he shared, 
 entered into his life to an intolerable degree, and a half- 
 paganism resulted. Twenty, thirty pounds a year is not 
 enough for the celibate who holds the sacramental power 
 in the village. I will show you in the rural communes 
 of France church after church part of whose buildings are 
 very old, part very new : and what is the reason ? That 
 in all these places the church fell into ruins till the new 
 State came to rebuild it. You may discover many cases of 
 restoration in the eighteenth century where a great cathedral 
 or a famous church or abbey is renewed: it is the work of the 
 upper clergy, and the dole out of their vast fortunes. In the 
 villages such cases are rare and eccentric. The Revolution, 
 for all its antagonism, gave to the Faith a new life. There 
 are to-day more monasteries and convents, more of the 
 clergy, both regular and secular, by far more missionaries, 
 than there were in 1789, but there are fewer bishops. 
 
i8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The peasant owned land, his roof and a few acres 
 beside ; he had been buying for generations, and the drift 
 of the law when it turned feudal tenant-right into owner- 
 ship was in his favour. But this ownership of the land, 
 the foundation of his future citizenship, was for the 
 moment his curse. It made him an independent man, 
 while he still had to pay the dues of his feudal depen- 
 dence. And independence works both ways. He stood, 
 ignorant and extremely poor, face to face with the all- 
 powerful State. His natural support and guide had left 
 the village for the court ; the lord was nothing more than 
 a name for endless annoyance and local exaction. The 
 symptom that comes just before death showed itself in the 
 ploughman and the labourer in the vineyard. He lost 
 heart ; he was too tired and too beaten to work ; the great 
 burden of the State, its taxes, its follies, had accumulated 
 on his shoulders, and had bent them so low that he could 
 no longer stir the earth with vigour into harvests. 
 
 Such men did not make the Revolution ; they were the 
 inert mass upon which it worked. They did not sing the 
 war-songs ; they did not understand the meaning of the 
 invasions. No peasant marked the assembUes with the 
 sense or cunning of the fields, the sound of patois was 
 lacking in the great chorus, and as you read the Revolu- 
 tion you feel continually the lack of something closely 
 in touch with Nature, because the most French of all 
 Frenchmen had forgotten how to speak. 
 
 The Revolution has made them ; and to this day the 
 heirs of the Republic wonder at the peasant in his 
 resurrection. From him come the humour, the gaiety, 
 the manhood; it is his presence in the suffrage that 
 criticises and tones down the crudities of political 
 formulae. He has re-created a host of songs, he has turned 
 all France into a kind of walled garden ; underneath the 
 poUticians, and in spite of them, he is working out the 
 necessary thing which shall put flesh on to the dry bones 
 
THE REVOLUTION 19 
 
 of the Revolution, — I mean the reconciliation of the 
 Republic and the Church. 
 
 As to the artisans, they play in the story of the 
 movement a subsidiary but an interesting part. The 
 artisans (in the sense in which I use the term) were found 
 only in the great towns. At least the artisans outside 
 these centres must be reckoned as part of the peasantry, 
 for their spirit was that of the village. These craftsmen 
 of the towns did not form a large percentage of the nation. 
 Perhaps half-a-miUion famihes — perhaps a trifle more. 
 But their concentration, the fact that they could come in 
 hundreds and hear the orators, the fact that they alone, 
 by the accidents of their position, could form mobs, these 
 were the causes of their pecuhar effect upon the Revolu- 
 tionary movement. 
 
 Like the peasant, the ouvrier gives hardly any type to 
 politics. If we except Hebert, on the strength of his 
 being a vagabond ticket-collector, there is hardly any one 
 of prominence who comes from the labourers in the towns. 
 But the combined effort of the class was great and was as 
 follows: — It furnished for the party of revolt an angry 
 and ready army of the streets ; it was capable of follies and 
 of violence almost unlimited ; it was capable also of con- 
 centration and common action. It filled the tribunes of 
 the clubs, and more than once terrorised the ParUament. 
 It was patriotic, but wofully suspicious; and in all it did the 
 main fault was a lack, or rather a dislike, of delay, of self- 
 criticism, and of self-control: the ruling passion anger, and 
 the motive of this anger the partial information, the 
 extreme false idea, of the political movement, which it 
 was wUling to read into every speech delivered. 
 
 I will attempt to say why this character, the worst 
 and the most dangerous of the period, was developed in 
 the labour of the towns. In the first place, the industrial 
 system is of itself fatal to the French character. It is not 
 in the traditions of the nation; it is opposed to the tendencies 
 
20 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 which, the most superficial observer can discover in them. 
 The Frenchman saves and invests in small parcels, lovea 
 to work with his own tools, is impatient of a superior 
 unless it be in some domestic relation, is attached to the 
 home life, and above all is no good specialist : " II veut 
 rester homme." You will find too many artists, too few 
 machines in a crowd of them. 
 
 It may be that a cheap distribution of power, or 
 that some other economic change, will reinstate the small 
 capitalist; till then, for all his industry, the French 
 workman will be at a disadvantage. In the great towns, 
 in the manufactory, under a central control which has no 
 political basis of right, cut off from the fields for which 
 the peasant Ln him always yearns, he is like good wine 
 txumed sour. 
 
 In the second place, the system of the old regime 
 had produced an aristocracy of labour such as many 
 reformers demand in England to-day. Mediaeval restric- 
 tions, which had once appHed to all workers, and had 
 been designed to limit competition between men all of 
 whom were employed, survived in 1789 as guilds and 
 companies strictly protected by law, with fixed hours of 
 labour, fixed wages — every kind of barrier to exclude 
 the less fortunate artisans. A system that under St. 
 Louis had made life more secure for all, had, under his 
 descendants, separated the workmen into two classes of 
 the over- and the under-paid, and these last increased. 
 
 In the third place, the recent treaty of commerce 
 with England had worked most disadvantageously for 
 French manufacture, and in all the great towns, especially 
 in Paris, thousands of men were out of work. 
 
 In the fourth place, the general scarcity of agri- 
 cultural produce struck the ouvrier, even if he were 
 employed at good wages, in the heaviest fashion. 
 
 Between the cornfield and the city came the taxes, 
 the feudal dues, the provincial frontier duties, and 
 
THE REVOLUTION 21 
 
 finally the octroi paid at the city gates. So inejit a 
 method of continually harassing exchange could not 
 but react upon production, and even when the harvest 
 was plentiful bread was dear in the great cities. Even 
 when these internal taxes did not diminish the output, 
 they raised the price in the towns. 
 
 Finally, the Church, which, as we have seen, had none 
 too firm a hold on the villagers, had lost all power over 
 the townsmen. To what was this due ? Presumably 
 to the apathy which had overtaken the rich higher 
 clergy, a class which naturally congregated in the towns, 
 especially in Paris, and whose example influenced all 
 the surrounding priests. Add to this the destruction 
 of the old unit of the parish in the city. The industrial 
 system had broken up the neighbourliness of the capital. 
 Men rarely lived in their own houses, often changed their 
 lodgings to follow their work. There is no worse enemy 
 to the parochial and domestic character of our religion 
 than the economic change from which we suffer. Now 
 with the Church was associated all the morality of their 
 traditions ; without it they were lost. They had not read 
 the philosophers ; Kousseau had not permeated so deep. 
 For the matter of that, they would have cared little for 
 him or for Seneca ; and, deprived of any code, they were 
 at the mercy of every passion and of all unreason. 
 Only this much remained : that they honestly hated 
 injustice ; that egotism had very little to do with their 
 anger ; that they were capable of admirable enthusiasms. 
 They had not the little qualities of the rich, and they 
 also escaped their vices. One great virtue attached to 
 them : they did nothing at the expense of the coxmtry's 
 honour ; no reactionary or foreigner bought them ; they 
 were patriotic through all their errors. 
 
 To these characters, which they brought into the 
 Kevolution, a further accident must be added. They 
 became disfranchised. As we shall see later, the coa« 
 
22 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 stitution of 1790, based upon the very sound prin- 
 ciple of representing those only who supported the 
 State, gave no provision (as it should have done) for 
 making that support fall upon the shoulders of all. It 
 enfranchised the great bulk of Frenchmen — over four 
 milhon entered the ranks of the " Active Citizens " — but 
 it disfranchised the very class which sat in the galleries 
 of the Parliament or ran to the Place de Grfeve. The 
 workman, Kving in lodgings or flats sublet, often chang- 
 ing his residence, rarely paid any direct tax; he alone, 
 therefore, lost the vote to which practically every peasant 
 was entitled. This accident (it was not planned) worked 
 in two ways. It added to the discontent of the Parisian 
 workman, but it also forbade his movements to take 
 political shape. To the very last the initiative was in 
 the hands of others. 
 
 These others were the three remaining divisions — 
 the middle class, the professionals, and the nobles. 
 
 It would be an error to make too hard and fast the 
 barriers between these classes. In the cart that took the 
 Dantonists to the guillotine all three were to be found. 
 Nevertheless it aids a history of the Revolutionary period 
 to distinguish each from each. 
 
 The bourgeoisie meant almost anything from a small 
 shopkeeper to a successful lawyer. It was not so much 
 the man's occupation as his breeding and domestic sur- 
 roundings that made him of this rank. Let me explain 
 what I mean. Suppose the family of a linendraper (such 
 as was Priestley's family or Johnson's in England) pos- 
 sessed of several thousand poimds. Let them put a son 
 to the bar, and let the son succeed at the profession ; well, 
 the man and his son, so different in their pursuits, would 
 yet remain in the class I desire to define, unless by some 
 accident they got " in with " one of the Uterary coteries 
 with which the noblesse mingled. And this separation 
 would be something much more definite than in the 
 
THE REVOLUTION 23 
 
 parallel case in England. This class of the bourgeoisie 
 stood like a great phalanx in the Kevolution. Not one 
 in ten of the class I am attempting to describe had 
 entered the salons; there was not (as there is in an 
 aristocratic state) any great desire to know the noblesse. 
 An accident of surroundings, of eminence, or of friend- 
 ship might lift a man from this class, but he would leave 
 it with regret. 
 
 Of this class were Robespierre, Marat (in spite of his 
 aristocratic milieu), Bonaparte,* Danton himself, Santerre, 
 Legendre, Carnot, Couthon, Barrfere — dozens of all the 
 best-known names in the second period of the Revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Brewers, builders, large shopkeepers, a host of pro- 
 vincial lawyers — these all over France, to the number of 
 at least a mUlion voters, formed a true middle class such 
 as we lack in England. Note also that they might rise 
 to a very considerable position without leaving this rank. 
 A man might be physician to the first houses, a king's 
 counsel, a judge, anything almost except the colonel of a 
 regiment, and yet be a bourgeois, and his son after him. 
 In the memoirs of the last century you wiU find con- 
 tinually a kind of disgust expressed by the upper class 
 against a set just below them; it is the class feeling 
 against the bourgeoisie, their choice of words, their restric- 
 tions of fortune, their unfashionable virtues. These men 
 were often learned ; among the lawyers they were the pick 
 of France ; they had a high cultiu'e, good manners, in the 
 case of individuals wit, and sometimes genius, but they 
 were not gentlefolk, and had no desire to be thought so. 
 
 Of those, however, who were technically bourgeois, 
 possessing no coat of arms nor receiving feudal dues, 
 some had practically passed by an accident of association 
 
 1 Bonaparte may have had a noble ancestry. But so had more than 
 one Brne bourgeois whose family had had neither the means nor the desire 
 to insist npon the privileged rank in the past. 
 
24 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 into the upper class of all. They met constantly in some 
 salon, library, or scientific body members of the privileged 
 order ; their dress, manners, and conceptions were those of 
 the liberal noblesse. To such men, very small in number 
 and very influential, I would give the name of Profes- 
 sionals. The class is complete if you add to it the many 
 noble names who stood prominent in the sciences or the 
 arts. It was recruited from legal families of long stand- 
 ing, from financiers. It was polite, wealthy, often singularly 
 narrow. Of such a type were the Marquis de Condorcet, 
 BaiUy, Sieyfes ; even Roland might be counted, though he 
 Aardly stood so high. These were the theorisers of the 
 Revolution, with no practical grievance, ignorant of the 
 mob, despising and misunderstanding the bourgeoisie 
 (save in their political speeches) ; they were the orators of 
 the new regime, and died with the Girondins. 
 
 As to the noblesse (who partly overlapped these last, 
 and yet as a class were so distinct), they formed a body 
 with which this book will hardly deal, and upon which 
 I will touch but lightly. In very great numbers, the 
 bulk of them by no means rich (though some, of course, 
 were the greatest milhonaires of their day), they were 
 defined by a legal status rather than an especial manner. 
 
 He was noble whom the king had ennobled or who 
 could prove an ancestry from the feudal lords of the 
 manors.^ The family name was never heard, only the 
 territorial name preceded by the " de." They had also 
 this in common, that the whole great swarm of families, 
 thousands and thousands, had a cousinship with that 
 higher stratum which made the court. This coasinship 
 was acknowledged ; it put them in the army ; it gave 
 them the right to be spitted in a duel, and, above all, it 
 exempted them from taxes. It made them, wherever they 
 went, a particular class, to be revered by fools, and able 
 
 1 For the sake of clearness I do not mention the large class who h»d 
 porchased fiefs, all technically noble, many practically bourgeois. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 25 
 
 to irritate their enemies merely by existing — a privilege 
 of some value. They held together in the heat of the 
 reform, and it was only from the higher part of the 
 noblesse that the deserters came — Mirabeau, Lafayette, 
 and De S^chelles. The great bulk of them were poor, 
 and consequently determined in the matter of privilege 
 and feudal right that gave them their pittance. The class 
 was richer than the bourgeoisie, but numerous families 
 in it had not the capital of a bourgeois household, and 
 many a poor lady boasts to-day of family estates lost in 
 the Revolution, whose ancestry had no estates at all, but 
 only a few tithes and a chance in the spoU to be had at 
 court. 
 
 Now to all these, without exception, reform seemed 
 necessary ; it was only when the Revolution was in full 
 swing that the opposition of particular bodies appeared. 
 The peasant was in misery; the artisan was angry; the 
 middle class, possessed of that feeling which Sieyfes ex- 
 pressed in a phrase : " Qu'est-ce que le Tiers £tat ? — 
 Rien;" and they were determined to work upon the 
 sequel : " Que doit-il etre ? — Tout." To this general 
 chorus of demand the professionals added a strong con- 
 viction (in the abstract) of the good of self-government 
 and of the necessity for removing State interference. 
 The noblesse, as a class, expected nothing in particular 
 to happen, but they were not unwilling for a ParHament 
 to meet ; they also suffered from the extreme complexity, 
 or rather anarchy, into which things had fallen. Talent 
 saw itself wrecked by court iatrigue; piety was offended by 
 the sight of a starving priest side by side with a careless, 
 wealthy, often irreligious member of the higher clergy. 
 Moreover, there ran through the nobiUty this curious 
 feeling — an error which you will always find in the more 
 generous of a privileged class — namely, that in some 
 mysterious way their special rights might be aboUshed 
 and they not suffer for it — as though there were some 
 
26 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 vast sum in reserve, into which the State had but to put 
 its hand and relieve the poor without taxing the rich. 
 On the moral as on the material side this error obtained, 
 and Lafayette, a man created by privilege, thought that 
 when privilege was abolished his native virtues would 
 lift him into the first rank. 
 
 To all this attitude of expectancy, and to this instant 
 demand for reform, was added the insurmountable thing 
 that made the Parliament necessary. The great symptom 
 of decay had shown itself — the revenue could no longer be 
 raised. Luckily for France, there existed in the last cen- 
 tury no such international finance as exists at present, 
 and the fatal temptation of external debt was not ofifered. 
 With a population not quite two-thirds what it is to-day, 
 the country failed to raise one-twentieth of what it now 
 pays with ease. The debt was increasing with a terrifying 
 rapidity, and since all the methods of centralised routine 
 had failed, it was necessary to turn to the last resource, 
 and the nation was asked to vote a tax. With promises 
 of redress, with an understanding that the Assembly was 
 to reform upon all sides, with a special demand for a 
 statement of grievances, but especially for the necessities 
 of revenue, the States General were summoned for the 
 first time in a hundred and seventy-five years. 
 
 Such was the condition that preceded the Revolution. 
 We have seen the attitude of the various social classes 
 and the material necessity that prepared the reform. 
 Now what were the ideas that were about to guide it ? 
 What theory was moving the men who met at Versailles ? 
 What form would the national character give to the 
 changes which were ia preparation ? 
 
 It will be necessary here to propose a paradox. The 
 French character, which has been blamed so frequently 
 since the Revolution (and so justly) for an excess of 
 idealism, postesses at the same time a passion for the 
 positive, the objective, and the certain. In the saiar' 
 
THE REVOLUTION 27 
 
 man you ■mil continually find some idea which pushes 
 him to extremes, and in the ordinary afifairs of life a 
 most exact sense of reality, even sometimes an exasperat- 
 ing accuracy of detail. They are not alone in discovering 
 an antithesis in the national character ; in England, Ger- 
 many, or Northern Italy it would be equally possible to 
 show two apparently opposite characteristics united in the 
 same civic type. But perhaps the nearest parallel we have 
 at home to the contrasts of the French is to be seen in 
 the Scotch people ; like the French, a nation of indepen- 
 dents, thrifty, investing continually in small sums, zealous 
 of pence ; like the French, on the other hand, they delight 
 in the abstract problem ; they wiU attach themselves to 
 some idea, and hold it to the point of martyrdom. 
 
 What was the result of these two tendencies ? In 
 some characters they balanced each other. Condorcet 
 comes to the mind as an example. But, as with other 
 nations, the two aspects of France appeared (in much 
 the greater number of her citizens) exalted to a violent 
 degree that corresponded with the extreme danger and 
 the extreme hopes of a moment of crisis. 
 
 I do not mean that you would have found in France 
 two factions, the one of visionaries, the other of practical 
 men; I mean that throughout the Revolution the goal 
 and the method of attaining it reflected this double 
 nature. Consider the decrees and their effects. At 
 the sight of what the AssembHes from 1789 to 1795 
 are trying to do you would say, " A set of men attempt- 
 ing to build a city of dreams ; " there is hardly anything 
 so unnatural but that they will attempt it ; they are ready 
 to reconstruct from the foundation. The most violent 
 period, that of 1794, is nothing but an effort to make all 
 men conform to civic virtue and believe the necessary 
 things ; the most sane, that of 1 79 1 , is yet an attempt 
 to realise in the State an equality and a justice that can 
 only exist in the souL 
 
28 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 But if you turn to their methods and to the measure 
 of their success, then you have a very different idea. 
 They succeeded beyond all hope. They struck in a 
 few months the blows that remoulded all France. The 
 centralisation which the practical side of the character 
 had created was used to transform France as rapidly as 
 though the nation had been a household ; and not only 
 do they find means to do this, but, when the necessity 
 arises, they suddenly raise armies of three hundred 
 thousand, of a million; they find the commissariat 
 somewhere in a starvLag people, and they succeed. 
 
 WhUe, then, the nation was fitted for action to such a 
 degree, what was the theory which its ideahsm was about 
 to embrace ? There had permeated throughout the 
 noblesse and the bourgeoisie something more than a phi- 
 losophy. It was not only a set of eighteenth-century 
 phrases, of Reason, and Nature, and Right, but all these 
 things turned into a religion. The apostolic quahty of 
 Rousseau had touched the mind of France. 
 
 It is the fashion to belittle this man. Something in 
 him angers our successful and eager century, and yet but 
 for him our century would not have taken the shape it 
 has. It is needless to recall the movement which had 
 preceded and which surrounded him. He did but com- 
 plete the theory of the social contract ; he hardly did 
 more than repeat the conclusions of the rationahsts; in 
 the matter of economics he was entirely ignorant ; he fell 
 continually into the error of superficiality where history 
 or where the details of institutions were concerned. A 
 resident in England, he imagined that her people were 
 represented ; writing his famous work at Nuneham 
 Courtenay, he could not see that the squire was every- 
 thing in the little village. He had all the faults of 
 weakness ; he invited a persecution which he had not the 
 wit to attack nor the stamina to sustain. What, then, 
 made him such a prophet ? In the first place, the power 
 
THE REVOLUTION 29 
 
 of words. All his critics in tliis country (with the 
 exception of Mr. Morley perhaps) have failed to appre- 
 ciate how great this power was. See what the Jacobean 
 translation of the Bible has done in England ; note what 
 the pure rhetoric of Burke, proceeding solely from passion 
 and untouched by any movement of reason, effected in 
 England within a year of the fall of the BastUle : it was 
 this that Rousseau did in France. But not this alone. 
 If he possessed the power of words, he also had to an ex- 
 traordinary degree that other quality which does not reside 
 in style but in the texture of the mind. He could write 
 in the pure abstract, and produce a piece of clear exposi- 
 tion deduced in an unbreakable chain from some funda- 
 mental dogma. He never commits the error of supposing 
 his first principles to rely upon reason ; he postulates a 
 Faith. He allows that Faith to illumine his every 
 sentence. He is certain that the things common to all 
 men are the things of immeasurable importance; he is 
 certain that the accidents of hving are secondary. He is 
 certain that our being part of all natiure is the condition 
 of happiness and of good; he is certain that the com- 
 plexity of living which separates us from Nature is an 
 evil, and to a France tortured with age he proposes 
 this simple water of youth : that it should return to the 
 first conditions of a small hamlet; where the families 
 met together dictate the law ; where each sees himself to 
 be a part of the whole, and where the harmony that all 
 men sought comes easily to an ideal democracy hidden 
 in happy valleys. It is idle to argue that complexity was 
 there ; that France could not have at once the patriotism 
 of twenty million, and the institutions of a hundred, 
 hearths. Every one saw that difficulty, and in the midst 
 of '94 the most fervent apostles of Rousseau compromised 
 on the chief point, for the principle of election, which he 
 hated, remained of necessity the chief method in their 
 scheme of democracy. 
 
30 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 It is not the obstacles, but the motive force that you 
 must examiue if you would comprehend the fervour of 
 the RepubUc. And the motive force was that passion 
 for the conditions under which the race has passed how 
 many seons of its tutelage, the harking back to the pre- 
 historic things, the village and the tribe, all of whose 
 spirit ran through the books that preached simplicity 
 with such admirable eloquence. 
 
 There remains one feature to be discussed before we 
 turn to a brief outliue of Danton's place in the move- 
 ment — a featm-e which will be of capital importance 
 throughout this book. That feature is the hegemony of 
 Paris. It was the rule of Paris that made the whole 
 course of the Revolution. In that focus of discussion 
 and of passion the great advances and the great blunders 
 of the" Revolution took place. Paris alone made the 14th 
 of July, almost alone the loth of August, alone and 
 against France the 2nd of June. Many an historian has 
 seen in her position an error that should have been and 
 could have been avoided. It is an opioion which from 
 the time of Mirabeau to our own day has lain in the mind 
 of French statesmen, that Paris must be jealously watched, 
 played, forbidden control. 
 
 Why does Paris hold this position ? Here is a city- 
 state, eager, concentrated, the centre Lq many things of 
 our European civilisation; that it should continually 
 exert a moral influence over the State is easily to be 
 understood, but Paris did more — it conquered and domi- 
 nated the State, and France continually permitted that 
 leadership. 
 
 There is, I beUeve, a point of view from which this 
 historical fact becomes no longer an accident but a 
 reasonable thing; and if we take that point of view it 
 will be possible to understand why from the beginning 
 ahe preserved the initiative, and became and remained 
 till Thermidor the mistress of France. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 31 
 
 The people of that country are, for much the greater 
 part, the peasants whom I have described. They have 
 for centuries been owners of the soil, and for at least two 
 thousand years (perhaps far longer) they have found all 
 their social, all their physical, and most of their intel- 
 lectual interests in the intense but narrow life of & 
 village community. In any great expanse of view you 
 see the white houses, all huddled together without 
 gardens, and between each group bare vast brown fields 
 empty of farmsteads. These peasants have in them an 
 admirable cousinship with the soil; their phrases and 
 their proverbs are drawn directly from the fields and 
 rivers ; they are as healthy as Nature herself. Such is 
 the general mass of France; but these innumerable 
 villages, these vigorous swarms of men who work in the 
 sunUght, need a bond. Some concrete object must be 
 present to give true unity to many vague national im- 
 pressions. Something must be the persona of these 
 miUions, and through the mouth of that something they 
 must hear action formulated, patriotism expressed, the 
 law defined. From it must come the executive, and of 
 it are expected the direct orders and the government by 
 which, in times of crisis, a nation is saved. 
 
 This brain, which is necessary to a complex organism, 
 might have been found in a high priest or a despot; 
 but we in England unconsciously look for it in an oli- 
 garchy. Seeing the squires wanting, we think there is 
 nothing, and we draw doleful conclusions when we note 
 the absence in the French villages of the forces that 
 invigorate our own. We complain of the centralisation 
 that atrophies, forgetting the oUgarchy that cows and 
 debases the inferior class ; and while we despise the 
 poUtical apathy of French country life, we ignore the 
 negation of society in our great cities. 
 
 The truth is that no definite system can escape 
 attendant evils, and that if one nation does not adopt 
 
32 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the methods that have succeeded in another it is because 
 those methods are connected with instinct, and instinct 
 can neither be taught nor adopted. 
 
 It was instinct that forbade the growth in France 
 of oligarchic institutions. Everything was ready for it; 
 the feudal system would seem its proper parent; the 
 lords of the manors were so many seeds of what should 
 have been a territorial aristocracy. They were destined 
 to fail, and to say why is impossible, because it is impos- 
 sible to explain Nature ; we can only feel. Something in 
 the genius of the nation makes for equality with the 
 depth and silence of a strong tide at night. It is not 
 the Roman law — all the nations had that. It is not 
 even the Church — there is a something in the Church 
 which neglects if it does not despise civic ideals. It is 
 not the distribution of capital — that can be distinctly 
 proved to be an historical result and not a cause. No, 
 it is not an exterior force, but something from within 
 which has produced this passion, the soul (as it were) 
 forming the body. " La France a fait la France." 
 
 If aristocracy were impossible, what remained ? The 
 waUed towns. They are like pins on which the lace of 
 France is stretched; the roads unite them and make a 
 web which supports the rural communes. Never far 
 apart, always living a life intensely their own, the walled 
 towns stood guardian over surrounding villages. Here 
 was the cathedral or the abbey, the judges, the college. 
 It would give the name to a district, it would form with 
 its dependent communes a kind of little state. News 
 from the outside was concentrated here, and if a religious 
 or political enthusiasm ran from the Rousillion to the 
 Artois, it was not the villages that caught fire in the 
 mass, but the towns, that passed the message on like 
 beacons. 
 
 Now as the roots of this municipal system were to 
 be found in Rome, these needed a little Rome to cap it. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 33 
 
 These towns being all of a kind, they of necessity fell 
 grouped under the largest of their class. The tendency 
 was well marked even before Gaul was re-united; the 
 same force that made the great archbishoprics makes the 
 metropolitan civil influence. Thus Rheims, Lyons,^ and 
 Toulouse stand out hierarchically the heads of provinces 
 — a very different kind of town from Canterbury (let us 
 say) or Lichfield, where once they talked of an arch- 
 bishopric for Mercia. 
 
 Well, as the power of the Crown increases (which is 
 another way of saying, " as the nation realises its memo- 
 ries of unity "), there increase with it the means of com- 
 munication, and especially the strong centralised system 
 which, as we have seen in another part of this chapter, 
 had become a fatal necessity to France. Remember also 
 that till the very end of the seventeenth century Paris had 
 been uniquely the king's town, and had so been (with 
 one short interval) for more than a thousand years. 
 Here was every single organ which the executive of a 
 centralised government may need, and (what is more 
 important) here was the place where each organ had grown ; 
 they were in the fibre of the place. Even if we go back 
 no farther than the Capetians, we have a full seven hun- 
 dred years of development in one spot from the familiar 
 domestic origins, the little barbarous cornrt in the palace 
 on the island to the great city of nearly a million souls, 
 whose terms and professions and classes, and whose every 
 institution had developed round the throne. 
 
 When one remembers that the king had abandoned 
 Paris but a hundred years ; that he had left in the capital 
 by far the greater part of the central machinery, espe- 
 cially the lawyers; that even from what he had taken 
 many relics remained, and that professional men of (Jl 
 classes had the family tradition of the court in the capital 
 
 ' Lyons was, of course, a frontier town of the empire, but locally it is 
 the centre of its own country the " Lyonnais." 
 
 
 
34 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 — then we can understand what Paris was, is, and must 
 be to a France where no class is permitted to govern. 
 Add to this the increasing speciaHsation of function as 
 the organism develops — the concentration of the brain — 
 and Paris of the eighteenth century, abandoned as it is, 
 hurt in its dignity, and a little uncertain of its action, 
 stUl fulfils the geography-books, and is the capital of 
 France. 
 
 She herself hardly knew how certainly power would 
 fall Lato her hands, yet from the first mention of the 
 States General it wa,s fated. 
 
 This, then, is the position as the States General meet. 
 A nation in absolute material need of reform, that must 
 have new institutions, especially new financial institutions, 
 or die ; classes separate from each other, mutually ignorant 
 of each other, yet all in some degree feeling the position 
 into which France had fallen : in the case of the bulk of 
 the people, misgovernment appearing ia the form of star- 
 vation ; in the case of the upper classes and of the govern- 
 ment itself, a conviction that the existing system was 
 contrary to all reason and opposed to every soimd interest. 
 
 In this society, at least in that part of it that will be 
 called upon to govern, is a conviction — a religion, if you 
 will — whose basis was the faith of Rousseau. Conditions 
 will moderate this for a time ; the necessary compromise 
 with what exists, the desire for peace that was uppermost 
 in the first two years, will make men slow to uproot and 
 destroy what may touch the interests of friends and of 
 large classes. They will always attempt a legal though 
 a rapid reform. But, in spite of them, on account of that 
 passionate conviction which underlay their most moderate 
 actions, the Revolution will move up towards the region of 
 unattainable things. The reformer will give way to the 
 Republican idealist when once the serious opposition of 
 the court is felt ; he in his turn will give way to the man 
 of passion and of action when the country is in danger ; 
 
THE REVOLUTION 35 
 
 and even the man of passion and of action — the man 
 of realities — will give way to the mere visionary before 
 reaction can come to sweep the floor clean in 1794. 
 
 Such will be the phases through which the form of the 
 Revolution will pass. As for the soul of it, France will be 
 steadily transformed, and, in spite of visionaries, reactions, 
 and every political accident, a new and a strong society 
 will be created. So the salt water comes in through old 
 dykes ; on its surface you will note the phases of a flood, 
 innumerable Httle streams, a torrent, a spreading lake, and 
 ultimately calm, but only one thing all the while is happen- 
 ing — where there has been land there will be the sea. 
 
 What place did Danton take in this transformation ? 
 Of his opinions in detail, his habit of body and mind, his 
 convictions, the accidents of his life, it is the purport of 
 this biography to treat. I will attempt only a very brief 
 description of his position, to make clear the drift of his 
 Revolutionary career, and with this close a chapter whose 
 only object has been to describe the surroundings of a 
 character with which the rest of this book is concerned. 
 
 Danton belonged to the bourgeoisie in rank, to the 
 less visionary in the bent of his mind. A young and suc- 
 cessful lawyer of thirty, the Revolution foimd him imknown 
 to poUtics and not desiring election. It was the accident 
 of oratory that gave him his first position. He discovered 
 himself to be a leader, and there grouped round him a 
 knot of the most ardent, some of them the most brilUant, 
 yoimger reformers. The electoral district to which he 
 happened to belong became through him the most demo- 
 cratic, and, in some ways, the most violent of Paris. 
 
 That part of him which led to such a position was his 
 sympathy. His tenderness (and he had a great share of 
 this quality) was hidden under the energy of his rough 
 voice, great frame, and violent gesture. His pity he was 
 slow to express. But the great crowd of men who were 
 unrepresented, the smaller but more influential class of 
 
36 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 those who felt and knew but could not speak — these 
 were attracted to him because he had the instinct of the 
 people. He was a demagogue at moments and for a 
 purpose, but never by profession nor for any period of 
 time. What he was, however, all his life and by nature, 
 was a Tribune. 
 
 The secret workings of the soil, the power that makes 
 all the quaUties of a nation from its wine to its heroes, 
 these had produced him as they produce the tree or the 
 harvest. He is the most French, the most national, the 
 nearest to the mother of all the Revolutionary group. 
 He summed up France ; and, the son of a small lawyer in 
 Champagne, he was a peasant, a bourgeois, almost a 
 soldier as well. When we study him it is like looking at 
 a landscape of Rousseau's or a figure of Millet's. We feel 
 France. 
 
 His voice was a good symbol of his mind, for there 
 was heard in it not only the deep tone of a multitude, 
 but that quality which comes from the mingling of many 
 parts — the noise of waters or of leaves. In his political 
 attitude he attained this collective quality, not by a vary- 
 ing point of view which is confusion, but by an integra- 
 tion. His opinions erred on the side of bluntness and of 
 directness. They were expressed in plain sentences of a 
 dozen words; he abhorred the classical allusion, he was 
 chary of metaphor. He spoke as a crowd would speak, 
 or an army, or a tribe, if it had a voice. 
 
 This was Danton, the public orator and the Tribune, 
 who for two years was heard at the Cordeliers, who spoke 
 always for the purely democratic reform, who opposed 
 the moderates, and who helped to destroy the com- 
 promise. Never identified with Paris, he yet saw clearly 
 the necessity of Paris. He admitted her claim, fenced 
 with her arrogance, but never worshipped her idols ; once 
 or twice he even dared to blame her worst follies. Elected 
 to the administration of the city, he played but a slight 
 
THE REVOLUTION 37 
 
 role, and until the spring of 1792 there is in him no 
 other quality. 
 
 The spring of 1792 produced the war with Europe, 
 and from that date Danton appears in another Ught. 
 Had he died then, we should have known him only 
 by chance references, a centre of strong reforming 
 speeches, an obscure man in opposition. But with the 
 outbreak of a war which he had done nothing to bring 
 on, and which his party thought unwise, Danton shows 
 that his character, in summing up his fellows, caught 
 especially their patriotism. France was the first thought, 
 and if we could hear not the debaters only, but all the 
 voices of France when the invasion began, it would be 
 this immediate necessity of saving the coimtry that 
 would drown all other opinions. Thence, and for a full 
 year after, Danton becomes the leading man of France. 
 The abUity which has led to his legal success (now that 
 his office is abolished and its reimbursement invested 
 in land) seems turned upon the political situation, and 
 such ability combined with such a representative quahty 
 pushes him to the front. Two quaUti«s appeared in him 
 which he himself perhaps had not guessed — the power 
 of rapid organisation, and the power of so judging char- 
 acter as to bring diplomacy to bear upon every accident 
 as it arrived. 
 
 It was not strictly he who made the i oth of August, 
 but he was the leader. He saw that with the king in 
 power the Prussians would reach Paris, and more than 
 any man he organised the insurrection. That was the 
 one act of violence in his life. 
 
 The rest of the nineteen months that fate allowed 
 were spent in the attempt to reconcile and harmonise all 
 the forces he could gather for the salvation of the nation. 
 Perhaps it was his chief fault that in this matter he held 
 to no pure idea. 
 
 A Republican and an ardent reformer, he yet seems 
 
38 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 to have thought France of so much the first importance 
 that he compromised and traflacked with all possible 
 allies. He attempted to stave off the war with England ; 
 he attempted to keep Dumouriez; he tried to prevent 
 vengeance from following the Girondins ; when the ex- 
 tremists captured the great Committee, he acquiesced, 
 and stiU wrestled with the forces of disunion. He would 
 have hidden, if possible, those wounds which weakened 
 France in the eyes of the world, and he waged a futile 
 war with the pure idealists — the men of one dogma, 
 who in so many separate camps were destroying each 
 other for their civic faith, and preparing all the evils of a 
 persecution. 
 
 On another side of pohtical action he appeared more 
 resolute than any man. It was he who saw the necessity 
 of a strong government, he who created the revolutionary 
 tribunal, and he who is chiefly responsible for the first 
 Committee of Public Safety. He made the dictatorship, 
 caring nothing for the principle, caring only to throw 
 back the foreigner. " He stamped with his foot, and 
 armies came out of the earth." The violent metaphor 
 is just. There is a succession, a stream of great armies 
 (they say four millions of men !) pouring out from France 
 for twenty years. If you will glance at the head of that 
 stream, and wonder when you read of Napoleon what first 
 called up the regiments, you may see on the Champ de 
 Mars in '92, and later demanding the great levy of '93, 
 the presence of Danton, the orator with the voice of 
 command, the attitude of a charge, the right arm thrown 
 forward in the gesture of the sword. 
 
 Possessed of astounding vigour, but lacking ambition, 
 a lover of immediate but not of permanent fame, his 
 superb energy after a year of effort spent itself in a 
 demand for repose. In September 1793 he thought his 
 work done and his position secure. He went back into 
 his country home, walked in the fields he loved (and of 
 
THE REVOLUTION 39 
 
 •whicli he talked before his death), revelled in Arcis, 
 filling himself with the conYivial pleasure that he had 
 always desired. He came back in November secure and 
 happy — ready, almost from without and as a spectator, 
 to continue the task of welding the nation together. It 
 was too late. He had created a machine too strong for 
 his control. He had seen the Terror swallow up the 
 Girondins, and had cried because he could not save them. 
 
 With the winter he began his protests, his persistent 
 demands for reason and for common-sense ; in the religious 
 and ia the political persecution he called for a truce ; 
 always his effort turned to the old idea — a united Re- 
 pubhcan France, strong agaiast Europe, with exceptional 
 powers against treason in a time of danger, but with a 
 margin on the side of mercy. 
 
 He failed. The extreme theorists whom he despised 
 had captured his dictatorship, and in April 1794 they 
 killed him. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE YOUTH OF DANTON 
 
 I SHALL attempt in the following chapter to tell all that 
 is known of the first thirty years of Danton's life. Our 
 knowledge of this period in his career is extremely slight. 
 It is based upon a minute research, but a research under- 
 taken only in the latter half of this century ; and it is 
 to be feared that the scanty materials will never be 
 seriously augmented. Every year makes the task more 
 difficult, and a century has rendered impassable the gulf 
 which Michelet, Bougeart, and even- Dr. Robinet, have 
 been able to bridge with living voices. 
 
 He was bom at Arcis-sur-Aube,^ a lesser town of the 
 Champagne Pouilleuse, that great flat which stretches out 
 from the mountain of Rheims beyond the twin peaks, tUl 
 it loses itself in the uplands of the river-partings. Here, 
 though it is cold in winter, there are still vineyards 
 making their last bastion on the covered slopes of the 
 hUls that form the northern boundary of the plain. 
 
 The day of his birth was the 26th of October 1759;^ 
 the date gives us his relation to the drama in which 
 he was to be a chief actor. Five months older than 
 Desmoulins, bom some months before De S^chelles, eight 
 years older than St. Just, he was the junior of Robespierre 
 by one and a half, of Mirabeau by ten years ; Louis XVI. 
 
 ' All biographers agree. The first publication of the extract from the 
 civil register was obtained by Bougeart in August i860. It was furnished 
 to him by M. Ludot, the mayor at the time. There is a ridiculous error in 
 the Jowmal de la Montagne, vol. ii. No. 142, "n^ k Orchie sur Aube." 
 
 ' The date is given in the extract mentioned in the preceding note. 
 \ 40 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 41 
 
 and Marie Antoinette were respectively five and four 
 years his seniors. He was sixteen years old when their 
 predecessor died in ignominy and in dirt. Born six weeks 
 after the fall of Quebec, he received the lasting impres- 
 sions of early youth during the rapid decline of the French 
 monarchy — the end of a slow decay which threatened to 
 be that of the nation itself. But just then Rousseau was 
 writing the Contrat Social, to be pubUshed in two years; 
 Voltaire was still in the full vigour of his attack, with 
 nineteen years of life before him ; it was the year of Can- 
 dide ; Diderot was founding the Encyclopaedia. 
 
 The time of his birth coincided with the rising of a 
 certain sun which has not yet set upon Europe, but the 
 boy's eyes turned to more immediate things, and saw in 
 a Httle provincial place the break-up of a wretched, ex- 
 perimental reign. 
 
 This point must be insisted upon, that a country 
 town was the best possible place for noting the collapse 
 of misgovernment. The country manors were more 
 wretched, the provincial capitals more loud and able in 
 their expressions of opinion ; but few places could show 
 the fatal process of disintegration more clearly than these 
 little provincial centres, the sub-prefectures of to-day. 
 The confusion of power, the excess and the ill-working 
 of privilege, the complexity and weakness of government, 
 were there apparent upon every occasion. The wealth of 
 the nation was diminished most especially by the inter- 
 ference with exchange. This (though ultimately a 
 source of their penury) was less directly evident to the 
 villagers, while the large town with its varied production 
 could (in another form) disguise the evil; but to the 
 small borough the experience was direct and terrible. 
 
 Again, the practical equahty of educated men was 
 there more apparent and more sinned against than in 
 the wider societies of the large towns. In a place like 
 Arcis-sur-Aube, isolated specimens of classes technically 
 
42 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 distinct were continually in contact. The less the number 
 of their caste and order (and the less their importance), 
 the more do the noblesse, to this day, put on their pride ; 
 and yet the more necessary is it, in the life of a small 
 town, that they should associate with those whose con- 
 versation and abilities are precisely their own. In Paris 
 or in Lyons, where large cUques were occupied in general 
 interests, such differences were often neglected; in the 
 forgotten towns of the provinces never. 
 
 On the other hand, the blind and dumb anger of the_ 
 peasantry would hardly reach Arcis. All over France 
 the town misunderstood the countryside, and in the early 
 Revolution actually fought against it. This will appear 
 strange to an English reader, who sees scarcely any con- 
 trast between a country market and an overgrown village. 
 In England the distinction hardly exists, but iu France 
 the borough is very separate from the peasant society 
 outside, and, though often smaller than some large neigh- 
 bouring village, it keeps to this day the Roman traditions 
 of a city. 
 
 We see, then, that Danton's birthplace in great part 
 accounts for the peculiar bent of his future politics : 
 practical, of legal effect, inspired by no hatred, though 
 strongly influenced by a personal experience of misgovem- 
 ment. But his parentage will show us still more clearly 
 how the conditions of his origin affected his career. 
 
 He was of the lawyers. His father was procureur 
 in the baihwick of Arcis. It is difficult to explain the 
 functions of his office at this date and to an English 
 reader, for it belongs to that " Administration" which is so 
 essentially Latin, and which we are but just beginning to 
 experience in England. Let it suffice to describe him as 
 the official whose duty it was to supply that which in 
 England the institution of the grand jury still in theory 
 provides, as it did once in reality. It was his business to 
 " present " the cases and the accused to the local criminal 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 43 
 
 court — local, because in France the circuit of assize is 
 unknown. Added to this were many duties and privi- 
 leges of registration, of stamping and so forth ; and the 
 position required an accurate, and even a minute know- 
 ledge of the royal law and provincial usage, the compli- 
 cated customary system of the old regime. 
 
 It is perhaps of still more importance to appreciate 
 the social position of Jacques Danton. Belonging to the 
 lower branches of the legal profession, and placed in a 
 lesser borough of Champagne, the father of Danton held 
 something of the same rank as would a small country 
 solicitor in one of our market-towns, with whatever addi- 
 tions of dignity might follow from a permanent oiEce in 
 the municipality of the place. 
 
 As to fortune, we do not accurately know the amount 
 of the family income during Danton's boyhood, but we 
 know that the office which was afterwards purchased for 
 him was worth some three to four thousand pounds ; that 
 the money was found largely upon the credit of his 
 father's legacy,^ and that the house in which the family 
 lived was their own — a useful rule existing throughout 
 provincial France. It is a substantial building, among 
 the best of the little town, standing in the market-place, 
 with the principal rooms giving upon the public square. 
 What with the probable capital and the known emolu- 
 ments of his position, we may regard Jacques Danton as a 
 man disposing of an income of about four to five hundred 
 pounds a year. 
 
 His mother was of a somewhat lower rank. She was 
 the daughter of a builder from the Champagne, and 
 her brother was a master-carpenter of the town. Of 
 her two sisters, one had married a postmaster and the 
 other a shopkeeper, both in Troyes ; her brother was the 
 priest of Barberey, near Arcis. 
 
 The father died when the boy was two and a half 
 
 ' See the action of the relatives in No. VI. of the Appendix. 
 
44 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 years old, leaving four children. We must presume, 
 thougli we are not certaLu, that Danton had one brother ; 
 and we know he had two sisters, one of whom married in. 
 Troyes ; the other died a nun at the same place in the 
 middle of this century.^ 
 
 On both sides of his family, through the connections 
 and marriages of his relations, their employment, their 
 dwellings, their descendants, we see the origin of Danton 
 absolutely separate from the lower and from the higher 
 ranks of the old regime. Only by an effort of imagiaa- 
 tion could he later understand the workman or the 
 peasant; only by daily conversation could he appreciate 
 the strange nobles of 1790, with their absence of national 
 pride. 
 
 In fine, Danton came out of that middle class which 
 has made the modern world, and which still iasecurely 
 sustains it. " Respectability and its gig " is an epigram 
 that would exactly suit the dull and proviacial surround- 
 ings of his first home ; but the converse of such pro- 
 vincialism is sanity, order, and strength, and out of fuel 
 so soUd and so cold the bourgeoisie has time and again 
 built a consuming fire. 
 
 From his father's death, before he was three years 
 old, till his ninth year, the child was with his mother in 
 the house at Arcis, for she had from the httle fortune 
 just enough revenue to keep the family together and to 
 educate the children. The little boy was taught his 
 Latin elements in the town, and then sent to the " Lower 
 Seminary" at Troyes.^ 
 
 It was the intention of his uncle at Barberey to 
 make him a priest, and in that case he would have passed 
 through the regular stages, taking the higher forms in 
 
 ' Bougeart, p. 12. A Danton, who was presumably the son of this 
 brother, was an inspector of the University under the second Empire. 
 
 " See Appendix No. V. ; also Thidtre de I'Anoien ColUge de Troyet, 
 Babeaa, published by Dufour Bouquet, Troyes, 1881. 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 45 
 
 the Upper Seminary, and finally being admitted to orders 
 a year or two after finishing his " Philosophie." However, 
 this programme was never completed, and the Church 
 lost in him the material for a vigorous, charitable, and 
 obscure country vicar. 
 
 The decision was probably the result of one of those 
 family meetings, such as were habitually held in France 
 to decide the career of an orphan child, and which the 
 Revolution raised to the dignity of an institution with 
 legal form. Some biographers have read the politics of a 
 man of thirty into the action of a little child, and have 
 made this step a precocious protest against clericalism. 
 These biographers have no children. 
 
 The uncle consented to the change, and, with Madame 
 Danton's two married sisters, agreed upon the bar as his 
 future profession. He was sent to Troyes and placed 
 with the Oratorians, a religious order which has had the 
 honour of training so many of the great reformers. In 
 their College he went through that training which no 
 amount of social change or new theories in pedagogy has 
 been able to uproot from the secondary education of 
 France. Little Greek, much Latin, two years all employed 
 in the literature of the late Roman republic and early 
 empire — a groundwork in the elements which gives the 
 educated French an almost mediaBval familiarity with 
 Roman thought; such was the course which the bour- 
 geois did and does go through in the French schools. A 
 system founded upon the humanities of the sixteenth, 
 but developed in the classicism of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, it has lost the Hellenism, the subtlety, and the 
 breadth of the former, while it has preserved the rigidity, 
 the strength, and the clearness which the latter owes to 
 the influence of the Jesuits. It fails to develop that 
 initiative coupled with originality to which we in England 
 attach so much importance ; it achieves, upon the other 
 hand, a strength in the convictions, and above all a 
 
46 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 soundness in the judgment, which our public schools 
 often fail to produce. 
 
 From just such a curriculum came the exaggerated 
 classicism of Kobespierre, the more brilUant but equally 
 Latin style of Desmoulins, though it must be admitted 
 that the first is a reminiscence of CorneUus Nepos, while 
 the second is at times well modelled upon Tacitus him- 
 self. The error of such imitation, however, never marred 
 the speech of Danton in his later hfe; he owed this 
 singular freedom from the spirit of his age to travel, to 
 his vivid interest in surrounding things and men, and to 
 his intimacy with Enghsh and Itahan.^ 
 
 Yet in a famous speech upon pubhc education he 
 makes a just reference to the influence of this schooling 
 upon the mind of his contemporaries, and notes truly its 
 tendency to turn men republican.^ 
 
 Unfortunately he did not remain at such a school 
 long enough to receive its last and most beneficial im- 
 pressions. The head form at a French school is called 
 " Philosophic," and the last year is spent largely in read- 
 ing the sociology and the metaphysics of the old world. 
 Danton left at the age of sixteen, when he had just com- 
 pleted " Rh^torique," but what he lost in polishing he 
 gained in being left to his own development for one more 
 year of his hfe than were his fellows. 
 
 Active, often rebelhous, full of laughter, he showed 
 his intelligence in the final examinations, his vigour in an 
 escapade that endeared him to at least one of his school- 
 fellows,^ who has given us, with Rousselin, the only notes 
 we possess as to this period of his hfe. He ran off in his 
 last year to Rheims, seventy odd miles away, that he 
 might see the crowning of Louis XVI. Going and return- 
 
 1 See list of his library, Appendix VIII., and his interview with 
 Thomas Payne, at the beginning of Chapter VII. 
 
 ^ Speech of August 13, 1793. Printed in Moniieur of August 15. 
 8 M. B^on. 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 47 
 
 ing on foot, he satisfied the desire which he had expressed 
 to his school-fellows of " seeing how they made a king." 
 So as a boy he went to look at the making of a king, and 
 afterwards, when he grew older, Danton himself unmade 
 him. 
 
 In 1780 — his twenty-first year^ — he entered the 
 office of a solicitor at Paris named Vinot, Apprenticed as 
 a clerk in order to read law, and above all to watch the 
 procedure of the coiurts, he spent the next four years in 
 preparing for the bar. If we are to depend on a chance 
 phrase dropped just before his death, he was at that time 
 entirely dependent on his master and his pen.^ We know, 
 at any rate, that he received no salary, but lodged and 
 boarded with his employer; nor is it probable that he 
 received any money from home, for his mother had 
 married again, and a short time after this second hus- 
 band (a certain Recordain) was so deeply involved that 
 Danton was begged to hand over the most part of his 
 inheritance to save the family. He did so, and remained 
 with some five or six hundred pounds only as his share 
 of the family fortune. It was invested in land near 
 Arcis, and he kept it for his ultimate purpose of buying 
 a barrister's practice in one of the higher courts. 
 
 He was called to the bar (a process in the same form 
 as taking a degree) in 1785,* choosing, with provincial 
 patriotism, Rheims as the place in which formally to 
 join the profession; but he intended to practise in the 
 capital, and returned thither at once. 
 
 It is not easy to render to an English public the 
 meaning of the various courts before 1789. Even in 
 France (so completely has the new order supplanted the 
 old anarchy) their forms have been forgotten, and 
 research purely antiquarian cannot give us more than 
 
 ' Danton, Homme d'Mat, p. 29. 
 
 ' See "Notes of Courtois de I'Aube" in Claidtie's " DesmonlinB." 
 
 • Danton, Momme d'Mat, p. 30. 
 
48 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 disjointed particulars as to their procedure.^ There was 
 a division corresponding to the Enghsh between Common 
 Law and Equity. This was to be discovered in every 
 country of the West, and had arisen of necessity from 
 the imposition of the king's power and the Canon Law 
 over those local customs, mixed with reminiscences of 
 Rome, which had once been the whole life of the early 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 To the body of lawyers who ia Paris (or ia any of the 
 great centres) formed the courts for all ordinary pleas, 
 the name of " Parhament " was given. But that it com- 
 prised more persons, that it never went upon circuit, and 
 that it included many barristers as well as judges, the 
 Parliament of Paris corresponded more or less to what 
 the English Bench would be were our judges to form a 
 kind of permanent coimcil for advising the Crown and 
 registering its decrees, as well as for trying the cases 
 brought before them. To plead at their bar was no 
 difficult matter. It required but the taking of one's 
 degree in law, and the fees of entrance were slight. 
 Danton determined to adopt this branch of the profes- 
 sion, and to use it as a stepping-stone towards the higher 
 court, which he soon reached. 
 
 This higher court, " Court of Appeal," as we should call 
 it, or " Cour de Cassation," as it is named in the modern 
 French system, bore a title significant of the intense 
 conservatism of old France. It was called the " Court 
 of the King's Councils" — very much what we should 
 have to-day in England had we preserved in fact the 
 theory that the king in his council is the final authority. 
 But though it bore a name drawn from the Curia Regis 
 of the thirteenth century, it had of course lost all its old 
 simphcity. It was a Bench like any other, but there 
 
 • An excellent reading is afforded by the Avocat aux Conseils du Roi of 
 U. Bos (Machal & Billaad, Paris, 1881), quoted more than once in this 
 work. 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 49 
 
 pleaded at its bar an order of lawyers strictly Umited 
 in number and highly privileged.' It dealt, as did its 
 parallel in the English system, mainly with disputed 
 inheritances, especially in matters of land, and, as we 
 shall see, it showed the true mark of a court of Chancery, 
 in that it took more than a hundred and thirty years to 
 make up its mind. To plead before this court, with its 
 monopoly of valuable causes, was to have at once an 
 assured income and prestige ; therefore its vacancies 
 were prizes to be bought and sold. Danton determined 
 to plead so long at the com^mon law courts as might 
 assure him, with economy, a substantial addition to the 
 few hundred poimds that formed his whole capital, and 
 then to seek a loan that might eke out these savings 
 and place him at the Chancery bar. 
 
 Young, eloquent, eminently capable of seeing a real 
 issue, he was well fitted for the lower practice, and ha 
 succeeded. Within two years he had a smn to offer as 
 part payment, which was at once a proof of his business 
 habits and of his talents. His family, therefore, especially 
 those members of it who had urged him to go to the 
 bar, were wiUing to advance the necessary sums in addi- 
 tion to his own savings and his little patrimony. The 
 purchase-money was delivered, and a bond to the amount 
 of ;£^30oo (a sum which he could not then have furnished) 
 was signed by his aunts and uncles at Troyes. It was , 
 in March 1787 ^ that this step was taken, and this date 
 was in some-sense his entry into public life, for it brought 
 TiiTn into direct contact with the wealthy — that is, with 
 the ruling class. 
 
 We have on this date a vivid anecdote surviving. 
 A Latin oration had to be delivered off-hand to the 
 assembled, college on the reception of a candidate to 
 
 ' Since 1728 membership of this body had been pnTohasable and 
 hereditary ; a striking example of how wrongly society was moving. 
 ' See Appendix VI. 
 
 D 
 
50 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the order. The subject set for Danton when he entered 
 the hall was " The Moral and Political Situation of the 
 Country in their relations with the Administration of 
 Justice." A fine theme for 1787 ! Such a quaint scene 
 the old regime deUghted in, and its older members de- 
 hghted also in catching here and there a phrase of 
 quotation which they could understand. The genius 
 and the memory of their candidate seem on this occa- 
 sion to have furnished something new, to have given 
 them less platitude than was expected. He mentioned 
 reform; he spoke of the struggle in which the Parha- 
 ment was engaged against the ministers — a struggle of 
 which he wisely said, " They are fighting for the sacred 
 centres of civic liberty, but present no positive reform 
 by which that liberty may be brought into existence." 
 " Sacred centres " was, of course, aris et focis. The 
 speech was necessarily in a large measure a series of 
 clicMs, a stringing together of the well-worn Latin 
 mottoes. It even contaiued solus populi suprema lex, but 
 its argument was Danton's own. There is to be marked 
 also this phrase, for it is the note of all his future work 
 "Let the government feel the gravity of the situation 
 sufficiently to remedy it in the simple and in the natural 
 way downwards from its own authority." 
 
 The young men understood and applauded ; the old 
 men were assured that, if they had not quite followed 
 an unconventional harangue, it was due to the originality 
 of the speaker. Presumably their souls were softened 
 by aris et focis, and salus populi suprema lex." 
 
 For the nest two years his forensic reputation is 
 continually rising. No longer the Common Law pleader, 
 with pathetic and oratorical appeals for a shepherd against 
 his lord, he had shown how large a part intellect had to 
 do with his power of commanding attention. On the 
 intricacies of his Chancery practice and the clearness 
 and ability of his analysis we have an excellent witness 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 51 
 
 in one of tlie most learned of the modern Parisian bar,^ 
 and three of his opiaions, on the Ameliaau, Dubonis, and 
 De Montbarey cases, have come down to us, and have 
 received the favourable criticism of an opponent. 
 
 The last case (that of De Montbarey) shows us Danton 
 defending the claims of an old house and at work iu the 
 rustiest of all the legal grooves. It had been on the 
 stocks since 1657, and Danton, in attempting to give 
 the quietus to this intolerable longevity, uses a phrase 
 which shows us the feeling that spared one grave 
 at least when the mob sacked St. Denis: "Jeanne 
 d'Albret ^ is a name dear to all Frenchmen, for it recalls 
 the memory of that other Jeanne d'Albret who was the 
 mother of Henri IV." 
 
 There came to be his clients, among others De 
 Barentin, the minister of justice, and De Brienne,^ cr mp- 
 troUer-general ; it is on his intimacy with the former 
 that his first recorded opiaions on pubUc affairs turn. 
 They will be dealt with in the next chapter. 
 
 It is, of course, difficult to give an exact proof of a 
 man's private income at any moment, but we are certain 
 that Danton's cannot have fallen far short at this date 
 of a thousand pounds a year. His immediate success 
 at the bar, the monopoly and privilege of the body to 
 which he now belonged (the work certain to como to 
 the most inept was worth a lump sum of 60,000 francs, 
 to which talent would add indefinitely), his eloquence 
 and proved ability, the name of his cHents, their im- 
 portance and their wealth — everything leads to this as 
 a certain conclusion. Immense fortunes were not then 
 made in the profession ; his position was not an obsccure 
 one. 
 
 He married, on attaining this status, the daughter of 
 a man who kept one of the students' restaurants, Char- 
 
 i M. Bos, quoted above. ' Ibid., p. 52a 
 
 ' See Appendix Y. 
 
52 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 peutier by name. It was a c&U (C&U des Jficoles) very 
 much frequented by the University and the younger men 
 at the bar, and still one of the few remaining caf^s of the 
 last century. Danton himself was a regular customer, 
 and there is an interesting picture, drawn by a friend, of 
 the avocats in their special costumes at this place. It 
 occupied the site of what is now the south-western corner 
 of the Place de I'Ecole,^ nor has any change been made 
 in it save the raising of the road level. Looking on the 
 river, and just over the river from the Palais, it was the 
 natural rendezvous for the young barristers in the mid-day 
 adjournment and after the court rose. 
 
 Charpentier, the "limonadier" of Mdme. Roland, 
 was a man worth from five to six thousand pounds, 
 part only invested in his business ; ^ he had, moreover, 
 a little post under the Taxes, requiring a slight amount 
 of work and bringing in only a hundred pounds a year. 
 When he married his daughter to Danton, she was given 
 20,000 francs.^ 
 
 As will be seen later, it is of the first moment in 
 proving Danton's position to know accurately the capital 
 amoimt of which he disposed when the Revolution broke 
 out; for in the case of generous men in a democracy, 
 the accusation of venaKty is the most common and the 
 hardest to rebut. 
 
 Passionately fond of his wife, and successful in his 
 profession, on the threshold of a great career, I would 
 apply to him a phrase which one of his worst enemies 
 has given us to describe a far lesser man, " Actif et sain, 
 robuste et glorieux, il aim a sa femme et la parure." 
 
 We leave him, then, at the summit of a laborious and 
 perhaps of an arduous youth. He is twenty-eight years 
 old, in the best of his vigour and of his intelUgenoe — 
 
 ' See Appendix II. on Danton's lodgings in Faiis. 
 ' See Robinet, Danton vie Privie, p. 284. 
 • See Appendix VI. 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 53 
 
 the age at which Jefferson ten years before had drafted 
 his immortal paragraph ; the age at which Napoleon, with 
 his moving island of men, was ten years later to break 
 five armies of the Austrians from Lodi to Campo Formio. 
 
 What picture shall we make of him to carry with 
 us in the scenes in which he is to be the principal actor ? 
 
 He was tall and stout, with the forward bearing of 
 the orator, full of gesture and of animation. He carried 
 a roimd French head upon the thick neck of energy. 
 His face was generous, ugly, and determiaed. With wide 
 eyes and calm brows, he yet had the quick glance which 
 betrays the habit of appealing to an audience. His 
 upper Hp was injured, and so was his nose,' and he had 
 further been disfigured by the small-pox, with which 
 disease that forerunner of his, Mirabeau, had also been 
 disfigured. His Hp had been torn by a bull when he was 
 a child, and his nose crushed in a second adventure, 
 they say, with the same animal. In this the Romans 
 would perhaps have seen a portent; but he, the idol of 
 our Positivists, found only a chance to repeat MLrabeau's 
 expression that his " boar's head frightened men." 
 
 In his dress he had something of the negligence 
 which goes with extreme vivacity and with a constant 
 interest in things outside oneself; but it was invariably 
 that of his rank. Indeed, to the minor conventions 
 Danton always bowed, because he was a man, and because 
 he was eminently sane. More than did the run of men 
 at that time, he understood that you cut down no tree 
 by lopping at the leaves, nor break up a society by throw- 
 ing away a wig.^ The decent self-respect which goes 
 
 ^ By nature his nose was small. His was one of those faces rarely seen, 
 and always associated with energy and with leadership, whose great fore- 
 heads overhang a face that would be small, were it not redeemed by the 
 square jaw and the mouth. Thus Arnault, "une caricature de Socrate." 
 
 ' I refer to the English reformer who, on taking ship at Bristol, cast 
 his perruque into the water, crying, "I have done with such baubles," and 
 sailed bald to the New World. 
 
54 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 witli conscious power was never absent from his costume, 
 though it often left his language in moments of crisis, or 
 even of irritation. 
 
 I will not insist too much upon his great character 
 of energy, because it has been so over-emphasised as to 
 give a false impression of him. He was admirably sus- 
 tained in his action, and his political arguments were as 
 direct as his physical efforts were continuous, but the banal 
 picture of fury which is given you by so many writers is 
 false. For fury is empty, whereas Danton was full, and 
 his energy was at first the force at work upon a great 
 mass of mind, and later its momentum. 
 
 Save when he had the direct purpose of convincing 
 a crowd, his speech had no violence, and even no metaphor; 
 in the courts he was a close reasoner, and one who put 
 his points with ability and with eloquence rather than 
 with thimder. But in whatever he undertook, vigour 
 appeared as the taste of salt in a dish. He could not 
 quite hide this vigour : his convictions, his determination, 
 his vision all concentrate upon whatsoever thing he has 
 in hand. 
 
 He possessed a singularly wide view of the Europe 
 in which France stood. In this he was like Mirabeau, 
 and peculiarly unlike the men with whom revolutionary 
 government threw him into contact. He read and spoke 
 English, he was acquainted with Italian. He knew that 
 the kings were dilettanti, that the theory of the aristo- 
 cracies was hberal. He had no little sympathy with the 
 philosophy which a leisurely oligarchy had framed in 
 England ; it is one of the tragedies of the Revolution 
 that he desired to the last an alliance, or at least peace, 
 with this country. Where Robespierre was a maniac in 
 foreign policy, Danton was more than a sane — he was a 
 just, and even a diplomatic man. 
 
 He was fond of wide reading, and his reading was of 
 the philosophers ; it ranged from Rabelais to the physio- 
 
THE YOUTH OF DANTON 55 
 
 crats in his own tongue, from Adam Smith to the "Essay 
 on Civil Government " in that of strangers ; and of the 
 Encyclopaedia he possessed all the numbers steadily accu- 
 mulated. When we consider the time, his fortune, and 
 the obvious personal interest in so small and individual a 
 collection, few shelves will be found more interesting 
 than those which Danton delighted to fill.^ 
 
 In his politics he desired above all actual, practical, 
 and apparent reforms; changes for the better expressed 
 in material results. He differed from many of his 
 countrymen at that time, and from most of his political 
 countrymen now, in thus adopting the tangible. It was 
 a part of something in his character which was nearly 
 allied to the stock of the race, something which made 
 him save and invest in land as does the French peasant,^ 
 and love, as the French peasant loves, good government, 
 order, security, and weU-being. 
 
 There is to be discovered in all the fragments which 
 remain to us of his conversations before the bursting of 
 the storm, and still more clearly in his demand for a 
 centre when the invasion and the rebelhon threatened the 
 Republic, a certain conviction that the revolutionary 
 thing rather than the revolutionary idea should be pro- 
 duced : not an inspiring creed, but a goal to be reached, 
 sustained him. Like all active minds, his mission was 
 rather to reaHse than to plan, and his energies were 
 determined upon seeing the result of theories which he 
 unconsciously admitted, but which he was too impatient 
 to analyse. 
 
 His voice was loud even when his expressions were 
 subdued. He talked no man down, but he made many 
 opponents sound weak and piping after his utterance. 
 It was of the kind that fills great halls, and whose deep 
 note suggests hard phrases. There was with aU this a 
 carelessness as to what his words might be made to mean 
 
 1 See AH>eiidix VIII. " See Appendix IX 
 
56 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 when partially repeated by others, and such carelessness 
 has caused historians still more careless to lend a false 
 aspect of Bohemianism to his character. A Bohemian 
 he was not ; he was a successful and an orderly man ; but 
 energy he had, and if there are writers who cannot con- 
 ceive of energy without chaos, it is probably because in 
 the studious leisure of vast endowments they have never 
 felt the former in themselves, nor have been compelled 
 to control the latter in their surroundings. 
 
 As to his private life, affection dominated him. Upon 
 the faith of some who did not know him he acquired the 
 character of a debauchee. For the support of this view 
 there is not a tittle of direct evidence. He certainly loved 
 those pleasures of the senses which Kobespierre refused, 
 and which Koland was unable to enjoy; but that his 
 good dinners were orgies or of any illegitimate loves 
 (once he had married the woman to whom he was so 
 devotedly attached) there is no shadow of proof His 
 friends also he loved, and above all, from the bottom 
 of his soul, he loved France. His faults — and they were 
 many — his vices (and a severe critic would have dis- 
 covered these also) flowed from two sources : first, he 
 was too little of an idealist, too much absorbed in the 
 immediate thing ; secondly, he suffered from all the evil 
 effects that abundant energy may produce — the habit of 
 oaths, the rhetoric of sudden diatribes, violent and over- 
 strained action, with its subsequent demand for repose. 
 
 Weighted with these conditions he enters the arena, 
 supported by not quite thirty fruitful years, by a happy 
 marriage, by an intense conviction, and by the talents 
 of a man who has not yet tasted defeat. I repeat the 
 sentence applied to another : " Active and sane, robust 
 and ready for glory, the things he loved were his wife 
 and the circumstance of power." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 
 
 A MAN who is destined to represent at any moment the 
 chief energies of a nation, especially a man who will not 
 only represent but lead, must, by his nature, foUow the 
 national methods on his road to power. 
 
 His career must be nearly parallel (so to speak) with 
 the direction of the national energies, and must merge 
 with their maia current at an imperceptible angle. It is 
 the chief error of those who deliberately plan success that 
 they wUl not leave themselves amenable to such influences, 
 and it is the most frequent cause of their failure. Thus 
 such men as arrive at great heights of power are most 
 often observed to succeed by a kind of fatality, which is 
 nothing more than the course of natures vigorous and 
 original, but, at the same time, yielding unconsciously to 
 an environment with which they sympathise, or to which 
 they were bom. 
 
 It is not diflScult to determine the accidents of action, 
 temperament, and locality which predispose to success in 
 one's own society. It is less easy to appreciate what cor- 
 responds to them under foreign conditions. 
 
 It was seen in the first chapter that Paris sums up in 
 herself those conditions in the case of the French nation ; 
 and it was seen also (a point of peculiar importance) that 
 Paris at the close of the eighteenth century was ill at ease 
 — out of herself, demanding her place and yet anxious as 
 to the means by which it might be attained. 
 
 It might be imagined that this was a kind of usurpa- 
 
58 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 tion. Such a belief is entertained by most foreigners, and 
 certainly it has not been lacking among the more idealist 
 of the French Republicans. Nevertheless, such a view is 
 erroneous, and the Girondists, for all their virtues, went 
 (as we shall discover) against the nature of things when 
 they would have made of Paris but one of the cities, or 
 rather but " an ahquot voting part " of the nation. The 
 demand of Paris was essentially reasonable, and had to be 
 satisfied. Why ? Because without her leadership not this 
 thing or that thing would have been done, but nothing 
 would have been done. The crowds who waited round 
 the coaching inns in the country towns for news of the 
 city in the great early days of '89, by their very attitude 
 asked and expected Paris to move. 
 
 Paris, then, is Danton's gate. It is up the flood of 
 the Parisian tide that he floats. That tide rises much 
 higher than even he had thought possible, and it throws 
 him at last on the high inaccessible place of the loth of 
 August. Once there, from a pinnacle he sees all France. 
 Just as Cromwell was the Puritan soldier till he reached 
 power, and then became, or desired to become, the repre- 
 sentative of England, so Danton is the Parisian Frondeur 
 tUl from a place of responsibility and direction he aims 
 partly at the realisation of French ideas, but mainly at the 
 integrity and salvation of France itself. 
 
 Here he is, then, in the two years of active discussion 
 that precede the elections, by an accident of ambition, 
 Parisian ; one of a group of young provincial lawyers, 
 but the most successful of them all. Some months after 
 his marriage, in the course of 1788^ (we are not certain 
 
 ' From the Almanack Royal of 1788. Dr. Robinet, whose opportunities 
 of information are unique, tells us that he first moved into the Rue 
 des Fosses St. Germains, and later into the Cour du Commerce, some time 
 in 1790. The statement as to the first direction is unaccompanied by any 
 authority, but Dr. Robinet possesses a letter with this address on it ; now 
 here the definite information of an ofSoial list seems to me of the greatest 
 weight. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 59 
 
 of the exact date), lie moved into the house in which he 
 Uved to his death, six angry years. It was the corner 
 house of the Cour du Commerce and the Rue des Cor- 
 deliers.^ The house was better than that which he had 
 inhabited in the Eue des Mauvaises Paroles, when he 
 bought his practice ; on the other hand, it was in a some- 
 what less expensive neighbourhood. We may justly infer, 
 however, from the greater size of his new apartments, 
 and from the fact that he kept his office still in the old 
 house in the Rue de la Tixanderie, just behind the Hotel 
 de Ville, that he had prospered in his profession, and the 
 inference is sustained by our knowledge of the impor- 
 tance of his cases and his chents. As to the exact 
 situation which he chose, it was doubtless determined 
 by its proximity to the apartments of his friends. Here 
 Hved Desmoulins, his chief friend, a year younger than 
 himself, coming (after his marriage in 1 790) to hve in the 
 same house ; for then, as now, in Paris it was not the habit 
 to take a whole house but a flat, and Danton was on the 
 first, Desmoulins on the second floor. Just across the 
 river, over the Pont Neuf, was the caf^ on the Quai de 
 r^cole which his father-in-law had kept, and above aU, he 
 was here in the midst of the youth of the schools. It 
 was the slope of the famous hill of the University. Close 
 by he would find the Caf6 Procope, of which Desmouhns 
 had written with such enthusiasm, which had once been 
 illuminated with the little smile of Voltaire, which had 
 heard the assertion of Diderot, and which in 1788 was 
 noisy every night with discussion and speech and applause. 
 All that atmosphere of debate which comes unconsciously 
 to young men learning rose on the sides of the Mont 
 Parnasse and centred in the room ; and here in the 
 winter of the year, in a society so entirely of his own 
 rank that the high bourgeoisie and the noblesse knew 
 
 1 See Appendices II. and VII. Some rooms look on the Kue des Cor- 
 deliers, gome on the Cour du Commerce. 
 
6o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 nothing of its power, his great voice and generous face 
 filled the circle with their energy. But there was yet 
 no dream of revolution, still less of violence. France 
 was waiting for great things, but they were to come of 
 themselves, or on the wave of universal enthusiasm. The 
 fire, however, was lit, and the group which afterwards 
 passed from the Montagne to the scaffold of Germinal 
 was already formed. 
 
 To all this, however, which was but the relaxation of 
 an abundant spirit, must be added days of continual and 
 serious work on the other side of the river. If his nights 
 were in the Latin Quarter, his days were in the office of 
 the Rue de la Tixanderie. A minister of the crown ' does 
 not intrust his family affairs to such a wastrel as the 
 chance memoirs of opponents would make of Danton at 
 this period, nor a lawyer who is never in his chambers, 
 but gadding about poHticising, get the conduct of one of 
 the most important Chancery cases of his day. 
 
 There is one matter in these pre-revolutionary months 
 which is of no very great importance, but which is well 
 worth noticing, though the confusion apparent in our one 
 account of it has lessened its value. There can be no 
 doubt that Barentin, apart from his business relations, 
 was personally intimate with Danton; and when that 
 careful and moderate man had succeeded Lamoignon in 
 September 1788, there was some kind of informal offer 
 made to Danton of what we should call an official secre- 
 taryship to the minister^ — or rather we have no name 
 for it, for the ministry in France was not associated with 
 legislation, but only with executive power, and therefore 
 positions in its gifts had not the political importance they 
 have with us. 
 
 As to the precise date of the offer, how far it was 
 
 ' De Barentin. See preceding chapter and Appendix V. He became 
 Danton's client just before the decree that summoned the States-General, 
 " Secretaire du Sceau, 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 6i 
 
 pressed, or how seriously it was made, we can have no 
 exact knowledge. But it seems to me unwise to reject so 
 characteristic an anecdote, and one which fits in so well 
 with Danton's known position, merely on the somewhat 
 strained theory that documentary evidence alone should 
 be admitted in history, and documentary evidence sifted 
 by the rules of a rigid cross-examination.^ 
 
 At any rate, Danton refused it. And not only did he 
 refuse it, but there is no trace of an attempt to use his 
 friend's influence or to make a political success at a time 
 when nearly every man's head was turned by the chances 
 of a great social change. He felt no need of politics, and 
 it was not till much later, after quite twelve months of 
 action and speech, that his oratory found foothold, and he 
 felt the imperious appetites of a new power. Success in 
 his profession was without question the one ambition 
 which occupied him in the close of 1788, it was an 
 ambition closely bound up with that business sense which 
 was a strong element in the sane and practical mind of 
 the Champenois lawyer. 
 
 It was upon him and his group of friends, in a Paris 
 that every day grew keener in its discussion and atten- 
 tion, that the long-expected decree of the 27th of Dec- 
 ember fell. There were to be elections. Paris, all 
 pamphleteered to death, but inclining as a whole to the 
 moderate criticism of the more practical men, was at last 
 called upon to act. 
 
 Many conditions must be made clear before we can 
 understand the effect of these elections upon the history 
 of the next three years. In the first place, France was 
 suffering from a great material evil : she was going bank- 
 rupt, her agriculture was hopelessly depressed, her indus- 
 
 ' See Appendix V., Eousselin. The anecdote is little esteemed by 
 Aulard, but is admitted to be of value by other biographers. Aulard relies 
 for his opinion upon the undoubted errors in the matter of date. Bat 
 Bousselin may have been right in the main, though (writing many years 
 after) mistaken in the matter of a month or so. 
 
62 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 tries ruined, and thousands and thousands of men out of 
 work were wandering about the streets of the cities. In 
 the second place, the class which was going to vote for 
 the Commons was the tax-paying class. And in the 
 third place, the voting was by two degrees. I name 
 these three conditions as qualifying a broad and often 
 erroneous impression. I do not mean that the ideals 
 were not abroad; all the world knows how bright the 
 eyes of the young men were getting, and we are all 
 familiar with Desmoulins, eager, passionate, stuttering 
 but voluble, and passing from group to group as they 
 discussed or dreamed. But it is too common to read the 
 spirit of '93 into those elections of '89, and the error is 
 a grievous one. As well might you interpret the spirit 
 of an eloquent man whp is about to defend a just and 
 practical cause by hearing what he said later in the day, 
 should his opponents have taken to fists and fought him 
 heavily for several hours. 
 
 The immediate need was fiscal; the class called upon 
 to meet it were the middle class; the men they were 
 about to elect were of professional rank. 
 
 The electoral units and all corporations were asked to 
 state their grievances before the gathering of the Parlia- 
 ment, and it is in these " cahiers " that the spirit of the 
 time is best discovered. The abstractions, the phrases, 
 the great general conceptions are found (as we might 
 have expected, though it comes as a new thing) mainly in 
 the complaints of the clergy and nobility ; the peasant, the 
 bourgeois, and the artisan have a more material grievance. 
 
 Thus the nobility of Caen in their cahier talk of the 
 " National Contract," and the clergy of Forez (after some 
 remarks on the care and cleansing of ponds) end up with 
 an admirable little essay on individual liberty, its limits 
 and proper extension.^ The nobihty of Nantes and of 
 
 •^ E. Champion, La France en ijSg. Esprit des Cahiers in La Sevolution 
 (Hist. Generate, viii.). 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 63 
 
 Meulan talk roundly of the " rights of man," ^ and gene- 
 rally this order calls for a Constitution — of which word 
 they had in a very short time supped and dined. With 
 lesser men the demands are rather for sublunary things, 
 but the complaints that made Beugnot laugh give a good 
 picture. " To have one's dogs killed if necessary but not 
 hamstrung, to be allowed to keep a cat, to be allowed 
 to light a fire without paying dues, to sell one's wine 
 when one hked ; " and from the bourgeoisie, regular 
 trial, abolition of lettres de cachet, the old European 
 pohcy that the growth of rich corporations should be 
 checked and much of their property confiscated, the 
 equalisation of taxation — such are the points upon which 
 (a mere redress) the great bulk of Frenchmen were 
 determined. One might sum up and say, "They de- 
 manded the freedom and common justice obtainable in 
 the modem State." But the privileged orders, for all 
 their phrases, resisted when the time for reform was 
 come, and their friction ht the flame of the ideal, 
 disastrously for themselves and happily for the world. 
 
 As for the cahier sent from the electoral district of 
 Paris in which Danton lived, it was destroyed by the 
 Commune when they burnt the Hotel de Ville in 1871. 
 We know, however,^ that it demanded "the destruction 
 of the Bastille," a symbolic act ever present to the minds 
 of Parisians, and, for the matter of that, by several cahiers 
 of the provincial noblesse and clergy. There is no 
 direct documentary evidence that Danton helped to draw 
 up this cahier, but I cannot believe that a man of such 
 influence in so small a space and among (comparatively) 
 so few voters^ had nothing to do with the framing of 
 this document, especially when we consider the cry he 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 ' Aulard, who quotes Chassin, Les Elections de Paris, vol. ii. p. 478. 
 M. Anlard tells us that M. Chassin saw the document himself before the 
 war. 
 
 ' Less than six hundred. 
 
64 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 gave as a boy, swimming in the river just beneath the 
 walls of the prison.^ There is, however, nothing to prove 
 it, and he certainly took no memorable part in an action 
 where all was tranquil and even tedious. 
 
 The mention, however, of the districts of Paris, and 
 especially of that which could claim Danton, makes very 
 necessary a view of that focus of revolutionary energy. It 
 was called the district of the Cordeliers. It was small, one 
 of the smallest of the sixty into which Paris was divided, 
 yet it contained the very strongest of the brains and 
 eloquence of its time, very few nobles, and, for the matter 
 of that, very few of the artisans and hardly any of the pro- 
 letariat. Later, when Danton threatened the reactionaries 
 with the populace, it was not to the district of the Cor- 
 deliers, but to the Faubourg St. Marceau that he appealed; 
 for the workmen were rare in its ancient, narrow streets, 
 with their tall houses and little dark courts framing each 
 some relic of the Middle Ages. Here were found many of 
 the clergy, but above all a swarm of the young lawyers 
 and students, the class that think high and hard and 
 breed thoughts in others, a kind of little united clan 
 of what was strongest in the youth of the University and 
 the professions ; and the whole homogeneous group centred 
 round Danton. 
 
 If you stood in the Cour du Commerce in Danton's 
 time, and looked north to where his house made the 
 corner of the narrow entry, you would have seen a main 
 street only a trifle broader than the court, and running 
 at right angles. Standing in the mouth of the narrow 
 passage, you would have seen on the other side of the 
 main street, and a hundred yards up it, a little fifteenth- 
 century turret, capped with a pointed slate roof and 
 jutting outward on round supports.^ This was the ex- 
 
 ' Appendix V. 
 
 " This description is taken from a contemporary water-colour sketch 
 which I have seen in the collection of Dr. Robinet. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 65 
 
 treme angle of an old convent called the Cordeliers.^ 
 Here the Franciscans had settled in St. Louis's time, five 
 hiindred years before, but the walls you would have seen 
 were not of the thirteenth, but rather of the early four- 
 teenth century, while the church which flanked the 
 street was of the sixteenth, and additions had been made 
 of all periods. As you came out of the Cour du Com- 
 merce and went up the street, you would have the convent 
 running all along the opposite side, from the little turret 
 on the corner to the church of St. Come in the Rue de la 
 Haxpe, save where it was interrupted by private houses, 
 and where it was broken in one place by a Uttle lane 
 leading to the hall of the University College, which the 
 convent supported. Like so many great foundations, this 
 rich place was in full decay, and the vaulted hall, with 
 its dim Hght and resonant echoes, was given over to the 
 meeting of the district, and later to the thimder of the 
 voice that threw back the armies of Europe. Alone of 
 all the mediaeval buUdings of the Cordeliers this hall 
 remains to-day as the Mus^e Dupuytren. 
 
 There is yet one further point to be mentioned before 
 we can make a complete picture of Danton's position 
 before these elections of 1789. There can be no doubt 
 that the Masonic lodges had proved a powerful instrument 
 in the preparation of opinion, and though our information 
 on their formation in Paris is scanty, we can safely afl&rm 
 that Danton belonged to the lodge of the " Nine Sisters," 
 which included such members as Sieyfes or BaUly on the 
 one hand and CoUot D'Herbois on the other.^ It would 
 be fooUsh to over-estimate the influence of these societies. 
 The subsequent history of their members proves quite 
 clearly that the bond between them was slight (who can, 
 for instance, reproach Desmoulins with a secret support of 
 
 * See Appendix I. 
 
 ' See the discussion of the somewhat meagre authorities in Bobinet, 
 DanUm, Homme d'Etat, pp. 37-40, 
 
 B 
 
66 THE LIFE OF DANTON . 
 
 Bailly?), and (what is mucli more important) the very 
 character of their composition disproves effectually any 
 secret or prearranged action. The foolish Bailly, the 
 learned Sieyfes, the admirable, unpractical, high-minded 
 Condorcet, the weak Garat, CoUot D'Herbois the potential 
 Red, all members of one lodge! They can have been 
 little more than associations whose character of mutual 
 help and whose opportunities of club-life (that comfort so 
 lacking in Paris) attracted men. They were authorised, 
 and were one of the very few kinds of refuge from a 
 society where political discussion had decayed and where 
 combined action was almost unknown. 
 
 This is all the importance, I think, which should be 
 attached to them. Where men are free, and where the 
 suffrage is open and common, secret societies may very 
 justly be dreaded ; their action wiU be at all times 
 separate from that of society in general, and may be in 
 a hidden antagonism to the will of the nation. But in 
 a society where reunion, discussion, and all that is the 
 blood of civic political life has been exhausted, then, like 
 a special drug which cures, they have an excellent use. 
 They may, in such societies, just keep alive the habit 
 of political conversation and expectancy, and they may 
 develop in some at least that organising spirit without 
 which a political movement degenerates into anarchy. 
 
 This, then (to recapitulate), is Danton's position just 
 before the Parisian elections. He is in the midst of 
 what are to be his group of young Revolutionary friends 
 on the outskirts of the Latin quarter ; his daily occupa- 
 tion is the conducting in his office on the north bank 
 and at the Palace in the Cit4 of those important pleas in 
 the highest court, which bring him into contact with the 
 ministers, with the great corporations, and especially with 
 the various organs of government of the old regime — for 
 it was in cases for and against these that the Conseil du 
 Boi came into play. His income is sufficient for his 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 67 
 
 needs and for a slow but methodical payment of the price 
 of his practice. It amounted (we may presume) to some- 
 thing in the neighbourhood of 25,000 francs, possibly a 
 little less, but not much, for it was drawn from one of 
 the most important Chancery cases of his day, and his 
 clientele, to judge by the names which alone have reached 
 us, was wealthy and of influence. He was thoroughly 
 well read ; he was not expecting nor planning a political 
 career, as were so many of his friends (for instance, Des* 
 moulins), but certain characters which he was rapidly 
 developing, or rather discovering, in himself were pre- 
 paring that career of necessity. He was learning in 
 discussion and laughter, first that he was an orator, and 
 secondly that his energy sufficed for a whole group of 
 men, and that he could avoid leadership only at the 
 expense of entire seclusion. In a time of innumerable 
 pamphlets, he never put pen to paper outside his pro- 
 fession ; and in days that were producing the ardent 
 similes of CamiUe, and that were just beginning to feel 
 the ravings of Marat, he wrote nothing but three grave, 
 learned, concise, and duU opinions, which were admirable 
 in argument, clear in exposition, and tolerable only to 
 elderly lawyers. 
 
 As for his pohtics, he was centred wholly on the 
 outward thing. He seems to have lacked almost entirely 
 the metaphysic. Here was France all ruined ." 1 every 
 day approaching more nearly to disaster ; let her be 
 turned into a place where men should be happy, should 
 have enough to eat and drink, should be good citizens 
 to the extent of making the nation homogeneous and 
 strong. Reform should be practical : in part it would 
 require discussion, not too much of it. In part, however, 
 its lines were laid down for it. Economics taught certain 
 truths ; let them be applied. He had read in Adam 
 Smith certain indubitable principles of this science; let 
 them be used. Science had in such and such matters 
 
68 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 definite remedies to offer; let them be applied. Such 
 were his over-simple aims. He was of the Encyclo- 
 paedists. Had he no beliefs, then, in his politics ? Un- 
 doubtedly he had ; no man could desire " the good " 
 without feeling it. But, like all minds of his type, he 
 refused to analyse. His dogmas were all the more 
 dogmas because he took them so entirely for granted 
 that he refused even to define them. At a time when 
 all men had their first principles ready-made in words, 
 his was rather that confused instinct which is, after all, 
 nearest to the truth. Patriotism, good-fellowship, free- 
 dom for his activities, the satisfaction of the thirst for 
 knowledge — all these he desired in himself and for the 
 State. And that is why you will find his great body at 
 the head of mobs and daring criminal things when it is 
 a question of saving the nation, or later of breaking an 
 inquisitorial idea. It is this simplicity which makes him 
 daring, and this concentration on a few obvious points 
 which makes him judicious, unscrupulous, and successful 
 in the choice of means and of phrases. 
 
 On the 24th of January 1789, the Primaries were 
 convened. It was the opportunity for movement, in 
 Paris especially, since it was the first definite action after 
 so much discussion, attention, and fever. The district 
 of the Cordeliers met in the hall of which so much 
 mention has been made above. But there does not seem 
 to have been anything of importance transacted, unless we 
 call this important ; I mean the beginnings of the habit 
 of reunion and of open discussion. For three months the 
 place seems to have had its doors open to the first comer 
 of the quarter. The cahier was drawn up here, and the 
 rough foundations of what was to be the famous per- 
 manent survival of the " R^publique des Cordeliers " were 
 laid. But of Danton's part in all this we have, as I 
 have said above, no trace. We can only conjecture and 
 infer. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 69 
 
 It was on April 21 that the elections were finally 
 held. The voters all met together in the central halls of 
 their districts (churches for the most part) and elected 
 the electors, who in their turn were to nominate the 
 deputies for Paris. Of Danton's r61e in this important 
 action, again we know nothing. M. Bougeart ^ has taken 
 it for granted that he was at least " president of the 
 district," chairman (as we should say) of the electoral 
 meeting ; but he is either in error, or else he is relying 
 on some verbal evidence which he has not given us. 
 We have no document to prove it, and we know that 
 three months later Timbergue and Achimbault, two 
 barristers of the district, were successively presidents, not 
 Danton.^ What we do know of importance is that the 
 Cordehers were among those districts which did not 
 disperse after the elections, but maintained themselves 
 as a permanent club. This action by the districts was 
 of the very first importance in the history of the Revo- 
 lution. It created the municipal movement in July, it 
 made Paris an organisation, gave the town a method and 
 a voice, and more than any other accident it placed the 
 ladder for Danton's feet. 
 
 The elections of Paris once completed, the gates of 
 the Revolution are passed, and the States-General, whose 
 Commons formulated its first principles, are definitely 
 formed ; for Paris completed its voting much later than 
 the provinces. The Parliament meets at Versailles, and 
 that town presents for the next six months the centre 
 of official interest. But since Paris is going to be, by its 
 destiny, the heart of the reform, and since Danton is the 
 tribune of Paris, we must, for the purposes of this 
 biography, mention the assembly only in its relation to 
 what passed in the capital. 
 
 ' Documents tmthtntiques pour servir & VSisloire de la Revolution Frcmgaise 
 Damton, par Alfred Bougeart. Brussels, 1861 (La Croix, Van Meenen 
 ft Cie.). 
 
 ' Aulard, who quotes OharaYay, Aiaemblie electorale de Parii. 
 
70 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The tone of Paris during the first two months of the 
 Paxliament was, as has been expressed earher in this 
 chapter, essentially one of ill-ease and watching. But 
 this anxiety of the town took long to find a formula and 
 to recognise its own nature. What Paris needed was 
 the leadership ; but to hear the confused murmur of the 
 thousand voices, you would have thought that all her 
 demands were for a number of more or less conflicting 
 ideals. And yet there was no appearance of Party. One 
 may say, by a just paradox, that her very cliques made 
 for solidarity. The higher bourgeoisie could afford at 
 first to ignore the group of the Latin Quarter, thinking 
 the young lawyers and students to be merely foohsh 
 demagogues, not even dangerous. The ears of these last 
 were closed to the confused demands of the populace, and 
 the orators could honestly believe that ideas rather than 
 hunger were to be the goad of change. By great good 
 fortune their position was never wholly abandoned, and 
 the Revolution from first to last mastered Materialism 
 and its attendant Anarchy. Finally, the poor — the out- 
 of-work, the starving labourers of the economic crisis 
 —standing apart from both these leading classes, could 
 convince themselves that the great phrases meant bread, 
 and that a constitution was allied in some vague way to a 
 lowering ot prices. They were right in that instinct, but, 
 with the picturesque inexactitude of mobs, they fearfully 
 under-estimated the length of the coimecting links. 
 
 The place where the average of these different views 
 could best be found was the Palais Royal. Here a great 
 popular forum gathered in the gardens which the Duke 
 of Orleans had thrown open to the people. It was not a 
 bad thing that the debts of this debauchee and adventurer 
 had led him to let out the ground-floor of the wide quad- 
 rangle, for the caf^s and shops that surrounded it made 
 it a more permanent resort than the squares or gardens 
 could have been, and there could be a perpetual mob- 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 71 
 
 parliament held from day to day. Its orators were the 
 Dantonist group ; its instigators, I fear, the unprincipled 
 men who surrounded D'Orleans, its committee-room and 
 centre (as it were) the Cafi^ Foy. Still, by the action of 
 the main virtue of revolutions, the general sense of the 
 meeting was stronger than any demagogue; for in such 
 times society is not only turbulent but fluid, and while it 
 •wiU support a leader who can swim, no mortal force can 
 give it any direction other than that which it desires. 
 
 In this great daily crowd Danton was a prominent 
 but not a principal figure ; undoubtedly (though we can- 
 not prove it by any record) he had begun to speak in his 
 district, and we may presume that his voice had been 
 heard in the Palais Royal before July ; for just after the 
 fall of the Bastille his name is mentioned familiarly. But 
 even had he desired to identify himself with the place, 
 which is doubtful, his profession would not have per- 
 mitted it. He was not briefless, unmarried, and free, 
 like Desmoulins, but a man of three years' standing in 
 the highest branch of his profession ; doubtless, however, 
 he was present daily when the crowd was thickest — I 
 mean on the holidays and during the summer evenings. 
 
 All this pamphleteering, discussion, violence, salonis- 
 ing, oratory, and anxious criticism, even the mob violence 
 which hunger and bad laws had inflamed, found a head 
 in the three famous days that followed July 12, 1789. 
 All the world knows the story, and even were it unfamiliar 
 it would be impossible to treat of it at any length in this 
 book, for Danton's name hardly touches it, and our only 
 interest here, in connection with his life, is to discover if 
 he took part in the street fighting; for the event itself, 
 one of the most decisive in history, a few words must 
 Buffice. 
 
 Paris, and especially the Palais Royal, had been 
 watching the struggle at Versailles with gathering anger. 
 There, twelve miles off, every purpose for which the Par- 
 
72 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 liament had met, and every good thing which the elections 
 had seemed to ensure, lay in jeopardy. Step after step 
 the Commons had in fact, though not hx their phrases, 
 been beaten, and the promises of six months before seemed 
 in danger, not through any known or calculable enemy, 
 but from the sudden appearance of an opposition which 
 the nation, and especially Paris, had ignored. The King 
 had retreated from his position of the last December, and 
 the priTileged orders were sympathising with a growing 
 reaction. How far all this was due to the unconstitu- 
 tional and unprecedented action of the Commons in in- 
 sisting on a General Assembly cannot be discussed here. 
 Suffice it to say that, in the opinion of the nation, the 
 new departure of the Commons was in thorough accord- 
 ance with the spirit, if not with the letter, of the recent 
 decrees ; the King was held to have broken his word, and 
 the privileged orders to have abandoned their declarations 
 in the face of facts. The symbol, though a poor one, of 
 the constitutional position was the personality of Necker. 
 Conceited, foreign, and common-place, the father of an 
 authoress whom neither Napoleon nor posterity could 
 tolerate, Genevese and bourgeois to the backbone, this 
 mass of impotence yet stood, by one of the ironies of 
 history, in the place of an idol. He, the banker, was 
 the imagined champion for the moment of that other 
 man from Geneva, who had died of persecution ten years 
 before, the tender-eyed, wandering, unfortunate Rousseau, 
 between whom and him was the distance between a 
 financier and an apostle. 
 
 While the king was changing his advisers, and even 
 while the foreign troops — fatal error — were being massed 
 in wretched insufficiency on the Champ de Mars (not three 
 miles from the Palais Royal) Necker still stood like a 
 wooden idol, a kind of fetish safeguard against force. He 
 just prevented the growing belief in the dissolution from 
 becoming a certitude, and on account of his attitude Paris 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 73 
 
 "waited. These things being so, the king began his great 
 programme of working out the good of his people alone. 
 Relying on the three thousand foreigners, a regiment of 
 home troops, and practically no guns wherewith to hold 
 in check a tortuous city of close on a million souls, the 
 king on Saturday, July 1 1 , dismissed Necker. 
 
 Desmoulins first brought the news, running. It was 
 the morrow, Sunday, and the Palais Royal was crowded. 
 He forgot his stammer and hesitancy, and shouted to the 
 great holiday crowd in the gardens to strip the trees for 
 emblems, led them as they marched to the Place Louis 
 Quinze, saw the French troops defend their fellow-citizens 
 against the mounted mercenaries, and heard during a 
 night of terror and of civil war the first shots of 
 Revolution. 
 
 All the next day, Monday, July 13, 1789, Paris 
 organised and prepared. Thanks to the permanence of 
 the assemblies in certain districts, a rough machinery was 
 ready, and on the 14th, a Tuesday, two great mobs 
 determined upon arms. The time is not untainted, for 
 St. Huruge was there promising and leading, but if 
 D'Orleans was trying to make the most of the adventure, 
 he no more created the uprising than a miller makes the 
 tide. One stream of men seized the arsenal at the 
 Invalides on the west side of the town, the other going 
 east in a smaller band demanded arms of the governor 
 of the Bastille, a place impossible to take by assault. 
 The demand was refused. 
 
 A body of men, however, were permitted to enter the 
 courtyard, for which purpose the drawbridge had been 
 lowered : once in that trap, De Launay fired upon them 
 and shot them down. There is no evidence, nor ever 
 will be, as to the motives of that extraordinary act ; but 
 to the general people who were gathering and gathering 
 all about in the narrow streets, it was an act of deliberate 
 treason, part of that spirit with which our own time is 
 
74 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 not unfamiliar, and whicli has ruined a hundred reforms,— 
 I mean the sentiment that there is no honour to be kept 
 between government and insurrection. The misfortune or 
 crime of De Launay struck a clear note in the crowd ; if 
 after that they failed, the blow that was being struck for 
 the Parliament would fail also. Thus it was that, under 
 a dull grey sky, the whole of Paris, as it were, ran up 
 together to the siege of the fortress. Cur^s were there 
 gathering up their soutanes and joining the multitude, 
 notably -the man who had once been Danton's parish 
 priest, the vicar of St. Germains, with his flock at his 
 heels, like the good Cur^ of Bazeilles in later times, or 
 the humorous Bishop of Beauvais six centuries before. 
 Lawyers, students, shopkeepers, merchants, the big 
 brewer of the quarter, the pedants, the clerks in the 
 offices, soldiers and their officers, the young nobles even — 
 there was nothing in Paris that did not catch the fever. 
 The castle fell at last, because its garrison sympathised 
 with the mob (of itself it was impregnable) ; the old 
 governor made a futile attempt to blow up his strong- 
 hold and his command ; some few who still obeyed him 
 (probably the twenty Swiss) fired on the mob just after 
 the white flag had been hoisted on the Bazinifere tower, 
 and a great tide of men mad with a double treason 
 swirled up the fortress. Second on the wall was a man 
 with whom this book will have to deal again — H^rault 
 de S^chelles, young, beautiful, and of great family, be- 
 loved at the court and even pampered with special 
 privilege, the friend and companion of Danton, and 
 destined five years later to stand in the cart with him 
 when they all went up to the scaffold together on a 
 clear April evening in the best time of their youth. 
 
 The Cordeliers were in the attack, and presumably 
 Danton also, since all the world was there. But his 
 only allusion to the scene is a phrase of his circular to 
 the courts when he took the Ministry of Justice in 1792, 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 75 
 
 and he mentions his district only without including his 
 own name. One anecdote, and only one, connects him 
 with the days of July. It seems that in the night of the 
 morrow, the early morning of the 1 6th, he was at the 
 head of a patrol in that sudden levy of which mention 
 will be made in this chapter. He thought it his duty to 
 pass into the court of the Bastille, probably in order to 
 gather some detached portion of his command; but he 
 was met by Soul^s, whom the informal meeting at the 
 Hotel de Ville had named governor. Full of new-fangled 
 importance, Soules pompously forbad him to enter, and 
 showed his commission. Danton did a characteristic 
 thing, part and parcel of that intense sectionalism upon 
 which he based all his action until Paris was at last in 
 possession of herself: for him power was from below, and 
 the armed district had a right of passage : he called the 
 informal commission a rag, arrested Soulfes, and shut him 
 up in the guardroom at the Cordeliers; then, with a 
 rather larger force, he marched him back through the 
 streets and gave him into the custody of the Hotel de 
 Ville, whose authority for judgment he admitted. The 
 matter would be of no importance were it not for the 
 fact that, in the very natural and on the whole just 
 censure which the informal municipality passed on Dan- 
 ton's action, Lafayette showed an especial bitterness.^ 
 It was the first clash between two men one of whom was 
 to conquer and drive out the other; and it was a 
 typical quarrel, for Danton stood in the matter for the 
 independence of the electoral unit and for the power of 
 Paris over itself: Lafayette represented the principle of 
 a strong municipaUty based on moderate ideas and on a 
 limited suffrage; in other words, the compromise which 
 was planned for the very purpose of muzzling the 
 capital 
 
 ' Chasgin, Ltt Meetiom et la Cahieri de Pwrit, iii. 580-581, on wMcb 
 this whole scene is based 
 
76 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 I have spoken of an armed force and a patrol : it is 
 in this connection that the meaning of the days of July — 
 for Danton and for the Revolution — must be considered. 
 They form above all a municipal reform. Those towns of 
 which I have spoken as being the bond of France harked 
 back suddenly to their primitive institutions, and were 
 organising communal government. Paris of course was 
 the leader. Even before the taking of the Bastille, the 
 districts had in some cases maintained their electoral 
 colleges as a permanent committee, and these electoral 
 colleges met at the Hotel de Villa, forming a rough 
 government for the two nights of the revolt, and finally 
 directing the whole movement. Such a body was of 
 necessity too large to work. But its plans were rapidly 
 formed. They named a committee, which was formed of 
 electors with one citizen (not an elector) added. They 
 invited and obtained the aid of the permanent officers of 
 what had once been the old dying and corrupt corpora- 
 tion, and they thus had formed an irregular but sufficient 
 organ of government for the city. It was not confirmed 
 from above, nor had it, for days, any authority from the 
 King, but it reposed on a force which was admitted in 
 the theory of those times to be the source of power, for 
 it was composed of men elected by the new suffrage. 
 They had been elected for another purpose, but they were 
 the only popular representatives present at all in Paris. 
 
 Their weakness, however, lay in this quahty of theirs. 
 Reposing merely upon power from the districts, they 
 could not act with central authority, nor had they an 
 armed force of their own. They could, indeed, prevent 
 the success of the rough anarchy which threatened the 
 Hotel de VUle itself in the early morning of July' 14, 
 before the attack on the Bastille, but they could not 
 prevent the lynching of those against whom the popular 
 rage had arisen — De Launey, De M^ray, De Persan. As 
 for force, they organised a huge levy of 1200 men from 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 77 
 
 each of the sixty districts, a force which, with certain 
 additions, rose to 78,000. It was in this suddenly armed 
 mihtia that Danton was elected a captain (for the moment), 
 and ia connection with its duties of police on the nights 
 following the taking of the Bastille that his quarrel with 
 Soulis had occurred. They named Bailly their first mayor. 
 They gave the command of the new national guard to 
 Lafayette; on the i6th they ordered, with a pomp of 
 trumpets ia the Place de Grfeve, the destruction of the 
 Bastille, in which their new governor was installed. But 
 through all this vigorous action there is one cardinal fact 
 to be remembered : the whole of their power was from 
 below, not only in theory but in fact. We may construct 
 a metaphor to express the future effect of this, and say 
 that, at the very origin of the Revolution, the body of 
 government in Paris was tainted by an organic weakness 
 which no structural changes could remove, and to whose 
 character all subsequent events for three years can be 
 traced. It was essentially federal ; feeble at the centre, 
 continually asking leave, morally a servant and not a 
 master ; lacking above all things the supreme force of 
 conviction, it acted without power because it did not 
 beheve in itself. 
 
 The history, then, of its struggle with the extremists 
 is the history of a body attempting by compromise and 
 ruse to attain a position whose theory it openly denies, 
 whose moral right it will not affirm, and whose very 
 existence is made dependent upon those whom it would 
 coerce against their will. The municipality tried to be a 
 strong government while it openly approved of volim- 
 taryism, to be powerful in its acts and weak in its 
 structure. Ultimately the centre of compromise is cap- 
 tured by ardent revolutionaries whom it has attempted 
 to check, and then we get a true despotism in Paris — 
 the terrible commune of the second period of the Republic 
 and of the Terror. 
 
78 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 But if the character of the new municipal govern- 
 ment (a character which became specially prominent after 
 the legislation of the whole system later in the year) is 
 the special feature of the movement, its general motive 
 is of course more important. We have called it the 
 Reform ; what occurred in the next few days was without 
 any question the origin of the active Revolution, and a 
 Uttle examination of facts will show that the taking of 
 the Bastille was not merely a dramatic incident, still less 
 the exaggerated hagarre that certain modern special pleaders 
 would make it, but, on the contrary, the foundation of every- 
 thing. The contemporaries are proved to have been right 
 in their view of this matter, as of so many others. 
 
 Why was this ? Because, first, ia taking the Bastille, 
 after having sacked the Invalides, the people of Paris 
 (for it was not a particular mob, but a gathering of every 
 possible class) held all the cannon in the city, and 
 were thoroughly provided with small arms. They were 
 suddenly become the masters of that insufficient camp 
 in the Champ de Mars on which the King had rehed. 
 In open country and without artUlery these seventy 
 thousand civilians would, of course, have been so many 
 sheep, but in the town and with a number of old artillery- 
 men (officers and men) to work their guns, it was another 
 matter. On and after July 14, 1789, Paris had foiuid 
 that possession of herself which we postulated as her first 
 great appetite in the Revolution. 
 
 Secondly, by this sudden stroke Paris forced the 
 Court to capitulate. At Versailles the King went bare- 
 headed to the Assembly, gave permission for the reunion 
 of the three orders, for a discussion of grievances before 
 supply, for the title of National Assembly, for the forma- 
 tion of a constitution before the voting of fiscal measures — 
 in a word, for all that the Commons had demanded, and 
 for the fulfilment of all the promises from which he had 
 attempted to recede. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 79 
 
 Thirdly, the victory, or rather the act of Paris, changed 
 and weakened the opposition. From openly gathering 
 troops, and boasting an approaching attack on the Parlia- 
 ment, they are reduced to intrigue and to the difficult 
 business of arming in the dark. Many of the heads of 
 the reaction (notably the Comte d'Artois) leave France 
 in the " first emigration," and the whole action of the 
 uncompromising party is made weaker, and clearly un- 
 national. 
 
 Fourthly (and perhaps this is the most important 
 point), that municipal movement, of which mention has 
 been made above, took its rise directly from the 14th of 
 July. The towns hear of Necker's dismissal and of the 
 Parisian rising by the same courier, and in a week or 
 ten days the story is repeated all over France. Rouen, 
 Lyons, Valence, Montpellier, Nimes, Tours, Amiens (to 
 cite but a few of the more prominent examples), organise 
 a new town government. Sometimes the old hereditary 
 or appointed body is deposed, more often it is enlarged 
 by the addition of the electoral college of the city; 
 occasionally it takes upon itself the task of adding 
 to itself representatives of the three orders. Again, 
 the towns arm themselves as Paris did ; and finally, by 
 what a contemporary called " spontaneous anarchy," the 
 whole network of cities has received the pulse and vibra- 
 tion of Paris ; the National Guards are being drilled in 
 thousands ; the rusty, confused, and broken machinery 
 of the ancien rSgime is replaced by a simple if rough 
 system of local government. Moreover, since all this has 
 been done by the people themselves, and without a com- 
 mand or a centralised effort, since it is natural and not 
 artificial, it has entered into the body of the Revolution 
 and cannot be undone. 
 
 You see, then, that the days of July gave Paris the 
 first word, and made the spirit of sectionalism and local 
 autonomy based upon a highly democratic theory. All 
 
8o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 these things are the conditions of Danton's rise; they 
 make possible, and even necessary, the society of which 
 he is to be the guide. After the 1 4th of July the Cor- 
 deliers meet daily ; the bell was rung above the church 
 at nine in the morning, and an assembly of the district 
 was held.'' It was not yet in name the famous " club "; 
 but when we consider the action of the popular societies 
 in Paris, we must always remember that this, even before 
 it regularly assumed its final name and functions, was a 
 society organised for debate and action, and that it was 
 the first to be established. 
 
 From its origin, this famous meeting is sharply marked 
 in its spirit — the spirit that will later divide it not only 
 from the riioderate clubs, such as the Feuillants, but from 
 the Jacobins themselves. In the first place, it is Parisian ; 
 it attempts no provincial propaganda ; it confines itself to 
 action in Paris, and even to its own immediate neighbour- 
 hood. In the second place, it is purely popular. But (it 
 may be asked) were not the Jacobins in their later stage 
 a purely popular club ? No, not in the same sense. 
 The Jacobins, as wUl be seen later in this book, were 
 an organised body; the public was admitted to their 
 galleries; but, even in the most feverish time of the 
 Revolution, they are distinguished by a close bond from 
 the general people. Their membership is almost exclu- 
 sively confined to the politicians, and their business is 
 inquisitorial. They preach certain political dogmas, and 
 make it their affair to canalise the Revolutionary current ; 
 they desire to estabUsh in France a Republican reHgion, 
 as it were, and we shall see later in Robespierre their 
 high priest and dictator. 
 
 The Cordeliers had nothing of all this. If the 
 Royalist writers begin calling them from the outset the 
 " Ri^publique des Cordeliers," it is because they show the 
 general spirit which Danton surely gave to, rather than 
 
 ' Anlard, Revue de la Mvolution Franjaise, February 14, 1893. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 81 
 
 received from, his district. Freedom of opinion, the value 
 of varied discussion, open doors, and even an interming- 
 ling with the street — such were their methods. The men 
 who sat on the benches would vary from one hundred to 
 three,^ according to the interest of the debate or the 
 value of the occasion. The number inscribed on the 
 registers of the society were simply the whole voting 
 strength of the district ; under the limited suffrage of 
 the time it would fluctuate round the figure six hundred ; 
 and hence we may observe that those who were so 
 strongly touched by the contemporary movement as to 
 add meeting and debating to their mere votes numbered 
 a good half of the electorate. Standing grouped, or 
 moving in and out of the far end of the hall, would be 
 the chance-comers, the disfranchised multitude of the 
 district — those even who had no residence in the quarter, 
 but whom anger, interest, or curiosity might attract. It 
 was composed of every kind of man — the pedantic but 
 accurate Sieyfes ; the fastidious radical and poet D'Eglan- 
 tine ; the coarse, brutal, and atheistic Hubert ; Desmoulins, 
 ardent and admirably polished, linked by his style to the 
 classics of his own country and of Kome ; Legendre, the 
 master-butcher, no great politician, but an honest friend ; 
 and, added to all these, the lawyers. There was a pre- 
 ponderance of the young men, the students and bar- 
 risters in their thirtieth year; but take it all in all, 
 it was the most representative, the most general of the 
 meetings. 
 
 The society, then, from which Danton rises is marked 
 by these characters: it tends always to defend the pre- 
 sence in pohtics of the whole people; it is unitarian, 
 designing above all things a common ground where 
 Frenchmen may found the new order in harmony ; and 
 finally, it possesses nothing of the metaphysical spirit 
 
 ' See the figures given in the petition against Danton's arrest, p. 108. 
 
 F 
 
82 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 abroad at the time. It is all for action along the lines 
 of common sentiments — the defence of the new individual 
 liberty, the destruction as soon as may be of whatever 
 rehcs of the old machinery might be spared by the fear 
 or inertia of certain reformers. 
 
 I cannot leave what has already grown to an over- 
 lengthy description of their political attitude without 
 touching upon a quality of theirs, which was not indeed 
 a principle, but which was a method of action necessarily 
 flowing from the ideas they held. The Cordeliers are 
 essentially " Frondeurs." They are rebellious and in 
 opposition so long as the Kevolution remains incomplete. 
 They do things deliberately illegal, but which they justly 
 consider to be in the spirit of the reform and calculated 
 to aid its rapid development. Why was this ? Because 
 the day after Paris had captured the position, in the very 
 moment when the city had forced reaction into subter- 
 ranean channels, her power was bridled. The King came 
 to Paris on the 17th of July and confirmed the revolu- 
 tionary appointments. Bailly is mayor, and Lafayette is 
 commissioned head of the National Guard. In those two 
 names you have the forces, or rather the resistances, 
 against which Danton and the Cordeliers made it their 
 business to fight. Both of them were amiable, both 
 weak, and both sincere ; but they belonged, the one to 
 the high bourgeoisie, the other to the noblesse ; they 
 were both full of an intense class-prejudice ; both thought 
 rather of the restraints to be imposed than of the great 
 change in the midst of which they lived. The little 
 movements that BaUly might have mistaken for an 
 enthusiasm would arise at the sight of his telescope ; the 
 undoubted excitability of Lafayette was aroused by the 
 public mention of his own name. Under these weak- 
 nesses their external sign was pomposity, their political 
 action an attempt to confine the Revolution to the middle 
 class. Thus, later, the sixty districts are replaced by the 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 83 
 
 forty-eight sections in order to jerrymander the Parisian 
 radicals ; thus Bailly tries to oppose Parisian appeals to 
 the Parliament ; and thus Lafayette not only attempts 
 to convert the National Guard into a political army, but 
 makes it impossible for the poor to join it. 
 
 Against all this the Cordeliers set their face. Such 
 a partial conception of the State was the enemy of that 
 ideal by which they Uved and which has formed the 
 Kepublic in France and the Jeffersonian democracy in 
 America. Only four days after the King had worn his 
 tricolour cockade, smiling on the balcony of the Hotel 
 de Ville, they issue and print a resolution to use the 
 armed force of their district at its own discretion ; they 
 do not (of course) claim to act further, but they deter- 
 mine to be themselves the police which shall conduct 
 prisoners to the tribunals.^ At the close of 1789, and 
 especially in the succeeding year, we shall find them in 
 the affair of Marat, of Danton's election, of the Mandat 
 Imperatif, and of the Chatelet continually acting in the 
 spirit of local autonomy, and refusing to admit any 
 central authority save that of the whole people — bowing 
 after every revolt to the Assembly, but refusing to admit 
 the bourgeois power. ^ 
 
 The end of July was the destruction of the feudahty 
 in France. When the towns had fallen with a shock into 
 the new conditions, the great dust of villages rose of itself 
 into a storm, and there passed over all the countrysides 
 that strange panic, " The Great Fear," whose legend alone 
 of Kevolutionary memories remains among the peasantry 
 to-day. 
 
 The woods were full of terrors; ploughmen started 
 out at night by bands to meet invisible armies ; an un- 
 substantial enemy threatened the thousands of little 
 
 1 This decree was passed by the Cordeliers on Tuesday, July 21, 1789. 
 It is not so unreasonable as it might seem, for but two days afterwards 
 (July 23rd) the informal mnnicipal body recognises the necessity of new 
 city elections. 
 
84 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 lonely villages that lie undefended on the skirts of forests 
 or lost on the leagues and leagues of plains. In that 
 mysterious panic the Jacquerie arose; the cowed and the 
 oppressed, who had forgotten the generous anger which 
 makes men brave, rose under the lash of fear. They had 
 heard of the promises of reform, they had seen the 
 cahiers drawn up that they might become free men, and 
 yet the town close by had risen and armed because 
 something had gone wrong ; the King, whom they loved, 
 was not allowed to help his people ; some one was delaying 
 or destroying their hopes, and the brigands were coming 
 down the road. Not with committees, orgahisation, and 
 battalions, as the intelligence of the towns had just done, 
 but instinctively and with the anarchy of the torch they 
 destroyed the skeleton idol of the old regime. Like their 
 fathers of four hundred years before, they were out to 
 destroy the records of their servitude, and where the 
 records were defended the country-houses burned. But 
 this time no vengeance followed : the wild beast was dead. 
 AVhen in the noisy night of the 4th of August the privi- 
 leged men scattered away their rights, then that last 
 largesse of the nobles, the " Orgy,'' as Mirabeau called it, 
 was but a gift of things already taken. After Paris, after 
 the cities, the peasantry had suddenly stiffened the phrases 
 by an act ; perhaps it was their formless and vague energy 
 that laid the heaviest of the foundation-stones, for we 
 are told that in twenty years an exile returning thought 
 that France had been re-peopled with a new kind of 
 men. 
 
 It is not wonderful that, with such a fire just 
 smouldering down, and with the spirit of renunciation 
 abroad as weU, a regular stream of emigration should set 
 out. But it did not leave the opposition powerless 
 tiiough it deprived it of chiefs. If we consider the Court, 
 the capital, and the Assembly in the months of August 
 and September, the next great step (and the first in 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 85 
 
 connection with which the name of Danton is directly 
 connected) becomes clear. 
 
 At Versailles all the first part of August is taken 
 up in voting the famous decree which consecrated the 
 debate of the 4th. The Parliament abolished feudal 
 dues, declaring all rights in service at an end, and 
 establishing a period for the national purchase and sub- 
 sequent abolition of the rest of the feudal dues. All 
 the second part of August and the whole of September 
 were occupied in drawing up the declaration of the 
 rights of man and in decreeing the fundamental articles 
 of the new Constitution. The National Assembly, then, 
 as a whole, is thoroughly the organ of France. It is not 
 yet so divided as to arouse definite party feeling in the 
 capital, nor to prevent on important occasions a practi- 
 cally unanimous vote. But there is another factor. The 
 Court (especially the Queen) has a definite party formed ; 
 it has its correspondence with the emigres, and they with 
 the personalities, if not with the ofl&cial organs of foreign 
 governments. It was without any question the object 
 of this very small and very powerful group to arrest the 
 Revolution, and if possible to wipe out the last six 
 months. Between and above these stands the King. 
 Louis (we are too apt to forget it in our knowledge of 
 what follows) still possessed far more power even than the 
 National Assembly ; not only by the pohtical decrees of 
 the time, but by that immeasurable force of custom, by 
 the aflfection which he personally had iuspired in the 
 great bulk of men, he was a powerful king. What was 
 his attitude ? He was patriotic ; he greatly sympathised 
 with the ideas at the root of the reform ; he was sensible, 
 and saw the practical value of casting away what is 
 broken and worn out. On the other hand, he was not 
 brave (especially in the face of the unknown) ; new 
 developments irritated him ; he was (by the inevitable 
 result of his training) determined to preserve in his own 
 
86 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 hands the bulk of power, and sometimes he was panic- 
 stricken at a phrase or a debate which seemed to put it 
 in jeopardy. Finally— a matter of the utmost impor- 
 tance with a character of such weU-balanced mediocrity — 
 the people with whom he hunted, dined, and conversed 
 were almost all of them members of a powerful, bitter, 
 and skilful faction, headed by the most determined and 
 able of all — his wife, for whom he had latterly developed 
 a marked tenderness and even respect. 
 
 This ring of courtiers, who were Louis's evil fates, had 
 a certain quality that gave them great power in spite of 
 their small numbers. It must be remembered that they 
 were of the high cosmopolitan type, those who, a genera- 
 tion earlier, delighted in the wit of Voltaire, who, a 
 generation later, smiled at merely hearing the name 
 of Talleyrand. Perhaps there was never a body better 
 fitted to influence an isolated man by phrases, continual 
 conversation, and intrigue. 
 
 What is the effect ? That the King, always honestly 
 intending the reform, always hesitates a little too long, 
 with doubts that are often intellectual in origin and 
 sometimes wise in their nature, but foolish at the moment. 
 He hesitates to sign the decree of the 4th of August ; ^ 
 he hesitates about this and that expression in the De- 
 claration of rights. He has a very strong reluctance to 
 forego the absolute veto ; all through September you can 
 hear the machinery creaking, and it gets worse as the 
 autumn advances. 
 
 Meanwhile in Paris two forces are at work to aid 
 this crisis at Versailles. First, the popular societies, 
 notably that meeting in the Palais Royal, which now 
 is almost a Parliament, where every prominent Parisian 
 name is heard, and whence those curious documents, 
 parodies of the old-fashioned decrees, emanate,^ not 
 
 ' Signed 21st September; promulgated 3rd November. 
 
 * An ezcelleut example is on p. 45 of Danton, Homme d'Mat. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 87 
 
 unfrequently with the power to cause insurrectioa 
 Secondly, the price of food, especially of flour, is rising 
 rapidly. We have explained in the first chapter how 
 largely the lack of food in the towns was due to vicious 
 interference with exchange : when such is the prime 
 cause of economic trouble, the least disturbance aggra- 
 vates it to a high degree; thus it was that while the 
 harvest was being gathered in the north, and in the south 
 had been already stored, the supply of cereals in the 
 capital was all but exhausted. 
 
 Thus curiously side by side (and partly overlapping) 
 the intense poHtical interest of the voting class and the 
 growing misery of the populace ran fatally towards the 
 days of October. At the Cordeliers, uinocent of pedants, 
 practical, alert, debating with open doors, there met the 
 two revolutionary interests, those of the politicians and 
 of the poor; and this is why they are heard so loudly 
 in September, and why Danton and his district become 
 famous just before the march on VersaUles. 
 
 It will be remembered that the assembly of electors 
 at the Hotel de Ville had guided Paris through the great 
 storm of July 13— 17 ; their powers were vague and un- 
 constitutional, for they had been elected at first merely to 
 choose Deputies for Paris, nevertheless it was they who 
 had made BaUly mayor, who had nominated Lafayette, 
 who had formed the National Guard, and who had been 
 confirmed by the King in their functions of a provisional 
 municipality. It was acting on this decree which gave 
 them a right to take political initiative, that on Thursday, 
 July 23, they had sent a circular to the sixty districts 
 asking each to name two members. The hundred and 
 twenty so elected were to draw up a plan for a new 
 mimicipahty ; they met, did so, and the result of their 
 labours was the issue on August 30th of a scheme for a 
 new municipal system, upon wnl h the primaries in every 
 districts were asked to debate. Somewhat illogically, 
 
88 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 however, the complicated document was accompanied by 
 a writ demanding the immediate election in each district 
 of five members to form the new corporation. In other 
 words, the primaries were asked to form a new muni- 
 cipaUty, to give it full powers, and then to debate 
 academically upon what they had done. 
 
 It may have been only a blunder, but the Cordehers 
 took alarm at what certainly seemed to be a plot on the 
 part of the Moderates. The project and the writ had 
 reached them on Sunday August 3 oth ; by Thursday, Sep- 
 tember 3rd, they had arrived at a decision to refuse the 
 writ. They argued that it was absurd to ask the districts 
 to debate on a project after its most essential part had been 
 realised, namely, the election of deputies. On that elec-^ 
 tion, its methods, the powers of the members, and so forth, 
 the greater part of the discussions would turn, and by 
 the time the districts had arrived at such and such con- 
 clusions, or had modified the powers of their deputies 
 in such and such a fashion, those deputies would already 
 have been sitting for some time as a municipal council, 
 would be helping to frame or to modify the new muni- 
 cipal system on their own account. It would have been 
 not only confusion but an encroachment on the principle 
 by which (nominally) the districts had been consulted, 
 viz., that the electors themselves in their districts should 
 thrash out the new system. The Cordeliers named com- 
 missioners who examined the whole matter, and, on 
 Saturday, the 12th, definitely rejected the writ. Never- 
 theless, as the other districts had all obeyed and had 
 elected their five members each, the Cordeliers elected 
 their five under protest^ on the following Monday, the 
 14th, and sent them, bound by a strict oath, to the Hotel 
 de VUle. 
 
 ' Their names were Peyrilhe, De Blois, De Granville, Dupr^ Crohar& 
 They can be found, with all the decrees touching this business, in Banton, 
 Homme d'etat (Robinet, 1889), p. 248. Printed, like all the Cordeliers' 
 decrees, by Momoro in the Rue de la Harpe, and signed, "d'Anton." 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 89 
 
 This little incident merits a very considerable degree 
 of attention, although it has been somewhat neglected by 
 the historians, and even by Danton's biographers. It was 
 the first skirmish in that decisive struggle between the 
 democratic idea, headed by the CordeHers, and the limited 
 suffrage of the first municipality — a struggle which is at 
 the root of all the action of Paris. It is the first act 
 of Danton in an official position; in much that the 
 Cordeliers had done he was evidently the leader, but in 
 this document we learn that he is elected president of 
 the district, and see his name signed.^ And finally, 
 there appears here, for the first time in the Kevolution, 
 the Mandat Imperatif, the brutal and decisive weapon of 
 the democrats, the binding by an oath of all delegates, 
 the mechanical responsibility against which Burke had 
 pleaded at Bristol, which the American constitution 
 vainly attempted to exclude in its principal election, and 
 which must in the near future bo the method of our 
 fiinal reforms. It had been raised, and Danton had raised 
 it; for these five deputies, before being permitted to 
 attend at the Hotel de Ville, swore to a definite plan 
 of action whose terms were dictated at the general meet- 
 ing of the district. 
 
 The struggle as it continues becomes of greater im- 
 portance, until, within four months, it faces Danton 
 himself in the Hotel de Ville ; but we cannot describe 
 its further steps until we have mentioned the next action 
 with which the Cordeliers are associated, and in which 
 their decisive role is largely determined by the Revolu- 
 tionary championship which this brush with authority 
 had given them. 
 
 We have described above the various forces that were 
 
 ' It may be remembered that Bougeart (p. 69) claims the presidency 
 for Danton at the very beginning of '89. The error of this has been 
 pointed out. On the other hand, Aulard says he was not President till 
 October. This is another error. There is at least one earlier document, 
 that of September, quoted on the preceding page 
 
90 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 fatally converging to form the whirlpool of October — the 
 hesitancy of the King, the desperate intrigues of the Court, 
 the intense pohtical excitement of the Palais Royal and of 
 the electors in Paris, the growing misery of the populace. 
 We have pointed out how the Cordeliers, with their popular 
 audience and popidar sympathies, were at once the only 
 great debating place in Paris and the only spot where the 
 forces of voters and non-voters could join hands. Add 
 to this the effect of the protest described above and of 
 the position such a struggle gave them in the democratic 
 movement, and their importance in the days of October 
 becomes evident. 
 
 It was at the close of September that all these ten- 
 dencies came together. Again, after three months of 
 silence, the reaction found its voice, and the Bang's un- 
 certainty, the Court faction's plotting, culminated in the 
 arrival at Versailles of military reinforcements. The body- 
 guards were doubled, and there marched in the Regiment 
 of Flanders — a body (by the way) to whose name clings 
 something of comedy, and whose raggedness has passed 
 into a marching legend. This book is not the place to 
 describe at any length what followed, save in its connec- 
 tion with Danton and the Club. On Thursday, October 
 the ist, a famous dinner was given by the body-guard 
 to the newly arrived regiment. The Court dealt with 
 excellent material, and with the wine and the night the 
 admirable feelings of loyalty arose : the poor King assumed 
 the halo of a leader to these men whose regimental tradi- 
 tions were knit up with the monarchy; soldiers, they 
 appreciated his defeat, and, being comrades, they were 
 angry at his loneliness. They greeted him with a passion- 
 ate song, destroyed the three-coloured cockades, and pinned 
 on the white ribbons ; for the first time in a year enthu- 
 siasm was with the beleaguered, though it lasted but a 
 few hours and stretched to but a few hundred of men. 
 To Paris, hearing of it on the next day. Friday, it was a 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 91 
 
 challenge, discussed, oddly enougli, with some contradic- 
 tions and confusions. Men talked of Bouilld, the courtier, 
 and his frontier command at Metz; people were afraid 
 that he would protect the King in some flight to the 
 provinces; there ran a vague uneasiness and a fear of 
 anarchy with the King's disappearance ; above all, in the 
 minds of the politicians a fear of armed reaction, and in 
 the minds of the starving a terror that the reforms which 
 were so material to them were in jeopardy. Still, all 
 Saturday the waters only moved at the surface, and you 
 might have thought that Paris was incapable of any 
 combined action. 
 
 But if the reaction contained a powerful integrating 
 force in the Court party, Paris also possessed it in a small 
 meeting and in one supremely energetic man. On the 
 morning of Sunday, a day when there was leisure to read, 
 the walls were placarded with the manifesto of the Cor- 
 dehers. It demanded an insurrection, and was signed 
 with Danton's name. On Monday morning they rang the 
 tocsin at the belfry of the convent, and the battalion of 
 the district was drawn up and armed. De Crfevecceur, their 
 commander, prevented them marching in a body, but a 
 number of the district determined to merge with the 
 crowd. Meanwhile, the mob gathered from every quarter, 
 especially the Place de Grfeve — a true mob this time, and 
 accompanied, as all the world knows, by a crowd of women, 
 poured up the Versailles road. They made a hideous 
 night in the great space before the palace. Lafayette 
 followed tardily with his organised volunteers, the National 
 Guard; but on the Tuesday the palace was forced, and 
 some of its defenders killed. The royal family came in 
 their heavy coach down the twelve miles of falling road 
 into Paris, and, not without some state, they entered the 
 Tuilleries. The National Assembly followed the King 
 into the capitaL 
 
 Thus the second milestone of the Revolution was 
 
92 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 passed. Of all the revolutionary days, tliese were the 
 most purely anarchic. The action was that of men hardly 
 possessing ideas, but fixed upon a practical thing — the 
 presence of the King in Paris. It had for its main 
 object good, and for its method mad anger. Neverthe- 
 less, the instinct of the mob had hit the mark. Like all 
 sudden actions, it had made issues definite which had 
 till then been confused. It put an end once and for aU 
 to the idea of crushing the reform at its outset by force ; 
 it gave Paris a mastery over every subsequent action; of 
 the many ways the Court party might have tried it 
 reduced them to one only, namely, an organised secret 
 diplomacy with the object of raising Europe against 
 France. 
 
 As for Louis, we may honestly beheve that his capture 
 was not entirely distasteful to him : as he was less acute, 
 so he had certainly more common-sense than his wife. If 
 he was jealous of his dignity, which had been grievously 
 offended, yet he was very French, patriotic, and not un- 
 willing to see himself the object of a violent demand. 
 Everybody saw — the King must have seen it too — that 
 the whole uprising was monarchic. There was not any 
 class more monarchic in France than the poor. The King 
 as their father was an idea bred in them for centuries, and 
 he knew that they made of him a kind of providence who 
 could give them food ; that they rose not to make him less 
 powerful, but to make a faction impotent. And there was 
 nothing distasteful to him in being a King of the French, 
 seated in the midst of his great capital, and on the summit, 
 as it were, of a new order. October did not threaten to 
 make him less, but more of a King. It was later, in 
 questions that affected the heart, especially in matters 
 of religion, that the gulf opened between Louis and his 
 people. 
 
 With the King, then, at the Tuilleries, with the 
 Assembly some three hundreds yards off down the gardens 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 93 
 
 in the riding-school of the palace,^ we enter the long 
 avenue by which Paris obtains the initiative in every 
 subsequent reform. Let us turn, then, to follow once 
 more the action of the society and the man who, 
 between them, determine the direction of Paris for the 
 next three years. 
 
 The quarrel which was sketched earlier in this chapter, 
 the assault of the district upon the Moderates, continued 
 throughout the autumn and winter. Four times running 
 Danton is elected President,^ and it is under his guidance 
 that the affair proceeds. WhUe the Assembly are making 
 a new France at the Manage, organising the departments,^ 
 fixing the restricted suffrage,* creating the communes 
 over all France,^ the Cordeliers are making the spirit of 
 a new Paris on the hill over the river ; this spirit will 
 conquer and transform the debaters in the Parliament. 
 
 On the 2 2nd of October they follow up their previous 
 action. Already before the revolt they had come into 
 collision with the municipality: in this new resolution they 
 protest against a demand of Lafayette for regular courts- 
 martial in the National Guard. The protest had a 
 meaning, for Lafayette was raising an armed bourgeois 
 power, but the motive of the Cordeliers was mainly the 
 desire to harass the Moderates. A week later the Muni- 
 cipal Council gave its reply to these various encroach- 
 ments on the part of the Cordeliers in a decree of the 
 29th of October : it condemned the action of the district 
 in three definite points : first, its habit of passing resolutions 
 like a small municipal body ; secondly, its habit of asking 
 the fifty-nine other districts to pass spontaneous resolu- 
 tions on important matters ; thirdly (and most important), 
 
 ' They had sat for a while at the Ev^ch^ on the Island of the Cit^ 
 while the Manage was heing prepared. 
 ' Rev. de Paris, xxiii. p. 20. 
 
 • November nth and 12th. 
 
 • 22nd of December. 
 
 • I2th November and 14th of December. 
 
94 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 its revolutionary action in demanding an oath from its 
 delegates. In this last point the purely democratic idea 
 on the one hand, and the senatorial theories of the 
 Moderates on the other, came face to face, and on that 
 point the issue turned. On the 2nd of November the 
 district replied by a resolution denying the right of the 
 elected to control the electors, and especially condemning 
 the interference of the Hotel de Ville with debates in 
 the districts. On the 12 th, ten days later, they came 
 out into the open with a resolution that was hke a 
 declaration of war against Bailly and Lafayette; they 
 drew up a form of oath which their five deputies were to 
 swear, and this oath bound the members of the district 
 not only to obey the district in all its resolutions, but also 
 to admit that they could be dismissed after being called 
 upon three times to resign by a majority of the district. 
 It was the full doctrine of delegacy and of the corporate 
 will. 
 
 Only two of the five members took the oath, the 
 rest resigned and were promptly replaced by others, 
 and these presented themselves at the Hotel de Ville 
 on November i6th. Condorcet was President of the 
 municipal body, and practically everybody there was 
 furious against the Cordeliers. They demanded a 
 recital of the causes which had led to the dismissal 
 of the three members, and then they insisted on hearing 
 the terms of the famous oath that bound the five 
 deputies. Of the two who had consented to take the 
 oath in the first instance, one (Peyrilhe) muttered excuses, 
 but the other (Crohar^), who seems to have been more of 
 a true Cordelier, was very proud of the position he held, 
 and would have explained the true doctrine at great 
 length, had not the meeting cut him short by a vigorous 
 vote, declaring all such oaths inadmissible, sending away 
 the three new members, and recalling those who had 
 resigned. On the next day the municipality broke the 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 95 
 
 law. It turned Crohar4 out, but by a very small vote, in 
 which many abstained.^ Of course such an action was 
 not to be tolerated, for it would have made the majority 
 of the municipaUty able to end all opposition or debate, 
 and the mistake of Condorcet was Danton's opportunity. 
 
 Every character he possesses is apparent in the struggle 
 that follows. He carries it on with something of the 
 diplomacy that later was matched against all Europe : he 
 secures his allies and isolates his enemies : he pleads to 
 convince and to obtain official support, not (as do so many 
 of his contemporaries) in order to follow a line of thought. 
 In a word, he is habile, and practically he succeeds. 
 
 Observe the quality of this action. When the 
 district meets on the 17th (while the Commune was 
 dismissing Crohar^), Danton sees the importance of keeping 
 its debate in bounds. That gathering, which is so ena- 
 moured of abstract rights, is suddenly bound down by the 
 superior ability of its chairman : the discussion is made 
 to follow points of legal technicality, and Danton imposes 
 upon the Cordeliers so strict a discipline for one day, that 
 two points alone emerge from the speeches, and they are 
 precisely the two which could be used as arguments. ( i .) 
 That the Commune was provisional, and its raison d'Stre 
 was the formation of a new municipal system : in such 
 cases (say the Cordeliers) the subjects of the experiment 
 must remain masters, and it would be absurd to take away 
 the power of control, that later would have to be readmitted 
 when the new municipal constitution should be sent to 
 the districts for acceptance or rejection : in a word, they 
 argued on the vice de raisonnement — the want of logic 
 —in the Commune's action. (2.) They appealed to 
 the Assembly — that is, they recognised and submitted to 
 the centre of national power.^ The Assembly was in 
 a dilemma. It was in full sympathy with the Moderates 
 
 ' 31 against 20 (Aulard, from Journal de la Cour et de la ViUe, p. 518), 
 ' Danton, Homme d^Etat, pp. 256, &c. Signed, "d' Anton." 
 
96 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 with Bailly and with Lafayette; on the other hand, it 
 could not, without a great loss of prestige, deny the 
 very principles upon which its own power rested. Their 
 committee on the subject desired a complete admission of 
 the Cordeliers' claim ; the Assembly rejected this, and tried 
 to compromise by saying that both parties should go back 
 to " the state of things of November i oth " — that is, to the 
 state of things before the oath and before the whole 
 trouble. The compromise would not hold. The deputies 
 thus legally reinstated all resigned (except Crohar^) on 
 account of the feeling in their district, and the Cordehers 
 then, with full legality, re-elected their popular champions 
 of the Mandat Imperatif. 
 
 The Commune took its defeat ill. They tried to prove 
 that the old members had not really resigned. They sent 
 a committee to interview them, but the committee came 
 b ^ck with proof that the resignation was voluntary, and 
 finally, on November 28, the little company of democrats 
 were sworn in to a very ungracious and unwilling Assem- 
 bly, and Danton had won. 
 
 My readers must excuse so detailed an account of an 
 event which is empty of picturesque detail and which 
 is so small a part of that fertile winter. From the point 
 of view of general history it is the first appearance of 
 the Mandat Imperatif in action ; and from the point of 
 view of Danton's rule in the Revolution it is of the 
 utmost importance, though it is so insignificant a cata- 
 logue of quarrels. It was Danton's first victory, and it 
 was decisive. It put a wedge, as it were, into the gate 
 that he was forcing open by persistent effort; and though 
 his final position in the administration of Paris is won 
 after many further failures, it is a direct consequence of 
 this success in 1789. At the same time it showed that 
 a young, loud-voiced lawyer of the middle class could 
 have that one necessary quality of skill lying under the 
 coarse exterior ; he could play the game with the subtlety 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 97 
 
 of appreciation which was so necessary in the terrible 
 year of invasion, the keen aptitude of the mind which 
 the visionaries were too unpractised, the demagogues too 
 brutal to attain. That aptitude had appeared in Danton's 
 pleading, and was to make him during the war a man 
 necessary to France. 
 
 It was a month or six weeks after these events, on 
 some date in January which we can only fix by indirect 
 evidence, that Danton was himself elected to represent 
 the district. The restless society had caused a further 
 resignation, and five new members came to the Hotel 
 de VUle.^ He came unimportant, effaced, known merely 
 88 a demagogue, into that mimicipal assembly which 
 contained the most dignified, the most learned, and the 
 most representative of the noblesse and higher bour- 
 geoisie, to sit under the frowns and endure the sUence, 
 and at first the contempt, of Condorcet, of D'Espagnac, 
 of the academicians Laharpe and Suard, the astronomer 
 De Cassini, Lavoisier, De Moreton-Chabrillant captain 
 of the guard, BaUly and Lafayette themselves. And in 
 the very first hours of his presence, before he had taken 
 the oath, an incident occurred which clinched, as it were, 
 the disfavour in which he was regarded, and which for a 
 year put him in the background of a council which he 
 was destined ultimately to master. I refer to what is 
 known as the incident of Marat. 
 
 Marat was more of a gentleman than Danton ; it is 
 also fair to say that he was nearly mad. No two men 
 could have been more different than the learned, irritable, 
 visionary physician and the yotmg, healthy country law- 
 yer who was for a moment his champion. The one has 
 met continually the ruling class, and has suffered from 
 
 ' Danton, his friend Legendre, Testulat, Sable^, and Guintin. Several 
 anthorities have placed Danton's election in September 1789 instead of 
 January 1790, an error due (probably) to following Godard's list, which 
 was published in 1790, but bore the title, "Members of the Commune 
 elected since September 1789." 
 
 O 
 
98 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 its insolence and privilege; tlie other has known pro- 
 fessional friends indeed of the first rank, but has passed 
 his life with the trading middle class, and has entered 
 perhaps during all his career in Paris not one salon, nor 
 met perhaps one of the brilUant women of his time. 
 
 Marat presented from the outset the first problem to 
 be faced by a people who are testing liberty. He was a 
 journahst and pamphleteer of unbridled license, one of 
 those who cannot find ia themselves that control which, 
 when it is absent in pubhc writers, can only be sup- 
 planted by the cumbersome, dangerous, and necessary 
 machinery of the Censor. Not for money, of coiu'se, nor 
 for any unworthy motive, but for the excellent end of 
 attaining freedom, this morbid mind poured out the 
 wUdest, the most sensational, and the most dangerous 
 appeals. 
 
 Now the courts were in process of transition ; rapidly 
 as the reform had marched since the summer, much of 
 the old judicial procedure necessarily remained, and 
 among the rest a body known as the Chatelet, whose 
 removal was already planned, but which had to be main- 
 tained until the new system could be put in working 
 order. It was very typical of the old regime. A body 
 of privileged lawyers, many of them young and ignorant, 
 holding their places by inheritance or purchase, and 
 charged with what we may call the police of the capital. 
 They had formerly possessed (and it had not yet been 
 aboUshed in detail) the power of arbitrary arrest. They 
 drew then name from the heavy fortress which had once 
 defended the Pont au Change when Paris was confined 
 to the island of the Cit^ ; some of its walls dated at 
 latest from the Norman siege of the tenth century, and 
 beneath it were cellars which had for centuries been the 
 prisons of those arrested in Paris by the city guard. It 
 stood gloomy and strong on the site of the modem place 
 that bears its name, dominating the close streets of the 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 99 
 
 Boucherie, and possessing in its associations and its 
 waning power all the qualities that had made the BastiUe 
 odious to the people. It may be imagined how the juris- 
 diction which it contained was bound to attract the chief 
 efforts of the reformers ; it could not, however, cease to 
 exercise its functions until there was some more Hberal 
 institution to supply its place, and it came of necessity 
 into violent collision with that spirit which was deter- 
 mined to break down by force what the resolutions of 
 the Assembly had abolished in theory, but had not yet 
 supplanted in fact. 
 
 The principal object of Marat's tirades was the 
 moderate town council, and especially Bailly. Moreover, 
 the worthy astronomer was an admirable butt. He 
 assumed a livery, and put a fine coat-of-arms on his 
 carriage, and, while he weakly opposed the rising de- 
 mocracy of Paris, he was very strong in the matter of 
 pomposity. Marat was called to the bar of the Com- 
 mune to answer for these attacks upon the mayor on the 
 28 th of September. A warrant for his arrest was made 
 out by the Ch^telet on the 6th of October, but the day 
 was too critical for an action of police against an 
 individual. On the 8th another warrant was sent out, 
 and Marat fled to a hiding-place up on Montmartre, from 
 which, like a mad prophet on a hill-top, he pamphleteered 
 the city at his feet. His quarrels, therefore (though very 
 different in kind) were contemporaneous with the im- 
 portant struggle between the CordeUers and the Munici- 
 pality which are detailed above. The two attacks began 
 to merge in December. 
 
 Marat, on the 1 2 th of that month, was hunted out of 
 his retreat, and brought before a lower court, but so con- 
 fused were the powers of the Chatelet in this period of its 
 reform and extiaction that the prosecution was dropped. 
 Emboldened by this failure on the part of his opponents, 
 he came to live and print his sheet openly in the Rue des 
 
loo THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Fosses St. Germams — that is, in the midst of the district 
 of the Cordeliers. What followed is well known. At a 
 moment when the struggle between the district and the 
 Hotel de Ville is at its height, just after the scene in 
 which Danton's deputation had protested against the 
 mayor's commission to the militia officers, while the 
 insulting irony of the term " my lord " was still ringing 
 in BaLUy's ears, and when Danton himself had been 
 actually elected for the district, and was present in the 
 Mimicipality on the point of taking the oath — when all 
 these causes of quarrel were, so to speak, met in one 
 date, the Moderates determined to strike. Marat was 
 pouring out his impossible diatribes from the territory of 
 the rebellious district, and no opportimity could be more 
 favourable. The Ch§,telet issued once more the warrant 
 for his arrest, and this time it was supported by Lafayette, 
 who promised to lend four thousand of the National 
 Guard. 
 
 Now note the importance of what follows. Neither 
 side in the struggle of the autumn had definitely won. 
 The National Assembly had temporised, the advantage of 
 the Cordeliers in the matter of the disputed elections had 
 been achieved by a trick, and in the dead-lock between 
 two principles, the central power of the Municipality and 
 the local autonomy of the district, neither of the two 
 theories was based upon tradition, neither even (in the 
 confusion of rapid reforms) could justify itself by a defi- 
 nite pronouncement of the law. On the one side was the 
 theory of a highly restricted suffrage, government by a 
 class socially refined and lying with the nobility rather 
 than with the people ; this side was determined to form 
 an army to support their politics, and it was they who, 
 when they did act at last, achieved — but much too late — 
 the sharp and sanguinary reaction of July 1 79 1. On the 
 other side was the desire for a wide, later for a universal, 
 suffrage; a determination to emphasise in the develop- 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS loi 
 
 ment of the Revolutionary theory, equality and the general 
 will, rather than order and the practical working of new 
 laws ; a political attitude which was to lead the Revolu- 
 tion into the intense idealism of 1792, and to end by 
 declaring the Republic. And all this was represented in 
 the demand which, of its nature, is the expression of ex- 
 treme democracy — I mean the demand for local autonomy, 
 the idea that an act of government is most just when 
 it emanates not even from representatives, but from the 
 lips of the governed themselves. 
 
 Such were the two forces opposed to one another in 
 the affair of Marat — forces which, if not in all France, were 
 in Paris at least the two great camps of the Revolution. 
 Already the district had declared its intention to protect 
 the liberty of the press within its boundaries,^ and had 
 been wise enough to specially condemn Marat's violence ; 
 already had it named a committee of five to see that no 
 arbitrary arrest should take place in its territory,^ when 
 Lafayette sent his mihtia, cavalry and infantry, on the 
 2 2nd of January to help the arrest of Marat. Not content 
 with the 3000 men thus employed, he clinched the 
 matter with cannon, placing a couple of pieces at the 
 end of the Rue des Fossfe St. Germains.* He was deter- 
 mined to settle things by force, and beat the extremists 
 vrith their o\ni weapons. His effort did not find force 
 opposed to it, as he had hoped; it broke itself in the 
 most unexpected manner upon the legal abOity of 
 Danton. 
 
 The district might have raised, all told, 1 500 men, 
 and it possessed two pieces of artillery; but Danton 
 was far too wise to use them in such a cause as 
 that of defending Marat. A street fight, and one in 
 
 1 Marat's presses were hidden in a cellar of the Cordeliers now situated 
 under the house of the concierge of the Clinique. 
 
 ' January 19th. 
 
 ^ The Bue des Fosses was (and is, under its new name) remarkably 
 straight for an old street. Cannon could be used. 
 
I02 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 which the Cordeliers would have been infallibly beaten, 
 would have ruined the future chances of their pohtics. 
 He armed no one, and did not add a single man to 
 the small guard which each district kept permanently 
 drilled, but he assigned them as their guard-room for the 
 week the ground-floor of Marat's house. Then he went 
 there himself with his four companions on the newly 
 elected committee, and awaited developments. 
 
 The great body of the National Guard were massed 
 in their blue and white at the end of the street, their two 
 pieces sweeping it, and there was opposed to them nothing 
 but a small crowd and few arguments. Through their 
 ranks, and accompanied by a small detachment, came the 
 two officers or policemen of the Chatelet.-' They pre- 
 sented their writ, and Plainville, the commander of the 
 little detachment that accompanied them, asked to be 
 allowed to place sentries at the door. The commissioners 
 gave them leave with the greatest pleasure in the world, 
 but when the officers presented their warrant, the oppor- 
 tunity which Danton had been waiting for with some 
 anxiety presented itself With a slovenliuess that was 
 part and parcel of the old regime, the Chatelet had not 
 made out a new warrant, but had issued the old one 
 which had done duty on the 8 th of October. 
 
 Now, siace that date the Assembly had passed several 
 important changes in the criminal law, notably one in the 
 same month October which declared that " no warrant 
 for arrest can be issued against a householder save in 
 case of those charges -vvl:ich, if proved, would lead to 
 imprisonment." ^ A very obvious principle ; but in 
 France of the old regime to seize a man, hold him, and 
 even to let him go without trial, merely for some purpose 
 of the pohce, was permitted, and the Chatelet may have 
 
 ' Their names were Ozanne and Damien ; the same Damien, I believe, 
 who committed the blunder of September 13, 1791. See p. 150. 
 ' Article 9 of the decree of October 8 and 9, 1790. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 103 
 
 acted upon this tradition. Add to this the fact that the 
 Assembly had created elective councils in each district to 
 ■watch the interest of every inhabitant arrested in criminal 
 cases/ and it is easily apparent that the Chitelet had 
 committed a great blunder, the value of which a man 
 trained in the courts and quick to seize an error in 
 procedure immediately recognised. 
 
 Danton affirmed that the writ was illegal, ofifered 
 to prove it, and led the officers of the Ch^telet to the 
 hall of the district. There he had the new procedure 
 read to them, compared it with the date of their war- 
 rant, and so confused the minds of those simple men that 
 they signed a proc^s-verbal which declared that, after 
 hearing such reasons, they doubted how they should act. 
 They came back escorted by Fabre d'Eglantine through 
 an angry crowd, and were received by the officers of the 
 National Guard with some heat. They stood firm, how- 
 ever, and refused to pursue the arrest untU they could 
 consult with those who sent them, and finally the diffi- 
 culty was removed by Danton's promising to appeal to 
 the National Assembly and to abide by its decision. The 
 terms were accepted, the sentries left Marat's door, and 
 the troops withdrew. 
 
 All this debate and turmoil had taken up the morn- 
 ing and the luncheon-hour, the Rue des Fosses St. 
 Germains was evacuated in the early afternoon, and by 
 four o'clock of that day, 22nd of January 1790, Danton 
 and his companions were pleading their cause at the bar 
 of the House. It was the old pohcy of resorting to the 
 National Assembly as the last place of appeal, and of 
 using this principal result of the Revolutionary move- 
 ment as a weapon against the Parisian Moderates. The 
 Assembly found itself in the old dilemma, and adopted 
 
 1 "Notables-adjoints," to the number of seven in each district. Danton 
 himself was elected on to such a body in May or June 1790, and served for 
 a few months. 
 
I04 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the old compromise. By its theory it was democratic ; all 
 its phrases and many of its decrees were based on the 
 " Contrat Social," but by its personnel and its connections 
 it was natm-ally alHed to the high professional class, to 
 the Baillys and the Lafayettes. It instructed Target 
 (the President of the fortnight) to write to the district; 
 he condemned the attitude of the Cordehers, but Parlia- 
 ment " relied upon their patriotism to execute the wUl of 
 the Assembly." The district, true to its policy, at once 
 submitted. They sent Legendre and Testulat to tell the 
 commander of the forces (who had re-entered the Eue 
 des Fosses) that they had no longer the right to prevent 
 the arrest ; whereupon he sent in the poUce and awaited 
 Marat in the street below. The house was empty, and 
 Marat was on his way to England, a country with which 
 he was not unfamiliar, and the vices of whose constitution 
 had already furnished a theme for his too facUe pen. 
 
 Such are the details of the story of the famous Friday 
 in the district of the Cordeliers, events which put Danton's 
 name iDto some prominence, but which also showed him 
 to the most educated of his time, and therefore to pos- 
 terity, in something of a false Hght. He appears as the 
 friend of Marat, a man for whom he felt no sympathy, 
 to whom he was immeasurably superior, and whom he 
 had supported only because Marat's quarrel was a tactical 
 opportunity against the Moderates. To have been from 
 the outset admitted by the cultured would have been 
 difficult to him — it would have needed tact, self-effacement, 
 and silence. For he showed by nature just those rough 
 gestures and loud, ill-chosen phrases which should be the 
 sign of a foolish and dangerous man ; of what underlay 
 it, of his learning, his patriotism, and his common-sense 
 he was to give plenty of proof; but so violent were the 
 prejudices he had raised that only great length of time 
 has effaced the false impression of his first appearance 
 on the scene of politics. We can see the statesman 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 105 
 
 cleaxly, but his contemporaries never quite pierced the 
 medium that had gathered round him ; here and there a 
 just and noble man, as was Condorcet, would admit his 
 own misconception, but to the bulk of the gentlemen in 
 power he was and remained the demagogue. 
 
 Two years of careful action fail to clear him, because, 
 being already one of those whose superficial quahties 
 repel the close attention necessary to a just opioion, he 
 had also the misfortune to enter the arena from the 
 wrong door. Those who were most with him adored 
 him, the great bulk of his district-voters signed a fervent 
 declaration in his favour, and later his immediate friends 
 are willing to die with him. But the class with which 
 at heart he had most in common held aloof; he had 
 succeeded twice in a pitched battle with them; they 
 apologise for his acquaiatance, vilify him iu their letters, 
 and if his name has emerged from all this error, if he 
 has been given his statue in a time of social order and 
 reconstruction, it is because this man, who never wrote, 
 who left only a confused legend of his personality, saved 
 his country when it was at war with the whole world, 
 and such actions compel history to inquiry and resti- 
 tution. 
 
 On the 23 rd, the day after the trouble, he was sworn 
 in to the reluctant Commune, and there follow two long 
 years ^ of patient attempt to gain the place for which he 
 feels himself fitted, but years (on the whole) of disappoiut- 
 ment, and in which his real position in Paris (I mean the 
 prominence he held in the thoughts of men) contrasts 
 curiously with the little part he played. 
 
 1790 contains so great a portion of the Eevolution, 
 and sows the seed of so much future division and civil 
 war, that it seems ridiculous to confine oneself to the 
 
 * That is, till his election as substitute to the Frocureur in December 
 1791. 
 
io6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 description of the restricted action of one man who had 
 not yet even attained power. It will be necessary, how- 
 ever, to make a survey of this restricted action in order 
 that we may comprehend the greater role of Danton in 
 the two years that follow. 
 
 Danton came, then, with Legendre and the three others 
 into a city Council very much opposed to him and to the 
 district whose spirit he had formed. He was not often 
 heard, and there is no doubt that he deliberately tried to 
 purchase by silence the more just and equable judgment 
 of such men as he respected, but who knew him only by 
 unfavourable report. For the bulk of the Assembly he 
 cannot but have felt contempt; they had no instinct of 
 the revolutionary tide ; even when they were attempting 
 to check the movement that Danton represented, they 
 were inefficient and imworthy opponents, from whom his 
 eye must have wandered inwards to the great battles that 
 were preparing. 
 
 In the eight months during which he was a member 
 of the Provisional Commime, that is, from January to 
 September 1790, his name appears in the debates but 
 a dozen times.-^ More than half of these are mention of 
 committees upon which his common-sense and legal train- 
 ing were of service; in one only, that of February 4, 
 does he speak on a motion, and that is in support of 
 Barr^ to admit the public when the oath was taken : one 
 other (that on the 19th of March concerning the forma- 
 tion of a " grand jury ") would be interesting were it not 
 that the whole gist of the debate was but a repetition of 
 the much more significant discussion at the Cordeliers. 
 Finally, there is one httle notice which is half-pathetio 
 and half-grotesque : he is one of the committee of twenty- 
 four charged with the duty of " presenting their humble 
 thanks, with the mayor at their head," to the King for 
 
 ' January 25, 28 ; February 4, 16 ; March 3, 5, 13, 19 ; June 15, 19, 23. 
 Aulard, lUv, Franfaiae, February 14, 1893, pp. 142, 143. 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 107 
 
 giving the municipality a marble bust of himself. But 
 every entry is petty and imimportant : Danton at the 
 Provisional Municipality of 1790 is deliberately silent — 
 he can do nothing. 
 
 If we turn, however, to a field in which he was more 
 at home, we find him during that year more than ever 
 the leader of the Cordeliers, which itself becomes more 
 than ever the leader of Paris. 
 
 There are two important features in the part he 
 plays at the assemblies of the district during the spring 
 and summer in which he was a silent member of the 
 Commune. First, the afiair of his arrest; secondly, his 
 campaign against what may be called " the municipal 
 reaction." 
 
 As to the first, it is a very minor point in the general 
 history of the Revolution, but it is of considerable in- 
 fluence upon the career of Danton himself. When the 
 affair of Marat was (or should have been) forgotten, the 
 Chatelet, with that negligence which we have seen them 
 display in the business of the warrant for Marat's arrest, 
 saw fit to launch another warrant, this time for the 
 arrest of Danton himself. Once more that unpopular 
 and moribund tribunal put itself on the wrong side of 
 the law, and once more it chose the most inopportune 
 moment for its action. It was on the 17 th of March,^ 
 nearly two months after the affair — two months during 
 which Danton had been hard at work effacing its effects 
 upon his reputation — that the warrant was issued, and the 
 motive of arrest given in the parchment was of the least 
 justifiable kind. In the district meeting of the day, 
 when the pohce officers had been taken to the hall of 
 the Cordeliers, and had had the changes in the law read 
 out to them, Danton had made use of a violent phrase : 
 
 ' It is this warrant which has probably misled one biographer as to the 
 date of the "Affaire Marat." (DarUKm, Somme d'Etat, p. 67: "En mwri 
 Borrint I'affaire Harat.") 
 
io8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 its actual words were not known ; some said that he 
 had threatened to " call out the Faubourg St. Antoine, 
 and make the jaws of the guard grow white." Other 
 witnesses refused to attribute those words to him, but 
 accused him of saying, " If every one thought as I do, 
 we should have twenty thousand men at our back;" his 
 friends admitted that some angry and injudicious speech, 
 such as he was often guilty of, had escaped him, but 
 they affirmed that he had added, " God forbid that such 
 a thing should happen ; the cause is too good to be so 
 jeopardised." 
 
 Whatever he said (and probably he himself could 
 not accurately have remembered), the place and the time 
 were privileged. It was a test case, but the logic of such 
 a privilege was evident. Here you have deliberative 
 assembhes to which are intrusted ultimately the forma- 
 tion of a government for Paris : what is said ia such a 
 constituent meeting, however ill-advised, must in the 
 nature of things be allowed to pass ; if not, you limit the 
 discussion of the primary, and if you limit that discussion 
 you vitiate the whole theory upon which the new con- 
 stitution was being framed. It must be carefully remem- 
 bered that we are not dealing with deUberative bodies 
 long established, possessed of the central power, and hold- 
 ing privilege by tradition and by their importance in the 
 State ; we are dealing with the elementary deUberative 
 assemblies in a period which, rightly or wrongly, was 
 transforming the whole State upon one perfectly definite 
 political theory — namely, that these primary assemblies 
 were the only root and just source of power. When, 
 therefore, Parisian opinion rose violently in favour of the 
 president of a district so attacked, when three hundred 
 voters out of five signed a petition in Danton's favour, 
 when he was re-elected president of the district twelve 
 days after the issue of the warrant, it was because the 
 whole body of the electors felt a great and justifiable fear 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 109 
 
 of what was left of the old regime. The Ch^telet had 
 acted so, not from a careful appreciation of public danger 
 — to fend off which temporary powers had been given 
 it — but because it was blind with old age ; because it 
 dated from a time and was composed of a set of men 
 who hated all deliberative assemblies, and it was justly 
 thought that if such actions were justified, the whole 
 system of revolutionary Paris was in danger. 
 
 As though in proof of the false view that the Ch§,telet 
 took of their man, on the 19 th of March, two days after 
 the warrant was issued, Danton was urging the replace- 
 ment of the ChS,telet by a Grand Jury ; he had an 
 admiration and a knowledge of the old English system, 
 and it was against a man attempting so wise a reform 
 that the last relic of the old jurisprudence was making 
 an attack. 
 
 An appeal was lodged with the National Assembly, 
 and Anthoine read a long report to the Assembly upon 
 May 1 8. This report was strongly in favour of Danton. 
 It was drawn up by a special committee — not partisan in 
 any way — and after examining all the evidence it came 
 to this conclusion against the Chatelet. Nevertheless 
 the House, a great body of nearly a thousand men, to 
 most of whom the name of Danton meant only a loud 
 Radical voice, hesitated. To adopt the report might have 
 irretrievably weakened the CMtelet, and the National 
 Assembly was extremely nervous on the subject of order 
 in Paris. It ended by an adjournment. The report 
 remained in Damon's favour ; he was not arrested, but 
 the affair was unfortunate for him, and threw him back 
 later at a very important occasion, when he might have 
 entered into power peaceably himself and at a peace- 
 able time. 
 
 But while this business was drawing to its close, 
 during the very months of April and May which saw his 
 partial vindication, another and a far more momentous 
 
no THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 business was occupying the Cordeliers — a matter in which 
 they directed all their energy towards a legal solution, 
 but in which, unfortunately for the city, they failed. 
 
 Ever since the days of October — earlier if you will — 
 there had been arising a strong sentiment, to which I 
 have alluded more than once, and which, for lack of a 
 better name, may be called the Moderate reaction in 
 Paris. It is difficult to characterise this complex body 
 of thought in one adjective, and I cannot lengthen a 
 chapter already too prolonged by a detailed examination 
 of its origin and development. Suffice it to say that 
 from the higher bourgeoisie (generally speaking), from 
 those who were in theory almost Republican, but whose 
 lives were passed in the artificial surroundings of wealth, 
 and finally from the important group of the financiers, 
 who of all men most desired practical reform, and who 
 of all men most hated ideals; from these three, sup- 
 ported by many a small shopkeeper or bureaucrat, came 
 a demand, growing in vigour, for a conservative muni- 
 cipal establishment — one that should be limited in its 
 basis, almost aristocratic in quality, and concerned very 
 much with the maintenance of law and order and very 
 Uttle with the idea of municipal self-government. 
 
 It is a character to be noted in the French people, 
 this timidity of the small proprietor and his rehance 
 upon constituted authority. It is a matter rarely ob- 
 served, and yet explaining all Parisian history, that this 
 sentiment does not mark off a particular body of men, 
 but, curiously enough, is found in the mind of nearly 
 every Frenchman, existing side by side with another set 
 of feelings which, on occasion, can make them the most 
 arrant ideahsts in the world. 
 
 For the moment this intense desire for order was 
 uppermost in the minds of those few who were permitted 
 to vote. In the Cordehers it was the other character of 
 the Parisian that was emphasised and developed. They 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS in 
 
 were determined on democracy, like everybody else ; but, 
 unlike the rest, they were not afraid of the dangerous 
 road. They were inspired and led by a man whose one 
 great fault was a passionate contempt of danger. On 
 this account, though they are taxpayers and bourgeois, 
 lawyers, physicians, men of letters and the like, they do 
 aU they can to prevent the new municipal system from 
 coming iuto play, but they fail. 
 
 Now, consider the Assembly. That great body was 
 justly afraid of Paris; indeed, the man who was head 
 and shoulders above them all — Mirabeau — was for leaving 
 Paris altogether. The Assembly, again, had the whole 
 task of re-making France in its hands, and it could not 
 but will that Paris, ia the midst of which it sat, should be 
 muzzled. Through aU the debates of the Provisional 
 Commune it could easily be seen that Bailly and Lafayette 
 were winning, and that the Parliament would be even 
 more Moderate than they. Three points were the centres 
 of the battle : first, the restricted suffrage which was to 
 be estabhshed ; ^ secondly, the power which was to be ex- 
 ercised over the new Commune by the authorities of the 
 Department; thirdly, the suppression of those sixty 
 democratic clubs, the districts, and their replacement by 
 forty-eight sections, so framed as specially to break up 
 the ties of neighbourhood and association, which the first 
 of the Revolution had developed. It was aimed especi- 
 ally at the Cordeliers. 
 
 Against the first point the Cordehers had little to 
 say. Oddly enough, the idea of universal suffrage, which 
 is so intimate a part of our ideas on the Revolution, was 
 hardly thought of in early 1790. Against the second 
 they debated, but did not decree ; it was upon the third 
 that they took most vigorous action. The law which 
 
 • That is, of course, the inclusion of Paris into the general scheme of 
 December 1789 — a scheme that enfranchised the peasants, but created an 
 oligarchy in the towns. See above, pp. 21, 22, and 93. 
 
112 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 authorised the new municipal scheme was passed on May 
 
 the 27 th, and, faithful to their policy, the Cordehers did 
 
 not attempt to quarrel with the National Assembly, but 
 
 they fought bitterly against the application of the law 
 
 by Bailly and his party. The law was signed by the 
 
 King on June the 27 th, and on the same day the mayor 
 
 placarded the walls, ordering an immediate installation 
 
 of the new system. The 27 th was a Saturday. Within 
 
 a week the new sections were to be organised, and on 
 
 the Monday, July 5, the voting was to begin. The very 
 
 next day, the 28 th, the Cordeliers protested in a vigorous 
 
 decree, in which they called on the fifty-nine other 
 
 districts to petition the National Assembly to make a 
 
 special exception of the town of Paris, to consider the 
 
 great federation of July 14, which should be allowed 
 
 to pass before the elections, and finally to give the city 
 
 time to discuss so important a change. All through the 
 
 week, on the ist, 2nd, and 3rd of July, they published 
 
 vigorous appeals. They were partially successful, but in 
 
 their main object — the reconstruction of the aristocratic 
 
 scheme and the arousing of public spirit against it — they 
 
 entirely failed. Bailly is elected mayor on August 2 by 
 
 iiU enormous majority — practically 90 per cent. The 
 
 old districts disappear, and, like every other, the famous 
 
 Cordeliers are merged in the larger section of the Th^^tre 
 
 Fran^ais. It may not sit in permanence ; it may not 
 
 (save on a special demand of fifty citizens) meet at all ; it 
 
 is merely an electoral unit, and in future some 14,000 
 
 men out of a city of nearly a million are to govern all. 
 
 The local club, directing its armed force and appealing to 
 
 its fellows, is abolished. Danton then has failed. 
 
 But, as we shall see later, the exception became the 
 rule. No mechanical device could check the Revolution. 
 The demand for permanent sections is continuous and 
 successful. From these divisions, intended to be mere 
 marks upon a map, come the cannon of the loth of 
 
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS 113 
 
 August, and it is the section of the Thd&tre Fran^ais, 
 wherein the traditions and the very name of the Cor- 
 dehers were to have been forgotten, that first in Europe 
 declared and exercised the right of the whole people to 
 govern. 
 
 If I may repeat a common-place that I have used 
 continually in this book, the tide of the Revolution in 
 Paris was dammed up with a high barrier ; its rise could 
 not be checked, and it was certain to escape at last with 
 the force and destructive energy of a flood. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY 
 
 I HAVE taken as a turning-point in the career of Danton 
 the municipal change which marks the summer of 1790, 
 concluding with that event the first chapter of his poli- 
 tical action, and making it the beginning of a new phase. 
 Let me explain the reasons that have led me to make 
 such a division at a moment that is marked by no 
 striking passage of arms, of policy, or of debate. 
 
 In the first place, a recital of Danton's hfe must of 
 necessity follow the fortunes of the capital. The spirit 
 of the people whose tribune he was (their growing 
 enthusiasms and later their angers) — that spirit is the 
 chief thing to guide us in the interpretation of his 
 politics, but the mechanical transformations of the city 
 government form the framework, as it were, upon which 
 the stuff of Parisian feeling is woven. The detail is 
 dry and often neglected; the mere passing of a parti- 
 cular law giving Paris a particular constitution, a system 
 not unexpected, and apparently well suited to the first 
 year of the Revolution, may seem an event of but 
 little moment in the development of the reform; but 
 certain aspects of the period lend that detail a very 
 considerable importance. In the rapid transformation 
 which was remoulding French society, the law, however 
 new, possessed a strength which, at this hour, we can 
 appreciate only with difiiculty. In a settled and tradi- 
 tional society custom is of such overwhelming weight 
 that a law can act only in accordance with it ; a sudden 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 115 
 
 cliange in tlie macliinery of government would break 
 down of itself — nay, in such a society laws can hardly be 
 passed save those that the development of tradition 
 demands. But in a time of revolution this postulate 
 of social history fails. When a whole people starts out to 
 make fresh conditions for itself, every decree becomes an 
 origin; the forces that in more regular periods mould 
 and control legislative action are, in a time of feverish 
 reconstruction, increased in power and give an impetus 
 to new institutions ; the energy of society, which in years 
 of content and order controls by an unseen pressure, is 
 used in years of revolution to launch, openly and 
 mechanically, the fabric that a new theory has designed. 
 Thus you may observe how in the framing of the 
 American constitution every poiat in a particular debate 
 became of vast moment to the United States ; thus in our 
 time the German Empire has found its strength in a set 
 of arbitrary decrees, all the creation of a decade ; thus in 
 the Middle Ages the Hildebrandine reform framed in the 
 life of one man institutions which are vigorous after the 
 lapse of eight hundred years; and thus in the French 
 Kevolution a municipal organisation, new, theoretic, and 
 mechanical, was strong enough, not indeed to survive so 
 terrible a storm, but to give to the whole movement a 
 permanent change of direction. 
 
 This, then, is the transitional character of the summer 
 of 1790, as regards the particular life of Danton and the 
 particular city of Paris. What the Cordeliers had fought 
 so hard to obtain as a constitutional reform had failed. 
 The direct action of the districts upon the municipality 
 was apparently lost for ever, and the centre of the new 
 system was in future to be controlled in the expression 
 of ideas and paralysed in its action. What the Cordeliers 
 had represented in spirit, though they had not for- 
 mulated it in decrees — government by the whole people 
 — was apparently equally lost The law of December 
 
ii6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 (that which estabHshed the " active and passive citi- 
 zens ") was working for Paris as for all France ; and 
 though a suffrage which admitted two- thirds of the male 
 population to the poUs could not be called restrictive, yet 
 the exception of men working for wages under their 
 master's roof, the necessity of a year's residence, and the 
 qualification of tax-paying did produce a very narrow 
 oligarchy in a town like Paris : the artisans were excluded, 
 and thousands of those governed fell just beyond the 
 limits which defined the municipal voter. Danton may 
 receive the provincial delegates, may make his speeches 
 at the feast in the Bois de Boulogne ; but once the organ 
 of government has been closed to his ideas, the road 
 towards the democracy lies through illegality and revolt. 
 
 Now there is another and a wider importance in this 
 anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. It is the point at 
 which we can best halt and survey the beginning of the 
 heat which turned the Revolution from a domestic reform 
 of the French nation to a fire capable of changing the 
 nature of all our^civilisation. I do not mean that you 
 will find those quarrels in the moment; in 1790 there is 
 nothing of the spirit that overturned the monarchy nor 
 of the visions that inspired the Gironde; you cannot even 
 fairly say that there are general threats or mutterings of 
 war, although the Assembly saw fit to disclaim them : it is 
 a year before the fear of such dangers arises. But there is 
 in this summer something to be discovered, namely, an 
 explanation of why two periods differing so profoundly in 
 character meet so suddenly and with such sharp contrast 
 at one point in the history of the movement ; it is from 
 the summer of 1790 and onwards that the laws are 
 passed, the divisions initiated, which finally alienate the 
 King, from that lead to his treason, from that rouse 
 Europe, and from the consequent invasion produce the 
 Terror, the armies, and the Empire. The mind needs 
 a link between two such different things as reform and 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 117 
 
 violence, and because that link is not supplied in the 
 mere declaration of war or in the mere flight to Varennes, 
 men commit the error of reading the spirit of the Repub- 
 lic into the days of Mirabeau, or even of seeing temperate 
 politics in the apostolic frenzy of '93. Some, more igno- 
 rant or less gifted than the general reader, explain it by 
 postulating in the character of the French nation quaiat 
 aberrations which may be proper to the individual, but 
 which never have nor can exist in any community of 
 human beings. 
 
 Let me recapitulate and define the problem which, as 
 it seems to me, can be solved by making a pivot of the 
 anniversary of the States-General. 
 
 There are, then, in the story of the Revolution these 
 two phases, so distinct that their recognition is the foun- 
 dation of aU just views upon the period. In the first, the 
 leaders of the nation are bent upon practical reforms ; the 
 monarchy is a machine to hand for their accomplishment ; 
 the sketch of a new France is drawn, the outlines even 
 begin to be filled by trained and masterly hands. Phrases 
 win be found abundantly in those thirty months, because 
 phrases are the christening of ideas, and no nation of 
 Roman training could attempt any work without clear 
 definitions to guide it. But these phrases, though often 
 abstract in the extreme, are never violent, and the oratory 
 itself of the National Assembly is rarely foimd to pass the 
 limits which separate the art of persuasion from the mere 
 practice of defiance. 
 
 In the second phase, for which the name of the Con- 
 vention often stands, those subterranean fires which the 
 crust of tradition and the stratified rock of society had 
 formerly repressed break out in irresistible eruption. 
 The creative work of the revolutionary idea realises itself 
 in a casting of molten metal rather than in a forging, 
 and the mould it uses is designed upon a conception of 
 statuary rather than of architecture. The majestic idol 
 
ii8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 of the Kepublic, in whose worship the nation has since 
 discovered all its glories and all its misfortunes, is set up 
 by those artists of the ideal ; but they forget, or perhaps 
 ignore, the terrible penalties that attach to superhuman 
 attempts, the reactions of an exclusive idealism. 
 
 What made the second out of the first ? What made 
 a France which had discussed Sieyfes Hsten to St. Just or 
 even to Hubert ? The answer to this question is to be 
 discovered in noting the fatal seeds that were sown in 
 this summer of 1790, and which in two years bore the 
 fruit of civil war and invasion. 
 
 In the first place, that summer creates, as we have 
 seen, a discontented Paris — a capital whose vast majority 
 it refuses to train in the art of self-government, and 
 whose general voice it refuses to hear. 
 
 In the second place, it is the moment when the dis- 
 content in the army comes to a head. The open threat 
 of military reaction on the side of a number of the 
 ofiicers, their intense animosity against the decrees abo- 
 lishing titles, their growing disgust at the privileges 
 accorded to the private soldiers — all these come face to 
 face with non-commissioned officers and privates who are 
 full of the new liberties. These lower ranks contained 
 the ambitious men whose abihty, the honest and loyal 
 men whose earnestness, were to carry French arms to the 
 successes of the Kevolutionary wars. 
 
 In the third place, it is the consummation of the 
 blunder that attempted to create an established National 
 Church in France. Before this last misfortune a hundred 
 other details of these months that were so many mothers 
 of discord become insignificant. Civil war first mutter- 
 ing in the South, counter-revolution drilling in Savoy, the 
 clerical petition of Nimes, the question of the Alsatian 
 estates, the Parisian journals postulating extreme demo- 
 cracy, the Jacobins appearing as an organised and propa- 
 gandist body, the prophetic cry of Lameth— all these 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 119 
 
 things were but incidents that would have been forgotten 
 but for the major cause of tumult, which is to be dis- 
 covered in the civil constitution of the clergy. 
 
 Of course, the kings would have attacked, but they 
 were divided, and had not even a common motive. Of 
 course, also, freedom, in whatever form it came, would 
 have worked in the moribund body of Europe like a 
 drug, and till its effect was produced would have been 
 thought a poison. But against the hatred of every 
 oppressor would have been opposed a disciplined and a 
 united people, sober by instinct, traditionally slow in the 
 formation of judgments, traditionally tenacious of an 
 opinion when once it had been acquired. It would 
 have been sufficient glory for the French people to have 
 broken the insolence of the aggressors, to have had upon 
 their lists the names of Marceau and of Hoche. 
 
 But with the false step that produced civil war, that 
 made of the ardent and liberal West a sudden opponent, 
 that in its final effect raised Lyons and alienated half the 
 southern towns, that lost Toulon, that put the extreme 
 of fanaticism in the wisest and most loyal minds — such a 
 generous and easy war was doomed, and the Revolution 
 was destined to a more tragic and to a nobler history. 
 God, who permitted this proud foUy to proceed from a 
 pedantic aristocracy, foresaw things necessary to man- 
 kind. In the despair of the philosophers there will arise 
 on either side of a great battle the enthusiasms which, 
 from whencever they blow, are the fresh winds of the soul. 
 Here are coming the heroes and the epic songs for which 
 humanity was sick, and the scenes of one generation of 
 men shaU give us in Europe our creeds for centuries. 
 You shall hear the " Chant du Depart " hke a great hymn 
 in the army of the Sambre et Mouse, and the cheers of 
 men going down on the Vengeur ; the voice of a young 
 man calling the grenadiers at Lodi and Areola ; the noise 
 of the guard swinging up the frozen hill at Austerlitz. 
 
I20 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Already the forests below tte Pyrenees are full of the 
 Spanish guerillas, and after how many hundred years 
 the love of the tribe has reappeared again above the con- 
 ventions that covered it. There are the three colours 
 standing against the trees in the North and the South; 
 and the delicate womanly face of Nelson is looking over 
 the bulwarks of the Victory, with the slow white clouds 
 and the light wind of an October day above him, and 
 before him the enemy's sails in the sunlight and the black 
 rocks of the coast. 
 
 It may be well, at the expense of some digression, to 
 say why the laws affecting the clergy should be treated as 
 being of paramount historical importance. They ruined 
 the position of the King; they put before a very large 
 portion of the nation not one, but two ideals ; and what 
 regular formation can grow round two dissimilar nuclei ? 
 Finally — a thing that we can now see clearly, though then 
 the wisest failed to grasp it — they went against the grain 
 of the nation. 
 
 It is a common accusation that the Revolution com- 
 mitted the capital sin of being unhistorical. Taine's 
 work is a long anathema pronounced against men who 
 dared to deny the dogmas of evolution before those 
 dogmas were formulated. Such a criticism is erroneous 
 and vain ; in the mouths of many it is hypocritical. The 
 great bulk of what the Revolution did was set directly 
 with the current of time. For example : The re-unison 
 of Gaul had been coming of itself for a thousand years — 
 the Revolution achieved it; the peasant was virtually 
 master of his land — it made him so in. law and fact ; 
 Europe had been trained for centuries in the Roman law 
 — it was precisely the Roman law that triumphed in the 
 great reform, and most of its results, all of its phraseology, 
 is drawn from the civU code. But in this one feature of 
 the constitution of the clergy it sinned against the nature 
 of France. Of necessity the Parliament was formed of 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 121 
 
 educated men, steeped in the philosophy of the time, and 
 of necessity it worked vmder the eyes of a great city 
 population. In other words, the statesmen who bungled in 
 this matter and the artisans who formed their immediate 
 surroundings were drawn from the two classes which had 
 most suffered from the faults of the hierarchy in France. 
 
 Mirabeau, for example, has passed his life in the 
 rank where rich abbds made excellent blasphemy; the 
 artisan of Paris has passed his life improtected and 
 unsoHcited by the priests, whose chief duty is the main- 
 tenance of human dignity in the poor. Add to this the 
 Jansenist legend of which Camus was so forcible a reUc, 
 and the Anglo-mania which drew the best intellects into 
 the worst experiments, and the curious project is inevi- 
 table. 
 
 In these first essays of European democracy there 
 was, as all the world knows, a passion for election. In 
 vaiQ had Rousseau pointed out the fundamental fallacy 
 of representation in any scheme of self-government. The 
 example of America was before them ; the vicious temp- 
 tation of the obvious misled them; and until the hard 
 lessons of the war had taught them the truth, represen- 
 tation for its own sake, like a kind of game, seems to 
 have been an obsession of the upper class in France. 
 They admitted it into the organisation of the Church. 
 
 Now let us look in its detail at this attempt to make 
 of the Catholic Church in the eighteenth century a 
 mixture of the administration of Constantine, of the 
 presbyteries of first centuries, and of the "branch of the 
 civil service" which has suited so well a civilisation so 
 different from that of France. 
 
 The great feature of this reform was the attempt to 
 subject the whole clerical organisation to the State. I 
 do not mean, of course, the establishment of dogmas by 
 civil discussion, nor the interference with internal dis- 
 cipline ; but the hierarchy was to be elected, from the 
 
122 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 parish priest to the bishop ; the new dioceses were to 
 correspond to the new Departments, and, most important 
 of all, their confirmation was not to be demanded from 
 the Pope, but " letters of communion " were to be sent to 
 the Head of the Church, giving him notice of the election. 
 
 This scheme passed the House on July 12, 1790, two 
 days before the great feast of the federation. A time 
 whose intellect was ahen to the Church, a class whose 
 habits were un-Cathohc, had attempted a reformation. 
 Why was the attempt a blunder ? Simply because it 
 was unnecessary. There were certain ideas upon which 
 the reconstruction of France was proceeding ; they have 
 been constantly alluded to in this book ; they are what 
 the French call " the principles of '89." Did they neces- 
 sarily affect the Church ? Yes ; but logically carried out 
 they would have affected the Church in a purely negative 
 way. It was an obvious part of the new era to deny 
 the imperium in imperio. The Eevolution would have 
 stultified itself had it left untouched the disabilities of 
 Protestants and of Jews, had it continued to support 
 the internal discipline of the Church by the civU power. 
 It was logical when it said to the religious orders : " You 
 are private societies; we will not compel your members 
 to remain, neither will we compel them to leave their 
 convents." (In the decree of February 13, 1790.) It 
 would have been logical had it said to the Church : " It 
 may be that you are the life of society ; it may be that 
 your effect is evil; we leave you free to prove your 
 quality, for freedom of action and competition is our 
 cardinal principle." But instead of leaving the Church 
 free they amused themselves by building up a fantastic 
 and mechanical structure, and then found that they were 
 compelling religion to enter a prison. Nothing could be 
 conceived more useless or more dangerous. 
 
 On the other hand, if this scheme as a whole was 
 futile, there were some details that were necessary results 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 123 
 
 of what the clergy themselves had done, and some which, 
 if not strictly necessary, have at least survived the Revolu- 
 tion, and are vigorous institutions to-day. It might have 
 been possible for Rome to seize on these as a basis of 
 compromise, and it is conceivable, though hardly pro- 
 bable, that the final scheme might have left the Church 
 a neutral in the coming wars. But if the councUs of the 
 Holy See were ill-advised, the ParHament was still less 
 judicious; its extreme sensitiveness to interference from 
 abroad was coupled with the extreme pedantry of a 
 Lanjuinais, and the scheme in its entirety was forced 
 upon Louis. He, almost the only pious man in a court 
 which had so neglected religion as to hate the people, 
 wrote in despair to the Pope; but before the answer 
 came he had signed the law, and in that moment signed 
 the warrant for his own death and that of thousands of 
 other loyal and patriotic men. 
 
 While these future divisions were preparing, during 
 the rest of the year 1790 Danton's position becomes more 
 marked. We find a little less about him in the official 
 records, for the simple reason that he has ceased to be a 
 member of an official body, or rather (since the first Com- 
 mune was not actually dissolved till September) he remains 
 the less noticeable from the fact that the policy which 
 he represented has been defeated ; but his personality is 
 making more impression upon Paris and upon his enemies. 
 We shall find him using for the first time moderation, and 
 for the first time meeting with systematic calumny. He 
 acquires, though he is not yet of any especial prominence, 
 the mark of future success, for he is beginning to be singled 
 out as a special object of attack; and throughout the sum- 
 mer and autumn he practises more and more that habit 
 of steering his course which up to the day of his death so 
 marks Mm from the extremists. 
 
 The failure of his poHcy, the check which had been 
 given to the CordeHers, and the uselessness of their pro- 
 
124 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 tests on the ist, 2n(i, and 3rd of July, had a marked effect 
 upon the position of Danton even in his own district. He 
 had been president when they were issued, and his friend 
 D'Eglantine had been secretary. One may say that the 
 pohcy of resistance was Danton's, and that but for his 
 leadership it would have been unheard. Hence, when it 
 has notoriously failed, that great mass of men who (when 
 there is no party system) follow the event, lost their faith 
 in him. 
 
 Bailly is not only elected by an enormous majority 
 in all Paris ^ on the 2nd of August, but even Danton's own 
 district, now become the Section of the Th6§,tre FranQais, 
 abandoned his policy for the moment. In a poll of 5 80, 
 478 votes were given for Bailly. 
 
 In this moment of reverse he might with great ease 
 have thrown himself upon all the forces that were for the 
 moment irregular. The Federation of July had brought 
 to Paris a crowd of deputies from the Departments, and to 
 these provincials the good-humour and the comradeship 
 of this Champenois had something attractive about it. In 
 a Paris which bewildered them they found in him some- 
 thing that they could understand. In a meeting held by 
 a section of them in the Bois de Boulogne it is Danton 
 who is the leading figure. When the deputies of Marseilles 
 ask for Chenier's " Charles IX.," it is Danton who gets it 
 played f jr them at the Theatre Francjais in spite of the 
 opposition of the Court; and again it is Danton who is 
 singled out during an entr'acte for personal attack by the 
 loyalists, who had come to hiss the play.' 
 
 The unrepresented still followed him, and he still 
 inspired a vague fear in the minds of men Hke Lafayette. 
 Innocent of any violence, he stood (to those who saw him 
 from a great distance) for insurrection. He was remembered 
 
 ' He received 12,550 votes, tha great bulk of the limited suffrage. 
 Forty-nine odd votes were cast for Danton, but he was obviously not a 
 candidate (Aulard). 
 
 ^ Ami du Peuple, No. 192. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 125 
 
 as the defender of Marat, and Marat in turn annoyed him 
 by repeated mention and praise in his ridiculous journal. 
 Note also that the time was one in which the two camps 
 were separating, though slowly, and the r61e of a dema^ 
 gogue would have been as tempting to a fooHsh man on 
 the Radical, as the r61e of true knight was to so many 
 foolish men on the Conservative side. Each part was 
 easy to play, and each was futile. 
 
 Danton refused such a temptation. He, almost alone 
 at that moment (with the exception, in a much higher 
 sphere, of Mirabeau), was capable of being taught by 
 defeat. He desired a soUd foundation for action. Here 
 were certain existing things : the club of the Cordeliers, 
 which had for a while failed him ; the Friends of the Con- 
 stitution, which were a growing power; the Hmited suffrage 
 of Paris, which he regretted, but which was the only 
 legal force he could appeal to ; the new municipal con- 
 stitution, which he had bitterly opposed, but which was 
 an accomplished fact. Now it is to all these reahties that 
 he turns his mind. He will re-capture his place in the 
 Section, and make of the quarter of the Od^on a new 
 R^publique des CordeUers. He will re-estabhsh his posi- 
 tion with Paris. He will attempt to enter, and perhaps 
 later to control, this new mimicipality. It was for such 
 an attitude that St. Just reproached him so bitterly in the 
 act of accusation of April 1794, while at the moment he 
 was adopting that attitude he was the mark of the most 
 violent diatribe from the Conservatives. Nothing defines 
 Danton at this moment so clearly as the fact that he 
 alone of the popular party knew how to be practical and 
 to make enemies. 
 
 The month of August may be taken as the time when 
 Danton had to be most careful if he desired to preserve 
 his place and to avoid a fall into violence and unreason. 
 It was the 2nd of that month (as we have said) that 
 saw Bailly's election, the 5 th that gave Danton a personal 
 
126 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 shock, for on that date he received, for an ofiSce which 
 he really coveted and for which he was a candidate, but 
 193 votes out of over 3000 present. 
 
 From that moment he devotes all his energy to recon- 
 struction. The first evidence of his new attitude appears 
 with the early days of September. Already the old meet- 
 ing of the Cordeliers had been changed into the club, and 
 already his influence was gaining ground again in the 
 debates and in the local battalion of the National Guard, 
 when the news of Nancy came to Paris. 
 
 A conflict between the National Guard and the people, 
 an example of that with which Lafayette continually 
 menaced Paris — the conflict of the armed bourgeoisie and 
 the artisans, or rather of the militia used as a professional 
 army against the people^this had happened at last. It 
 was an occasion for raving. Marat raved loudly, and the 
 royalists gave vent to not a little complacent raving on 
 their side. In the great question whether the army was 
 to be democratic or not, whether reaction was to possess 
 its old disciplined arm, it would seem that reaction had 
 won, and France had seen a httle rehearsal of what in ten 
 months was to produce the 17th of July. 
 
 In such conditions the attitude of the GordeHers was 
 of real importance. During all Lafayette's attempt to 
 centralise the militia of Paris this battalion had remained 
 independent ; its attitude during the days of October, its 
 defence of Marat in January, had proved this. The crisis 
 appeared to demand from this revolutionary body a strong 
 protest against the use of the militia as an army to be 
 aimed against the people. Such a protest might have been 
 the cause of an outbreak in Paris. Under these circum- 
 stances Danton — by what arguments we cannot teU (for 
 the whole affair is only known to us by a few lines of 
 Desmoulins) — obtained from his battalion a carefully- 
 worded pronouncement. " For all the high opinion we 
 have of the National Guards who took part in the affair 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 127 
 
 of Nancy, we can express no other sentiment than regret 
 for what has happened."^ It was moderate to the degree 
 of the common-place, but it saved Danton from the abyss 
 and from the street. 
 
 There followed another check in which he showed 
 once more his power of self-control. The " Notables " — 
 corresponding something to the aldermen of our new 
 municipal scheme in England — were to be elected for 
 Paris a little after the elections for the mayor and for the 
 governor of the Commune. Each Section was to elect 
 three, and Danton had so far regained his influence at 
 home as to be elected for the Thd9,tre Franpais. 
 
 Unfortunately the new constitution of Paris had been 
 provided with one of those checks whose main object it 
 is to interfere with direct representation. The choice of 
 each Section was submitted to the censure or the approval 
 of all the others. It is by the judgment which they 
 pass that we can best judge the suspicion in which he 
 was held by the great bulk of his equals. A regular 
 campaign was led against him. The affair of Marat was 
 dragged up, especially the warrant for Danton's arrest 
 which the Ch^telet had issued six months before. That 
 very favourite device in electioneering, the doubt as to 
 real candidature, was used. The voter, not over-well 
 informed in a detail of law (especially at a time when all 
 law was being re-modelled), was told that the warrant 
 made Danton's candidature illegal. They said he was 
 sold to Orleans, because he had haunted the Palais 
 Royal and because he hated Lafayette. The character 
 of demagogue — the one thing he desired to avoid — was 
 pinned to his coat, and alone of all the Notables he was 
 rejected by forty-three Sections (five only voting for him) 
 in the week between the 9th and the i6th of September.^ 
 
 ' Revolutions de Framce et Brabant, torn. x. p. 171. 
 
 ^ There is a misprint (a very rare thing with this careful historian) in 
 footnote No. 3, p. 231, of M. Aulard's article on Danton in the Sev. Fran- 
 
128 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 In these five were the Postes, Invalides, Luxembourg. 
 It was not the purely popular quarters that supported 
 Danton, hut rather the University and the lawyers. 
 
 He took his defeat as a signal for stiU greater reserve, 
 letting his name take perspective, and refusing by any 
 act or phrase to obscure his reputation with new issues. 
 The tactics succeeded. When, in October, a pubHc orator 
 was needed, they remembered him, and he presents the 
 deputation of the i oth of November. The circumstances 
 were as follows : — 
 
 The ministry which surrounded the King was frankly 
 reactionary. I do not mean that it was opposed to the 
 constitution of the moment. Perhaps the majority (and 
 the less important) of its members would have been loath 
 to bring back anything approaching the old regime. But 
 there were in the Revolution not only the facts but the 
 tendencies, and in a period when every day brought its 
 change, the tendencies were watched with an extreme 
 care. France may have thought, seeing the federation 
 on the Champ de Mars and the altar where Talleyrand 
 had said mass, that the Revolution was at an end and 
 the new state of affairs established in peace, but those 
 in the capital knew better ; and the men immediately 
 surrounding the King, who saw the necessary consequences 
 of his signing the civic constitution, and the growing 
 breach between himself and the assembly — these men 
 were on the King's side. The affair at Nancy, which had 
 aroused so many passions, was the thing which finally 
 roused Parisian opinion ; and at the very moment when 
 the King is secretly planning the flight to Montm^dy — 
 that flight which six months later failed — Paris is for 
 the first time claiming to govern the councils of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 faiietoi March 14, 1893. For "November" we should read "September," 
 for we know that the voting was over on September 16. See Kobiquet, 
 Personnel Municipal, p. 373, and the evidence on all sides that a new poll 
 was ordered on September 17 in his Section. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 129 
 
 It was the Sections that began the movement, those 
 Sections whose action was to have been so restricted, and 
 which, upon the contrary, were becoming the permanent 
 organs of expression in the capital. 
 
 The Section Mauconseil on the 22nd of October sent 
 in a petition for the dismissal of the cabinet and appealed 
 to the National Assembly. The Section of the National 
 Library followed suit three days later, and sent its petition 
 not only to the Assembly but to the King. It must be 
 remembered that the legend of a good king deceived by 
 his advisers held at the time. Indeed, it survived the 
 flight to Varennes ; it partly survived the i oth of August, 
 and only the research of recent times has proved clearly 
 the continual intrigue of which the King was the head. 
 
 On the 27 th MauconseU came forward again with a 
 petition to the mayor, BaUly, to caU the general council 
 of the Commune and consider the complaints. Fourteen 
 other Sections backed this petition. BaHly hesitated, and 
 while he temporised, all the forty-eight Sections named 
 commissioners and sent them to an informal gathering 
 at the Archbishopric.^ 
 
 Danton was a member of this big committee and was 
 made secretary. He drew up an address ; the mayor was 
 twice summoned to call the general council of the Com- 
 mune. Hesitating and afraid, Bailly finally did so, and 
 after a violent debate the resolution passed. Bailly was 
 sent by the town to " present the Commune at the bar 
 of the Assembly and demand the recall " of the Ministers 
 of Justice, War, and the Interior — De Cic4 La Tour du 
 Pki, and St. Priest. 
 
 Danton was taken out of the informal body to which 
 he had acted as secretary, and asked to be the orator 
 
 1 This big building in the island next Notre Dame disappeared in the 
 restorations of VioUet le Due. It was often used in the revolutionary 
 period for public meetings, and even the Assembly sat there for a few 
 days after entering Paris in October, and while the Eiding-School was 
 being prepared for it. 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 of the legal Commune. There followed on the lOth of 
 November a very curious scene. 
 
 Bailly pitifully apologising with his eyes brought in 
 the representative body of Paris. It was present for the 
 first time in the National ParHament, and before three 
 years were over Paris was to be the mistress of the ParHa- 
 ment. At present they were out of place ; their demand 
 frightened them. It needed Danton's voice to reassure 
 them and to bring the opposing forces to a battle. 
 
 His voice, big, rough, and deep, perhaps with a 
 shght provincial accent, helped to strengthen the false 
 idea that the gentlemen of the Parliament had formed. 
 This Danton, of whom they heard so much, had appeared 
 suddenly out of his right place — for he had no official 
 position — and the Eight was furious. 
 
 Yet Danton's harangue was moderate and sensible. 
 There is, indeed, one passage on the position of Paris 
 in France which is interesting because it is original, but 
 the bulk of the speech is a string of plain arguments. 
 This passage is as follows : — 
 
 " That Commune, composed of citizens who belong in a 
 fashion to the eighty -three Departments — {The Right, No ! 
 no !) — ^jealously desiring to fulfil in the name of all good 
 citizens the duties of a sentinel to the constitution, is 
 in haste to express a demand which is dear to aU the 
 enemies of tyranny — a demand which would be heard 
 from all the Sections of the Empire, could they be 
 united with the same promptitude as the Sections of 
 Paris." ' 
 
 For the rest, he is continually insisting upon the right 
 of the ParHament to govern — the right, above all, of a 
 representative body to dismiss a ministry. He had in 
 this, as in certain other matters, a very EngHsh itoint of 
 view, and certainly the arguments he used were able. 
 But he was interrupted continually, and we get, even in 
 
 Moniieur, Old Series, No. 316 (1790). 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 131 
 
 the dry account of the Moniteur, a good picture of what 
 the scene must have been like — 
 
 " A dismissal which the Assembly has the right to 
 demand." 
 
 The Abb^ Maury : " Who ever said that ? " [Murmurs 
 and discussion followed. The Abb^ was called to order, 
 when . . .J 
 
 M. Cazales remarked : " It is our duty to listen, even 
 if they talk nonsense." 
 
 Danton began again with: "The Commune of Paris 
 is better able to judge the conduct of ministers than . . ." 
 
 The Abb^ Maury : " Why ? " [He is again called to 
 order.] 
 
 And so it went on. But in a duel of this kind lungs 
 are the weapons, and Danton had the best lungs in the 
 hall. He had also perhaps the soundest brain of any; 
 but the Abbe Maury and his friends had chosen more 
 rapid methods than those of arguments. The short 
 address ended (it did not take a quarter of an hour to 
 read), and the deputation left the Assembly. This last 
 debated and refused the decree ; yet the Commune had 
 succeeded, for in a few days the Archbishop of Bordeaux 
 left the Ministry of Justice, and La Tour du Pin, " who 
 thought that parchment alone made nobility " (a phrase 
 of Danton's which had upset the Right), left the Ministry 
 of War. 
 
 The deputation had petitioned on Wednesday, the 
 I oth of November. Four days later he was elected head 
 of the mUitia battalion in which he had served for a 
 year.^ There is some doubt as to whether he remained 
 long at this post. Some antagonists talk vaguely of his 
 " leading his batalHon " in '92, but never as eye-witnesses. 
 
 ' M. Anlard says "somewhere between the loth and the 15th," and 
 " nous n'aTons pas la date precise." He has probably overlooked L'Ami du 
 Peuple, No. 290, " Le 14 de ce mois Danton a ^t^ nomm^ ii la place du Siear 
 ViUette." 
 
132 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 On the other hand, there is a letter in existence talking 
 of Danton's resignation ; but it is unsigned and undated. 
 Only some one has written in pencil, "Gouvion, 22nd 
 November." ^ 
 
 At any rate, the interest of the Uttle incident lies in 
 the fact that it meant a meeting between Danton and 
 Lafayette, and, as Freron remarks in his journal, " Cela 
 serait curieux." ^ Perhaps they did not meet. 
 
 The campaign continually directed against Danton 
 was as active in this matter as in aU others. It gives 
 one, for instance, an insight into the management and dis- 
 cipline of the guards to learn that " Coutra, a corporal, 
 went about asking for signatures against Danton's nomi- 
 nation." ^ He had just risen above the successes of his 
 enemies. November had put him on a sure footing again, 
 and in January he reached the place he had had so long 
 in view, the administration of Paris. 
 
 It will be remembered that the voting was by two 
 degrees. The electors nominated an " electoral college," 
 who elected the Commune and its officers. Already in 
 October Danton had been put into the electoral college 
 by twenty-six members chosen by his Section, but not 
 without violent opposition. Finally, after eight ballots, 
 on the 31st of January 1791, he became a member of 
 the administration of the town — the twenty-second on 
 a list of thirty-six elected. He faUed, however, in his 
 attempt to be chosen " Procureur," and through all the 
 year 1791 he keeps his place in the administration of 
 Paris merely as a stepping-stone. He does not speak 
 much in the Council. He used his partial success only 
 for the purpose of attaining a definite position from which 
 he could exercise some measure of executive control ; this 
 position he finally attains (as we shall see) in the foUow- 
 
 ^ Anlard. The other biographers all assume that he did not resign. 
 " Oratew du Peuple, vol. iii. No. 24. 
 • Ibid., vol. vi. No. 27. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 133 
 
 ing December, and it is from it that lie is able to direct 
 tbe movement of 1792. 
 
 The year 1791 does not form a unit in the story 
 of the Revolution. It is cut sharply in two by the flight 
 of the King in June. Before that event things went with 
 a certain qtajlude. The tendency to reaction and the 
 tendency to extreme democracy are to be discovered, but 
 there can be no doubt that a kind of lassitude has taken 
 the pubhc mind. After all, the benefits of the Revolution 
 are there. The two years of discussion, the useless acrimony 
 of the preceding autumn, began to weary the voters — 
 there is a sentiment of jovialty abroad. 
 
 After the flight of the King all is changed. To a 
 period of development there succeeds a period of violent 
 advance, and of retreat yet more violent; there appears 
 in France the first mention of the word republic, and all 
 the characters that hung round Lafayette come definitely 
 into conflict with the mass of the people. The action of 
 the troops on the Champ de Mars opens the first of those 
 impassable gulfs between the parties, and from that 
 moment onward there arise the hatreds that are only 
 satisfied by the death of political opponents. 
 
 In that first period, then, which the death of Mirabeau 
 was to distm:b, the 1 8 th of April to endanger, and the 
 flight of the King to close, Danton's role, like that of all 
 the democrats, is effaced. Why should it not be ? The 
 violent discussions that followed the aflair of Nancy led, 
 as it were, to a double satisfaction : the loyal party saw 
 that after aU the Radicals were not destroying the State ; 
 the Radicals, on the other hand, had learnt that the 
 loyalists could do nothing distinctly injurious to the 
 nation without being discovered. At least, they thought 
 they had learnt this truth. They did not know how for 
 months Mirabeau had been in the pay of the Court, and 
 how the executive power had concerned itself with the 
 King rather than with the nation. 
 
134 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 A sign of this appeasement in the violence of the 
 time (a movement, by the way, which was exactly what 
 Danton desired) is his letter to La Rochefoucald, the 
 president of the Department, when the successful election, 
 which I have described above, was knowii. This letter, 
 one of the very few which Danton has left, is a singularly 
 able composition. He alludes to the mistrust which had 
 been felt when his name was mentioned ; he does not deny 
 the insurrectionary character of the quarter of Paris which 
 he inspired. But he replies : " I will let my actions, 
 now that I hold public office, prove my attitude, and if 
 I am in a position of responsibility, it will have a special 
 value in showing that I was right to continually claim 
 the public control of administrative functions." The 
 whole of the long letter ^ is very weU put ; it is Danton 
 himself that speaks, and it is hard to doubt that at this 
 moment he also was one of those who thought they were 
 touching the end of the reform, that goal which always 
 fled from the men who most sincerely sought it. 
 
 He did not, however, come often to the Council — to 
 less than a quarter of its sittings, at the most ; moreover, 
 the men who composed it still looked upon him with 
 suspicion ; and when, on the 4th of May, the committees 
 were drawn up, his name was omitted. He asked on the 
 next day to be inscribed on the committee that contained 
 Sieyfes, and his request was granted. 
 
 The activity of Danton during these few months was 
 not even shown at the Cordeliers ; though that club occa- 
 sionally heard him, it was at the Jacobins that he princi- 
 pally spoke. 
 
 This famous club, on which the root of the Revolution 
 
 " so largely depends, was at this period by no means the 
 
 extreme and Robespierrian thing with which we usually 
 
 associate the name. It hardly even called itself " the 
 
 ' The letter will be found in M. Etienne Charavay's AsaembUe Eleetorale, 
 
 V- 437. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 135 
 
 Jacobins" yet, but clung rather to its original name of 
 " Friends of the Constitution." Its origin dated from the 
 little gathering of Breton deputies who were in the habit, 
 while the Assembly was still at Versailles, of meeting 
 together to discuss a common plan of action. When 
 the Assembly came to Paris, this society, in which by 
 that time a very large number of deputies had enrolled 
 themselves, took up their place in the hall of the 
 Dominicans or " Jacobins," just off the Rue St. Honor4 
 (Its site is just to the east of the square of Vendome to- 
 day.) It was a union of aU those who desired reform, 
 and in the first part of the year 1790 it had been 
 remarkable for giving a common ground where the 
 moderate and extremist, all who desired reform, could 
 meet. The Due de Broglie figures among its presidents. 
 It was the Royalists, the extreme Court party, that dubbed 
 these " Friends of the Constitution " " Jacobins," and it 
 was not till somewhat later that they themselves adopted 
 and gloried in the nickname. It was composed not only 
 of deputies, but of all the best-born and best-bred of the 
 Parisian reformers, drawn almost entirely from the noble 
 or professional classes, and holding dignified sessions, to 
 which the pubHc were not admitted. 
 
 Almost at the same moment, namely, towards the 
 autumn and winter of 1 790, two features appeared in it. 
 First, the Moderates begin to leave it, and the schism 
 which finally produced the '' Feuillants " is formed ; 
 secondly, there come in from all over France demands 
 from the local poptdar societies to be affihated to the 
 great club in Paris. These demands were granted. 
 There arises a kind of " Jacobin order," which penetrates 
 even to the little country towns, everywhere preaches 
 the same doctrine, everywhere makes it its business to 
 keep a watch against reaction. These local clubs de- 
 pended with a kind of superstition upon the decrees of 
 what, without too violent a metaphor, we may call 
 
136 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the " Mother House " in Paris ; it was this organisation 
 that aroused the apathy of proviacial France and trained 
 the new voters in pohtical discussion, and it was this also 
 that was later captured by Robespierre, who, Hke a kind 
 of high priest, directed a disciplined body wherever the 
 affiliated societies existed. 
 
 Dan ton first joined the society at the very moment 
 when this double change was ia progress, lq September 
 1790. His energies, which were employed in the club to 
 arrange the difficulty with the Moderates (if that were 
 possible), were also used (to quote a weU-known phrase) 
 in " letting France hear Paris." The Cordeliers had been 
 essentially Parisian ; steeped in that feeling, Danton spoke 
 from the Rue St. Honors to the whole nation. 
 
 It is with the end of March that he begins to be heard, 
 in a speech attacking Collot d'Herbois; for that un- 
 pleasant fellow was then a Moderate. It is apropos of 
 that speech that the " Sabbots Jacobites " give us the 
 satirical rhyme on Danton, which recalls his face when he 
 spoke, looking all the ugher for the energy which he put 
 into his words : — 
 
 " Monsieur Danton, 
 Quittez cet air faroucte, 
 
 Monsieur Danton, 
 On V0U8 prendrez pour un ddmon." ' 
 
 On the 3rd of AprU it was known in Paris that 
 Mirabeau was dead. He had been killed with the over- 
 work of attempting to save the King from himself. A 
 masterly intrigue, a double dealing which was hidden 
 for a generation, had exhausted him, and in the terrible 
 strain of balancing such opposite interests as those of 
 France, which he adored, and Louis, whom he served, 
 his two years of struggle suddenly fell upon him and 
 crushed him. He smiled at the sun and called it God's 
 
 ' I quote from M. Aulard, Rev. Frarv^aise, March 14, 1893. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 137 
 
 cousin, boasted like a genius, gave a despairing phrase to 
 the monarchy, demanded sleep, and died. 
 
 Danton had always, from a long way off, understood 
 his brother in silk and with the sword. On this day 
 he passionately deplored the loss. Like all Paris, the 
 Jacobins forgot Mirabeau's treason, and remembered his 
 services when the news of his sudden death fell upon 
 them. From their tribune Danton spoke in terms in which 
 he almost alone foretold the coming reaction, and he was 
 right. The King, hardly restrained from foUy by the 
 compromise of the great statesman, plunged into it when 
 his support was withdrawn. He had been half Mirabeau's 
 man, now he was all Antoinette's. 
 
 It was the fatal question of religion that precipitated 
 the crisis. Louis could not honestly receive the Easter 
 communion from a constitutional priest. On the other 
 hand, he might have received it quietly in his household. 
 He chose to make it a public ceremony, and to go in 
 state to St. Cloud for his Easter duties. It was upon 
 April 1 8 th, a day or two more than a fortnight after 
 Miiabeau's death, that he would have set out. As one 
 might have expected, the streets filled at once. The 
 many battahons of the National Guard who were on the 
 democratic side helped the people to stop the carriage; 
 in their eyes, as in that of the populace, the King's journey 
 to St. Cloud was only part of the scheme to leave Paris 
 to raise an army against the Assembly.' 
 
 On the other hand, those of the National Guard who 
 obeyed Lafayette ^ could not, by that very fact, move 
 until Lafayette ordered them. Thus the carriage was 
 held for hours, until at last, in despair, the King went 
 back to the Tuilleries. 
 
 Meanwhile, what had occurred at the Hotel de Ville ? 
 
 ^ Note that Lafayette in his Memoirs (vol. iii. p. 64) talks of Danton 
 " at the head of his battalion." I doubt an error on the part of a soldier 
 whose business it was to know his own command. 
 
 ^ e.g. that of the quarter of the Carmelites (ibid.). 
 
138 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The testimony is contradictory and the whole story 
 confused, but the truth seems to have been something 
 of this kind. Lafayette certainly called on the admiaistra- 
 tion of the Department and asked for martial law. Bailly 
 as certainly was willing to grant it. Danton was called from 
 his rank and came to oppose it; but did he end the 
 matter by his speech ? Camille Desmoulins ^ says so, 
 and draws a fine picture of Danton carrying the admini- 
 stration with him, as he carried the club or the street. 
 But Desmoulins is often inaccurate, and here his account 
 is improbable. Danton's own note of the circumstance 
 (which he thought worthy of being pinned to his family 
 papers) runs : " I was present at the Department when 
 MM. the commandant and the mayor demanded martial 
 law." Nothing more. 
 
 Desmoulins makes another mistake when he attri- 
 butes to Danton the letter which was written to the King, 
 and which was sent on the night of the 1 8th ; it re- 
 proached him for his action, sharply criticised his 
 rejection of constitutional priests. It was not Danton, 
 it was Talleyrand (a member also of the Department) 
 who wrote this letter. 
 
 It is probable that Danton and Talleyrand knew each 
 other. TaUeyrand was a good judge of men, and would 
 have many strings to his bow — we know that he 
 depended upon Danton's kindness at a critical moment 
 in 1792 — but the style of the letter is not Danton's, and 
 the document as we find it in Schmidt is definitely 
 ascribed to Talleyrand. 
 
 This is all we can gather as to his place in the 
 popular uprising to prevent the King's leaving Paris. A 
 placard of some violence issued from the Cordehers, saying 
 that he had " forbidden Lafayette to fire on the people ; " 
 but Danton disowned it in a meeting of the Department. 
 
 This much alone is certain, that the i8th of April 
 ' RivoUitioni de Prance et Braiamt, No. 74. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 139 
 
 had finally put Danton and Lafayette face to face, and 
 that in the common knowledge of Paris they would be 
 the heads of opposing forces in the next crisis. But their 
 r61es turned out to be the very opposite of what men 
 would have predicted. It was Lafayette who shot and 
 blustered, and had his brief moment of power; it was 
 Danton who made a flank movement and achieved a 
 final victory. For the next crisis was the fiight of 
 the King. 
 
 It would be irrelevant to ^ve the story of this flight 
 in the life of Danton. Our business is to understand 
 Danton by following the eyact course of his actions 
 during June and July, and by describing exactly the 
 nature of the movement in which his attitude took the 
 form which we are investigating. 
 
 Two things command the attention when we study 
 the France of 1791. Frince was monarchic and France 
 was afraid. History ifejiows what was to follow ; the men 
 of the time did not.. There lay in their minds the 
 centuries of history that had been ; their future was to 
 them out of conception, and as vmreal as our future is 
 to us. You may notice from the very first moment of 
 the true Revolution a passion for the King. For most 
 he is a father, but for all a necessary man. They took 
 him back to Paris; they forced him to declarations of 
 loyalty, and then, with the folly of desire, accepted as 
 real an emotion which they had actually dictated. Such 
 was the movement of the 4th of February 1790; such 
 the sentiment of the Federation in July of that year. 
 And the people understood his reluctance in taking com- 
 munion from a nonjuring priest, however much the upper 
 class mifrht be astonished. What no one understood 
 was that only Mirabeau stood between the Crown and 
 its vfiest temptations ; only his balance of genius, his 
 great <»nd admirable fault of compromise, prevented Louis 
 f^'.'n Tielding to his least kingly part, and while he lived 
 
I40 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the king of the French preferred the nation to his own 
 person. But Mirabeau was dead. They did well to 
 mourn him, those who had smelt out his treason and 
 guessed the weakness of the artist in him ; they did well 
 to forgive him ; his head misunderstood France, but his 
 broad French shoulders had supported her. The i8th 
 of April was a direct consequence of his death; the 
 2 1 st of June was a fall through a broken bridge : Louis 
 had yielded to himself 
 
 Well, France was also afraid. This democracy (as it 
 had come to be), an experiment based upon a vision, 
 knew how perilous was the path between the old and 
 the new ideals. She feared the divine sunstroke that 
 threatens the road to Damascus. In that passage, which 
 was bounded on either side by an abyss, her feet went 
 slowly, one before the other, and she looked backward 
 continually. In the twisting tides at night her one 
 anchor to the old time was the monarchy. Thus when 
 Louis fled the feeling was of a prop broken. France 
 only cried out for one thing — '' Bring the Kiag back." 
 Tie up the beam — a makeshift — anything rather than a 
 new foundation. 
 
 Here is the attitude of Danton in this crisis. France 
 is not republican; his friends in Paris are. He inclines 
 to France. It was Danton more than any other one 
 man who finally prepared the Republic, yet the Republic 
 was never with him an idea. The consequences of the 
 Republic were his goal ; as for the systems, systems were 
 not part of his mind. At the close of this chapter we 
 shall see him overthrowing the Crown ; he did it because 
 he thought it the one act that could save France ; but 
 the Crown as an idea he never hated : he lived in existing 
 things. 
 
 These were the reasons that made him hesitate at 
 this date. A man understanding Europe, he saw that 
 the governments were not ready to move ; a man under- 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 141 
 
 standing his own country, he saw that it would have the 
 King in his place again ; a man, on the other hand, who 
 had met and appreciated the idealists, he saw that the 
 Kepublic already existed in the mia^; and a man who 
 understood the character of his fellows better than did 
 any contemporary, he saw that the men who were bound 
 to lead were inclined to a declaration against the KLug. 
 He suffered more than his action should have warranted, 
 and he goes through a sharp few days of danger on 
 account of association and of friends in spite of all his 
 caution. 
 
 When Louis was known to have fled, and when Paris, 
 vigilant beyond the provinces, and deceived by the de- 
 claration of April, had undergone its first wave of passion, 
 the word Republic began to be spoken out loud. The 
 theorists found themselves for once in accordance with 
 public humour; and against the keenness, if not the 
 numbers, of those who petitioned for the deposition of 
 the King on his return, there stood two barriers — the 
 Assembly and the moderate fortunes of the capital. 
 Danton lived with the former, thought with the latter, 
 and was all but silent. 
 
 The bust of Louis XIV. before the Hotel de Ville was 
 broken; men climbed on ladders to chisel off the lilies 
 from the palaces, and there soon appears a new portent : 
 some one cries out, " Only a Eepublic can defend itself at 
 the last." 
 
 To this somewhat confused cry for a Repubhc came 
 the very sharp announcement from no less a person than 
 Condorcet. Condorcet, the moderate and iUumined, was 
 also half a visionary, and there had always floated in his 
 mind the system of contract by which England had 
 excused the movement of 1688, but which France took 
 seriously. England had for him the attraction which it 
 had for all the professionals of that date — an attraction 
 which lasted tUl the disasters of 1870, and which you 
 
142 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 may yet discover here and there among those who are 
 the heirs of Lamartine. England had given them Locke, 
 and Condorcet's reasoning on the King's flight ^ reads Hke 
 a passage from the Bill of Eights. Yet he was a good 
 and sincere man, and died through simphcity of heart. 
 
 On the 4th of July, ten days or more after the King 
 had been brought back to Paris,^ it was Condorcet who 
 made the demand for the Republic; in a speech at 
 Fauchet's club he asked for a National Convention to 
 settle the whole matter. He wrote so in the papers' 
 all through July, and even after the affair of the Champ 
 de Mars he continued his agitation. 
 
 Now how do we know Danton's attitude ? The 
 Cordehers presented a petition of June 2ist itself and 
 demanded the Republic. It is largely from this docu- 
 ment that the error has arisen. But Danton was not then 
 with the Cordeliers; his name does not appear. It is at 
 the Jacobins that he is heard, and the Jacobins took up 
 a distinctly monarchical position. They all rose in a 
 body on the 22nd and passed a unanimous vote in favour 
 of the constitution and the King.* Danton was present 
 when this vote was passed, and he had just heard the 
 hissing of the Cordeliers' petition ; he was silent. Thomas 
 Payne is demanding the Republic in the Moniteur ; 
 Sieyes replies for the monarchy;^ even Robespierre 
 tardily speaks in favour of ideas and against change of 
 etiquette ; Marat shouts for a dictator ; * Danton, almost 
 alone, refuses to be certain. On June 23rd he spoke at 
 the Jacobins in favour of a council to be elected by the 
 
 ' See his Collected Works, vol. xii. pp. 264, 265. 
 
 ' M. Aulard points out an error in Condorcet's own note (xii. p. 267), 
 where it is mentioned as the 12th of July ; but the Bouche de Fer of the loth 
 gives us the above date over these two speeches. 
 
 ' He wrote a funny little letter (among other things) to the lUpublicain 
 of July 16, describing a "mechanical king," "who is practically eternal" 
 
 * See SocUU des Jacobins, vol. ii. p. 54'. 
 ' Moniteur, July 16, 1791. 
 
 • Ami du Peujple, June 22, 1791. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 143 
 
 Departments immediately, but he proposed nothing as to 
 its actions ; it was merely his permanent idea of a cen- 
 tral, strong power. 
 
 Lafayette amused himself by arresting people who 
 repeated this in the street, but Lafayette hated Danton 
 blindly. Nothing republican can be made of a speech 
 which his enemies said was " a loophole for Orleans." 
 
 Danton attacked Lafayette : he saw persons more 
 clearly than ideas, and Lafayette was Danton's night- 
 mare. He was that being which of all on earth Danton 
 thought most dangerous, the epitome of all the faults 
 which he attacked to the day of his death ; in Louis, in 
 Robespierre, " The weak man in power." He drove him 
 out of the Jacobins on the 21st, and later in the day 
 gave the cry against his enemy in the street, which the 
 fears of the Assembly so much exagger£|jted. 
 
 For the events of the twenty-four hours had all 
 added to his natural opposition to Lafayette, and as we 
 relate them from Danton's standpoint, we shall see this 
 much of truth in the idea that he led the movement, 
 namely, that the three days of the King's flight and 
 recapture, while they put Lafayette into a position of 
 great power, made also Danton his antagonist, the leader 
 of the protest against the general's methods. It is the 
 more worthy of remark that in such conditions the word 
 " RepubUc " never crossed his Ups. 
 
 At eleven o'clock at night on the Monday of the 
 King's flight, Danton and Desmoulins were coming home 
 alone from the Jacobins. Each remarked to the other 
 the emptiness of the streets and the lack of patrols, and 
 at that moment, when the evasion was httle suspected, 
 each was in a vague doubt that Lafayette had some 
 reason for concentrating the National Guard.^ Desmoulins 
 will even have it that he saw him enter the palace, as 
 the two friends passed the Tuilleries. 
 
 I S^vdutions de Prance et dt Brabant, No. 83, 
 
144 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The next morning at the Cordeliers Danton cried out 
 against Lafayette for a moment, and then at the Jacobins 
 he made the speech that has been mentioned above. Con- 
 tinually he attacks the man who was preparing a counter- 
 revolution, but 1 do not beheve he would have attached 
 the least importance at that moment to a change in 
 the etiquette of government. Thus, as the Department 
 was sent for by the Assembly in the afternoon, Danton 
 came later than his colleagues, provided himself with 
 a guard, and as he crossed the Tuilleries gardens he 
 harangued the people, but against Lafayette, not against 
 the King. 
 
 Now, to make sure of this feature, the duel between 
 Lafayette and Danton, and to see that it is the principal 
 thing at the time, turn once more to the scene at the 
 Jacobins, and compare it with Lafayette's Memoirs, and 
 you wiU find that Danton was the terror of the saviour 
 of two worlds, and that it was upon Lafayette that Danton 
 had massed his artillery. 
 
 Here is Danton at the Jacobins, sitting by Desmou- 
 lin's side; he goes to the tribune and speaks upon the 
 disgrace and danger that the Moderates have brought 
 about. When Lafayette entered during the speech, he 
 turned upon him suddenly, and laimched one of those 
 direct phrases which made him later the leader of the 
 Convention : " I am going to talk as though I were at 
 the bar of God's justice, and I will say before you, M. 
 Lafayette, what I would say in the presence of Him who 
 reads all hearts. . . . How was it that you, who pretend 
 to know nothing of me, tried to corrupt me to your views 
 of treason ? . . . How was it that you arrested those who 
 in last February demanded the destruction of Vincennes ? 
 You are present; try to give a clear reason. . . . How 
 was it that the very same men were on guard when the 
 King tried to go to St. Cloud on the i8th of April were 
 on guard last night when the King fled ? . . . I will not 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 145 
 
 mention the 6000 men^ whom you have picked as a 
 garrison for the Eang; only answer clearly these three 
 accusations. For in their hght you, who answered with 
 your head that the King should not fly, are either a 
 traitor or a fooL For either you have permitted him to 
 fly, or else you undertook a responsibility which you could 
 not fulfil : in the best case, you are not capable of com- 
 manding the guard. ... I will leave the tribune, for I 
 have said enough." ^ 
 
 This is clear enough in all conscience to show what 
 was Danton's maia pre-occupation in the days of June 
 1 79 1. And if, upon the other hand, you will turn to 
 Lafayette's Memoirs, the third volume, the 83 rd and 
 following pages, you will find that Danton was Lafayette's 
 pre-occupation, and that he makes this moment the 
 occasion to deliver the most definite and (luckily) the 
 most demonstrably false of his many accusations of vena- 
 lity. He tells us that he could not reply because it 
 would have " cost Montmoria his hfe ; " that Montmorin 
 "had the receipt for the 100,000 francs;" that Danton 
 had been "reimbursed to the extent of 100,000 francs 
 for a place worth 10,000," and so forth. We know now 
 exactly the amount of compensation paid to him and his 
 colleagues at the court of appeal,^ and we know that 
 Lafaj^ette, writing a generation later, animated by a bitter 
 hatred, and remembering that somebody had paid Danton 
 something, and with his head full of vague rumours of 
 bribing, has fallen into one of those unpardonable errors 
 common to vain and vacillating men. But at this jimc- 
 
 ' This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. It indicates, as will be seen 
 later in the chapter, the very number that finally formed the garrison of 
 the palace — a point not Ijitherto noticed, and well worth remembering, 
 for it shows how Lafayette's accusations are half the truth. He had 
 approached Danton, and he had told him many of his plans. Danton had 
 not acceded, but he used the knowledge. 
 
 ^ Evolutions de France el de Brabant, No. 82. 
 
 * Appendix IL 
 
 E 
 
146 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 ture the main point that should be seized is that Danton 
 was taking the opportunity of the King's evasion to attack 
 Lafayette with all his might, and that a generation later 
 the old man chiefly remembered Danton as leading the 
 popular anger which the commander of the guard thought 
 himself bound to repress. It is this that will explain 
 why Danton, who so carefully avoided giving the word 
 for the Republican "false start," was yet marked out, 
 fled, and returned to lead the opposition. 
 
 The Cordeliers followed Danton's lead. They got up 
 a petition,^ signed by 30,000 in Paris, demanding that 
 the affair, should be laid before the country, but not de- 
 manding the abolition of the monarchy. Memdar, their 
 president, declared himself a monarchist. But the peti- 
 tion, though read at the Assembly, was not adopted, and, 
 on the 9th of July, the Cordeliers presented another. 
 Charles de Lameth (who was president that fortnight) 
 refused to read it. The Assembly, in other words, was 
 dumb ; it was determined (Uke its successor a year later) 
 to do nothing — an attitude which (for all it knew) might 
 be very wise, and those who were following Danton deter- 
 mined upon a definite policy. On Friday the 15th, at 
 the Jacobins, it was determined to draw up a petition 
 which begged that the Assembly should first recognise 
 Louis as having abdicated by his flight, unless the nation 
 voted his reinstatement, and secondly (in case the nation 
 did not do so), take measures to have him constitutionally 
 replaced. Now the constitution was monarchist. 
 
 The petition was to be taken to be read at the Champ 
 de Mars on the altar, and there to obtain signatures. It 
 was drawn up by Danton, Sergent, Lanthanas, Ducanel, 
 and Brissot, who wrote it out and worded most of it. 
 The events that follow must be noted with some care, 
 because on their exact sequence depends our judgment 
 of Lafayette's action and of Danton's pohtics. 
 • On June 24. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 147 
 
 On Saturday ^ the 1 6tli, about mid-day, a deputation 
 of four from the Jacobins came to the Champ de Mars. 
 The petition was read by a little light-haired Englishman 
 on one side, and by a red-haired Frenchman in a red 
 coat on the other; picturesque but unimportant details. 
 Danton leapt on to the corner of the altar, and read it 
 again to the thick of the crowd. The signatures were 
 written in great numbers, and when the completed docu- 
 ment was about to start for the Assembly, when the depu- 
 tation that was to take it was already formed, it was 
 suddenly spread abroad that the Assembly had passed a 
 vote exonerating Louis. * 
 
 The Jacobins were appealed to, and repUed that imder 
 the conditions the petition which they had drawn up 
 could not be presented. The Cordehers, however, lost 
 their tempers, and Robert determined to draw up a new 
 petition. Now in this second action Danton took no 
 part. It was this new petition that (signed by Robert, 
 Peyre, Vachard, and Demoy) was drawn up hastily in the 
 Champ de Mars on Sunday the 17 th, to this that the 
 6000 signatures were attached, and this which demanded 
 a " Convention to judge the King." There followed the 
 proclamation of martial law, the appearance of Lafayette 
 and BaiUy in the Champ de Mars with the red flag, the 
 conflict between the National Guard and the crowd, and 
 all that is called the "Massacre of the Champ de 
 Mars." 
 
 That petition was not signed by Danton.^ He was 
 not even present,' as we know from his speech on his 
 
 ' I follow Aulard in this as to the general scheme, and largely as to 
 •ntborities also. 
 
 ^ Anlard is my authority for the fact that the actual text of this second 
 petition disappeared in 187 1, when the Hotel de Ville was burnt by the 
 Commune, but that Berchez saw it before that event, and carefully drew 
 np a list of the principal names. Danton is not among them. 
 
 ' The Courrier Francis of July 22 asks if "the man in holland trousers 
 and a grey waistcoat was Danton," but says nothing more. 
 
148 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 election to be " Substitut-Procureur," and especially from 
 the fact tliat in the fortnight of terror, when the red flag 
 stood over the Hotel de Ville, when the democrats were 
 arrested or in hiding, when the door of the Cordeliers 
 was shut and nailed, and when the Eadical newspapers 
 were suppressed, no warrant of arrest could be issued, 
 because there existed nothing definite against him. La- 
 fayette was determined, however, to act in a military 
 fashion, and on the 4 th of August the arrest of Danton 
 was ordered, on some other plea which he alludes to in 
 his speech of the next January, but the exact terms of 
 which have not come down to us. 
 
 He had left Paris at once when he saw that Lafayette 
 had practically absolute power for the moment. He first 
 went to his father-in-law's, Charpentier, at Rosny-sur-Bois, 
 and then escaped to Arcis. Before the warrant was 
 actually made out, Lafayette had sent a man to watch 
 him at Arcis. He was " giving a dinner. It would need 
 a troop of cavalry to arrest him. Everybody was on his 
 side." ^ Marseilles and Bar spoke up for him. But the 
 attack only grew stronger. On the 3 1 st of July he 
 moved again to Troyes, to the house of Millaud, of his 
 father's profession, and a friend, because he feared a new 
 arrival from Paris who seemed a spy.^ He was there 
 when the warrant was sent down to the " procureur " for 
 the arrest ; the ofiicial in question was Beugnot, and 
 Beugnot told Danton jocularly that he would not arrest 
 him. He did not think this a sufficient guarantee, and 
 as his stepfather, Recordain, was off to England to buy 
 some machinery for a cotton-mUl that he thought of 
 starting, Danton went to England with him, and re- 
 mained in this country for a month, staying in the house 
 of his stepfather's sons, who were established in London. 
 It was in the last days of July or the first days in 
 
 ' See the letter published in the Rev. Fran(aise, April 1893, p. 325, 
 '' Orateur du Peuple, viii. No. 16. Not over-trustworthy. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 149 
 
 August^ that he arrived, and he did not return to 
 Paris until the appointment of his friend Garran de 
 Coulon as President of the Court of Appeal. He appears 
 again at the Jacobins on the 1 2 th of September ; some 
 say he was in Paris on the loth.^ 
 
 It would be of the utmost interest to know how he 
 passed those thirty or forty days. Unfortunately there is 
 no direct evidence as to whom he met or what negotia- 
 tions he entered into. As to his English acquaintances, 
 his letters from Priestley and Christie, the relations he 
 had with Talleyrand, and their common diplomacy for the 
 English alliance — all these properly belong to Danton in 
 power, the minister directing France after August 1792, and 
 it is in that place that they will be dealt with. Of his- 
 torical events in his voyage we have none, and there is 
 no more regrettable gap in the very disconnected series 
 of ascertained facts concerning him. 
 
 On his return, he discovered that the Section of the 
 Thd^tre Fran^ais had named him a member of the electoral 
 college which sat at the Archbishop's palace. Many mem- 
 bers of this Assembly had been arrested, or had fled during 
 Lafayette's violent efforts of reaction in August and Septem- 
 ber. The new Parliament which had just met did not 
 decree an amnesty (as it was asked to do on the 5 th of 
 September), but it was of course far more democratic than 
 the old Assembly, and it was understood to be tacitly in 
 favour of the return of those whom Lafayette had driven 
 out. Following Danton's example, they slowly came back ; 
 but a curious incident shows how much of the danger 
 remained. 
 
 ' Possibly later. Beugnot seems to speak as though Danton was still 
 in Troyes on at least as late a date as the 6th of August (Memoires, i. pp. 
 249-250). 
 
 " Since writing the above I notice that M. Aulard in the same article 
 quotes a remark of Danton's in the Electoral Assembly of September loth. 
 This is taken from the procia verbal of the Assembly, and M, 01»«irftvay 
 communicated it to M. Aulard. 
 
I50 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 On the 13 th of September the Parliament, at tho 
 desire of the King, voted the anmesty. While it was 
 actually voting, a constable called Damien got into the 
 gallery of the hall in which Danton and the electors were 
 debating, and sent a note to the president asking him to 
 allow the arrest. The president and the electoral college 
 (who did not Uke Danton, by the way, and who would 
 not give him more than forty votes when it came to elect- 
 ing members for Paris) yet ordered the arrest by Damien, 
 and it was only when they learnt of the amnesty that, on 
 Danton's own motion, he was released. 
 
 It has just been said that Danton failed to be elected: 
 let us point out the conditions imder which the Legisla- 
 tive met, that short Parliament of one year which made 
 the war, and saw to its dismay the end of the monarchy. 
 
 The Legislative was not elected in one of those moments 
 of decision which were the formative points of the Revolu- 
 tion. It came upon a very curious juncture, and showed 
 in all its first acts a marked indecision. 
 
 The members were chosen under the action of a 
 peculiar combination, or rather confusion of emotions. 
 The King had fled, had been recaptured. France, of many 
 possible evils, had chosen what she believed to be the 
 least when she reinstated him. " The New Pact " was 
 accepted even by those who had spoken of the Republic 
 in July. Condorcet, who had led the civic theorists 
 towards the Republic, leads them also now in this move- 
 ment of reconciliation. Again, these were the first elec- 
 tions held since the middle class and the peasantry had 
 been given the suffrage over the heads of the artisans: 
 it was the most sober part of France that dictated the 
 policy of the moment. The divisions that the King's 
 flight had laid bare, the sharp reaction and terror of the 
 Chajpp de Mars— all these were forgotten. 
 
 Thus the Parliament will not have Garran-Conlon for 
 its first president, and yet on the next day passes the 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 151 
 
 extreme democratic etiquette as to the reception of the 
 King should he visit the Assembly. Next day it repeals 
 this, and when the King does visit the Assembly, he is met 
 by an outburst of loyalty and affection. 
 
 As to parties, the power lay, as it always does in a 
 French Assembly, with the centre — some three hundred 
 men, unimportant, of no fixed idea, unless indeed it were 
 to keep the Legislative to the work for which it had been 
 elected, that is, to keep it moving moderately on the lines 
 laid down for it by the constitution of 1791. 
 
 The right, well organised, loyal and brave, was Feuil- 
 lant ; that is, it was monarchic and constitutional, but 
 more monarchic than constitutional. It was the support 
 of Lafayette, and on the whole the centre would vote with 
 it on any important occasion. 
 
 But there sat on the left a group less compact, full of 
 personal ambitions and personal creeds, containing almost 
 all the orators whose names were to make famous the 
 following year. It was but a group of 130 men, even if we 
 include all those who signed the register of the Jacobins 
 when the Assembly met; yet it was destined, Hi-disciplined 
 as it was, part wild and part untrue, to lead all France. 
 Why? Because the King was to make impossible the 
 action of the Moderates, because his intrigue made French- 
 men choose between him and France, and in the inevitable 
 war the men who were determined to realise the Revolu- 
 tion could not but be made the leaders. 
 
 As has been said above, Danton was not elected. 
 The electoral college, of which he was a member, chose 
 Moderates for the most part, such as Pastoret and De 
 Quincy, and the narrow suffrage represented the true drift 
 of Parisian feeling only in the case of a few — De SecheUes, 
 Brissot, Condorcet, and a handful of others. But though 
 Danton did not sit in the Legislative he was free for action 
 in two other directions, which (as it turned out) were the 
 commanding positions in the great changes that came with 
 
152 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the war. He was free to attain an administrative position 
 in the municipality of Paris, and he was free to use his 
 power of oratory at the Jacobins. 
 
 As to the first, it came with his moderate but im- 
 portant success in the municipal elections at the close of 
 the year. Bailly, frightened out of place, half-regretting 
 his action of the Champ de Mars, had resigned, and 
 Potion, on November i6th, was elected in his place. 
 Only ten thousand voted, and he obtained 6700 votes. 
 On the same day the Procureur of the new Commune 
 was to be elected. A Procureur under the new system 
 was a position of the greatest importance. He was, so 
 to speak, the advocate of the town, its tribime in the 
 governing body, and with his two substitutes (who aided 
 and occasionally replaced him) was meant to form a kind 
 of small committee whose business was to watch the 
 interests and to define the attitude of the electorate 
 whenever those interests were in jeopardy or that atti- 
 tude was opposed to the policy of the elected body. 
 These three positions were dangerous, but would lead to 
 popularity, and perhaps to power, if they were directed^ 
 by a certain kind of ability. It was precisely such a 
 power, the quality of a tribime, that Danton knew him- 
 self to possess. 
 
 His candidature for the principal position was cordi- 
 ally supported by the Cordeliers, but the Jacobins were 
 divided, and they hesitated. Manuel was elected, and 
 Danton obtained only the third place. This vote, how- 
 ever, was not decisive, and there was a second ballot on 
 December the 2nd. In this Manuel was definitely elected. 
 
 Cahier de Gerville (the second substitute) was made 
 Minister of the Interior, and Danton, on December 6th,^ 
 was elected to his place by a majority of 500 over Collot 
 d'Herbois. It was from this position that he prepared 
 the I oth of August, and it was still as substitute that he 
 ^ His election was not declared till the 7th, but was known on the 6th. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 153 
 
 remained side by side with the insurrectionary commune, 
 and lending it something of legal sanction when the 
 King was overthrown. 
 
 Let me, before leaving this point, define exactly the 
 position in which his new dignity placed him. Three 
 men were charged with the advocacy of public opinion, 
 the Procureur and his two substitutes. Manuel, who was 
 elected to the principal position, was energetic, kindly, 
 and conscientious, but a man of' no genius ; he was good 
 to Madame De Stael in the days of September, as is 
 apparent from her rather contemptuous description of 
 how she appealed to him for safety ; he did his very best 
 (with no power in his hands) to stop the massacres at that 
 same time. He was fond of work, and a little pompous 
 in his idea of ofSce ; he was, therefore, a man who would 
 only leave his substitutes the less important work to do, 
 and, from close by, would have been the dorainatiug 
 member of the three. On the other hand, his lack of 
 decision and of initiative effaced him in moments of 
 danger or of new departures, and it is thus his second 
 substitute who seems to lead when seen from a distance, 
 from the point of view of the people, who only look 
 round when there is a noise. 
 
 The first substitute was Desmousseaux. He had 
 not resigned, and had therefore not been re-elected. 
 Forming part of the old Commune, and in office since 
 the winter of 1790, he was a Moderate by preference and 
 long tradition. 
 
 As for Danton himself, standing third in the group, 
 it was for him a position of honour and of dignity. That 
 part of him which was so capable of high office and so 
 desirous of an opportunity to act was well served by the 
 election. It seemed to put a term to the misconcep- 
 tions which his person, his faults, and the course of the 
 Kevolution had created. But the great stream of events 
 moved him at their will. This office wherein he desired 
 
154 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 to appear settled at last, to show himself an administrator 
 rather than a leader of unreasoning men, was precisely 
 suited in case of danger to call out those other qualities 
 which had made him despised by many whom he himself 
 respected, and had aroused against him hatred — a passion 
 which he himself had never allowed to arise from anger. 
 
 If the spirit of 1791 had been kept, and if after so 
 many false promises the Revolution had been really 
 accomplished, then the official, or, if you will, the states- 
 man, would have appeared in him. I can see him in the 
 difficulties which even a settled kingdom would have had 
 to meet, convincing his contemporaries as he has convinced 
 posterity. He was the man to impress on others the 
 true attitude of Europe — the only diplomat among the 
 patriots. His disadvantages were of the kind that are 
 forgotten in the constant proof of ability; and his learn- 
 ing, which was exactly of the kind to be used in the new 
 regime (a knowledge of languages, of law, of siu-rounding 
 nations, a combination of detail and of comprehension) — 
 this learning would have made necessary a man so popular 
 with the people to be ruled, and, in the matter of the 
 heart, so honestly devoted to his country. Had France, 
 I say, by some miracle been spared her Passion, and had 
 she been permitted to be happier and to do less for the 
 world, then as the new regime settled into the lower 
 reaches of quiet and content, I believe Danton would 
 have remained for us a name, perhaps less great, but 
 certainly among the first. England has been permitted. 
 She has been given good fortune, and no fate has asked 
 her to save civilisation with her blood, and therefore in 
 England we are accustomed to such careers ; men whose 
 origin, whose exterior, and whose faults might have exiled 
 them, have yet been seen to rise from the municipal 
 to the imperial office, because they were possessed of 
 supreme abilities, and because they devoted those abihties 
 to the service of England. They have died in honour. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 155 
 
 I will not discuss what it was that made the war. 
 There are no causes. Burke raved like a madman, but 
 then so did Marat. The King was alienated by the 
 clerical laws, but nothing is an excuse for treason. Pil- 
 nitz was an affront and even a menace, but it was not a 
 declaration of war. There were peoples behind the kings, 
 as Mayence tragically proved ; and if France fought into- 
 lerable evils, she also seemed the iconoclast when she put 
 out the altar-lamp, which she is Ughting again with her 
 own hand. There are no causes. Only, if you will look 
 and see how Europe has lived, and how our great things 
 have been done, you will find nothing but armies upon 
 armies marching past, and our history is an epic whose 
 beginning is lost, whose books are Roncesvalles and 
 Cortenuova and Waterloo, and whose end is never reached. 
 The war came, and with it a definite necessity to choose 
 between France and the Crown. In that crisis Danton is 
 thrown back upon insurrection. He, who desired men to 
 forget the days of October, was compelled to the loth 
 of August because he was aroused. Even the massacres 
 were attached to his name, and there still trails after him 
 an easy flow of accusation, only a httle less sordid or less 
 terrible. 
 
 To follow his action during the first months of 1772, 
 to hear his speeches on the war, and to note his policy, 
 we must leave him at his post in the Commune (where 
 we shall find him again when Paris rises in the summer), 
 and see how he stands for the Mountain at the Jacobins. 
 
 This club was now definitely the organ of the left. It 
 was after Danton had been elected, but before he was defi- 
 nitely installed in office,^ on the 1 4th of December, a week 
 after the former and five weeks before the latter event, that 
 the debate on the war was begun at the Jacobins, — a debate 
 of the first importance, because it opened the breach between 
 the Girondins and the Mountain, between the orators who 
 
 ' January 20, 1792. 
 
156 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 insisted on going to meet Europe, and even on a war of 
 propaganda, and the reformers who wished Europe to 
 take the first step, who dreaded war or who thought a 
 war of aggression immoral. At the head of these last 
 was Robespierre. But it is not too much to say that in 
 the first months of the year Danton was more important 
 at the Jacobins than Robespierre. What was his attitude ? 
 It was part of the general policy upon which he had 
 determined : he compromised. In his first motion on the 
 1 4th of December, he attacked the idea of declaring war. 
 On the 1 6th he still attacked it, but in other terms. " I 
 know it must come. If any one were to ask me, 'Are 
 we to have war ? ' I would reply (not in argument, but 
 as a matter of fact), ' We shall hear the bugles.' " But 
 the whole speech is taken up with an argument upon its 
 dangers, and especially upon " those who desire war in 
 the hope of reaction, who talk of giving us a constitution 
 like that of England, in the hope of giving us, later, one 
 hke that of Turkey." 
 
 In March and April, the months when the war was 
 preparing and was declared, he was silent. And we can 
 understand his silence when we turn to his speech in the 
 Commune when he was given office. He alludes to the 
 false character given him ; he speaks of the reputation 
 which his past actions in Paris had given; he says things 
 that indicate a determination to play the part of a 
 Moderate, and to see whether in his case, as in that of so 
 many others, there would not be permanence in the com- 
 promise of the last six months. But there rankled in his 
 mind the insults of the men with whom he sat, Condor- 
 cet's disavowal in his paper of so much as knowing 
 Danton, and he made a peroration which at the time 
 offended, but which possesses for us a certain pathos. 
 " Nature gave me a strong frame, and she put into my face 
 the violence of liberty. I have not sprung from a family 
 which was weakened by the protection of the old privileges ; 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 157 
 
 my existence has been all my own ; I know that I have 
 kept and shown my vigour, but in my profession and in 
 my private hfe I have controlled it. If I was carried 
 away by enthusiasm in the first days of our regeneration, 
 have I not atoned for it ? Have I not been ostracised ? 
 ... I have given myself altogether to the people, and 
 now that they are beyond attack, now that they are in 
 arms and ready to break the league unless it consents to 
 dissolve,^ I wiU die in their cause if I must, ... for I 
 love them only, and they deserve it. Their courage will 
 make them eternal." 
 
 This outburst is the one occasion of his pubhc life in 
 which Danton spoke of himself, and it has the ring of 
 genuine emotion ; for in all his harangues he preserved, 
 both before and after this, an objective attitude, if any- 
 thing too much bent upon the outward circumstances. 
 
 Thus, when the notes came to go between the Austrian 
 and the French governments, he was silent. He fears that 
 France is unprepared; he fears that the King is be- 
 traying the nation. How much he was a traitor was 
 not known till a far later period; but when at least 
 it is proved that something is undermining the French 
 people, that, apart from the defeats and the lack of 
 preparation, there is treason, then he leaves his silence. 
 The policy of the Moderate acting in a settled state is no 
 longer possible to any one ; the court and the nation stood 
 one against the other, and one side or the other must be 
 taken by every man. Then he put off the conventions 
 which he respected, and which he regretted to the end ; 
 he went back into the street ; he headed the insurrection, 
 destroyed the monarchy ; for twelve months he took upon 
 himself aU the responsibility of errors in his own policy, 
 and of crime in that of his associates. He saved France, 
 but at this expense, that he went out of the world with a 
 reputation which he knew to be false, that he saw his 
 ' I see in that phrase all Danton's attitude upon the war. 
 
158 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 great powers rulgarised, and that lie could never possess, 
 either in his own mind or before the world, not even in 
 France, his true name. The whole of this tragedy is to 
 be found ia his trial, and here and there in the few 
 phrases that escape him in the speeches or with his 
 friends. If you sum it up, it comes to this paraphrase of 
 a great sentence : Son nom itait jiitri mais la France 6tait 
 lihre. 
 
 It was upon April the i8th that the new Girondin 
 ministry received the note from Vienna rejecting the 
 French proposals of a month before. The poor King, 
 who had been protesting his loyalty to the nation in 
 Paris, had been protesting in Vienna the necessity of 
 sending an army to save him, and Austria gave this 
 reply. On AprU 20th the Assembly declared war with 
 practical unanimity^ upon " the King of Hungary and of 
 Bohemia." But the phrase was useless. You might as 
 well put a match into gunpowder and say, "It is the 
 sulphur I am after, not the charcoal." Prussia joined, 
 and within a year we shall see aU Europe at war with 
 France, in a war that outlawed and destroyed. 
 
 Danton was right. France was hopelessly unready. 
 She had not learnt the necessary truth that the soldier is 
 a man with a trade. The orators had mistaken words 
 for things ; honest and great as they were, they had fallen 
 in this matter into the faults common to small and dis- 
 honest verbiage. The rout and panic under De Dillon, 
 his murder by the troops, the occupation of Quidvrain, 
 came one upon the other. Paris was full of terror and 
 anger in proportion to the greatness of the things she 
 had done, which now seemed aU destroyed. "We said 
 and did thiags that should have convinced the world; 
 we were to be a people unconquerable from our love 
 of liberty, and we appear a beaten, panic-stricken lot 
 — volunteers and babblers who cannot stand fire." 
 > There was a minority of seven. 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 159 
 
 The King dismissed the Girondin ministers, even sent 
 Dumouriez away, heard Roland's remonstrance, knew 
 that the Assembly was more and more against him ; but 
 he remained calm. There was a plan of the simplest. 
 There was to be nothing but a few days of monotonous 
 marching between the allies and Paris. Lafayette with 
 his army of the centre was on his side. The Assembly 
 decreed a great camp of 20,000 men under Paris, and 
 the disbanding of the guard ; the guard was disbanded, 
 but the King vetoed the decree. Lafayette wrote his 
 letter menacing the Parliament with his army; the re- 
 action seemed in full success and the invaders secure, 
 when Danton reappeared. 
 
 On the 1 8 th of June he found the old phrases 
 against Lafayette at the Jacobins. "It is a great day 
 for France ; Lafayette with only one face on is no longer 
 dangerous." He did not make, but he permitted the 
 20th of June ; and as Paris rose, and the immense mob, 
 grotesque, many-coloured, armed with all manner of 
 sharp things, passed before the Assembly and into the 
 Tuilleries, it might have been a signal or a warning. 
 The excited citizen makes a poor soldier, but if Paris 
 moves the whole great body of France stirs. Such giants 
 take long to be fully awake, and it is a matter of months 
 to drill men ; still it is better to let great enemies sleep. 
 There was in that foolish, amiable crowd, with its pleasure 
 at the sight of the King, its comic idea of warning him, 
 something serious underlying. Danton will be using it 
 in a very short time ; for there are points of attack where 
 mobs are like machine-guns — ridiculous in general war- 
 fare, but very useful indeed in special conditions, and in 
 these conditions invincible. This something serious was 
 that vague force (you may call it only an idea) which you 
 will never find in an individual, and which you will 
 always discover in a mass — the great common man 
 which the French metaphysicians have called " Le 
 
i6o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Peuple ; " that, drilled, is called by the least metaphysical 
 an army. 
 
 A week later Lafayette appeared. He demanded the 
 right to use the army, and July opened with the certainty 
 of civU war. 
 
 July is the month of fevers ; the heat has been 
 moving northward, and all France is caught ia it. The 
 grapes fill out, and even in Picardy or in the Cotentin 
 you feel as though the Midi were giving her spirit to the 
 north. July made the Revolution and closed it. A 
 month that saw the Bastille fall and that buried Robes- 
 pierre is a very national time. 
 
 If you overlook France at this moment, you may see 
 the towns stirring as they had sthred three years before ; 
 it is from them that the opposition rises — especially from 
 Marseilles. A crowd of young men dragging cannon, the 
 common-place sons of bourgeois, whom the time had 
 turned into something as great as peasants or as soldiers, 
 surged up the white deserts along the Rhone, passing 
 the great sheet of vineyards that slopes up the watershed 
 of Burgundy. As they came along they sang an excel- 
 lent new marching song. When they at last saw Paris, 
 especially the towers of Notre Dame from where they 
 just show above the city as you come in from Fontaine- 
 bleau, and as the roads came in together and the suburbs 
 thickened they sang it with louder voices. On the even- 
 ing of the 30th they came to the gates, and the workmen 
 of the south-eastern quarter began to sing it and caUed it 
 the " MarseUlaise." No one can describe music ; but if 
 in a great space of time the actions of the French become 
 meaningless and the Revolution ceases to be an origin, 
 some one perhaps wOl recover this air, as we have 
 recovered a few stray notes of Greek music, and it will 
 carry men back to the Republic. 
 
 For ten days the insurrection grew. In a secret 
 committee which the Sections formed, men violent like 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY i6r 
 
 Fournier, or good soldiers like Westermann, or local 
 leaders of quarters like Santerre — but all outside the 
 official body — organised the fighting force, and at their 
 head the one man who held the strings of the munici- 
 pality — Danton. The Assembly had heard Vergniaud's 
 angry speech, but it had also confirmed the constitution 
 and the monarchy in the "baiser Lamourette." Paris 
 had to work alone, and the King, seeing only Paris before 
 him, filled the Tuilleries, and stood by with a small 
 garrison to repress the mere movement of the city — 
 " something that should have been done in '89." 
 
 It was on a Paris thus enfevered, doubtful, nursing 
 a secret insurrectionary plan, but full of men who hesi- 
 tated and doubted, having still many who were loyaJ, that 
 there fell^ the document which the King had asked of 
 his friends — but which he must, on seeing it, have regretted 
 — the manifesto of the commander of the allies. This 
 extraordinary monument of folly is rarely presented in 
 its entirety. It is only in such a form that its full 
 monstrosity can be appreciated, and I have therefore been 
 at pains to translate for my readers the rather halting 
 French in which Charles William proposed to arrest the 
 movements of Providence. It ran as follows ^ : — 
 
 " Their Majesties the Emperor and the King of Prussia 
 having given me the command of the armies assembled 
 on the French frontier, I have thought it well to teU 
 the inhabitants of that kingdom the motives that have 
 inspired the measures taken by the two sovereigns and 
 the intentions that guide them. 
 
 "After having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and 
 the possessions of the German princes in Alsace and 
 Lorraine, troubled and overset public order and their 
 legitimate government, exercised against the sacred person 
 of the King and against his august family violence which 
 
 1 Perhaps as early as the evening of the 28th. 
 ' This account Is translated from tbe M<miteur, August 3, 1792. 
 
 L 
 
i62 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 is (moreover) repeated and renewed from day to day, 
 those who have usurped the rems of the administration 
 have at last filled up the measure by causing an unjust 
 war to be declared against his Majesty the Emperor, and 
 by attacking his provinces in the Netherlands. 
 
 " Several possessions of the German Empire have been 
 drawn into this oppression, and several others have only 
 escaped from a similar danger by yielding to the impe- 
 rious threats of the dominant party and its emissaries. 
 
 " His Prussian Majesty with his Imperial Majesty, 
 by the ties of a strict and defensive alliance, and himself 
 a preponderant member of the Germanic body (sic), has 
 therefore been unable to excuse himself from going to 
 the aid of his ally and of his feUow State (sic). And 
 it is imder both these heads that he undertakes the 
 defence of that monarch and of Germany. 
 
 " To these great interests another object of equal 
 importance must be added, and one that is near to the 
 heart of the two sovereigns : it is that of ending the 
 domestic anarchy of France, of arresting the attacks 
 which are directed against the altar and the throne, of 
 re-establishing the legitimate power, of giving back to the 
 King the freedom and safety of which he is deprived, 
 and of giving him the means to exercise the lawful 
 authority which is his due. 
 
 " Convinced as they are that the healthy part of the 
 French people abhors the excesses of a party that enslaves 
 them, and that the majority of the inhabitants are im- 
 patiently awaiting the advent of a relief that will permit 
 them to declare themselves openly against the odious 
 schemes of their oppressors, His Majesty the Emperor 
 and His Majesty the King of Prussia call upon them 
 to return at once to the caU of reason and justice, of 
 order, of peace. It is in view of these things that I, 
 the undersigned. General Commander-ia-Chief of the 
 two armies, declare — 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 163 
 
 " (i) That led into the present war by irresistible 
 circumstances, the two allied courts propose no object to 
 themselves but the happiness of France, and do not 
 propose to enrich themselves by annexation. 
 
 " (2) That they have no intention of meddling with 
 the domestic government of France, but only wish to 
 deliver the King, and the Queen, and the Royal Family 
 from their captivity, and procure for his Most Christian 
 Majesty that freedom which is necessary for him to call 
 such a council as he shall see fit, without danger and 
 without obstacle, and to enable him to work for the good 
 of his subjects according to his promises and as much as 
 may be his concern. 
 
 "(3) That the combuied armies ■will protect all towns, 
 boroughs, and villages, and the persons and goods of all 
 those that will submit to the King, and that they will 
 help to re-establish immediately the order and police 
 of France. 
 
 " (4) That the National Guard are ordered to see to 
 the peace of the towns and country-sides provisionally, 
 and to the security of the persons and goods of all French- 
 men provisionally, that is, until the arrival of the troops 
 of their Royal and Imperial Majesties, or until further 
 orders, under pain of being personally responsible ; that 
 on the contrary, the National Guards who may have 
 fought against the troops of the allied courts, and who 
 are captured in arms, shall be treated as enemies, and 
 shall be punished as rebels and disturbers of the pubhc 
 peace. 
 
 "(5) That the generals, officers, non-commissioned 
 ofi&cers, and privates of the French troops of the line are 
 equally ordered to return to their old allegiance and to 
 submit at once to the King, their legitimate sovereign. 
 
 "(6) That the members of departmental, district, 
 and town councils are equally responsible with their 
 heads and property for all crimes, arson, murders, thefts, 
 
i64 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 and assaults, the occurrence of which they allow or do 
 not openly, and to the common knowledge, try to prevent 
 in their jurisdiction ; that they shall equally be bound to 
 keep their functions provisionally until his Most Christian 
 Majesty, reinstated in full liberty, has further decreed; 
 or unto, in the interval, other orders shall have been 
 given. 
 
 "(7) That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and 
 villages who may dare to defend themselves against the 
 troops of their Imperial and Royal Majesties by firing 
 upon them, whether in the open or from the windows, 
 doors, or apertures of their houses, shall be punished at 
 once with all the rigour of the laws of war, their houses 
 puUed down or burnt. All those inhabitants, on the 
 contrary, of the towns, boroughs, and villages who shall 
 hasten to submit to their King by opening their gates to 
 the troops of their Majesties shaU be placed under the 
 immediate protection of their Majesties ; their persons, 
 their goods, their chattels shall be under the safeguard 
 of the laws, and measures will be taken for the general 
 safety of each and all of them. 
 
 " (8) The town of Paris and all its inhabitants with- 
 out distinction shall be boimd to submit on the spot, and 
 without any delay, to the Eong, and to give that Prince 
 full and entire liberty, and to assure him and all the 
 Royal Family that inviolability and respect to which the 
 laws of nature and of nations entitle sovereigns from 
 their subjects. Their Imperial and Royal Majesties 
 render personally responsible for anything that may 
 happen, under peril of their heads, and of military 
 execution without hope of pardon, all members of the 
 National Assembly as of the Districts, the Municipality, 
 the National Guards, the Justices of the Peace, and all 
 others whom it may concern. Their aforesaid Majesties 
 declare, moreover, on their word and honour as Emperor 
 and Bang, that if the Palace of the Tuilleries be insulted 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 165 
 
 or forced, that if the least violence, the least assault, be 
 perpetrated against their Majesties, the King, the Queen, 
 and the Royal FamUy, and if steps be not at once taken 
 for their safety, preservation, and liberty, they, their 
 Imperial and Royal Majesties, will take an exemplary 
 and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by giving up the 
 town of Paris to military execution and to total subver- 
 sion, and the guilty rebels to the deaths they have 
 deserved. Their Imperial and Royal Majesties promise, 
 on the contrary, to the inhabitants of Paris to use 
 their good offices with his Most Christian Majesty to 
 obtain pardon for their faults and errors, and to take 
 the most vigorous measiires to ensure their persons 
 and goods if they promptly and exactly obey the above 
 command. 
 
 " Finally, since their Majesties can recognise no laws 
 in France save those that proceed from the King in full 
 liberty, they protest in advance against any declarations 
 that may be made in the name of his Most Christian 
 Majesty, so long as his sacred person, those of the Queen 
 and of the Royal Family, are not really safe, for which 
 end their Imperial and Royal Majesties invite and beg his 
 Most Christian Majesty to point out to what town in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of his frontiers he may judge 
 it best to retire with the Queen and the Royal Family, 
 under good and sure escort that will be sent him for 
 that purpose, in order that his Most Christian Majesty 
 may be in all safety to call to him such deputies and 
 counsellors as he sees fit, call such coimcUs as may please 
 him, see to^ the re-establishment of order, and arrange 
 the administration of his kingdom. 
 
 " Lastly, I engage myself, in my own private name 
 and in my aforesaid capacity, to cause the troops under 
 my command to observe everywhere a good and exact 
 discipline, promising to treat with mildness and modera- 
 tion all well-meaning subjects who may show them- 
 
i66 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 selves peaceful and submissive, and to use force with 
 those only who may be guilty of resistance and of recal- 
 citrance. 
 
 " It is for these reasons that I require and exhort, in 
 the strongest and most instant fashion, aU the inhabitants 
 of this kingdom not to oppose themselves to the march 
 and operations of the troops under my command, but 
 rather to give them on all sides a free entry and all the 
 good-will, aid, and assistance that circumstances may 
 demand. 
 
 "Given at our headquarters of Coblentz, July 28. 
 
 (Signed) "Charles William Ferdinand, 
 
 Duke of Brunawick-Lunebourg." 
 
 With that weapon the insurrection was certain of all 
 Paris. Mandat, who had replaced Lafayette at the head 
 of the ainicd force in the town, was stUl loyal to the 
 King ; he organised, as far as was possible, the forces 
 that he could count upon. The other side also prepared, 
 and the movements had all the appearance of troops 
 entrenching themselves before battle. 
 
 Danton went to Arcis and settled an income on his 
 mother in case of his death, came back to Paris, and on 
 the night of August the 9th the Sections named com- 
 missioners to act. They met and formed the " insurrec- 
 tionary commune." At eight the next morning they 
 dissolved the legal commune, kept Danton, and directed 
 the fighting of the morning. 
 
 Meanwhile the King had gathered in the Tuilleries 
 about 6000 men, and depended very largely upon the 
 thick mass of wooden buildings in the Carrousel for 
 cover. The Swiss Guard, whom the decree had re- 
 moved, were only as far off as Rueil, and were ordered 
 into Paris, over 1 5 00. They were the nucleus, and with 
 them some 2000 of the National Guard, 1500 of the 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 167 
 
 old "Constitutional Guards," and a group of "Gentils- 
 hommes." Mandat had ordered a battery of the National 
 Guard's artillery to keep the Pont Neuf; they revolted 
 and joined the people, and Mandat himself, the chief of 
 the defence, was killed on the steps of the Hotel de , 
 ViUe. Danton, who had not slept, but had lain down 
 in Desmoulin's flat till midnight, had been to the Hotel 
 de Ville since two in the morning, and he took before 
 posterity — in his trial — the responsibihty of Mandat's 
 death. He did more. He acted during the short night 
 (a night of calm and great beauty, dark and with stars) 
 as the organiser and chief of the insurrection. Especially 
 he appoiuts Santerre to lead the National Guard. On 
 these rapid determinations the morning broke, and the 
 first hours of the misty day passed in gathering the 
 forces. 
 
 Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously 
 in the Tmlleries gardens, and asked Roederer, like a 
 king in comic opera, " when the revolt would begin." 
 
 All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people 
 were slow to gather — " le tocsin ne rend pas " — and it was 
 not till the insurrectionary commune had done its work 
 that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disci- 
 plined, came into the Carrousel. 
 
 Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to 
 parley with the Swiss Guard; he asked them in German 
 (which was his native tongue, for he was an Alsatian) 
 to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard 
 retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people 
 would also retire. The Swiss — the only real soldiers ia 
 Paris — replied that they were under orders, and when 
 Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire. 
 
 Antoinette had said, " Nail me to the Palace," and even 
 Louis, timid and uncertain, thought that the chances 
 were in his favour. Let only this day succeed, and the 
 city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive ; 
 
i68 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of 
 August I St ; it was Louis's hope now. 
 
 Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the 
 battle might have ended in favour of the garrison, 
 but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped 
 the attack, and the S^viss, unable to deploy, fought, 
 almost singly, a very unequal fight. There were no 
 volleys except the first. Rapid individual firing from 
 the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd pressing 
 up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hun- 
 dreds of lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the 
 " Grande Galerie " the Tuilleries were forced, the garrison 
 killed, and only a small detachment of the Swiss Guard 
 retreated through the gardens, firing alternate volleys, 
 and saving themselves by an admirable discipline. 
 
 But whUe the issue was still doubtful, Louis and his 
 family had gone slowly through the same gardens to the 
 Riding-school, and had taken refuge with the Assembly. 
 The noise of the fusillade came sharply in at the windows, 
 and the event was still uncertain when the Parliament 
 received the King and promised him protection. The 
 president opened for him a small door at the right of the 
 chair, and the King and Queen and their children watched 
 the meaningless resolutions through a grating as they sat 
 in the little dark box that gave them refuge. The debate, 
 I say, lacked meaning, but the battle grew full of meaning 
 as they heard it. The shots were less frequent, the noise 
 of the mob — the roar — was suddenly mufiled in the walls 
 of the palace. The crowd had entered it. Then came 
 the few sharp voUeys of the retreating guard right under 
 the windows of the Manage, and finally the firing ceased, 
 and the Assembly knew that their oath was of no value, 
 and that the Tuilleries had fallen. Louis also knew it, 
 eating his grotesque roast chicken in the silent and 
 hidden place that was the first of his prisons. He saw 
 in the bright light of the hall many of the faces that 
 
FALL OF THE MONARCHY 169 
 
 were to be the rulers of France, but for himself, in his 
 silence, he felt all power to be gone. He had become a 
 Capet — there was truth in the Republican formula. There 
 had been played — though few have said it, it should be 
 said — a very fine game. The stakes were high and the 
 Court party dared them. They played to win all that 
 the Kings had possessed, and for this great stake they 
 risked a few foolish titles without power. The game was 
 even ; it was worth playing, and they had lost. But the 
 man who had been their puppet and their figure-head 
 hardly knew what had happened. Perhaps the Queen 
 alone comprehended, and from that moment found the 
 proud silence and the glance that has dignified her end. 
 In her the legend of the lilies had found its last ally, but 
 now the great shield was broken for ever. 
 
 So perished the French monarchy. Its dim origins 
 stretched out and lost themselves in Rome ; it had already 
 learnt to speak and recognised its own nature when the 
 vaults of the Thermae echoed heavily to the slow foot- 
 steps of the Merovingian kings. Look up that vast valley 
 of dead men crowned, and you may see the gigantic figure 
 of Charlemagne, his brows level and his long white beard 
 tangled like an undergrowth, having in his left hand the 
 globe and in his right the hUt of an unconquerable sword. 
 There also are the short, strong horsemen of the Robertian 
 house, half-hidden by their leather shields, and their sons 
 before them growing in vestment and majesty, and taking 
 on the pomp of the Middle Ages ; Louis VII., aU covered 
 with iron ; PhiHp the Conquerer ; Louis IX., who alone 
 is surroimded with light : they stand in a widening inter- 
 minable procession, this great crowd of kings ; they loose 
 their armour, they take their ermine on, they are accom- 
 panied by their captains and their marshals ; at last, in 
 their attitude and in their magnificence they sum up in 
 themselves the pride and the achievement of the French 
 nation. But time has dissipated what it could not 
 
lyo THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 tarnish, and the process of a thousand years has turned 
 these mighty figures into unsubstantial things. You 
 may see them in the grey end of darkness, like a 
 pageant all standing still. You look again, but with the 
 growing light and with the wind that rises before morn- 
 ing they have disappeared. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REPUBLIC 
 August io, 1792 — April 5, 1793 
 
 The I oth of August is not, in the history of the Revolu- 
 tion, a turning-point or a new departure merely ; it is 
 rather a cataclysm, the conditions before and after which 
 are absolutely different. You may compare it to the rush 
 of the Atlantic, which " in one dreadful day and night " 
 swept away the old ciTilisation in the legend. It is like 
 one of the geological " faults " which form the great inland 
 escarpments, and to read or to write of it is like standing 
 on the edge of Auvergne. You have just passed through 
 a volcanic plateau, rising slowly, more and more desolate : 
 you find yourself looking down thousands of feet on to the 
 great plain of Limagne. 
 
 There is no better test of what the monarchy was than 
 the comparison of that which came before with that which 
 succeeded its overthrow. There is no continuity. On the 
 far side of the insurrection, up to the 9th of August itself, 
 you have armies (notably that of the centre) contented with 
 monarchy ; you have a strong garrison at the Tuilleries, the 
 ministers, the departments, the mayor of Paris (even) con- 
 sulting with the crown. The King and the Girondins are 
 opposed, but they are balanced ; Paris is angry and expec- 
 tant, but it has expressed nothing — it is one of many 
 powers. The moderate men, the Eolands and the rest, 
 are the radical wing. It is a triumph for the Revolution 
 that the Girondins should be again in nominal control. 
 
172 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Petion is an idol The acute friction is between a govern- 
 ment of idealists standing at the head of a group of pro- 
 fessional bourgeois, and a crown supported by a resurrected 
 nobUity, expecting succour and strong enough to hazard a 
 pitched battle. 
 
 Look around you on the 1 1 th of August and see what 
 has happened. Between the two opponents a third has been 
 intervened — Paris and its insurrectionary Commune have 
 suddenly arisen. The Girondins are almost a reactionary 
 party. The Crown and all its scaffolding have suddenly 
 disappeared. The Assembly seems something small, the 
 ministry has fallen back, and there appears above it one 
 man only — Danton, called Minister of Justice, but practi- 
 cally the executive itself A crowd of names which had 
 stood for discussion, for the Jacobins, for persistent in- 
 effective opposition, appear as masters. In a word, France 
 had for the moment a new and terrible pretender to the 
 vacant throne, a pretender that usurped it at last — the 
 Commune. 
 
 The nine months with which this chapter will deal 
 formed the Republic ; it is they that are the introduction 
 to the Terror and to the great wars, and from the im- 
 prisonment of the King to the fall of the Girondins the 
 rapid course of France is set in a narrowing channel 
 directly for the Mountain. The Commune, the body 
 that conquered in August, is destined to capture every 
 position, and, as one guarantee after another breaks 
 down, it will attain, with its extreme doctrines and their 
 concomitant persecution, to absolute power. 
 
 What was Danton's attitude during this period? 
 It may be summed up as follows : Now that the Revolu- 
 tion was finally established, to keep France safe in the 
 inevitable danger. He put the nation first ; he did not 
 subordinate the theory of the Revolution ; he dismissed 
 it. The Revolution had conquered : it was there ; but 
 France, which had made it and which proposed to 
 
THE REPUBLIC 173 
 
 extend the principles of self-government to the whole 
 world, was herself in the greatest peril. When discus- 
 sion had been the method of the Revolution, Danton 
 had been an extremist. He was Parisian and Frondeur 
 in 1790 and 1791 ; it was precisely in that time that he 
 failed. The tangible thing, the objective to which all 
 his mind leaned, appeared with the national danger; 
 then he had something to do, and his way of doing it, 
 his work in the trade to which he was born, showed him 
 to be of a totally different kind from the men above 
 whom he showed. I do not believe one could point to 
 a single act of his in these three-quarters of a year which 
 was not aimed at the national defence. 
 
 It is a point of special moment in the appreciation of 
 his poUtics that Danton was alone in this position. He 
 was the only man who acted as one of the innumerable 
 peasantry of France would have acted, could fate have 
 endowed such a peasant with genius and with knowledge. 
 The others to the left and right were soldiers, poets, or 
 pedants every one. Heroic pedants and poets who were 
 never afraid, but not one of them could forget his theories 
 or his vision and take hold of the ropes. Such diplo- 
 macy as there is is Danton's ; it is Danton who attempts 
 compromise, and it is Danton who persistently recalls the 
 debates from personalities to work. It is he who warns 
 the Girondins, and it is he who, in the anarchy that fol- 
 lowed defeat, produced the necessary dictatorship of the 
 Committee. Finally, when the Committee is formed, you 
 glance at the names, the actions, and the reports, and you 
 see Danton moving as a man who can see moves among 
 the blind. He had been once " in himself the CordeHers " 
 — it had no great effect, for there was nothing to do but 
 propose rights ; now, after the insurrection, he became "in 
 himself the executive," and later " in himself the Com- 
 mittee." So much is he the first man in France during 
 these few months of his activity, that only by following 
 
174 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 his actions can you find the unity of this confused and 
 anarchic period. 
 
 It falls into four very distinct divisions, both from the 
 point of view of general history and from that of Danton's 
 own life. The first includes the six weeks intervening 
 between the loth of August and the meeting of the Con- 
 vention ; it is a time almost without authority ; it moves 
 round the terrible centre of the massacres. During this 
 brief time the executive, barely existent, without courts 
 or arms, had him in the Ministry of Justice as their one 
 power — a power unfortunately checked by the anarchy 
 in Paris. 
 
 The second division stretches from the meeting of the 
 Convention to the death of the King. It covers exactly 
 four months, from the 20th of September 1792 to the 
 2 1st of January 1793. It is the time in which the 
 danger of invasion seems lifted, and in which Danton in 
 the Convention is working publicly to reconcile the two 
 parties, and secretly to prevent, if possible, the spread 
 of the coalition against France. 
 
 The third opens with the universal war that follows 
 the death of Louis, and continues to a date which you 
 may fix at the rising of the loth of March, or at the 
 defeat of Neerwinden on the 19th. Danton is absent 
 with the army during the greater part of these six weeks; 
 he returns at their close, and when things were at their 
 worst, to create the two great instruments which he 
 destined to govern France — the Tribunal and the Com- 
 mittee. 
 
 Finally, for two months, from the establishment of 
 these to the expulsion of the Girondins on the 2nd of 
 June, he is being gradually driven from the attempt at 
 conciliation to the necessities of the insurrection. He is 
 organising and directing the new Government of the 
 Pubhc Safety, and in launching that new body, in im- 
 posing that necessary dictator, we shall see him sacrific- 
 
THE REPUBLIC 175 
 
 ing one by one every minor point in his policy, till at last 
 his most persistent attempt — I mean his attempt to save 
 the Girondins — fails in its turn. Having so secured an 
 irresistible government, and having created the armies, 
 the chief moment of his life was past. It remained to 
 him to retire, to criticise the excesses of his own creation, 
 and to be killed by it. 
 
 Immediately after the insurrection, a week after he 
 had taken the oath and made the short vigorous speech 
 to the Assembly,* Danton sent out his first and almost 
 his only act as Minister of Justice, the circular of the 
 1 8 th of August,^ which was posted to all the tribunals 
 in France. It is pecuHar rather than important; it is 
 the attempt to convince the magistracy and all the courts 
 of the justice and necessity of the insurrection, and at the 
 same time to leave upon record a declaration of his own 
 intentions now that he had reached power. In the first 
 attempt he necessarily fails. The old judicature, ap- 
 pointed by the Crown and by the moderate ministers, 
 largely re-elected by the people, wealthy for the most 
 part, conservative by origin and tradition, would in any 
 case have rejected such leadership; but the matter is 
 unimportant ; this passive body, upon which the reaction 
 had counted not a little, and which De Cic^ had planned 
 to use against the Revolution, was destined to disappear 
 at the first demand of the new popular powers. France 
 for weeks was practically without courts of law. 
 
 Those passages, on the other hand, in which Danton 
 makes his own apology are full of interest. They contain 
 in a few sentences the outline of all his domestic poHcy, 
 
 ' Journal des Deiats, 183. 
 
 2 I take this doonment from Robinet, Danton, Bomme d'itat, pp. 109, 
 112 ; but neither he nor Aulard (who quotes it) gives the authority. The 
 circular is quoted often under the date of August 19 ; it was issued on 
 that Sunday, but was drawn up and dated on the Saturday to which I 
 have assigned it. 
 
176 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 and we find in them Danton's memories, his fears of what 
 his past reputation might do to hurt him. 
 
 " I came in through the breach of the Tuilleries, 
 and you can only find in me the same man who was 
 president of the CordeHers. . . . The only object of my 
 thoughts has been political and individual hberty, . . . the 
 maintenance of the laws, . . . the strict union of all the 
 Departments, . . . the splendour of the State, and the 
 equality, not of fortune, for that is impossible, but of 
 rights and of well-being." 
 
 If we except the puerilities of the new great seal, the 
 Hercules with eighty-four stars (to represent the union of 
 the Departments), replaced by the conventional Liberty 
 and fasces, there is practically nothing more from Danton 
 as Minister of Justice. But as the one active man in the 
 Cabinet he is the pivot of the whole time. Those 
 qualities in him which had so disgusted the men of 
 letters were the exterior of a spirit imperatively de- 
 manded in Paris at the time. His heavy, rapid walk, 
 the coarseness and harshness of his voice, his brutality in 
 command, exercised a physical pressure upon the old 
 man Roland, the mathematician Monge, and the virtuous 
 journalists who accompanied them. I know of but one 
 character in that set which could have prevented Danton's 
 ascendancy, and have met his ugly strength by a force as 
 determined and more refined. Roland's wife might have 
 done it, but though she was the soul of the ministry, she 
 was hardly a minister, and being a woman, she was con- 
 fined to secondary and indirect methods. Her hatred of 
 Danton increased to bitterness as she saw him succeed, 
 but she could not intervene, and France was saved from 
 the beauty and the ideals which might have been the 
 syrens of her shipwreck. 
 
 The three weeks following the loth of August were 
 filled with the news of the invasion. The King of Prussia 
 had hesitated to march. France, full of herself, never 
 
THE REPUBLIC 177 
 
 understood that such a thing was possible. The kings 
 were on the march, the great and simple ideas, so long in 
 opposition, had met in battle. All France thought that 
 1792 was already 1793. Perhaps there were only two 
 men in the country who saw the immaturity, the com- 
 plexity, and the chances of the situation — I mean Danton 
 and Dumouriez : Dumouriez, because he was by nature a 
 schemer who had seen and was to see the matter from 
 close at hand ; Danton, because, from the first moment of 
 his entrance into the ministry, he had gathered up the 
 threads of negotiation into his hand. 
 
 The King of Prussia had hesitated, so had Brunswick. 
 It was the success of the insurrection that decided them. 
 They made the error that the foreigner always makes, 
 the error that led the most enUghtened Frenchmen to 
 exaggerate the Hberal forces in England, the error of see- 
 ing ourselves in others. They imagined that " the sane 
 body of the nation," the Frenchmen that thought like 
 Prussians, would rise in defence of the monarchy and in 
 aid of the invasion. They had no conception of how 
 small in number, how hesitating, and how vUe were the 
 anti-national party. 
 
 On Sunday the 1 9th the frontier was crossed ; on the 
 Thursday Longwy capitulated, and a German garrison 
 held the rocky plateau that overlooks the plain of Luxem- 
 bourg. A week later, Thursday the 30th, Verdun was 
 surrounded. 
 
 From the hills above the town, the same hills which 
 make of Verdun the fifth great entrenched camp of 
 modem France, the Prussian batteries bombarded with 
 a plunging fire. There may have been food and ammuni- 
 tion for two or three more days, but fire had broken out 
 in several quarters, and the town council was imploring 
 Beaurepaire to surrender. Brunswick proposed a truce 
 and terms of capitulation. On the Saturday, the ist of 
 September, after a violent discussion, the terms were 
 
 M 
 
178 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 rejected, but Beaurepaire knew that nothing could save 
 the to-WTi, and in the night he shot himself. On the 
 next day, Sunday the second, Verdun yielded and the 
 road to Paris lay open. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the capital itself, a vortex was opening, 
 and the poor remnants of public authority and of public 
 order were being drawn down into it. The loth of 
 August had been a victory into which there entered three 
 very dangerous elements. First, it was not final ; it had 
 been won against a small local garrison under the menace 
 of an invasion, and this invasion was proving itself irre- 
 sistible. Secondly, it had left behind it terrors accentu- 
 ated by success ; I mean whatever fears of vengeance or 
 of the destruction of Paris existed before the insurrection 
 were doubled when so much greater cause had been given 
 for the '' execution " that Brunswick had threatened. 
 Finally, the success of the insurrection had of itself 
 destroyed the last shadow of executive power, for all 
 such power, weak and perishing though it was, had 
 centred in the King. 
 
 But besides these clear conditions which the loth of 
 August had produced, there was something deeper and 
 more dangerous — the fear which fed upon itself and 
 became panic, and which ran supported by anger growing 
 into madness. There was no news but made it worse, 
 no sight in the streets and no rumour but increased the 
 intolerable pressure. Trade almost ceased, and the whole 
 course of exchange, which is the blood of a great city, 
 seemed to have run to the heart. Over the front of the 
 Hotel de Ville hung that enormous black flag with the 
 letters "Danger" staring from it in white, and in the 
 heavy winds another blew out straight and rattled from 
 the towers of Notre Dame. Every action savoured of 
 nightmare, and suffered from a spirit grotesque, exagger- 
 ated, and horrible. The very day after the fight a great 
 net had been cast over Paris and drawn in full of royalists. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 179 
 
 The gates had been shut suddenly, and every suspect 
 arrested by order of the Commune. The prisons were full 
 of members of the great conspiracy, for in civil war the 
 vanquished appear as traitors. Then there arose a violent 
 demand for the trial and punishment of those who had 
 called in the foreigner, and a demand as violent, touching 
 on miracle, for innumerable volunteers. In every project 
 there ran this spirit of madness mixed with inspiration. 
 
 If Paris lost its head, so did the Assembly and the 
 Moderates, but in another fashion. Paris was pale with 
 the intensity of anger, Eoland from a sudden paralysis. 
 The fear of Paris was an angry panic ; with the Girondins 
 it was the sudden sickness that takes some men at the 
 sight of blood. Paris had clamoured for an excess when 
 it demanded the trial of the Swiss, who had done nothing 
 beyond their mercenary duty ; but the executive met it 
 by an excess of weakness when it produced its court of 
 ridiculous and just pedants, afraid to condemn, afraid to 
 decide. Already the people had learned the secret pay- 
 ments of the old civil list,^ the salaries paid to the 
 emigrants, the subsidised press. GoHer's report had 
 appeared but a day before the invasion. 
 
 The news of Longwy was already known. Verdun 
 stood in peril, when the acquittal of Montmorin on Friday 
 the 31st seemed to be the deciding weakness of the 
 government that pushed the populace to their extreme 
 of violence. 
 
 He had been governor of Fontainebleau, openly and 
 patently a conspirator on the side of the Tuilleries; he 
 was not acquitted of this. It was admitted that he had 
 " planned civil war ; " he was released by that heroic but 
 fatal fault of the Girondins, the fault that later sent them 
 to the guHlotine, and that now inspired their tribunal — 
 they would not bend an inch to compromise with necessity; 
 rather than do so they would deliberately aggravate the 
 
 ' Anlard, who quotes from the Moniieur, xii. 445. 
 
i8o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 worst conditions by inclining against the passions of the 
 moment. They seemed to say, " You clamour for mere 
 reprisals ; we will show, on the contrary, that we are just, 
 and we will even irritate you with mercy." Yet they 
 knew that Montmorin deserved death. 
 
 After that decision, and when Osselin the judge took 
 with great courage the prisoner's arm in his own and led 
 him away, a voice in the court cried out, "You acquit him 
 now, and in a fortnight his friends will march into Paris." 
 The massacres were certain from that moment; the thing 
 had been said which made the small band of murderers 
 start out, which made Paris look on immovable, and 
 which kept the National Guard silent, refusing to stop 
 the carnage. " We will go to the frontier, but we will 
 not leave enemies behind us. If the law will not execute 
 them, the people wUl." The damnable spirit which runs 
 in colonies and wUd places had invaded civilised Europe, 
 and the lynching was determined. 
 
 When the Assembly had yielded to the Commune, 
 when it was certain that the insurrectionary Commune 
 would have its own way, and when it was known that 
 Longwy had fallen, that Yerdun was surrounded, there 
 took place one of those scenes that stand out like 
 pictures in the mind, and that interpret the characteirs 
 of history for us better than any accumulation of detail. 
 
 In the garden of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at 
 its end, and away from the house, and luider the low 
 foliage, the six ministers were met in an informal gather- 
 ing — rapid, half - silent, a coimcil not predetermined, 
 suited to the time ; a few hurried words, whose descrip- 
 tion has come down to us by no minute, but by the 
 accident of Fabre's presence. Fabre d'Eglantine, the 
 uncertain poet, Danton's prot^g^, and dangerous, ill- 
 balanced friend,^ stood watching at a little distance. 
 
 ' The scene can be reconstructed from his testimony at the trial of the 
 Girondins and from his speech at the Jacobins on the 5th of November. 
 
THE REPUBLIC i8i 
 
 Roland spoke for all his friends. He was very pale 
 and broken-down; lie leaned his head against a tree — 
 " We must leave Paris." Danton spoke louder, " Where 
 do you mean to go ? " " We must go to Blois. We 
 must take with us the King and the treasure." So said 
 Servan; so said Clavifere. Kersaint, whom Danton had 
 known at the old Commune in 1791, and who was some- 
 thing of Danton's kind, added his word : " I have just 
 come from Sedan, and I know there is nothing else to be 
 done. Brunswick will be here in Paris within the fort- 
 night as surely as the wedge enters when you strike." 
 Danton stopped six waverers by a phrase, a phrase of 
 just such a character, exaggerated, violent, as his good 
 sense made use of so often in the tribune. " My mother 
 is seventy years old, and I have brought her to Paris ; I 
 brought my children yesterday. If the Prussians are to 
 come in, I hope it may be into a Paris burnt down with 
 torches." Then he turned round to Roland in person and 
 threw out a fatal sentence, necessary, perhaps, but one 
 of many that dug the great gulf between him and the 
 Girondins. " Take care, Roland, and do not talk too much 
 about flight ; the people might hear you." ^ 
 
 I know of no anecdote that tells more about Danton, 
 or explains with greater clearness his attitude during the 
 crisis that brought on the massacres. For these over- 
 vigorous words, full of excess, were uttered by a man 
 whose character was all for material results — results 
 obtained, as a rule, by compromise. This same Danton, 
 who talked of " torches " and " Paris en cendres," was 
 the only man in France who had the self-control to 
 negotiate for the retreat of the Prussians after Valmy. 
 His " mother of seventy years " had indeed been brought 
 to Paris, but from Arcis, which every one knew to be 
 right in the track of the invasion. What we have to 
 
 ' I take all this bom Aalard's article in the Bivolution Pranfaiie of 
 June 14, 1893. 
 
i82 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 discover in this speech, as in every phrase he uttered, ia 
 the motive ; for with any other of the great Eevolutionaries 
 words were the whole of the idea, and sometimes more 
 than the idea, but with Danton alone words were the 
 means to a tangible end. 
 
 He desired to prevent that fatal breach with Paris 
 which he had foreseen to be a risk from the beginniug, 
 and which Mirabeau in his time had thought so near as 
 to be necessary. He was determined to keep this shadow 
 — the national executive — in reach of the one thing that 
 was alive and vigorous and defending the nation. It is 
 of the greatest importance in appreciating his attitude 
 to know that he dreaded the Commune. Later, no one 
 of the deputies of Paris in the Convention saw as he saw 
 the necessity of amalgamation with the Departments. 
 Marat he thoroughly despised. Most of the men of the 
 Commune had sat in one room with him ; Panis and 
 Sergent had even desks under him. He knew them, 
 and he contemned them all. He did not know to what 
 crimes they were about to commit themselves, or perhaps 
 he would have interfered, but he knew they were worth- 
 less. 
 
 Behind them, however, he saw Paris, and in Paris he 
 ardently believed, in its position and in its necessity. He 
 was entirely right. Once let the ministers leave the city, 
 and civil war would begin — a civil war waged within 
 ten days' march of the enemy, and between what forces ? 
 An imbecile, a man hke one of our moderns, who thinks 
 in maps and numbers, would have said, " Between eighty- 
 three departments and one." But Danton knew better. 
 He had that appreciation which is common to all the 
 masters; he knew the meaning of potential and of the 
 word ' quality.' It would have been a fight between the 
 members and the brain, and the brain would have died 
 fighting, leaving a body dead because the brain had 
 died. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 183 
 
 Thus while the Assembly and the Commune fight 
 their sharp battle of the last days of August, while the 
 Parhament commands new municipal elections, breaks the 
 municipality, then flatters it, then yields and permits it 
 to be practically reinforced under the form of a fresh 
 vote from the Sections,^ Danton acts as though both 
 Parliament and Commune had dropped from the world. 
 There are two speeches of his, one of the 28 th of 
 August, one of the 2nd of September, and between 
 them they mark his attitude and form also the origins 
 of that full year of action and rhetoric which define 
 him in history. 
 
 In the first, he proposes and carries the measure 
 which has been made an excuse for laying upon his 
 shoulders the responsibility of the massacres. The speech 
 was made for a very different purpose. He authorised 
 the domiciliary visits, but his object was to obtain arms. 
 One thought only occupied him : to counteract the intense 
 individualism of the Moderates, to force despotic measures 
 through a Parliament that hated them, and to force these 
 measures because without them the situation was lost. 
 He got his arms, and just afterwards his mass of volun- 
 teers, but the other measure which he had introduced 
 to pacify the Commune, the domiciliary visits, have 
 marked more deeply in the memories of the time, because 
 in the troubled days that followed these visits seemed to 
 be a beginning. 
 
 It was Sunday morning, the 2nd of September. Ver- 
 dun (though no one knew it yet in Paris) had just fallen ; 
 Beaurepaire was dead. The " Comitd de Surveillance " 
 of the Commune had admitted Marat UlegaUy,^ and for 
 
 ' The votes of the 30th, 31st, and 2nd. 
 
 ' The word " illegally " is just, for the constitution of the Commune 
 and all its acts were legally dependent on the Assembly. On the other 
 hand, the Commune had given this committee right to add to its numbers, 
 but such men as Marat, who was not a member of the Commune, were 
 surely not intended. 
 
i?4 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 a sinister reason. For three days the prisons had been 
 marked, and those whom the Comit^ wished to save 
 had been withdrawn ; and though the movement was 
 spontaneous, though the most of the Sections spoke before 
 Marat,^ yet there was an executive and a directory, and 
 that madman was its chief. The moment that the 
 massacres were beginning at the Carmes, Danton was 
 making the last effort to tmrn the anger of the moment 
 into an enthusiasm for the Champ de Mars and for the 
 volunteers. If ever there was an attempt to influence by 
 rhetoric a popular emotion which could not be checked, 
 and to direct energy from a destructive to a fruitful 
 object, it is to be found in this his most famous speech — 
 the speech that even the children know to-day in France, 
 the closing words of which are engraved upon his 
 pedestal. For the only time in his life he turned and 
 leant upon the mere power of words : there is something 
 in their extraordinary force which savours of despair, and 
 they rise at the close to an imtranslatable phrase in which 
 you hear rhythm for the first and last time in his appeals : 
 " De I'audace, encore de I'audace, toujours de I'audace — 
 et la France est sauvye." ^ 
 
 He did not wholly fail. When he had rung the great 
 bell of the Hotel de Ville and had gone to the Champ de 
 Mars, he looked over a great and growing crowd of young 
 men running to the enhstment. But for four days — days 
 in which he doggedly turned his back to the Commune 
 which called him — the killing went on in the prisons. He 
 and his volunteers, his silence, were most like this : a man 
 in a mutiny on ship-board, in a storm at night, keeping 
 the helm, saving what could be saved and careless whether 
 
 ' First La Poissonniire, then the Pastes and the Luxembourg. 
 
 ' It is possible that this sentence, including the preceding phrase, "le 
 tocsin qui va sonner," &o., aie the only part of the speech that has been 
 literally reported. The Logotachygraphe was not founded till January, and 
 while the Moniteur and the Jowmal da Bebats give much the same Ter- 
 eion, the latter calls it a "summary." 
 
THE REPUBLIC 185 
 
 the morning should make him seem a traitor on the one 
 hand or a mutineer upon the other. For the tragedy of 
 those five days — the days of Sedan — always seems to be 
 passing ia a thick night. We read records of action at 
 this or that hour in the daylight, but we cannot believe 
 the sun shone. Maillard, tall and pale in his close black 
 serge and belt, is a figure for candles on the Abbaye table 
 and for torches in the cloisters and the vaults. There never 
 was a horror more germane to darkness. 
 
 But why did Danton not save the prisoners ? I know 
 that question is usually answered by saying that he was 
 indifferent. So much (it seems to me) survives of a 
 legend. For history no longer pretends that he organised or 
 directed the crime. Indeed, history finds it daUy more diffi- 
 cult, as the details accumulate, to fix it upon any one man. 
 But the fact that he persistently defended the extremists 
 in the following month, that he made himself (for the 
 purposes of reunion) an advocate for many men who were 
 blameworthy, and tried to reconcile the pure minds of 
 the Girondins mth such terrible memories — in a word, 
 the fact that for months he sacrificed himself in the 
 Convention, that he demanded union, has condemned him 
 to every suspicion. Que mon nom soit JUtri et que la France 
 soit litre. 
 
 He might, indeed, have spoken. Popular, the one 
 vigorous and healthy personality in the face of Paris, he 
 might have bent his energy to the single aim of prevent- 
 iag an outbreak. I will not deny that in his mind, over 
 which we have seen passionate anger falling suddenly in 
 October 1789 and in June 1792, there may have arisen 
 some such feeling as that which restrained the vast mass 
 of the Parisians from interfering with the little band of 
 murderers — a feehng of violent hatred, a memory of the 
 manifesto and a disgust which made the partisans of Bruns- 
 wick seem like vermin. There is something of that de- 
 plorable temper in the anecdote which Madame Roland 
 
i86 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 gives of him, striding through the rooms on the second 
 day and saying that the prisoners " could save themselves." 
 But this anecdote is not history ; it is an accusation, and 
 one made by a partisan and an enemy.i There is another 
 and better reason for his action, which must, I think, have 
 made the greater part of his motive. To have spoken 
 would have been to play a very heavy stake. If he spoke 
 and failed to prevent the rising, he ceased to be Danton. 
 His influence fell, he became a Moderate, and himself, the 
 one man left to direct affairs, entered the confused ranks 
 of opposition — un-Parisian, rejected of either party, while 
 France beneath him fell into mere anarchy. 
 
 It would have been gambling with all that he most 
 desired : the English neutrality, the union of the coming 
 ParHament, the rapid organisation of the armies, all this 
 staked to win something that was not precious to him at 
 all — the lives of a mass of men the bulk of whom had 
 demanded the success of the invasion. 
 
 Why did he not act ? Because nobody could act. 
 Remember the phrase which he delivered while Louis 
 was being executed four months later : " NuUe puissance 
 humaine."^ We are so accustomed to an aristocratic and 
 orderly society that a title of office implies power. The 
 Home Secretary or some other man " does this," but the 
 man who reaUy does it — does it with his hands — is the 
 pohceman or the soldier. Now these did not exist at the 
 moment in Paris. It explains a hundred things in the 
 Revolution to remember that every successive step reduced 
 society to powder, to a mere number of men. Rousseau 
 had said that this compact, this thing based on voluntary 
 
 ^ "Appel k I'impartiale posterity." Madame Roland had the great 
 historical gift of intuition, that is, she could minutely describe events 
 which never took place. I attach no kind of importance to the passage 
 immediately preceding. If Danton and Potion were alone, as she describes 
 them, her picture is the picture of a novelist. The phrase quoted above 
 may be authentic — there were witnesses. 
 
 " Moniteur, January 25, 1793. Speech of January 21st. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 187 
 
 union, was not made for the cities. Paris gave us in 
 September an awful proof. Koland, a man whom Marat 
 had put upon his list and whom Danton had saved, talked 
 on the Monday of the "just anger of the people." Yet 
 Roland was a just man, and brave in matters that aifected 
 himself alone, and the massacres chiefly concerned him. 
 He was Minister of the Interior, that is, responsible for 
 order, but there was nothing with which to work. On the 
 Tuesday he sent to Santerre and said, " Call out the 
 National Guard." Santerre answered that he could not 
 gather them. He was right. Again, Potion was an 
 honest man, a Moderate, the mayor of Paris ; all he could 
 do was to sit at a useless committee of the Sections and talk 
 of the "National Defence;" that utter disintegration which 
 the theories of the Revolution had produced— that purely 
 voluntary condition of the soldier, the official, the police 
 (a mere anarchy) — was irresistible when there was spon- 
 taneity of action; it was useless where the conditions 
 demanded organisation and initiative. It withstood the 
 cannonade at Valmy, it stormed the height of Jemappes, 
 but it fled in rout when the spring had melted enthusiasm. 
 So here police, the function that most requires discipline, was 
 lacking in the State. And the whole situation is summed 
 up in the sharp picture we have of Manuel pushing his 
 way though the crowd with " two policemen " who had 
 " volunteered," and trying in vain to stop the lynching at 
 the Carmes. It was to this anarchy that Danton, after 
 six months of struggle, succeeded in giving government 
 during 1793. 
 
 Danton himself, after four months of vain effort to 
 reconcile his enemies, put the whole matter in the last 
 phrase of his defence : " No human power " could have 
 stopped the massacres ; ^ all that could be done was to 
 work, from that moment forward, against the extreme 
 
 1 Speech of Jannary 21, 1793. 
 
i88 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 theories of a Toluntary state, and towards the establish- 
 ment of a strong government.' 
 
 When, on the Thursday, September 6, the wave re- 
 ceded, and when on the morrow Potion was able to 
 interfere, the people and the Assembly looked round them 
 and saw that a thing had happened which was to hurt 
 the future of the Revolution more than all the armies. 
 It was like the breaking of day after that moral night, a 
 daybreak in which the wind goes down and you see the 
 wreckage. 
 
 Paris was very silent ; the accusations had not yet 
 begun ; the Assembly was dying. The electoral council 
 of Paris had met during the very days of the massacre, 
 and had proceeded to choose the members who were to 
 represent the capital in the Convention that was about to 
 meet. It also voted in silence, and sat in the mingled panic 
 and remorse that oppressed the whole city. The names 
 came out in the balloting. On the 5 th (the murderers 
 were still growling in the streets) Robespierre was elected in 
 a small meeting of 5 2 5 ; on the 6th Danton was elected 
 second, but with a much larger attendance and with a 
 much greater majority — 638 votes out of an attendance 
 of 700, a curious result. Dan ton's name forced itself 
 upon them, was acclaimed beyond any other ; yet his 
 attitude of conciliation, his attempt to have all Paris 
 represented, was set aside. The man and his reputation 
 succeeded, his pohcy failed. They elected also Marat, 
 Panis, Sergent — those who had directed the crime. Dan- 
 ton and Manuel alone of all the twenty-four had any 
 touch of the Moderate about them. The long list ends 
 with the name of Egalit^, elected by a majority of one.^ 
 
 There came, therefore, into the Convention an ap- 
 
 • The accusations against Danton in this matter are given and criticised 
 in Appendix IV., where the reasons are also given for omitting any men- 
 tion of Marat's circular in the text. 
 
 ' For the figures and very interesting details as to EgaUt^'s election see 
 lUvolutum Fran^aite, August 14, 1893, second note, page 129. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 189 
 
 parently united body of men from Paris — the Mountain. 
 Up on the benches of the extreme left, in the grey, dark 
 theatre of the Tuilleries, there were to sit, in a compact 
 group, these extremists ; and across the floor the Depart- 
 ments, the pure Republicans of the south, who despised 
 the city and them, who feared them terribly, and who 
 hated with the force of a religion, were to single them 
 out as tyrants. And in this Mountain, this body of 
 Reds, Danton was to find himself imbedded, bound up, 
 falsified. He had determined to prevent such parties. 
 He had tried hard to make Paris elect not only Robes- 
 pierre but Petion also as a mark of unity: he had failed. 
 When the country members came up to the capital, 
 September had grown to be an awful legend. The 
 number of those killed was multiplied ten times,^ twenty 
 times — number lost meaning. Paris seemed a city of 
 blood. Guides volunteered story after story. " Here, in 
 the Abbaye, the blood had risen so high " — they made 
 a mark in the wall ; " there, under that tree, the massacres 
 were planned by such and such a one" — any name 
 suited, sometimes it was Robespierre, sometimes Danton. 
 The deputies came from their little towns and from the 
 fields, over seven hundred — pilgrims from places where 
 the pure enthusiasms of 1790 still lingered, where even 
 1792 had brought no passion. They came, many of 
 them for the first time, bewildered in the enormous 
 city; its noise confused them, its crowds, its anger — 
 " Yes ; that was where the massacres were committed a 
 fortnight ago — we can beUeve it." The Convention from 
 its first day seemed a battlefield — Paris defiant in the 
 Mountain, and the Departments sUent with an angry fear 
 in the plain and on the benches of the right. And when 
 the newcomers asked to be shown the group of deputies 
 for Paris, as men would ask to be shown lurking enemies 
 
 * More than 700 and less than 1000 died. The common exaggeiation 
 ig Peltier's 12,000. 
 
I90 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 or wild beasts, they would have their gaze directed to that 
 high place on the left where sat the names that had 
 terrified and fascinated them in the prints of their 
 country-sides. 
 
 There were no windows ; the skylight, high above 
 that deep well of a room, sent an insufficient hght down- 
 wards upon the foreheads, making the features sharp 
 and yet lending them a false gloom. That man with 
 the small squat body and the frog's face was Marat ; you 
 could just see his great vain mouth in the dim hght. 
 Those small, keen features, well barbered and set up, the 
 high forehead, the pointed bones of the cheek and chin, 
 stood for Robespierre. The hght fell chiefly on the white 
 of his careful wig ; his thin smile was in shadow. And 
 who was that huge figure, made larger by the darkness 
 and carrying a head like Mirabeau ? They saw it moving 
 when the others were fixed. He would speak to his 
 neighbours with heavy, sweeping gestures. They grew 
 accustomed to the half-light, and they could distinguish 
 his face — the strong jaw, the powerful movement of the 
 Ups, torn and misshapen though they were ; the rough, 
 pitted skin, the small, direct, and deep-set eyes. Who 
 was he ? He seemed to them the very incarnation of 
 all the bloodshed and unreason which they hated in 
 Paris, a master of anarchy. It was Danton. 
 
 Against that impression all policy and wisdom broke. 
 He demanded unity ; he checked the growing attack on 
 the rich ; he said things that were like France speaking. 
 But the voice was harsh and loud ; they heard it in their 
 minds at the head of mobs ; they fled from him to the 
 Girondins ; they forced him back upon the Mountain, and 
 he had to do his work alone in spite of those orators 
 whom he would have befriended and whose genius he 
 loved — in spite of those madmen who surrounded him, 
 and who later killed him and the Republic with one 
 axe. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 191 
 
 It was on the 25 th of September, a Thursday, that 
 the Convention met in the Tuilleries ; on the Friday, in 
 the same place, with doors shut and with the galleries 
 empty, they declared the Republic, and moved off to the 
 Manege, where their predecessors had sat. In those two 
 days the violent quarrel between Paris and France was 
 hushed for a moment. Danton, in the lull, said all he 
 could to define his own position and to prevent that 
 quarrel from ever reaching a head. He went out to 
 meet the Moderates. He declared, with the common 
 sense of the peasant, that property must first be declared 
 inviolable ; and it is curious that the Convention, the 
 majority that misunderstood him and broke with him, 
 was yet less moderate than he ; it passed the resolution, 
 but in the form, " property is under the safeguard of the 
 nation." In order to calm opioion he resigned the 
 Ministry of Justice on the spot; ^ he did everything to 
 make his position clear and true, and to save the unity 
 of the Parliament. 
 
 But the attack came from the others. Within a 
 week Lasource had proposed a guard for the Convention, 
 " drawn from the departments ; " and in the face of this 
 proposition, that was almost civil war, Danton found 
 himself able to speak once more for unity. The Girondins 
 had elected one of themselves for president, and had 
 chosen from among their own members the secretaries of 
 the Assembly; they had wittingly ostracised the left, and 
 they desired to make it dumb. Danton stUl attempted 
 union. " I myself come from the Departments, from a 
 place to which I always turn my eyes. But Paris is 
 made of the Departments, and we are not here as members 
 of this place or that, but as members for France." He 
 continually presented the idea of France united; the 
 
 ' As a fact, his successor, Garat, was not elected till the 9th of October, 
 and did not begin to act till the 12th. Danton seems to have remained at 
 the Ministry till the evening of the nth. 
 
192 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Girondins as continually rejected it. He knew that they 
 thought him a shield for Marat; he rejected Marat openly 
 from the tribune. But all this intense and personal 
 action had but an effect upon individuals. Two especially 
 it moved — Vergniaud, the young orator, sincere and brave 
 beyond all his colleagues, and more far-seeing than any 
 of the dreamers around him ; Condorcet, to whom a year 
 before Danton had seemed so repulsive, but whose calm 
 and just miad had arrived at the truth ; who had said, 
 " Danton has that rare faculty of neither hating nor envy- 
 ing genius in others ; " who had voted and spoken for his 
 appointment as Minister of Justice, and who, up to the 
 catastrophe of the following June, continued to under- 
 stand and to support him. 
 
 But, for the mass of the Girondins, he remained an 
 outcast. He used words that one could not use before 
 Roland's wife, and the great group that surrounded her 
 (men over-full of Utopias, but heroic, men whom Danton 
 himself regretted bitterly) made him an outcast. He 
 replied often with passion, and once with insult, but as 
 we shall see he did not abandon them entirely till the 
 insurrection destroyed them in '93. 
 
 Meanwhile, while they voted the Republic in Paris, 
 under Argonne a battle among the most curious in 
 history was making a momentary security — that is, a 
 momentary union of good feeling throughout France, 
 and even in Paris itself. The Prussian army had been 
 checked on the little rise of Valmy. As you stand upon 
 the field in that same season of the year to-day, in the 
 mist of the early morning, as the volunteers and the 
 battered remnants of the hne stood then; as you look 
 from that standpoint at the open road, at the great plain 
 of Champagne, so well suited to maintain an army; as 
 you see to the east the long wall of the Argonne, and 
 remember that Dumouriez had been outflanked in his 
 Thermopylae, a confusion seizes the mind. Why on earth 
 
THE REPUBLIC 193 
 
 was Valmy so important a victory ? It is a common-place 
 to say that Valmy was a cannonade, but what was a 
 cannonade in 1792? If indeed to-day a line of guns 
 were drawn up and served, as I have seen them served in 
 the manoeuvres within sight of these same hUls, and if a 
 force should be discovered capable of withstanding the 
 shrapnel of twelve batteries of artillery, sure of their 
 range, turning the mark into a ploughed field — then that 
 force would merit peculiar names, for it would be im- 
 mortal. But in the eighteenth century guns were not 
 the arbiters of battles. Infantry could charge the bat- 
 teries then. France, which was crushed yesterday and 
 wUl succeed to-morrow solely through artillery, had not 
 a hundred years ago to dread the random solid shot of 
 smooth bores ; what she had to dread was the bayonet 
 charge of that superb infantry which the great Frederick 
 had trained, and on which the monstrous scaffolding of 
 Prussia stUl reposes. All we can say of Valmy is this, 
 that men quite ignorant of warfare, badly held together, 
 managed to stand firm under an ill-directed, at times 
 a desultory and distant cannon fire. 
 
 Valmy was not a victory. The results of Valmy 
 have changed the world, but no one could have seen it 
 then. Goethe, in the course of a long life, discovered it, 
 and put it beautifully into his own mouth over one of 
 the bivouac fires : " We entered on a new world then ; " 
 but there were better prophets than Goethe, and not one 
 perceived it. For days the Prussian army hesitated. 
 Dumouriez did not dare to meet them. A pitched battle 
 in the last days of September might have changed all 
 history. 
 
 Why then did the King of Prussia retreat ? No 
 force compelled, but two arguments convinced him. The 
 peasantry, and Danton, the man who through the whole 
 year is, as it were, a peasant trained and illumined. The 
 resistance of the peasantry had taught the King that to 
 
 N 
 
194 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 reach Paris it required not a war of the dynasties, such 
 as had filled the eighteenth ceDtory— wars in which 
 armies passed like visiting caravans; the invasion of 
 France would need a crusade. He was no crusader. 
 He had undertaken the war with only half a heart, 
 and at this slight check he hesitated. The second 
 argument came from Danton. He bargained like a 
 peasant secretly for the purchasable and obvious good, 
 while the Parliament was talking as might talk a 
 conqueror who was something of a poet and well 
 read in the classics. When there was a talk of 
 negotiations just after the battle, it launched the great 
 words, " That the Republic does not discuss tUl its terri- 
 tory is evacuated." That was on Tuesday ; the Republic 
 was young to discuss anything — it was four days old. On 
 Wednesday night, Westermann, Danton's man of the 
 loth of August, and his companion at the scaffold, 
 started off secretly to diplomatise. That foolish man 
 D'Eglantine followed him, but his folly was swallowed up 
 in the wisdom of Danton, who sent him, a secretary and 
 a mouthpiece, to do that which, had he done it himself, 
 would have produced some violent and ill-considered vote. 
 Between them this clique settled the matter, and the 
 invaders passed back through the Argonne heavily, in 
 wet roads and through drenched woods, with Kellermann 
 following, impatient, above the valleys, but bound by 
 Danton's policy not to harass the retreat; tUl at last, 
 more than a month after Valmy,^ he fired the salute 
 from Longwy, and the territory was free. 
 
 Did Danton know, as he was pursuing these plans, 
 why Dumouriez helped him ? Did he understand thor- 
 oughly that vain, talented, and unprincipled soldier ? I 
 think it certain. It is among those things which cannot 
 be proved ; one does not base such convictions upon docu- 
 ments, but rather on the general appreciation of character. 
 1 October 23. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 195 
 
 Thus Danton undoubtedly helped and used Talleyrand 
 at another time in England, and Talleyrand was patently 
 false. But Talleyrand was, as patently, the cleverest 
 diplomatist he could find. Dumouriez wished the King 
 of Prussia to be left unmolested for a number of very 
 mixed reasons, in which patriotism played a small part ; 
 Danton wished it for the sake of France, and for that 
 only ; but if Dumouriez at the head of an army was to 
 hand, so much the better. Danton supported Dumouriez, 
 his policy, even his retreats up to the disaster of March. 
 To say " he sympathised with a traitor " is one of those 
 follies which men can only make when they forget that 
 contemporaries cannot have known what we know. With 
 aU his time-serving and his separate plans, no one dreamt 
 that in six months the general would joiu the Austrians ; 
 it was a sudden blow even to those who sat in his tent. 
 
 October was a month of reconciliation. When the 
 man broad awake succeeds, the dreamer is ready to build 
 a new dream on that result. The Gironde was almost 
 silent, the Mountain was afraid. In the short visit that 
 Dumouriez paid, between a victory and a victory, to Paris, 
 Danton appears for a moment a partner in the mental 
 ease, the brilliant expression, and the Republican faith of 
 the Girondias. He might perhaps have ended there, and 
 with his great arms and shoulders have held apart the men 
 whose mutual hatred killed the Republic. In his success 
 — and every one bore him gratitude after Valmy — that 
 which he most desired almost happened, and the alliance 
 between the opposing Girondist and the Mountain was 
 half realised. 
 
 Michelet gives us two pictures ^ which, nke the reve- 
 lation of lightning, show us that rapid drama standing 
 still. In the first it is Madame Roland, in the second 
 Marat, who makes the tragedy. In the first Dumouriez 
 and Danton sat in the same box at the theatre, and 
 
 1 Michelet, 1st edition, vol. iv. pp. 392-394. 
 
196 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Vergniaud was coming in witli the soul of tlie Girondina 
 The door opened and promised this spectacle : Danton 
 and the general and the orator of the pure Eepublicans, 
 and the woman most identified with the Eight. It would 
 have been such a picture for all the people there as Dan- 
 ton would have prayed or paid for. The door was ajar, 
 and, as she came near, Madame Roland saw Danton sitting 
 in the box ; she put out her hand from Vergniaud's 
 arm and shut the door. There is in her memoirs a kind 
 of apology, " des femmes de mauvaise tournure." Utter 
 nonsense ; it was Roland's box, and his wife was expected 
 Danton and Dumouriez were not of the gutter. No, it 
 was the narrow feminine hatred, so closely allied to her 
 intense devotion, that made Madame Roland thrust Dan- 
 ton at arm's length. The same spirit that made her 
 vilify the Left like a fury made her the calm saint of the 
 Girondins. For she lived entirely in the Idea. 
 
 The second scene is a reception. I wUl not repeat 
 Michelet's description ; its spirit is contained in an admir- 
 able phrase : " France civilised appealed therein agaiast 
 France political." Danton was surrounded with those 
 whom he would have taught, as he taught all who ever 
 knew him closely, to respect or to love him. Marat 
 heard that he was there — Marat, whom he had repudiated 
 in public a few days before. He heard that Danton was 
 there, surrounded by the soldiers, and the women, and 
 the orators. He called at the door, and shouted in the 
 hall, " I want to see Danton," and at the sound of his 
 voice everybody grew troubled, and Danton was left 
 alone. On the 29th of October Danton attempted 
 openly to break with Marat : " I declare to you and to 
 France," he said in the Convention, " that I have tried 
 Marat's temperament, and I am no friend of his." But 
 the attempt came too late. 
 
 The discussions broke out again in November. On 
 the loth, the victory of Jemappes was heard in Paris. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 197 
 
 This book, dealing only -with a man, cannot detail those 
 famous charges; it was a victory won by men singing 
 the new songs ; it is the inspiration of " La victoire en 
 chantant." But the security it gave only went further 
 to destroy what was left of union. Danton found him- 
 self more and more alone. He who had been named on 
 a committee with Thomas Paine, with Condorcet, with 
 Pt^tion, on the very day after his election to the presidency 
 of the Jacobins,^ who had in his own temporary success 
 seemed to realise his pohcy of union, found himself after 
 a month once more pushed back towards the Mountain. 
 The growing sense of security had destroyed the chances 
 of union. He remained silent. One would say that the 
 time passed him by untouched, because the one thing he 
 cared for had failed, and because the inevitable civil dis- 
 sensions of the next spring covered his mind with clouds. 
 France was irretrievably divided. The arraignment of 
 the King, the discovery of the secret papers, all the 
 movement of November leaves him, as it were, stranded, 
 waiting his mission to Belgium. 
 
 There belongs to this period only one considerable 
 speech. It is the only thing in all his public acts in 
 which you can discover beauty. You may find in this 
 speech the pity and the tenderness which his intimates 
 loved, the memory which they for sixty years defended, 
 but which no document or letter remains to perpetuate. 
 
 Cambon, careless of anything but his exchequer, had 
 thou^it the new era come. That cold and inflexible 
 head determined, seeing the steep fall towards bankruptcy 
 that France was making, to save a hundred millions, 
 but to save it at an expense. He proposed to separate 
 the State from what was left of the Church, to break 
 the vow of 1790. In almost the last speech before he 
 went off to the armies, Danton opposed him and gave 
 this passage — a passage better fitted to the defence of 
 ^ October lo and ii. 
 
198 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 an older and stronger thing than the wretched constitu- 
 tional priesthood : — 
 
 "... It is treason against the nation to take away 
 its dreams. For my part, I admit I have known but 
 one God. The God of all the world and of justice. The 
 man in the fields adds to this conception that of a man 
 who works, whom he makes sacred because his youth, 
 his manhood, and his old age owe to the priest their 
 little moments of happiness. When a man is poor and 
 wretched, his soul grows tender, and he chngs especially 
 to whatever seems majestic : leave him his illusions — 
 teach him if you will . . . but do not let the poor fear 
 that they may lose the one thing that binds them to 
 earth, since wealth cannot bind them." 
 
 Before he left on the mission to the armies there 
 occurred a scene which has always been, since Michelet de- 
 scribed it, the most striking passage of his relations with 
 the Girondios. He, the man who saw safety for France 
 only in diplomacy, had, for the sake of unity, held his 
 tongue when the Girondins passed the decree of the 
 19th November, which was to sustain a revolutionary 
 crusade against Europe. I say that November is full 
 of Danton's attempt to maintain the unity of the Parha- 
 ment. After all these efforts he was worsted, because 
 the Girondins were possessed by a dream which admitted 
 of no compromise and of no realities. 
 
 The scene of his last attempt was this : — He made a 
 rendezvous with their party. They were to meet secretly 
 at night and away from Paris in a house in the woods of 
 Sceaux at the very end of November. The whole life 
 of this man was a tragedy, and we see in this sad journey 
 that kind of dramatic presentiment of his death and of 
 theirs, the " foreknowledge " with which the tragedies 
 of the world are filled. 
 
 He went through the desolate bare woods of Novem- 
 ber, under the hurrying sky, that recalls to o;ir miads 
 
jTHE REPUBLIC 199 
 
 in France to-day the charges of Jemappes. The night 
 was as wild as the time, and as dark as his forebodings, 
 ■when he came on to the httle group of men in the 
 candlelight, and argued with them, and against them, 
 and alone. Michelet gives to Danton's mind a senti- 
 ment of coercion. He shows us Danton dragged by 
 necessity. But I can see no necessity except the supreme 
 desire to unite the parties and make the government real. 
 They would not receive his alliance, and he went away 
 from that meeting at midnight, pushed back upon Paris, 
 thrown into the comradeship of violence. Guadet re- 
 jected him with an especial fervour. Danton as he left 
 turned upon him with this phrase : " Guadet, Guadet, 
 you cannot understand and you do not know how to 
 forgive ; you are headstrong, and it will be your doom." 
 The next day he started on his mission to the army. 
 
 During the arraignment and during the trial of the 
 King the opinions that divided the Left and the Right 
 fought it out in his absence.^ He was not there to 
 attempt such a movement as his character demanded. 
 No one in aU the Assembly dared hold out a hand as 
 he would have done and see whether after all Vergniaud 
 might not perhaps be right on the one hand, and the 
 Mountain perhaps be patriots on the other. 
 
 There was in this debate upon one man's life an 
 element to which Danton's nature was weU suited. 
 There had to be kept in view for the French nation the 
 effect upon Europe which would foUow from the determi- 
 nation as to the death or life of the King, and Danton's 
 great voice has so strongly and so rightly affected the 
 historians of the period that he thrusts his personality 
 forward into their narrative, and in at least one notable 
 place Danton appears, in history, and in one of the greatest 
 
 ' He made a speech on the 6th of November demanding (of course) the 
 trial of the King, but not with violence. He left for Belgium with Dela- 
 croix on the ist of December. 
 
200 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 pages of history, by no right, and figures upon scenes -wliicli 
 do not possess the advantage of his voice. He has been 
 made to defend Louis's life, to plead for a respite, and then 
 by a violent change to vote for his death. 
 
 Let me now explain how this error passed into the 
 mind of Michelet and of other men. Danton returned 
 from Belgium on the night of the 14th January. On 
 that same day a certain Dannon, apparently an honest 
 man,^ rose late in the evening and demanded respite for 
 Louis. When Gallois reprinted the Moniteur, he saw this 
 obscure name coupled with a politic demand ; he read it 
 again, and said, "This Dannon must be a misprint for 
 Danton." He corrected it so. On this chance venture 
 there fell the eye of Michelet, the eye that from a glance 
 or a word could bring back the colours and the move- 
 ments of living men. In him also the tragedy of Danton 
 powerfully worked ; he moulded a figure from these few 
 words in the Moniteur, and made of them an admirable 
 anti-climax. Here was Danton (Dannon) hot from the 
 armies, knowing in what peril France stood, having seen 
 with his own eyes how momentary had been the effects 
 of Jemappes. He comes from his travelling coach to 
 the Assembly, and with the mud of the road yet upon 
 him, gives his expression as an ally to the Girondins and 
 to the Moderates. Then some rebuff, some unrecorded 
 insult throws him back again as he had been so often 
 thrown back into the arms of the Extremists. On the 
 next day, the 1 5 th of January, we are asked to watch him 
 sitting by the side of his dying wife, sullen and despairing. 
 On the 1 6th he comes back furious, and votes for the death 
 of the King. 
 
 1 This Dannon was a friend of Danton'g. He began, but did not com- 
 plete, a collection of his speeches, &c., and an inquiry into his accounts. 
 He was a member for Pas de Calais. It is not easy to get his nama 
 accurately spelt. I follow the spelling of a list of the Convention pub- 
 lished in 1794. Dannon voted for banishment. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 201 
 
 There are those for whom detail in history is pedantic, 
 yet here upon three letters and their order hangs the 
 interpretation not only of an individual character but 
 of a policy whose effects we are still feeling. Michelet's 
 great picture is false from beginning to end. Danton had 
 returned on the 1 4th, and came jaded with his journey to 
 the bedside of her who had been his young wife of five 
 years, who was now near to childbirth and to death. He 
 had his own drama as well as that of the historian's, and 
 our own dramas are acted upon a stage where the results 
 are real. All that night of the 14 th and all the 15 th 
 he was watching in his flat of the Passage du Commerce 
 a fate which was coming upon him, and certainly for 
 whose thirty-six hours the Revolution was a Httle thing 
 to him. He came back wearily to his position and to his 
 duties on the 1 6th; he remembered there was such a thing 
 as the Revolution — that Louis was after all on trial, and 
 descended from his home into the hall of the Parliament to 
 give the short angry sentence in which we seem to read less 
 moderation and less of diplomacy than was his by nature. 
 The scene in the home had made him not only bitter but 
 weak, for there is surely weakness in saying, " I am not a 
 statesman," in borrowing, that is, the vulgar acrimony of 
 Marat, or in talking of " the tyrant," and in repeating the 
 phrases of the Mountain. 
 
 But in the days that followed Michelet finds a good 
 excuse. Certainly one would say, if one knew nothing 
 about him except his action of January 1793, that Danton 
 was the Mountain and nothing else. This error would be 
 supported by the unreasoning vehemence, the almost 
 brutal anger, into which he allows himself to fall. 
 
 They asked whether the King could be condemned to 
 death by a mere majority, and whether that majority was 
 decisive. Danton threw back at them : " You decided 
 the Republic by a mere majority, you changed the whole 
 history of the nation by a mere majority, and now you 
 
202 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 think the life of one man too great for a mere majority, 
 you say such a vote could not be decisive enough to make 
 blood flow. When I was on the frontier the blood flowed 
 decisively enough." 
 
 So naturally was he at that moment the Danton of 
 unreason, so much had his character yielded to its persis- 
 tent temptation of violent words, that there could be heard 
 a voice once calling out to him as he rushed to the 
 tribune without leave from the Speaker, " You are not a 
 king yet, Danton." And yet this was the man who had 
 saved France from any folly of defiance after Valmy, who 
 was determined upon saving her in the future by keeping 
 upon the helm a quiet and unswerving hand. Vergniaud's 
 great simile, " That France might become, if she did not 
 take care, like the statues of Egypt; they astonish by their 
 greatness, and yet are enigmas to all who see them, because 
 the living spirit that made them has died," passed him by 
 without effect. He was one of those who voted in the 
 fatal majority, and he threw down as gage of battle the 
 head of a king.^ 
 
 The word had become reality, and Louis had stood at 
 mid-day trying to be heard beyond the ring of soldiers, 
 had cried out that he was innocent, and had died in the 
 noon of that cold January day. This act was destined to 
 produce the one thing that Danton had most ardently 
 desired to avoid — it put an end once and for all to the 
 neutraUty of England. 
 
 Another people, then in their infancy, now old, whom 
 Louis had been persuaded to help against his will, re- 
 ceived the death of Louis like a kind of blow in the face. 
 The people of the United States in their simplicity had 
 imagined the French king to be their saviour; they did 
 
 ' I must not omit to mention one phrase which is far more oharaoter- 
 Ullc of him — that spoken after Lepelletier's assassination : "It would ba 
 well for us if we could die like that." 
 
THE REPUBLIC 203 
 
 not know Louis's phrase, " I was dragged into that un- 
 happy affair of America; advantage was taken of my 
 youth." They regarded his crown with a certain super- 
 stition, as they still regard what is left of baubles in 
 Europe ; and when the axe fell upon him, France lost 
 not only the calculating hypocrisy of Pitt, but the genuine 
 sympathy of the American people. 
 
 In the days that followed (they were only ten) between 
 the 2 1st of January and the end of the month, it is still 
 plain that the shock which most affected Danton's vigor- 
 ous and independent judgment was that return after seven 
 weeks to the wife whom he had passionately loved, and 
 whom this ugly Orpheus felt slipping from his arms back 
 into the shades. After her death, as we shall see, he did 
 not reel so heavily, but in that fortnight of January, which 
 was of such supreme importance, he permitted misfortune 
 to rouse mere passion in his mind ; and he who might 
 have led the Moderates, who might have played with the 
 life of Louis like a card, chose to remember his rebuff in 
 the winter and threw his trump away. 
 
 Many have tried to explain Vergniaud's vote. Is it 
 not probable that he was drawn by the example of a man 
 whom he did not understand, and whose opinion attracted 
 an orator not unappreciative of energy ? Vergniaud has 
 always before history a doubting and a hesitating face, 
 and it seems more than possible that the wrath of Danton 
 carried him and many others into the vote for death. 
 
 Ever since the loth of August had thrust him into 
 imexpected power, Danton had held in one way or another 
 the threads of a certain diplomacy. It was as follows : — 
 To rely upon all the elements in Europe which admired 
 or were indifferent to the Revolution, and to combiae them 
 in a kind of resistant body ; to use, as it were, their inertia 
 against those who were setting out as crusaders against 
 France. On this account the foolish war of propaganda 
 was most distasteful to him. On this account England's 
 
204 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 neutrality haunted his mind. He knew that in this 
 country there existed a body strong in its influence 
 though not in its numbers, a body which would have 
 supported the French. Priestley had written to him be- 
 fore his exile. Talleyrand was working for him at the 
 moment, and opposing as an informal Dantonist the 
 Girondin acerbity of Chauvelin.'^ Danton was even willing 
 to use Dumouriez, mainly because Dumouriez was about 
 to compromise with England. To this policy of observa- 
 tion, a policy which took advantage of England ss the 
 lover of Individual liberty and of England as the ]iier- 
 chant, the death of the King put a sudden stop. It was 
 Danton that killed his own intrigue. 
 
 Before he left on his second mission to the armies on 
 the 31st January 1793, he shows that new face in which 
 he attempts to retrieve, as far as possible, the errors of 
 which he had been largely the author. In a speech 
 which shows once again all his old power of party politi- 
 cal action, he demands the annexation of Belgium. He 
 has seen that general war is inevitable, and harking back 
 again to that unique French conception of which he was 
 the heir, the raison d'etat, he determines to save the State, 
 and to do it by an action which opposed every theory of 
 the Revolution. He asked " everything of their reason, 
 nothing of their enthusiasm," and he demanded the 
 annexation of Belgium with France. It was pure oppor- 
 tunism — the determination to get hold of a revenue by 
 force of arms ; and the next day, after having painfully 
 come back to his old policy of the real and objective, 
 burdened by a past error, and having broken with all that 
 he valued in French opinion, he went off again to the 
 
 ' The proofs of the connection with Talleyrand are based only on infer- 
 ence. They will be found discussed in Eobinet's Danton Emigre, pp. 12- 
 16 and pp. 270, &o. As for Priestley's correspondence, it was sympathetic 
 and deep, and continued in spite of the massacres of September. There 
 is a draft of a Constitution in the French archives which some believe to 
 be Priestley's, but I am confident it is not in his handwriting. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 205 
 
 army. While his chaise was yet rolling on the flat roads 
 of Flanders, Chauvelin returned with Pitt's scrawl in his 
 hand, and France was at war with the whole world. 
 
 This next voyage to Belgium occupied but a very 
 short time. He did not get there until the 3rd February, 
 and he started to come back on the isth. But the 
 moment, which is necessarily a silent one in his biography, 
 would be one of capital importance to us had he remained 
 in Paris to speak, and to leave us by his speeches some 
 clue as to the revolution through which his mind had 
 passed. 
 
 Consider these contrasting pictures : Danton, up to 
 the death of the King, seems uniquely occupied in pur- 
 suing the threads of a very careful diplomacy, and in 
 weldmg as far as possible the opposing factions of the 
 ParUament. Of course, his general theories in politics 
 remain unaltered, but something has happened which 
 makes him, on returning from Belgium for the second 
 time, pursue this different pohcy : the immediate con- 
 struction of a strong central government, and the provid- 
 ing of it with exceptional and terrible machinery. He 
 works this as absolutely the unique pohcy. He seems to 
 have forgotten all questions of diplomacy, nearly to have 
 despaired of settling the quarrel between Paris and the 
 Girondins. In fine, Danton, when first in power, had 
 been a man so representative of France as to have many 
 different objects, and to attempt their co-ordination. We 
 see bim the brief fortnight of Louis's execution violent, 
 angry, unreasoning; we see him again in less than a 
 month transformed into a man with a single object, pur- 
 sued and succeeded in with the tenacity common to 
 minds much narrower than his own. 
 
 I know that events will largely account for the change. 
 The Girondins had repelled him; diplomacy had no further 
 object when once the imiversal war was declared; the 
 grave perils, and later the disasters of the French armies 
 
2o6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 whicli he had seen with his own eyes, called imperatively 
 for a dictatorship. Nevertheless events will not of them- 
 selves account for the very great transformation in all 
 that he says and does. I beheve that we must look to 
 another cause — one of those causes which historians 
 neglect, but which in the lives of individuals are of far 
 more importance than their political surroundings. By 
 nature he had great tendencies to indolence as well as 
 to violence. He was capable of temporising to a danger- 
 ous extent, and this, I think, was largely the cause of his 
 action in the autumn. But such natures are also of the 
 kind which disaster spurs to action. As we have seen, the 
 return in January to his household, ruined by an impend- 
 ing fate, made him the violent and bitter speaker who 
 spoiled his own plans by his own speeches. But returning 
 from Belgium in February, not a menace but a definite 
 disaster awoke in him a much more useful energy. 
 
 Coming from fields in which he had seen the whole 
 force of the early battles breaking up in confusion and 
 retreat, he had suddenly to meet the news of his wife's 
 death. He bought a light carriage for himself in order 
 to travel with greater speed, and arrived at the city in 
 time, they say, to have her coffin taken out of the grave 
 and opened, so that he might look once more upon her 
 face. The home was entirely empty. The two little chil- 
 dren, one of whom was in arms, the other of whom was 
 just beginning to talk, had been taken away to their grand- 
 mother's. The seals were on the furniture and on the 
 doors. One servant only remained. The house had been 
 without a fire for a week when he entered. It was an oppor- 
 tunity and a command for another origin in his political 
 life. Coming and going from these rooms, he found them 
 intolerable ; he took refuge in direct and determined 
 action, calUng to his aid all that vast reserve of energy 
 which he was accustomed to expend at the cost of so 
 much future exhaustion. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 207 
 
 Here was the first thing to be done — to construct at 
 once that strong and simple government which he had 
 talked of so long. The report which he and the other 
 commissioners had prepared on the state of the army ^ 
 was one deliberately intended to make such a government 
 voted. The Commune of Paris immediately after the 
 preparation of the report made its vigorous appeal for a 
 further levy, and on the 8th of March Danton made the 
 first of those speeches which riveted the armour all round 
 France.* 
 
 In the first phrase of this speech he strikes the note 
 upon which depended so much of his power. He reads 
 his own character into that of the nation. " We have 
 often discovered before now that this is the temper of 
 the French people— namely, that it needs dangers to 
 discover all its energy." Then he strikes the other note, 
 the appeal to Paris which had marked so much of his 
 career. " Paris, which has been given so iU a fame " (a 
 stroke at the Girondins), " I say is called once more to 
 give France the impulse which last year produced all 
 our triumphs. We promised the army in Belgium 30,000 
 men on the ist of February. None have reached them. 
 And I demand that commissioners be named to raise a 
 force in the forty-eight Sections of Paris." 
 
 If there was some talk at that moment of making 
 bim Minister of War after Beumonville's resignation, it 
 was because no one but Danton himself understood 
 how much his energy could do. He rejected the pro- 
 posal, but he had the desire to replace the ministers 
 themselves by a power more formidable and more direct. 
 
 In these days one disaster after another came to help 
 his scheme. More than one of his enemies had suspected 
 in a vague fashion that he was framing a new power,^ but 
 they could not imagine in Danton anything higher than 
 
 1 Moniteur, March 9, 1793. ' Ibid. March 10, 1793. 
 
 ' See Patriate Pran^aii, No. 1308. 
 
2o8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 ambition, and they lent him the ridiculous project of 
 forcing a new ministry upon the Assembly. What he 
 was really preparing, and what he produced on the loth 
 of March, was the weapon which history has called the 
 Kevolutionary Tribunal. 
 
 It was the moment when the mutterings against the 
 Girondins seemed about to take the form of an insur- 
 rection, when their priating presses were broken, and 
 when, in the vague panic that always followed any popular 
 movement since September, men feared a renewal of the 
 massacres. The proposal is put forward with ability of 
 argument rather than with passion ; but, in the teeth of 
 the majority and a ministry to which such methods were 
 detestable, in the teeth, that is, of the Girondin idealism 
 which was ruining the country, he affirmed the necessity 
 of his scheme, and he passed it.^ He had given the 
 Revolutionary Government its first great weapon, a weapon 
 that was later to be turned against himself; his second 
 move was to put it into vigorous hands. 
 
 This next proposition, which, combined with the esta- 
 blishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was to change 
 the history of France, did not proceed from Danton alone, 
 but it was based upon Danton's suggestion; it sprang 
 largely from the vivid impression he had given of the 
 peril in which France lay and of the necessity of forming 
 something central and strong, of providing a hand which 
 could use the dictatorship of the Terror. The Committee 
 of Public Safety, in a word, could not have been declared 
 but for the interpretation which Danton had given to the 
 disasters of March. 
 
 The crowning defeat of Neerwinden, which at the 
 time must almost have seemed the death of the Republic, 
 gave the first impulse. The old Committee of General 
 Defence was renewed. But though this committee was 
 far too large and far too feeble, we owe it to Danton that 
 
 ' See Moniteur, March 13, 1793. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 209 
 
 it contained a vigorous minority from the Left. The 
 final blow that replaced it by an institution round which 
 the rest of this book will turn was the treason of 
 Dumouriez. 
 
 Let us consider what the situation was at this moment. 
 The Republic had lost every man upon whose ability she 
 could rely ia the leadership of armies. Of all the school 
 of generals who had grown up under the old regime, 
 Lafayette alone in his weak way had loved freedom, and 
 Dumouriez alone had remained on the side of the French. 
 Spain, England, the German Powers — nine allies — were 
 threatening the territory of the Eepubhc and the very 
 existence of the new regime ; the civil war, which was 
 soon to take such gigantic proportions, had already made 
 its successful beginning at Machecoul. Between the 
 Convention and immediate disaster there lay only the 
 personality of Dumouriez. When the news of his deser- 
 tion, following on the news of his defeat, reached Paris, 
 the Girondins were hopelessly discredited, and the line of 
 their poUtical retreat, the pursuit of their enemies, ran in 
 a direction that Danton's speeches had prepared. 
 
 For several days he had himself been the object of 
 the most violent attacks, especially for his friendship with 
 Dumouriez and on the question of the Belgian accounts. 
 For he had just returned from a third mission to the 
 army, and had been close to the general. On the ist 
 of April practically the whole sitting was devoted to an 
 attack upon him and to his defence. Had you been 
 sitting in the house that night, you would have said that 
 a violent demagogue, surrounded by a Httle group of yet 
 more violent friends, was resisting with some difficulty 
 the attacks of an honest and loyal majority. But this 
 demagogue was so far-seeing, was so much the greatest 
 of all those in the hall, that when three days afterwards 
 the ParHament was brought face to face with the reality, 
 Danton's method becomes the only solution. They hear 
 
 o 
 
2IO THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 of Dumouriez' treason, and on the night of the 4th of 
 April, Isnard, himself a Girondin, proposed the creation of 
 the Committee. Danton supported him at midnight with 
 a definite speech such as no Girondin would have dared 
 to make. He said practically, " This Committee is pre- 
 cisely what we want, a hand to grasp the weapon of the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal." 
 
 It was Isnard that formulated the idea, but it was 
 Danton that baptised it " A Dictator." It was at midnight 
 that he spoke, and he closed his short speech just on the 
 turn of the morning of the 5 th of April. That very day a 
 year later the Dictator seized him, and his own Tribunal 
 put him to death. 
 
 On the 5 th of April, the next day, in the evening, we 
 begin to get those large measures and rapid which came 
 with the new organ of power. And Danton speaks with 
 a kind of joy, and demands at once such measures as 
 only a dictatorship can produce— calling all the people to 
 the defence, fixing a maximum upon the price of bread, 
 even the first mention of a levi?e en masse. The air is 
 fuU of such a spirit as you get in an army, the certitude 
 that with discipline and unity and authority all things can 
 be done. On the following day, the 6th, the Committee 
 was chosen, and on the 7 th the names were read out, 
 which showed that the power had finally passed from the 
 Girondins to those whom they had rejected at the moment 
 when France was forgiving everything for the sake of 
 Jemappes. The Convention, in need of men of action, 
 had been forced to abandon its own leaders and to turn 
 to Danton. 
 
 The names that they heard read out were Barrfere, 
 Delmas, Brevard, Debry, Morvaux, Cambon, Treilhard, La- 
 croix, and Danton. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE TERROR 
 
 From the 6th April 1793, from the act which was de- 
 scribed at the end of the last chapter, we have something 
 new in the course of the Kevolution. We have at last an 
 Institution. 
 
 It is in the nature of the French people (for reasons 
 which might to some extent be determined, but whose 
 discussion has no place in this book) that their history 
 should present itself in a peculiarly dramatic fashion. 
 Their adventures, their illusions, their violence, their de- 
 spair, their achievements, seem upon a hundred occasions 
 to centre round particular men or certaia conspicuous 
 actions, in such a fashion that those men and these actions 
 fit themselves into a story, the plot and interest of which 
 absorb the reader. But if we attempt to connect the 
 whole into a series, even if we attempt to give the causes 
 or the meaning of a few years' events, the dramatic aspect 
 fails. This quality, which has fascinated so many, has 
 also mistaught us and confused us, and, in the desire to 
 " throw the limelight " upon the centre of action, one 
 historian after another has left in obscurity that imper- 
 sonal blind force which directs the whole. 
 
 This force in France is the Institution. Understand 
 the character and methods of her central power, and you 
 find yourself possessed of this great key to the imder- 
 standing of her history, namely, that events follow each 
 other in the order that the Institution requires, and the 
 nation moves along the lines which the Institution deter- 
 
212 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 mines. The Institution provides a standpoint from which 
 all falls into perspective, even the details of personality no 
 longer remain in confusion. You find, in a little while, 
 that you are dealing with an organism more simple and 
 of far greater vitahty than any man, as truly a living, and 
 much more truly a permanent, force than a monarch or a 
 great minister can be. 
 
 The consideration of half-a-dozen examples will make 
 this clear. What is all that marvellously dramatic action 
 between Pepin le Bref and the coronation of Hugh but 
 confusion ? It ceases to be so when we follow with Fustel 
 de Coulanges the transformation of the Imperial system. 
 You can make nothing of the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
 for all their personal interest, until you have grasped Feu- 
 dalism, and it is a common-place that the six hundred 
 years that follow are but the development of the Capetian 
 method. It is not in Louis the XL, or in Mazarin, or ia 
 Louis XIV. that we find the Force — it is in the French 
 monarchy. Look about you at the present day, ask your- 
 self what has recreated the prosperity of modern France, 
 and you will certainly not be able to find a special man. 
 It is the System that has done the work. 
 
 Now it is the note of all the Revolution, as we have 
 followed it up to this point, that the Institution was lack- 
 ing. France without it was France without herself : she 
 dissolved. The cause of this lack was as follows : The 
 monarchy, round which everything had centred, was dying, 
 and the social theories of the time — the great Philosophy 
 on which France was fed — neglected and despised the 
 Institution, relying as it did upon the vague force of 
 general opinion. It was the chief — I had almost said the 
 only — fault of the Jeffersonians in America and the idealist 
 Ropnblicans in France, that they could see neither the 
 necessity of formulae nor the just power of systems. Never- 
 theless it was the instinct which remained in the French 
 mind, the "sub-conscious" sense of what the InstitutioQ 
 
THE TERROR 213 
 
 was to France, that made half the violence of the time. I 
 do not mean that the speeches recognised this character 
 openly — on the contrary, the enmities and the divisions 
 seem to turn entirely upon personal hatreds ; but I mean 
 that the underlying fear, unexpressed but real, was that 
 such and such a proposition would create a permanent 
 tendency, and that Girondin or Jacobin success meant the 
 deflection of the torrent into one or the other of two 
 divergent channels. Here in England, living under an 
 order which is well established and old, we wonder at the 
 intensity of passion which some abstract resolution could 
 arouse in the Convention. We should wonder no longer 
 were we to comprehend that in the extreme rapidity with 
 which all France was being remoulded, a few words agreed 
 upon, a mere principle, might add a quality to all the 
 future history of the nation. 
 
 Two men in the Revolutionary period rose higher 
 than the flood, Mirabeau and Danton. Each was able 
 to perceive what the permanent character of the nation 
 was, and each gave all his efibrts to the uniting or weld- 
 ing round some stable centre the new order to which 
 both were attached. In a word, each understood what 
 the Institution was to France, and desired to lend it 
 force and endurance. With Mirabeau it was the monarchy. 
 Would he have saved, recreated, and restored that de- 
 clining power which had once been the framework of the 
 nation ? We cannot tell. Had he lived, '92 would have 
 shown us; only we know that if the monarchy had 
 seemed to him at last beyond repair, he would have 
 proposed at once some similar power to replace it. Now 
 Danton had survived ; doubtful in 1791, " more monarchist 
 than you, M. de Lafayette," he was determined in 1792 
 that the crown and France were separate for ever. He 
 overthrew the palace, but from that very moment all his 
 pohcy was directed to the construction of a governing 
 power. It is here that he and the Girondins, for all his 
 
214 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 personal attempts at unity, were hopelessly divided. The 
 Girondins were bent upon that local autonomy and that 
 extreme individual hberty in which the central power 
 disappears. With the growing danger, with his own 
 experience of Belgium, Danton, during the early part of 
 1793, becomes set upon the idea of government and of 
 nothing else. He gave it a weapon before it existed, for 
 he made the Revolutionary Tribunal, and though Isnard 
 first proposed it, it is known that Danton led the move- 
 ment which ended in the establishment of the Com- 
 mittee. 
 
 All government since that time in France has been 
 its heir. It was the Committee that forged the central- 
 ised system, that showed how the administration might 
 radiate from Paris, that gave precedent for the conscrip- 
 tion and for all determined action. That dictatorship so 
 plainly saved the country in its worst peril that under 
 many different names the French people have often re- 
 called it, and rarely without success. 
 
 All the remaining year with which this chapter must 
 deal is the story of the Committee. The Committee 
 explains and gives us the clue to every action. Its 
 changes, the men who dominated it, the reasons it had 
 for violence or for clemency, its main object of throwing 
 back the invasions — these are the central part of 1793 
 and 1794. 
 
 Had we an accurate account of what passed in that 
 secret council, almost every event could be referred to it. 
 But such an account is lacking. Barrfere, always incon- 
 sistent, wrote a rigmarole in his old age which has 
 anecdotes of interest, but which is almost valueless for 
 our purpose. Here and there we have a disconnected 
 anecdote or a lame confession, but the doors of the room 
 are as closed to us as they were to the contemporaries 
 who stood in the outer hall and received the official 
 nothings of Barrfere, or later of St. Just. Nevertheless 
 
THE TERROR 215 
 
 what we can reconstruct of its spirit and action, im- 
 perfect as our effort may be, does more to explain the 
 time than any descriptions of the orators or of the 
 crowd. 
 
 The action of this new executive, as it touches Danton, 
 changes rapidly during the year. In the first Committee 
 of nine Danton is everything. He made it and he directs 
 it. Towards the close, however, of its short existence, he 
 is beginming to feel the pressure of the Jacobins, and of 
 Robespierre and of St. Just, the victory of the Mountain. 
 This loss of power on his part ends with the dissolution 
 of the old Committee, and when the new one is formed — 
 with the loth of July — another period begins. The 
 members are increased to twelve ; then enter the Robes- 
 pierrians. Danton, for motives which we shall discuss 
 later, resigns, and there are two doubtful summer months 
 when he still maintains, from without, the power of the 
 Committee, but first begins to check so far as is possible 
 the tyranny upon which it has embarked. He retires 
 in a kind of despair to Arcis, and with his retiuTi a new 
 phase is entered. The Committee is striking furiously; 
 the Terror has taken root ; and by an action of generosity, 
 or perhaps of wisdom, Danton sets himself against his 
 own creation. These few months — the winter of 1793- 
 1794 — give us that side of Danton which at the time was 
 least explicable, but which best defines him for posterity. 
 He puts his whole weight as an orator, and, through the 
 genius of his friends, he puts the journals also against the 
 Terror. Knowing (as he must have known) how strong 
 was the engine he had made, he yet withstands it, and 
 attempts by a purely personal force, without an organisa- 
 tion and without executive power, to reduce the action 
 of the Committee. So great was he that for some weeks 
 his success hung in the balance. France, we must pre- 
 sume, was with him. Paris doubted, but might have 
 
2i6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 been won. When the violent and unscrupulous H^bertists 
 were executed he seemed to have succeeded, and the 
 Terror appeared to be closed. But the Committee had 
 a deeper policy; in the same week that saw the fall of 
 Hubert, Danton was himself suddenly arrested with his 
 friends. How far Robespierre permitted and how far 
 directed the action will never be fully known. The 
 Committee struck the one great force opposed to it, and 
 the Dantonists were executed on the anniversary of its 
 creation. 
 
 The first part of the story of the Committee in its 
 relation to Danton is the period between April the 6th 
 and July the loth 1793. It is the period of the fall of 
 the Girondins; and to make clear the importance of the 
 new power I shall adopt this method : — 
 
 To give first in their order the events that led to the 
 attack on the Parliament and the expulsion of the twenty- 
 two ; to show in what confusion the whole story Ues, and 
 how difiicult (or impossible) it is to follow the motives 
 of the deputies, or to say why they acted as they did. 
 Then to give, as a parallel account, the position and 
 action of the Committee, and to show how fully (in my 
 opinion) its motive determines the history of the time ; 
 to look at the insurrection of June 2 from the room 
 where the nine members debated in secret, and to point 
 out how, from that standpoint (which was Danton's own), 
 the confusion falls into order. 
 
 First, then, what was the exterior history of the move- 
 ment that destroyed the Gu'onde ? It will be remem- 
 bered that when the Convention first met in September, 
 the great majority of its numbers inclined to a certain 
 spirit. That spirit was best represented by a small group 
 of men, idealists and orators — and of these a number, 
 the most powerful perhaps, had come from the vineyards 
 of the peaceable southern river. The warmth, the calm, 
 
THE TERROR 217 
 
 the fruitfulness of the Valley of the Gironde, appeared 
 in Vergniaud's accents. To this devoted band of men, 
 whose whole career was justice and virtue, no one has 
 dared to be contemptuous, and history on every side has 
 left them heroes. They were own brothers to the im- 
 mortal group that framed the American Constitution, 
 the true heirs of Eousseau, and worthy to defend and 
 at last to give their lives for the Republican idea. They 
 hated the shedding of blood ; they tested every action 
 by the purest standard of their creed ; and from the first 
 speeches in which they demanded the war, to the day 
 when they sang the Marseillaise on the scaffold, they did 
 not swerve an inch from the path which they had set 
 before themselves. 
 
 What led such men] into conflict with Pajris, and per- 
 haps with France ? This fault ; that the pure theory which 
 they justly maintained to be the one right government 
 could not meet Europe in arms. What a few milhons lost 
 on the littoral of the American continent could do, without 
 frontiers and without memories, that France could not 
 do with civil war raging, and with the world invading 
 her frontiers. A modification was imperative, a com- 
 promise with necessary evil. The men who felt reahty 
 knew that well. Danton had forced on a dictatorship, 
 and gave it the method of the Terror. But the Girondins, 
 though they had been compelled to give up so much, yet 
 refused to follow the necessary path. They refused the 
 conscription ; a volunteer army was the only one tolerable 
 to free men. They refused diplomacy ; it involved a secret 
 method, and was of its nature based on compromise. 
 They refused the requisitions to the armies, the forced 
 taxes, the hegemony of Paris, the preponderance of 
 talent or genius in the committees — in a word, they 
 refused to sanction anything, however necessary, in that 
 crisis, which they would not have sanctioned in a time 
 of order and of a pure republic. 
 
2i8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The result of this sublime obstinacy was the ruia 
 of France and of themselves. The Royalists saw it, and 
 called themselves " Girondins ; " the great name became 
 a label for every reaction, and in every new disaster Paris 
 saw with increasing clearness the restraining hand of the 
 Gironde. For it was Paris and its Commune that took 
 the leadership in the attempt to depose or expel the men 
 who led the Parliament. Already before the Committee 
 had been formed, the Commune on April the 2nd had 
 begun to correspond with the municipalities of France — 
 the fatal step that had so often preceded insurrection. 
 To Paris as a centre, to Paris radical, and especially to 
 Paris violent and unreasoning, the Girondins had grown 
 detestable. Paris for a thousand years had stood for unity 
 — the Girondins were autonomist and federal. Paris was 
 passionate — the Girondins as calm as light. To all this 
 enmity the Gironde answered by no force, but only by 
 an assertion of their inviolable right. All AprU and May 
 is consumed in the tale of great disasters without, and 
 of the acute battle between the Right and the deputa- 
 tion from Paris within. 
 
 It is when we turn to this struggle within the Con- 
 vention that the confusion arises which can only be made 
 clear by considering the Committee. Especially is this 
 the case with regard to Danton's action. Thus, on the 
 loth of April, he opposes the prosecution of those who 
 sent a petition from the Halle aux Bles for the resigna- 
 tion of Roland ; on the 13 th there is the famous speech 
 in favour of diplomatic action as opposed to the violence 
 of the Mountain. Yet the day before he also opposed in a 
 formal and weU-reasoned speech the arrest and trial of 
 Marat. When that madman, with whom his name had 
 been so often linked, came back in triumph from his 
 acquittal, Danton took a yet more inexplicable attitude. 
 While all the Mountain were shouting for joy, and while 
 Paris welcomed the verdict as the first wound of the 
 
THE TERROR 219 
 
 Gironde (which, indeed, it was), Danton merely said, 
 " Paris, we see, so loves the Convention as to applaud 
 the acquittal of one of its members " — a very trans- 
 parent speech. On the ist of May Danton is the only 
 man to speak with sobriety and good sense against the 
 petition of the Faubourg St. Antoine, which attacked 
 the rig]|its of property ; yet on the i oth he turns agiKnst 
 Isnard, that is, against the Gironde and the Moderates, 
 and causes the proposal of what was practically a popular 
 referendum on the constitution to be rejected. We see, 
 therefore, even when we look at the action of Danton 
 alone, the apparent confusion that was indicated above. 
 Were we to turn to almost any other of the Committee 
 the same would be apparent. Barrfere, the chief spokes- 
 man, seems to take now one side, now the other. At one 
 moment he attacks the Girondins purposely ; at another 
 the petitions from Paris ; at every point, in the action 
 of every prominent speaker outside the two opposing 
 groups, there appears this inextricable tangle. 
 
 With the I oth of May the battle between Paris and 
 the Gironde entered into its last phase. It was upon this 
 date that the Convention began to sit permanently in 
 the little theatre of the Tuilleries, where they had first 
 met. The news that met them was the death of Dampierre 
 and the taking of Thenars by the Vendeans. Every 
 rumour of disaster (and the rumours were being confirmed 
 with fatal rapidity) was like oil spilt from the lamp of 
 the Gironde. Their own followers were shaken, the great 
 mass of the Convention who put their trust in these pure 
 doctrines grew afraid and doubtful. Within a week (on 
 the 1 7th) the Commune took a farther step ; they made 
 their own law, and put Boulanger at the head of the 
 armed force of the town — a force that was not theirs to 
 govern. Later they gave Henriot the place. The Con- 
 vention answered by electing Isnard their president ; and 
 Guadet, the headstrong, proposed to break the Commune, 
 
220 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 and to call the "suppliants" to Bourges. By this pro- 
 posal a kind of Parliament in reserve would have existed 
 to take up the work if the Parliament in Paris should be 
 mutilated. Had the motion passed, the civil war, which 
 was muttering in Lyons and had broken into open flame 
 in Vendue, would have embraced all France. 
 
 But at this juncture Danton's Committee comes in 
 again with its curiously mixed action. By the mouth of 
 Barrfere it pleads against the motion, and proposes instead 
 the appointment of twelve members, as Girondin as they 
 pleased, to judge the Commune, to " inquire." The com- 
 mission was named, and acted on thorough principle and 
 with haste, and without judgment, as any one might have 
 foretold ; for such was the Girondin weakness. Against the 
 army that the Commune was gathering, all it could pro- 
 pose was to double the sergeant's guard at the Tuilleries, 
 while it exasperated its enemy by ordering the arrest of 
 H(5bert. 
 
 Hebert was the one man in the Revolution of whom 
 the truth has certaialy been told by enemies. There was 
 something of the pickpocket in Hubert, but not of the 
 pickpocket only. He was also a blasphemer, an atheist, 
 a man delighting in the foulest words, and in the most 
 cowardly or ferocious of actions. His prominence was 
 due to two things. First, he was the pamphleteer of the 
 time, the " P^re Duchesne." France had not yet disco- 
 vered the danger of a free press. Secondly, in the 
 Parisian exasperation against " the Moderates," the most 
 extreme and the least rational became of necessity a 
 kind of symbol, an accentuated type, and was thrust 
 forward as a defiance. It is not too much to say that 
 the Girondins themselves, by their lack of all measure, 
 pushed Hubert to the front. 
 
 Such measures as those which "the twelve" had 
 decreed were but fuel for the insurrectionary flame. 
 Once more Danton appears, this time against the Gironde. 
 
THE TERROR 221 
 
 To tte demand for a large guard drawn from the Depart- 
 ments lie said, " You are decreeing that you are afraid ! " 
 Whereupon a voice from the right cried with some humour, 
 " I am." Danton had his way, the guard was not formed, 
 and on the foUowiug day (the 2Sth of May) Isnard's 
 imprudence brought on the catastrophe. 
 
 It was LQ the matter of the petition for the release of 
 Hubert. Isnard rose in. the chair, lifted his hand, and pro- 
 nounced in. his hollow voice the words that have enriched 
 history at the expense of his country : " If such a thing 
 should happen as an attempt upon the representatives of 
 the nation, I say to you, in the name of all France, that 
 very soon men would search upon the banks of the Seine 
 for proofs that Paris had once been there." Danton 
 intervened, but he could do nothing. The glove had 
 been thrown down. He asked for the withdrawal of 
 those words; the Girondin majority reaffirmed them. 
 Two days later he obtained the freedom of Hubert ; but 
 though for a moment he was promised the dissolution of 
 the " Commission of the Twelve," his effort faUed, for 
 they were immediately reinstated. In the night between 
 the 30th and the 31st of May the Sections named a new 
 and insurrectionary Commune ; for one day the danger 
 was warded off, and you may see Danton, stiU so difficult 
 to understand, urging the Committee, while Barrfere is pro- 
 posing the conciliatory message to France, a document 
 which blamed neither the Girondins nor Paris, and the 
 twelve were dissolved. But the final blow was not to 
 be avoided. On the 2nd of June the news of the counter- 
 revolution in Lyons reached Paris. The Convention was 
 surrounded; Henriot, at the head of the city militia, 
 guarded its approaches, lined the corridors. Even in 
 that moment, when Isnard proposed to retire, and made 
 his superb apology, the Gironde, as a whole, stood firm. 
 The inflexible Jansenist, Lanjuinais, proposed, with heroic 
 foUy, " a decree dissolving the authorities of Paris," at a 
 
222 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 moment when these very authorities were holding the 
 doors with fixed bayonets; but in spite of Barrfere's de- 
 mand for Henriot's condemnation, in spite of Danton's 
 demand for " a signal punishment," the Convention 
 yielded, voted the arrest not only of the twenty- two, 
 whom the Commune had demanded, but of twenty-nine, 
 and Vergniaud, Barbaroux, Guadet; Le Brun, and Clavi^re 
 (who were nominally ministers); Eoland (who had fled, 
 and whose wife was imprisoned by the Commune) — in 
 fine, the whole body of those great orators who had made 
 the Republic — were thrust out of the Assembly, some to 
 be held in the honourable confinement of their own 
 houses, some to fly and raise civil war in the Depart- 
 ments. The Commune ofiered hostages in equal number, 
 but they were refused ; and before the day was over the 
 Parliament was mutilated, and the obstacle to the dicta- 
 torship and to the Terror had been swept away. 
 
 Such is a rapid summary of the fall of the Giron- 
 dins — a story of contradictions and of inextricable cross- 
 purposes, in which for two months men seem (especially 
 the men of the new Committee) to change sides, to 
 hesitate, and to falter, in which the majority passes over 
 to the Jacobins with a startling rapidity, and in which 
 (apparently) the only two fixed points are the immov- 
 able figures of the Gironde and their opponents of the 
 Commune. 
 
 I know that this confusion has commonly led writers 
 to adopt an equal confusion in their explanation of the 
 insurrection and of its motives. To disentangle such a 
 skein it was apparently necessary to make Robespierre a 
 prophet, Isnard for once a coward, Barrere a skilful diplo- 
 matist, Danton a vacillator. Such a method appears to 
 me false. If, to explain a diflScult passage in history, we 
 make men b^liave in a way which contradicts all their 
 lives, we must (it seems to me) be in error. These special 
 theories are mechanical, and do not satisfy the mind. 
 
THE TERROR 223 
 
 The question is this : Somewhere a power existed ; 
 why was not that power in evidence either on one side 
 or on the other ? And why do we not see it acting ? I 
 believe the answer is as follows : — 
 
 The power was in the Committee. The Commit- 
 tee behoved it necessary to be rid of the Girondins. 
 But the Committee was part of the Convention — the 
 existence and the authority of the Convention was neces- 
 sary to it. It saw on the one hand a set of Parliamentary 
 leaders who would not permit it to act with vigour, on the 
 other it noted the angry spirit of Paris. The Committee 
 permitted that spirit to act, but gave it its measure and 
 its direction unknown to itself, desiring to eliminate the 
 Moderates, but anxious to avoid their proscription, exile, or 
 death. With this clue the maze seems to me resolved. 
 It was the Committee that expelled the Gironde, using 
 Paris for its arm. 
 
 Now to prove this certain steps are necessary. In 
 the first place, why can we say that the Committee was 
 the centre of power ? Because it alone had access to a 
 complete knowledge of France, it alone debated in secret, 
 and it alone existed for the express purpose of dictator- 
 ship. When once the generals, the deputies in mission, 
 and the poHce became famUiar with the new organ, they 
 referred to the Committee as naturally as the correspond- 
 ing men to-day would refer to a cabinet or to a monarch. 
 If the reader will glance at any portion of the document 
 which is printed as Appendix XI. of this book, and to which 
 I shall continually refer in this passage, he will at once 
 perceive that the men who drew it up had in their hands 
 every lever of pubUc machinery. I would not maintain 
 that this power sprang at once into existence on the 6th 
 of April, but the two months that produced such a report 
 was ample time to have developed a corresponding grasp 
 upon the armies, upon the diplomacy, and upon the 
 internal resources of Revolutionary France. Where else 
 
224 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 will you find such a document in all the offices of the 
 time ? Compared with it the decisions of the ministry 
 are vague abstractions, the reports of the Commune 
 puerihties or ravings. Eevolutionary France, until the 
 formation of the Committee, may be compared to a marsh 
 in which the water tends to flow to no one centre ; the 
 information, the revenue, the public forces stood incoherent 
 and stagnant. The creation of this secret body may be 
 compared to a pit dug in its centre, to which the waters 
 would immediately flow. It may be objected that they 
 had not the control of finance. No ; but they had 
 Cambon. In an assembly of men new to government 
 this very difficult province fell of itself into the hands of 
 a man whose genius all admitted, and whose probity 
 no one of his enemies would deny. Long before the 
 insurrection took place, any man with information, with 
 authority, or with a special duty to perform, had learnt 
 to regard the Committee as his chief, for the simple reason 
 that no other centre of authority existed. Add to this 
 the incalculable force of secrecy, the power by which the 
 most glaring failures of our cabinets can be hidden by 
 merely saying, " We know what all the rest ignore,'' and 
 it will appear reasonable to say that by June the Com- 
 mittee could almost, had it wished, have summoned an 
 army to Paris. The Committee then held the power. 
 
 In the second place, we must establish, as far as is 
 possible, the aims of the Committee and their method of 
 guiding the insurrection. As was said earlier in this 
 chapter, those aims and methods can only be arrived at 
 by inference ; the very nature of a body that dehberates 
 in secret makes this method of inquiry necessary. There 
 is no direct evidence, unless the contradictory anecdotes 
 of a much later period can be given that name. Now 
 we can infer with some accuracy what went on in their 
 deliberations. There should be noted at the outset the 
 document to which I have already referred, and which, if 
 
THE TERROR 225 
 
 I am not mistaken, is printed for the first time in this 
 book. It was the first of those general Rapports which were 
 delivered by Barrke to the Convention for the next six- 
 teen months, and which so profoundly affected the com-se 
 of the Revolution. It sums up the result of two months 
 of astonishing labour; everything — all the weakness of 
 France — has been noted with the accuracy of a topo- 
 graphical survey. It gives the equipment, the provision- 
 ing, the local difficulties of each army, the detailed 
 condition of the fleet (a most deplorable picture), the 
 result of what is evidently an elaborate spy-system in the 
 department of foreign intrigue, and everywhere the indict- 
 ment is obvious — " whatever has governed France hitherto 
 has hopelessly failed." There are, indeed, pohte refer- 
 ences to the ineptitude of the old regime, but side by 
 side with these there is a direct attack on the Girondin 
 Ministers of War, and on the diplomatic, or rather non- 
 diplomatic, methods which had been pursued abroad; 
 indeed, many parts of this report would not be out of 
 place had they appeared in a Compte Rendu drawn up 
 by the victorious insurrection, instead of preceding, as 
 they did, the fall of the Gironde. 
 
 Again, there is the date of its appearance. It was 
 not by a coincidence that Barrfere was given it to read on 
 the 29th of May. Note this sequence. Isnard made 
 his fatal speech on Saturday the 2Sth. Monday the 
 27th was the date of Danton's attempt to dissolve "the 
 twelve;" and his failure followed on Tuesday the 28th, 
 when, by the bhndness or firmness of the Gironde, they 
 were reinstated. It is on Wednesday the 29th that 
 Barr^re rises at the end of a long and stormy discussion, 
 and, late in the afternoon, presents his report. The vague 
 phrases on the importance of unity which it contains have 
 made some imagine that it was an attempt at conciliation, 
 rapidly devised and thrown out at that critical moment. 
 That opinion is surely erroneous, It is long (some 1 7,000 
 
 p 
 
226 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 ■words) and carefully prepared ; it must have taken some 
 time to draw up, and it has all the appearance of a 
 ■weapon framed at leisure and held in reserve ; it comes 
 at that moment with some such force as this, saying 
 from the Committee, from Danton, to the Gironde — " You 
 have refused to do what France absolutely needed. You 
 have rejected my attempts to save you, the avenues 
 which I opened for your escape; you were given the 
 commission of twelve ; you have fatally abused the gift. 
 Will you be convinced at the last moment by this 
 picture of the terrible straits to which you have brought 
 the nation ? " 
 
 Finally, we can draw a fairly conclusive set of proofs 
 from our knowledge of the men in the Committee and 
 of the public action they took. Of all the nine, Danton 
 was the one commanding personaUty. Cambon was a 
 specialist, and but for him and Lindet, honest but not an 
 orator, there were Danton and his men only. Barrere, 
 it may be urged, was not a Dantonist ; but he was 
 pUant to a degree ; his pliancy is notorious, and has 
 ignorantly been given a stUl worse name. Moreover, 
 Barrfere was closeted with Danton day after day; they 
 undertook the same department in the Committee (that 
 of foreign affairs), and they follow exactly the same 
 course in the tribune. In the Department of War was 
 Delacroix, Danton's friend and right hand. Of the report 
 itself, all the last part, and possibly some paragraphs in 
 the middle, were drawn up by Danton. Later we shall 
 see that his preponderance was notorious and a danger 
 to him. 
 
 Well, Danton and the Committee being so nearly 
 identical, can we make a description of the motive that 
 urged him ? I think we can. Desmoulin's " Histoire des 
 Brissottins " was certainly not of Danton's inspiration. 
 Camille wrote that deadly pamphlet under the eye of 
 Robespierre. But Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobins, on 
 
THE TERROR 227 
 
 May the ist, calling on the Girondins "to go, and return 
 when all is settled," is almost using Danton's own phrase 
 — " Qu'ils s'en aillent, et qu'Us revennent profiler de notre 
 victoire." All that he and Barrfere say, from then to the 
 day of June the 2nd, seems to fall under this formula. He 
 permits the attack of the Commune, while he does every- 
 thing to moderate its force. He speaks continually for 
 the defence, but he and his Committee refuse to act, and 
 if ever he has spoken a little too strongly, has given the 
 Girondins a httle too much power, he retreats somewhat 
 towards the Commune. He resembles a man who is 
 opening a sluice in a dyke of the fen country: behind 
 him is the sea; he admits and plays with its power, but 
 unless his calculation is just it may rush in and over- 
 whelm him. He permitted Paris to strike, and he created 
 a tyranny ; both the mob of the capital and the dictator- 
 ship were destined to break from his hands. 
 
 These are, as 1 read them, the causes of the fall of 
 the Girondins. I have dealt with them at this length 
 because the passage from the 3 ist of May to the 2nd of 
 Jime 1793 is not only one of the most fiercely debated, 
 but also one of the most important in the history of the 
 Kevolution. I have not given it too much space, for upon 
 the understanding of what led to and what permitted the 
 insurrection depends, without any question, our final judg- 
 ment on Danton's position. 
 
 Here, then, the Committee, even in its infancy, 
 furnishes the clue to a difiicult passage in the Revolution. 
 It is becoming more and more necessary as research pro- 
 gresses to refer the mysteries of the period to that central 
 body ; and, as it seems to me, we have in its first general 
 report the first explanation of that most complex move- 
 ment, the insurrection of the 2nd of June. 
 
 The Gironde having disappeared, there was left before 
 Danton a task of extreme difficulty. He was about to 
 attempt the management of men whom he deliberately 
 
228 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 permitted to engage in battle. It is of the very first 
 importance in our study of his career to appreciate the 
 conditions of this task. Consider for a moment what he 
 has done. He has by arguments, by threats, and finally 
 by the use of the mob, made the Kevolutionary Govern- 
 ment a reality. It is in this last ally that we find the 
 cause of his future failure. Hitherto he has been battling 
 with particular men, preventing a small group of politi- 
 cians from obstructing the Revolutionary measures, cajoling 
 on the other hand the extreme members of the Conven- 
 tion by calculated outbursts of sympathy. Such a task no 
 one would find impossible, did he possess at once a clear 
 object and the genius to approach it. But after the 2nd 
 of June it was another matter. He had let loose the 
 storm, and with the pride of a man who felt his strength 
 inwards and outwards (for scheming and for haranguing), 
 he had determined deliberately to ride it. It was a mis- 
 calculation. Something resembling a natural force, some- 
 thing like an earthquake or a lava stream, opposed itself 
 to his mere individual wiU; and Danton, who among the 
 pohticians had been like a man among boys, became in 
 the presence of these new forces like a lonely traveller 
 struggling at evening against a growing tempest in the 
 mountains. From this moment we shall see him using 
 in vain against the passions of 1793 the ability, the ruse, 
 the eloquence, the energy which had so long succeeded 
 among the statesmen. They will be swept down like 
 driftwood upon the current of popular madness which he 
 himself has let loose. The Committee will be formed of 
 new members, the Terror will grow from day to day, the 
 Revolution will begin to take on that character of fanati- 
 cism which was directly opposed to Danton's plan, and he 
 wiU retire disappointed and beaten. He will return 
 frankly out of sympathy with the excesses, and in expia- 
 tion of that fault of sanity he will die. 
 
 The months in which he fights this losing battle are 
 
THE TERROR 229 
 
 the hot months of 1 793. I will not deny that during 
 this summer his name is more conspicuousi than at any 
 period of his life. I -will admit that if we deal with 
 history as a spectacle, the climax of 1793 should be dis- 
 tinguished by his voice and presence. But it is this 
 fascination of the picturesque which has made his life 
 inexplicable, and a biographer dares not leave it so. 
 Although June, July, and August are full of his speeches, 
 his warning, and even his energy, yet I say that he 
 was day after day losing his hold and slipping. He 
 is conspicuous because in the face of such disaster he 
 redoubled his energy ; but even that redoubled energy is 
 dwarfed in the face of the spirit that animated the Terror. 
 
 First with regard to June : it was still a period of 
 hope, and he still thought himself the master. He had 
 added to the Committee, not thinking them dangerous, 
 but as a kind of sop, five members of the Mountain. 
 Among them were two who were to prove the ruin of his 
 whole system — Couthon and St. Just. Perhaps to tem- 
 per their action, perhaps merely because he was a friend, 
 he included H^rault de Sechelles. The names were 
 typical of what was to happen in 1794, when, by the 
 power of St. Just, H^rault was to be thrust out of the 
 Committee and sent to die with Danton himself 
 
 Unconscious of what this addition would lead to, un- 
 conscious also of what echoes the 2nd of Jime might 
 arouse in the provinces, Danton pursued his path as 
 though the insurrection had been but one event of many. 
 The minister Le Brun was brought by his guards day 
 after day to aid in the discussions, and taken back to the 
 custody of his own house. One might have thought that 
 the " moral insurrection " of which Robespierre had talked 
 had led only to a " moral suppression " of the Girondins. 
 Moreover, the whole of these days of June are full of 
 Danton's yet remaining supremacy. He goes on with his 
 two principal methods, namely, a strong secret govern- 
 
230 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 ment and moderation in the application of its tyranny, 
 as though the situation was his to mould at his will. 
 Thus, on the 8 th, he says with regard to the decree 
 against foreigners : " I will show you such and such an 
 alien established in France who is much more of a patriot 
 than many Frenchmen. I say to you, therefore, that 
 while the principle of watching foreigners is good, you 
 should send this proposal to the Committee and let it be 
 discussed there." Again, two days later, he refuses to 
 admit the violent attitude of the Mountain towards Bor- 
 deaux. He even praises that city at a time when it was 
 practically in rebelhon, to defend its proscribed members. 
 AVithin the same week he continues to talk of La Vendte 
 as the only centre of insurrection. He continues to be 
 the Danton of old, although the Girondins are raising the 
 standard of civil war on every side, and he maintains that 
 continuous effort and compromise which had saved so much 
 in the autumn of 1792, and which could do so little now. 
 Within the Committee they framed the Constitution 
 of 1793 — that great monument of democracy, which 
 never took its place in history, nor ever affected the lives 
 of men. It stands like an idol of great beauty which 
 travellers find in a desert place; its religion has disap- 
 peared from the earth ; no ruins surround it ; in the day 
 when it was put up the men who raised it were driven 
 from what should have been the centre of their adoration. 
 That Danton was still in power when the result was de- 
 bated in the Parliament during the third week of the 
 moQth is evident from two things : first, that the Constitu- 
 tion, with its broad guarantees of individual liberty and 
 of local autonomy, with its liberal spirit, so nearly ap- 
 proaching the great dream of Condorcet, so opposed to 
 the narrow fanaticism of the Jacobins, was definitely 
 intended to appease the growing passions of civil war. 
 Two-thirds of France, of the country-sides at least, was 
 arming because Paris had dared to touch the representa- 
 
THE TERROR 231 
 
 tives of the nation. The Constitution was thrown like 
 a hostage ; the men who saw the necessity for a dictator- 
 ship said virtually, " The violence that offends you is only 
 for a moment. Here is what we desire with the return 
 of peace." And the document so responded to the heart 
 of France that it succeeded. 
 
 The second proof that Danton had still hold of the 
 reins is to be found in this : that the advice which he 
 gives during the discussions on the Constitution is not 
 that of violence, nor of flattery, but of moderate common- 
 sense ; and of such advice which the Convention accepts 
 the best example is to be foimd in the speech on the 
 power of making war. It was a difficult thing to 
 convince the Assembly, in those days of abstractions, 
 that the nation, as a whole, could not exercise such 
 a right without hopeless confusion. Yet Danton had his 
 way. This month of June, then, which was so full of 
 terrible internal danger, during which Buzot had raised 
 a Girondin army sixty miles from Paris, during which 
 Normandy was in full revolt, during which Lyons had 
 attacked the Republic, and during which the counter- 
 Eevolution seemed on the point of breaking out — this 
 month was still Danton's own. He was secure in his 
 public position, for the very conquerors of the 2nd of 
 June, the violent extremists, could not prevent him from 
 exercising his diplomacy abroad and his pacificatory 
 compromise in domestic affairs. 
 
 He was also secure in that which mattered so much 
 more to him^I mean in his home. His mind had 
 sufficiently steadied after the shock that had maddened 
 him in February for him to follow the advice which 
 his dead wife had left him. On the 17 th of June he 
 re-married. The woman was not suited to Danton. She 
 did not love him, nor probably did he love her. There 
 were two young children, whom, in the winter, his first 
 wife, finding herself to be dying, felt she was leaving 
 
232 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 orphans. Tlie eldest was only tliree years old. This 
 good woman, Catholic and devout, knowing her husband, 
 and the sheer necessity for a home which his character 
 had shown, determined on a religious education for her 
 sons, and determined on a Catholic woman to be about 
 her husband. She urged him to marry her younger friend, 
 Mdlle. G^ly. An incident, which is doubtful, but which, 
 on, the whole, I accept, does not seem to me to prove 
 the violence of an uncontrolled affection, but, on the 
 contrary, to show a kind of indifference, as though 
 Danton said to himself, " The thing must be done, and 
 had better be done so as to offend the family as little as 
 possible." I mean the story of his marriage before a 
 non-juring priest. At any rate, that marriage shows an 
 element of determination and security. He was still 
 master of his fortunes and of himself. 
 
 But he had called up a spirit too strong for him. 
 July was to prove it. 
 
 June, which had seen the rise of the Girondin in- 
 surrection, had also seen its partial appeasement and 
 suppression. It was, as we have said, the Constitution, 
 hurriedly improvised for this purpose, that had been the 
 main cause of such a success, but there remained for 
 July, more dangerous than ever, the foreign invasion and 
 the three outstanding strongholds of the civil war — 
 Lyons, Toulon, and La Vendue. It was against them 
 and their growing success, against the rebels and the 
 invaders, that the Terror was serviceable, and it was on 
 account of their continual progress that the Terror 
 assumed such fearful proportions. 
 
 I said earlier in this chapter that Danton inaugurating 
 and strengthening the dictatorship of the Revolutionary 
 Government was like a man deliberately opening a sluice 
 behind which was the whole sea. There was an element 
 of uncertainty upon the chances of which he had staked 
 the success of his effort, and, with the reverses, he soon 
 
THE TERROR 233 
 
 discovered that the forces which he had let loose were 
 going beyond him. It may be that he thought the 
 results of the 2nd of June would be more immediate 
 than they were. As a fact, it took many months to 
 recover the position which the supineness of the GLrondins 
 had lost. In those months the Revolutionary Govern- 
 ment crystallised, as it were, became permanent, and fell 
 into the hands of the extremists. 
 
 On the very day that the Norman insurrection was 
 crushed at Vernon, a Norman girl stabbed Marat. It is 
 not within the scope of this book to deal at any great 
 length with the fate of the man whom Danton had called 
 " I'individu." That most striking and picturesque episode 
 concerns us only in this matter, that it was a powerful 
 impetus to the system of the Terror, and such an one 
 as Danton, with all his judgment, could not possibly have 
 foreseen. Moreover, on the very day that Marat was 
 killed, the allied forces entered Warsaw, and there can 
 be no doubt that the success of this infamy gave them 
 a freer hand morally, at least upon the French frontier. 
 Mayence fell, and its fall cost the life of Josephine's first 
 husband. The Allies had crossed the Rhine. Five days 
 later, on the 28th of July, Valenciennes fell. At the same 
 moment the Spaniards wore pouring in east and west 
 of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese had crossed the 
 Alps. From a little press in Newcastle (the family 
 of the printer yet remain to tell the tale), Pitt was 
 drawing the thousands of forged assignats to ruin the 
 Republic. Five foreign armies were occupying the terri- 
 tory of France, and late in the following month the 
 Spanish and English fleets were admitted to the harbour 
 and arsenal of Toulon. Let it then be granted that, with 
 the possible exception of the Roman power after Cannae, 
 no power in history was ever so near destruction as was 
 Revolutionary France in that summer. 
 
 Let us see how the misfortunes of the country 
 
234 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 reacted upon the position of Danton. Already, with early 
 July, he felt himself pressed and constrained by the 
 growing power of the Jacobin doctrine and of its high 
 priest. His system of conciliation, his attempts (in large 
 part successful) to coax rather than to defeat the insur- 
 rection, were violently criticised in the debate of the 4th. 
 The anger against the Girondins, which the death of 
 Marat was to increase to so violent a degree, produced 
 the report of St. Just upon the 8th of July, which, though 
 history has called it moderate, yet mentions the accusation 
 of Vergniaud and of Gaudet, and to this Danton was 
 forced reluctantly to put his name. Two days afterwards 
 the old Committee to which he had belonged was dis- 
 solved and a new one was elected. 
 
 It would be an error to regard this as a mere resigna- 
 tion on the part of Danton ; it would be equally an 
 error to regard it as a violent censure on the part of the 
 Convention. It is certain that he chose to withdraw 
 because the fatal necessity of things was giving power to 
 m^n of whom he had no opinion. Thus Robespierre 
 joined the Committee on the 27th of July — Robespierre, 
 of whom Danton could say in private, " The man has not 
 wits enough to cook an egg." Yet this was the man who 
 was so worshipped by the crowd, that, once within the 
 Committee, he was destined to become the master of 
 France. It may be remarked in passing that something 
 fatal seemed to attach to the date on which a man 
 entered and began to lead the Committee. On the day 
 that Danton entered in '93, on that day was he guillotined 
 in '94. On the day that Robespierre entered in '93, on 
 that day in '94 he fell. 
 
 Danton remained, for a little longer than a month, 
 more and more separate from the management of affairs, 
 more and more out of sympathy with the men who 
 were conducting the government. Nevertheless, he stands 
 almost as an adviser and certainly with pure disinterested- 
 
THE TERROR 235 
 
 ness throughout the month of August. He was alone. 
 Desmoulins was more with Robespierre than with him 
 at that moment. Westermann, his great friend and ally 
 on the loth of August 1792, was under censure for his 
 defeat in Vendue. But standing thus untrammelled, 
 Danton for the moment appears with an especial brUUancy. 
 Indeed there is no act of his pubhc life so clear, so 
 typical of his method, or so successful as his great speech 
 on the 1st of August. It was as though, divorced from 
 the pre-occupations of political intrigue and free from 
 the responsibility of executive power, he was able for the 
 first time in his whole life to speak his mind fully and 
 clearly. The speech is a precis, as it were, of all his 
 pronouncements on the necessity for a dictatorship and 
 the methods it should employ. It turns round this 
 sentence, " I demand that the Committee of Public 
 Safety should be erected into a Provisional Government." 
 He said openly that while he asked for absolute powers 
 for the Committee, he refused ever to join it again. He 
 pointed out to them the necessity of unitiug all power 
 in the hands of one body, of making a unique command 
 for a nation at war. To men who had been lost for so 
 long in the discussion of constitutional checks and guar- 
 antees, he talked of the necessities as a general would 
 to his staff. If you will read this speech through, you 
 will find it to be the clearest exposition in existence of 
 the causes and of the methods of the action of France 
 in all her dangers from that day to our own. This speech, 
 which is the climax of his career, and which stands at 
 the fountain-head of so much in the modem nation, was 
 followed throughout the month by many a piece of 
 practical and detailed advice. He talks always quietly, 
 and always with a specific object in view, on the edu- 
 cational proposals, on the great conscription (14th of 
 August), on the enforcement of an absolute military 
 discipline (iSth of August), and so forth. But while 
 
236 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 he is still ia this position, of which the brilliancy and 
 success have deceived some into thinking that it was 
 the centre of his career, two things were at work which 
 were to lead to the strange crisis in which he lost his 
 life. First, the Terror was beginning to be used for pur- 
 poses other than those of the National Defence. Secondly, 
 there was coming upon him lethargy and illness. He 
 seems to have remained for a whole month, from the 
 middle of September till the middle of October, without 
 debating. There had come a sudden necessity for repose 
 into his life, and until it was satisfied he gave an impres- 
 sion of weakness and of breaking down. 
 
 This was emphasised by a kind of despair, as he saw 
 the diplomatic methods abandoned in dealing with foreign 
 nations and the personal aims of the mystics, the private 
 vengeance of the bloodthirsty, or the ravings of the rank 
 madmen capturing the absolute system which he had 
 designed and forged at the expense of his titanic powers. 
 It was during this period that Garat saw him, and has 
 left us the picture of his great body bowed by illness, 
 and his small deep eyes filled with tears, as he spoke 
 of the fate that was following the Girondins, and of 
 how he could not save them. It was then also that, 
 walking slowly with Desmoulins at sunset by the Seine, 
 he said with a shudder that had never taken him before, 
 " The river is running blood." 
 
 With October the Terror weighed on all France by 
 the decree of the month before. The suspects were 
 arrested right and left, and the country had entered into 
 one of those periods which blacken history and leave 
 gaps which many men dare not bridge by reading. He 
 broke down and fled for quiet to his native place. From 
 thence the Great Mother, of whom in all the Revolution 
 he had been the truest son, sent him back to fulfil the 
 mercy and the sanity of Nature as he had up till then 
 fulfilled her energies. 
 
THE TERROR 237 
 
 This book is the life of a man, and a man is his 
 mind. Danton, who has left no memoirs, no letters even 
 — of whose life we know so little outside the field of 
 politics — can only be interpreted, Hke any other man, by 
 the mind. We must seek the origin, though we have 
 but a phrase or two to guide us. What was that medi- 
 tation at Arcis out of which proceeded the forlorn hope 
 of the "Vieux Cordeher" and of the "Committee of 
 Indulgence " ? 
 
 He was HI already ; the great energies which had been 
 poured out recklessly in a torrent had suddenly nm dry. 
 Garat saw him weak, imcertain, refusing to leave his 
 study, troubled in the eyes. The reins were out of hia 
 hands ; all that he thought, or rather knew, to be fatal to 
 the Republic was succeeding, and every just conception, 
 all balance, was in danger. This, though it was not the 
 cause of his weariness, coincided with it, and made his 
 sadness take on something of despair. There had always 
 been in his spirit a recurrent desire for the fields and 
 rivers ; it is common to all those whom Nature has blessed 
 with her supreme gift of energy. He had at this moment 
 a hunger for his native place, for the Champagne after 
 the harvest, and for the autumn mists upon the Aube. 
 It was in this attitude, weary, despairing, ill, and needing 
 the country as a parched man needs water, that he asked 
 and obtained permission to leave the Convention. It 
 was upon the 1 2th of October, just as the worst phase of 
 the Terror was beginning, that he left the violence and 
 noise of the city and turned his face eastward to the cool 
 valley of the Mame. 
 
 Starting from this point, his weariness and his longing 
 for home, we can trace the movement of his mind during 
 the six weeks of his repose. He recovered health with 
 the rapidity that so often characterises men of his stamp ; 
 he found about him the peaceable affection, the cessation 
 of argument and of self-defence which his soul had not 
 
238 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 known since the first days of 1789. His old mother 
 was with him, and his children also, the memories of his 
 own childhood. The place refreshed him like sleep ; he 
 became agaia the active and merry companion of four 
 years before, sitting long at his meals, laughing with his 
 friends. The window of the ground-floor room opened 
 on to the Grande Place, and there are still stories of him 
 in Arcis making that window a kind of little rendezvous 
 for men passing and repassing whom he knew, his chatting 
 and his questions, his interests on every point except that 
 poUtical turmoil in which the giant had worn himself out. 
 The garden was a great care of his, and he was concerned 
 for the farm in which he had invested the reimbursement 
 of his pre-revolutionary office. He delighted to meet his 
 father's old friends, the mayor, the functionaries of the 
 place. This man, whom we find so typical of his fellow- 
 countrymen, is never more French than in his home. 
 The Httle provincial town, the amour du docker, the pros- 
 pect of retirement in the province where one was born 
 — the whole scene is one that repeats itself upon every 
 side to-day in the class from which Danton sprang. 
 
 Moreover, as quiet took back its old place in his soul, 
 he saw, no longer troubled, but with calmness and cer- 
 tainty, the course that lay before the Republic. The 
 necessity of restraint, which had irritated and pursued 
 him in his days of fever in Paris, was growing into a 
 settled and dehberate policy ; he began to study the posi- 
 tion of France like a map ; no noise nor calumny was 
 present to confase him, and his method of action on 
 his return developed itself with the clearness that had 
 marked his first attitude in the elections of Paris. How 
 rapidly his mind was working even his friends could not 
 tell. One of them thought to bring him good news, and 
 told him of the death of the Girondins. Danton was in 
 his garden talking of local affairs, and when this was told 
 him, the vague reputation which he bore, the " terrible 
 
THE TERROR 239 
 
 Danton," and the fear he had inspired, led them to 
 expect some praise. He turned as though he had been 
 stabbed, and cried sharply, " Say nothing. Do you call 
 that good news ? It is a terrible misfortune. ... It 
 menaces us all." And no one understood what was pass- 
 ing in his mind. It was the note that Garat had heard, 
 and later Desmoulins : " I did my best to save them ; I 
 wish to God I could have saved them ! " 
 
 Whatever other news reached Arcis in those terrible 
 months served only to confirm him more strongly in his 
 new attitude. Had he been tinged in the slightest 
 degree with the mysticism that was common to so many 
 in that time he would have felt a mission. But he was 
 a Champenois, the very opposite of a mystic, and he only 
 saw a task, a thing to be planned and executed by the 
 reason. Perhaps if he had had more of the exaltation of 
 the men he was about to oppose he might have succeeded. 
 
 It was upon the 21st of November that he returned 
 to Paris. His health had come back, his full vigour, and 
 with the first days of his reappearance in politics the 
 demand for which the whole nation was waiting is heard. 
 And what had not the fanatics done during the weeks of 
 his sUence ! Lyons, the Queen, the Girondins, Roland's 
 wife — the very terms of poUtics had run mad, and he 
 returned to wrestle with furies. 
 
 Let me describe the confusion of parties through 
 which Danton had to wade in his progress towards the 
 re-establishment of hberty and of order. As for the 
 Convention itself, nominally the master, it was practically 
 of no power. It chose to follow now one now another 
 tendency or man ; to be influenced by fear at this 
 moment, by policy at that, and continually by the Revo- 
 lutionary formulae. In a word, it was led. Like every 
 large assembly, it lacked initiative. Above it and struggling 
 for power were these: First, the committees, that of 
 Public Safety, and its servant, that of General Security — 
 
240 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the Government and the police. It was Danton, as wo 
 know, who desired to make the committees supreme, who 
 had raised them as the institution, the central govern- 
 ment. But by this time they were a despotism beyond 
 the reach of the checks which Danton had always desired. 
 To save so mighty an engine from the dangers of ambi- 
 tion, he had resigned in July. His sacrifice or lethargy 
 did not suf&ce. The Committee which had once been 
 Danton was now the Triumvirate — Robespierre, Coulhon, 
 St. Just. It pursued their personal objects, it maintained 
 by the Terror their personal creed. Still Danton did not 
 desire to destroy it as a system. He wished to modify 
 its methods and to change its personnel, to let it merge 
 gradually into the peaceable and orderly government for 
 which the Revolution and the Republic had been made. 
 By a strange necessity, the workers, the men who were 
 most like Danton in spirit, the practical organisers on the 
 Committee, such as Carnot, Prieur, and Lindet, could not 
 help defending it in every particular. They knew the 
 necessity of staying at their post, and they feared, with 
 some justice, that if the Robespierrian faction was elimi- 
 nated their work might be suddenly checked. It was 
 because they were practical and short-sighted that they 
 were opposed to the practical but far-sighted pohcy of 
 Danton. They feared that with the cessation of the 
 Terror the armies would lack recruits, the commissariat 
 provisions, the treasury its taxes. 
 
 Against the Committee was the Commune. Hubert 
 at its worst ; Clootz at its most ideal ; Pache at its most 
 honest. This singular body represented a spirit very 
 close indeed to anarchy. It preached atheism as a kind 
 of dogma ; it was intolerant of everything ; it was as mad 
 as Clootz, as filthy as Hubert. It possessed a curious 
 mixture of two rages — the rage for the unity and defence 
 of France, the rage for the autonomy of Paris. In the 
 apathy that had taken the voters this small and insane 
 
THE TERROR 241 
 
 group held command of the city. But the Committees 
 were not what the Girondins had been. You could not 
 buUy or proscribe Camot, St. Just, Cambon, Jean Bon. 
 With the fatal pressure of the stronger wrestler the Com- 
 mittee was pressing the Commune down. The Terror 
 remained in either case. But with the Committee supreme 
 it was a Terror of system striking to maintain a tyranny, 
 a pure despotism working for definite ends. Had the 
 Commune succeeded, it would have meant the Terror 
 run mad, the guillotine killing for the sake of killing — 
 and for ever, 
 
 The third party in the struggle was Robespierre. He 
 also desired the Terror, but he intended to use it, as he 
 did every power in France, towards a definite end — a cer- 
 tain perfect state, of which he had received a revelation, 
 and of which he was the prophet. Of his aims and char- 
 acter I shall treat when I come to his action after the fall 
 of Danton. It suffices to point out here that of the three 
 forces at work Robespierre alone had personaHty to aid him. 
 He had a guard, a group of defenders. They were inside, 
 and led the Committee itself; they were the mystics in a 
 moment of strong exaltation, and unreal as was the dream 
 of their chief, the Robespierrians were bound to succeed 
 unless the force of the real, the " cold water " that came 
 with Danton's return, should destroy their hopes. There- 
 fore, as a fact, though no one, though Danton himself, did 
 not see it, it was between him and Robespierre that the 
 battle would ultimately be fought out. 
 
 For what was Danton's plan ? He put into his new 
 task the ability, the ruse, the suppleness that he had only 
 lost for a moment in the summer. First, Hubert and the 
 " enrages " must go — they were the vilest form of the 
 spirit that he perceived to be destroying the RepubUc. 
 Then the Committee must be very gradually weakened. 
 In that task he hoped, vainly enough, to make Robespierre 
 his ally. And finally, the end of all his scheme was the 
 
242 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 cessation of the Terror. He had created a dictatorship 
 for a specific purpose ; that purpose was attained. Wat- 
 tignies had been won, Lyons captured; soon La Vendee 
 was to be destroyed, and even Toulon to fall. It was in- 
 tolerable that a system abnorinal and extreme, designed 
 to save the State, should be continued for the profit of a 
 few theorists or of a few madmen. How much had not 
 his engine already done ? — this machine which, to the 
 horror of its creator, had found a life of its own ! It had 
 killed the Queen after a shockiag trial; it had alienated 
 what was left of European sympathy ; it had struck the 
 Girondins, and Danton was haunted by the inspired voice 
 of Vergniaud singing the " Marseillaise " upon the scaffold ; 
 it had run to massacre ia the provinces. He feared (and 
 later his fears proved true at Nantes) that September might 
 be repeated with the added horror of legal forms. The 
 Terror finally had reopened the question that of aU. others 
 might most easily destroy the State.. A handful of men 
 had pretended to uproot Catholicism for ever, and what 
 Danton cursed as the " Masque Anti-Religieuse " had 
 defiled Notre Dame. This flood he was determined to turn 
 back into the channels of reason ; he was going, without 
 government or police or system, merely by his voice and 
 his ability, to reahse the Revolution, to end the dictatorship, 
 and to begin the era of prosperity and of content. 
 
 The first steps taken were successful. On the very 
 night of his return, Robespierre was perorating at the 
 Jacobins against atheism and on the great idea of God, 
 but within twelve hours, on the morrow, Danton's voice 
 gave the new note. It was in the discussion upon the 
 pension to be paid to the priests whom the last decree had 
 thrust out of their regular office and of its salary. Dan- 
 ton spoke with the greatest decision on this plain matter 
 and the Convention heard with delight the fresh phrases to 
 which it had so long been a stranger. He says virtually, 
 " If you do not pay this sum you are persecutors." There 
 
THE TERROR 243 
 
 are in this speech such sentences as these: "You must 
 appreciate this, that politics can only achieve when they 
 are accompanied by some reason. ... I insist upon your 
 spariag the blood of men ; and I beg the Convention to 
 be, above all, just to all men except those who are the 
 declared and open enemies of the RepubHc." Four days 
 later he went a little further, and the Convention still 
 followed him. On the question which he had most at 
 heart he spoke plainly. Richard complained of Tours. 
 He said that the municipality of that town were arresting 
 " suspects " right and left, and had even attacked himself. 
 Danton said in a speech of ten lines : " It is high time 
 the Convention should learn the art of government. Send 
 these complaints to the Committee. It is chosen, or at 
 least supposed to be chosen, from the ^Ute of the Conven- 
 tion." Later in the same day he spoke on a ridiculous 
 procession such as the violence of the time had made 
 fashionable. It was a deputation of Hebertists bringing 
 from a Parisian chm:ch the ornaments of the altar. Al- 
 ready, it will be remembered, the Commune had ordered 
 the churches in Paris to be closed, and the attempt to 
 enforce such scenes were being copied in all the large 
 towns of France. He said : " Let there be no more of 
 these mascarades in the Convention. ... If people here 
 and there wish to prove their abjuration of Catholicism, 
 we are not here to prevent them . . . neither are we 
 here to defend them. . . . The Terror is still necessary, 
 the Revolutionary Government is still necessary, but the 
 people does not demand this indiscriminate action. We 
 have no business save with the conspirators and with 
 those who are treating with the enemy." There was a 
 protest from Fayan, who cried, " You have talked of 
 clemency ! " for all the world as though such talk was 
 blasphemy. But Danton was getting back his old posi- 
 tion and was leading the Convention. His success seemed 
 certain. On the 3rd of December (14th Frimaire) he was 
 
244 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 violently attacked at the Jacobins, but be managed to 
 bold bis own. Robespierre defended bim in a speech 
 which has been interpreted as a piece of able treachery, 
 but which may with equal justice be regarded as an 
 attempt to hold himself between the opposing parties ; 
 and within a fortnight after his return Danton, who had 
 in him a directness of purpose and a rapidity of action 
 that^ prefigured Napoleon, had gained every strategic point 
 in bis attack. 
 
 Events helped him, or rather be had foreseen them. 
 The Vendeans, moving more like a mob than an army, 
 were caught at Le Mans on the 13 th of December. On 
 the 7th of December the genius of Bonaparte bad driven 
 the English and Spanish from Toulon. On the 26th the 
 news came to the army of which Hocbe had just been 
 given the command, and, as though the name Bonaparte 
 brought a fate with it, the lines of Wissembourg were carried, 
 Landau was relieved, the Austrians passed the Rhine. 
 
 All these victories were the alUes of the party of in- 
 dulgence. The men who said, " The Terror has no raison 
 d'Stre save that of the national defence," found themselves 
 expressing what all France felt. After such successes it 
 only remained to add, " The nation is safe ; the Terror 
 may end." Already Danton had called up a reserve, so 
 to speak, in the shape of the genius of Desmoulins. The 
 first issue of " Vieux Cordelier " had appeared, and the 
 journal was read by all Paris. 
 
 That club, in which we saw the origin of Danton's 
 fame, was now the H^bertists, and nothing more. The 
 pamphlets which CamLlle issued under the leadership of 
 Danton were given a name that might recall its position 
 and its politics of the old days. And indeed the two 
 men most concerned m the new policy of clemency had 
 been, from their house in the Cour du Commerce, the 
 heart of the " R^pubUque des Cordeliers." There are not 
 in the history of the Revolution, in all the passages of its 
 
THE TERROR 245 
 
 eloquence and genius, any words that strike us to-day as 
 do the words of these six pamphlets which spread over 
 the winter of the year II. It is a proof of Danton's clear 
 vision, of his strong influence, that a distant posterity, far 
 removed from the passions of 1793, should find its own 
 expression in the appeals which his friend wrote, and 
 which form the Testament of the Indulgents. 
 
 The first two numbers were an attack upon the 
 H^bertists alone. Robespierre, from his position in the 
 Committee of Pubhc Safety, from the spur of his own 
 ambition, was willing to agree. He himself corrected the 
 proofs. But on the 15 th of December appeared the 
 famous Numero III., which ran through Paris hke a 
 herald's message, which did for reaction something of 
 what the great speeches had done for liberty in clubs 
 during the early days of the Revolution. Few men cared 
 to vote, but every man read the " Vieux Cordelier." To 
 those who had never so much as heard of Tacitus the 
 pen of Tacitus carried conviction. A crowd of women 
 passed before the Parliament crying for the brothers and 
 husbands who filled the prisons ; the " Committee of 
 Clemency " was within an ace of being formed ; and, 
 coinciding with the victories and with Danton's reappear- 
 ance, the demand of Desmoulins was draggiag after it, not 
 France only (for France was already convinced), but even 
 the capital. It was then that the Committee, who alone 
 were the government, grew afraid. Robespierre still 
 hesitated. He could only succeed through the commit- 
 tees ; but Desmoulins was his friend ; there was an appeal 
 to "the old college friend" in the "Vieux Cordeher" 
 that touched his heart and his vanity ; they had sat 
 together on the benches of the Louis le Grand, and 
 Robespierre seems to have made an honcbu attempt to aid 
 him then. A fourth number had appeared on the 20th, a 
 fifth (written on Christmas Day) appeared on January 8 th. 
 
 The Jacobins denounced Camille, and Robespierre, the 
 
246 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 eyes of whose mind looked as closely and were as short- 
 sighted as the eyes of his body, grew afraid. The men 
 determined on rigour had warned him in the Committee ; 
 now when he tried to defend CamUle he saw the Jacobins 
 raging : what he did not see was France. Perhaps, had 
 his sight been longer, he would not have been dragged six 
 months later to the guillotine. He attempted a compro- 
 mise and said : " We will not expel CamUle, but we wUl 
 bum his journal, punishing his act but not himself" 
 Camille answered with Rousseau, "BrUler nest pas repondre." 
 He would not be defended. 
 
 The battle was closely joined. DesmouHns was push- 
 ing forward his attack with the audacious infantry of 
 pamphlets ; Danton, from the Convention, was giving from 
 time to time the heavy blows of the artillery ; the advance 
 was contiauous ; when there was felt a check that proved 
 the prelude to disaster and that showed, behind the oppos- 
 ing lines, the force of the Committees. In the middle of 
 January, just after Desmoulins's defence at the Jacobius, 
 Fabre D'Eglantine, the friend and old secretary of Danton, 
 was arrested. It was ia vain that Danton put into his 
 defence all the new energy which he had discovered in 
 himself It was in vain even that he called for " the 
 right of the deputy to defend himself at the bar of the 
 house." Like all organised governments, the Committee 
 could give reasons of State for this silent action. Danton 
 was overborne, and the Convention for the first time since 
 his return deserted him. 
 
 He had yet seven weeks to Uve. Desmoulins still 
 attacked, but Danton knew that the action was lost. He 
 knew the strength of that powerful council whose first 
 efforts he himself had moulded, and when he saw it arise 
 in support of continuing the Terror, when he saw it and 
 Robespierre allied, he lost hope. The policy of the 
 Committee grew more and more definite. One member 
 of it, (H^rault de S^chelles) was Danton's friend: they 
 
THE TERROR 247 
 
 expelled him. Silently, but vritli all their strength, they 
 disengaged the government from either side. The Com- 
 mittee and Kobespierre determined to strike at once, 
 when the occasion should arise, both those in the Com- 
 mune who deshed to turn the Terror to their own ends 
 and those of the Convention — the Dantonists, who desired 
 to end it altogether. 
 
 Danton still speaks in the tribune, but the attack is 
 no longer there. He defends modestly and well the prac- 
 tical propositions that appear before the Parliament on 
 education, on the abolition of slavery, on the provisions 
 for the giving of bail under the new judiciary system, and 
 so forth. But there is in his attitude something of expec- 
 tancy. He is waiting for a sudden attack that must come 
 and that he cannot prevent. He holds himseK ready, but 
 the Committee is working in the dark, and he does not 
 know on which side to guard himself. A last personal 
 interview with Robespierre failed, and there was nothing 
 left to do but to wait and see whether they feared him 
 so much as to dare his arrest. It was with Ventose, that 
 is, with the first days of March, that the blow fell. 
 
 The H^bertists, chafing under three months of grow- 
 ing insults — insults which their old ally the Committee 
 refused to avenge— broke out into open revolt. Carrier was 
 back from his truly H^bertist slaughtering at Nantes, and 
 it was felt at the Cordeliers that the public execration 
 would destroy them unless they rose. In the autumn 
 they would have had the Committees on their side, but 
 the strong action of the Indulgents had broken the 
 alliance. They determined on insurrection. The Com- 
 mune this time was, once and for aU, to conquer the 
 government. The decision was taken at the Cordeliers 
 on the 4th of March — within ten days they were arrested. 
 The Committee pushed them through the form of a trial 
 Less than three weeks after the first talk of revolt, Hubert, 
 Clootz, and the rest were guillotined. 
 
LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 There were many among the Dantonists who thought 
 this the triumph of their policy. " The violent, the en- 
 rages are dead. It is we who did it." But Danton was 
 wiser than his followers. He knew that the Committee 
 were waiting for such an opportunity, and that a blow 
 to the right would follow that blow to the left. Both 
 oppositions were doomed. Only one chance remained to 
 him — they might not dare. 
 
 On the occasion of the arrest of the H^bertists he 
 made a noble speech on the great lines of conciliation and 
 unity, which had been his constant pohcy — a speech which 
 was all for Paris, in spite of the faction. 
 
 But that week they determined on his arrest and that 
 of his friends. Panis heard of it, and sent at once to warn 
 him. He found him in the night of the last day of March 
 1794 sitting in his study with his young nephew, moody 
 and silent. His wife was asleep in the next room. On 
 the flat above him Camille and Lucille were watching 
 late. The house was silent. Panis entered and told him 
 what the Committee had resolved. " Well, what then ? " 
 said Danton. " You must resist." " That means the 
 shedding of blood, and I am sick of it. I would rather 
 be guillotined than guUlotine." " Then," said Panis, " you 
 must fly, and at once." But Danton shook his head still 
 moodily. " One does not take one's country with one on 
 the soles of one's boots." But he muttered again to him- 
 self, " They will not dare — they will not dare." Panis left 
 him, and he sat down again to wait, for he knew in his 
 heart that the terrible machine which he himself had 
 made, and which he had fought so heroically, could dare 
 what it chose. They left him silent in the dark room. 
 From time to time he stirred the logs of the fire ; the 
 sudden flame threw a light on the ugly strength of his 
 face : he bent over the warmth motionless, and with the 
 memories of seven years in his heart. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE DEATH OF DANTON 
 
 In the night the armed police came round to the Passage 
 du Commerce ; one part of the patrol grounded their 
 muskets and halted at the exits of the street, the other 
 entered the house. 
 
 Desmoulins heard the butts falling together on the 
 flagstones, and the little clink of metal which announces 
 soldiery; he turned to his wife and said, "They have 
 come to arrest me." And she held to him till she 
 fainted and was carried away. Danton, in his study 
 alone, met the arrest without words. There is hardly 
 a step in the tragedy that follows which is not marked 
 by his comment, always just, sometimes violent ; but 
 the actual falling of the blow led to no word. Words 
 were weapons with him, and he was not one to strike 
 before he had put up his guard. 
 
 They were taken to the Luxembourg, very close by, 
 a httle up the hill. We have the story of how Danton 
 came with his ample, firm presence into the hall of the 
 prison, and met, almost the first of his fellow-prisoners, 
 Thomas Paine. The author of "The Eights of Man" 
 stepped up to him, doubtless to address him in bad 
 French.^ Danton forestalled him in the English of which 
 he was a fair master. 
 
 " Mr. Paine," he said, " you have had the happiness 
 of pleading in your country a cause which I shall no 
 
 ^ Paine's ignorance of Fi-enoh was such that his speech on Louis's 
 •zile was translated for him. 
 
 "49 
 
250 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 longer plead in mine." He remembered Paine's sane 
 and moderate view on the occasion of the king's trial, 
 and he envied one whose private freedom had remained 
 untrammelled with the bonds of office; who had never 
 been forced to a 2nd of June, nor had to keep to an 
 intimate conversation his fears for the Girondins. Then 
 he added that if they sent him to the scaffold he would 
 go gaily. And he did. There was the Frenchman con- 
 trasted with his English friend. 
 
 Beaulieu, who heard him, tells us that he also turned 
 to the prisoners about him and said, " Gentlemen, I had 
 hoped to have you out of this, and here I am myself; I 
 can see no issue.''" 
 
 So the prisoners came in, anxiously watched by reac- 
 tionaries, to whom, as to many of our modern scribblers, 
 one leader of the Revolution is as good as another — 
 Laeroix, Westermann (the strong soldier with his huge 
 frame overtopping even Danton's), and Desmoulins. As 
 they passed to their separate cells, for it was determined 
 to prevent their communication, a little spirit of the old 
 evil' used the powerful venom of aristocracy, the un- 
 answerable repartee of rank, and looking Laeroix up and 
 down, said, " I could make a fine coachman of that 
 fellow." He and his like would have ruined France for 
 the sake of turning those words into action. 
 
 Till the dawn of the 1 1 th Germinal broke, they were 
 kept in their separate rooms. But the place was not 
 built for a prison. Laeroix and Dan ton in neighbouring 
 rooms could talk by raising their voices, and we have of 
 their conversation this fragment. Laeroix said, " Had I 
 ever dreamt of this I could have forestalled it." And 
 Danton's reply, with just that point of fatalism which 
 had forbidden him to be ambitious, answered, " I knew 
 it ; " he had known it all that night. 
 
 There was a force stronger than love — private and 
 
 ' La Koche du Maine. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 251 
 
 public fear. It is a folly to ridicule, or even to misunder- 
 stand tliat fear. The possessions, the families of many, 
 the newly-acquired dignity of all, above everything, the 
 new nation had been jeopardised how many times by a 
 popular idol turned untrue. The songs of 1790 were all 
 for Louis, many praised Bailly; what a place once had 
 Lafayette ! Who had a word to say against Dumouriez 
 eighteen months before ? The victories had just begun 
 — barely enough to make men hesitate about the Terror. 
 The " Vieux Cordelier " had led, not followed opinion, as it 
 was just that the great centre of energy should lead and 
 not follow the time. And, men would say, how do we 
 know why he has been arrested, or at whose voice ? 
 How can we tell where the sure compass of right, our 
 Robespierre, stands in the matter? and so forth. Nothing 
 then was done ; but Paris very nearly moved. 
 
 There were thus two gathering forces ; one vague and 
 large, one small but ordered, and on the result of their 
 shock hung the life of Danton — may one say (knowing 
 the future) the life of the Republic ? 
 
 Now the struggle with Europe had taught the Com- 
 mittee a principal lesson. Perhaps one should add that 
 the exuberant fighting power of the nation and of the 
 age had forced the Committee to a certain method, 
 apparent in the armies, in the measures, in the speeches : 
 it was the method of detecting at once the weakest spot 
 in the opposing line, and of abandoning everything for 
 the purpose of concentrating all its strength and charging 
 home. So their descendants to-day in their new army 
 practise the marvellous massing of artillery which you 
 may watch at autumn in the manoeuvres. 
 
 What was the opposing line ? A vague ill-ordered 
 crowd — Paris; the undisciplined Convention, lacking 
 leaders, ignorant of party rule. Where was its weak- 
 ness? Id. the want of initiative, in the fact that, till 
 some one spoke, no one could be sure of the strength of 
 
252 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the corporate feeling. Also, on account of tlie publio 
 doubt, during that time men were grains of dust; but the 
 dust was like powder, and speech was always the spark 
 which permitted the affinities of that powder to meet in 
 fierce unity and power. A sudden blow had to be struck 
 and the fire stamped out before it had gathered power; 
 this is how the check was given. 
 
 In the morning of the 1 2th Germinal the Convention 
 met, and each man looked at his neighbour, and then, as 
 though afraid, let his eyes wander to see if others thought 
 as he did. At last one man dared to speak. It was 
 Legendre the butcher ; ^ he vacillated later before a mix- 
 ture of deceit in others and of doubt in himself, but it 
 should be remembered to his honour that he nearly saved 
 the Revolution by an honest word. " Let Danton be heard 
 at the bar of the Convention," was his frank demand ; 
 common-sense enough, but it fatally opened his guard, 
 and gave an opportimity to the thrusts most dangerous 
 in the year II. — an accusation of desiring privilege, and 
 an accusation of weakening that government which was 
 visibly saving the state on the frontiers. 
 
 Tallien was President that day, and he gave the reply 
 to Robespierre. Now Robespierre was no good fencer. 
 The supreme feint, the final disarming of opinion, was left 
 to an abler man. He had gone home from the Committee 
 to Duplay's house in the early morning; a monomaniac 
 hardly needing sleep, he reappeared at the early meeting 
 of the Convention. But, poor debater as he was, he could 
 
 ' Levasseur tells ns that Delmas spoke first, and that his remarks took 
 the form of a definite motion for the appearance of the Committees to 
 account for their action. Legendre is mentioned here because he alone 
 is agreed upon by all the eye-witnesses (and by the Moniteur) as being the 
 principal defender of Danton. We must not underestimate his courage ; 
 it was he who with a very small force shut the club of the Jacobins on the 
 night of the 9th Thermidor, and so turned the flank of the Bobespierrian 
 faction. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 253 
 
 take advantage of so easy an opportunity. In a speech 
 wliich was twice applauded, lie asserted that Legendre had 
 demanded a priyilege. He struck the note which above 
 all others dominated those minds. " Are we here to de- 
 fend principles or men ? Give the right of speech to 
 Danton, and you give rein to an extraordinary talent, you 
 confuse the issue with a hundred memories, you permit 
 the bias of friendship. Let the man defend himself by 
 proofs and witnesses, not by eloquence and sentiment." 
 Yet he did not add — perhaps he hardly knew — that 
 the memories and friendship would but have balanced 
 a direct enmity, and that witnesses and proofs would be 
 denied. Again he used that argument of government — 
 had not they saved France ? were they not the head of 
 the poUce ? did not they know in the past what they were 
 doing ? He assured them that a little waiting would pro- 
 duce conviction in them also. It did not, but time was 
 gained ; already half the Convention doubted. 
 
 Legendre, bewildered, faltered a reply; he admitted 
 error, and begged Robespierre not to misimderstand. He 
 could have answered for Danton as for himself, but the 
 tribunal was of course to be trusted. It was almost an 
 apology. 
 
 On that changing, doubtful opinion came with the 
 force of a steel mould the hard, high voice of St. Just. 
 
 St. Just spoke rarely. There has been mention in an 
 earlier part of this book of the speech against the Giron- 
 dins. There will be mention again of a vigorous and a 
 nearly successful attempt to save Robespierre. That he 
 should have been given the task of defending the Com- 
 mittee's action that day is a singular proof of the grip 
 which they had of the circumstances. Barrfere could never 
 have convinced an unsympathetic pubUc opinion. Robes- 
 pierre could meet a rising enthusiasm with nothing but dry 
 and accurate phrases. But St. Just had the flame of his 
 youth and of his energy, and his soul lived ia his mouth. 
 
254 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The report, even as we read it, has eloquence. 
 Coming from him then, with his extreme beauty, his 
 upright and determiaed bearing, it turned the scale. 
 The note of the argument was as ably chosen as could 
 be ; moreover it represented without question the attitude 
 of his own mind : it was this. " The last of the factions 
 has to be destroyed ; only one obstacle stands between 
 you and the appreciation of the Republic.^ Time and 
 again we have acted suddenly, but time and agaia we 
 have acted well and on sufficient reasons — so it is now. 
 If you save Danton you save a personaUty — something 
 you have known and admired; you pay respect to in- 
 dividual talent, but you ruin the attempt in which you 
 have so nearly succeeded. For the sake of a man you 
 will sacrifice all the new liberty which you are giving to 
 the whole world." There follows a passionate apostrophe 
 in which he speaks to Danton as though he stood before 
 him, as striking as the parallel passage in the fourth 
 Catiline Oration.' Had Danton been present he would 
 have been a man against a boy : a loud and strong voice, 
 not violent in utterance, but powerful in phrase and in 
 delivery, a character impressing itself by sheer force of 
 self upon vacillating opinion. Had Danton spoken in 
 reply, his hearers would have said with that moral con- 
 viction which is stronger than proof, " This man is the 
 chief lover of France." 
 
 But such is rhetoric, its falsity and its success — 
 the gaps of silence grew to a convincing power. The 
 accusations met with no reply ; they remained the echo of 
 
 ' "Quand les restes de la faction . . . ne serout pins . . . vous 
 n'aurez plus d'exemples h donner . . . ils ne restera que le peuple et 
 vous, et le gouvernement dent vous 6tes le centre inviolable." 
 
 ' " Mauvais citoyen, tu as conspire ; faux ami, tn disais, il y a deux jours, 
 du mal de Desmoulins que tu as perdu ; m^chant homme, tu as compart 
 I'opiuion publique h. une femme de mauvaise vie, tu as dit que I'honneur 
 ^tait ridicule ... si Fabre est innocent, si D'Orl^ans, si Dnmouriez 
 turent innocents tu Test sans doute. J'en ai trop dit — tu repondras k la 
 justice." 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 255 
 
 a living voice ; the answers to them could be framed only 
 in the silent minds of the audience. The Hving voice 
 won. 
 
 And there was, as we have said, intense conviction 
 to aid St. Just. He was a man who would forget and 
 would exaggerate with all the faults of passion, but he 
 beheved the facts he gave. Not so Robespierre. Robe- 
 spierre had furnished the notes of St. Just's report,^ and 
 Robespierre must have known that he had twisted all to 
 one end. Robespierre was a man who was virtuous and 
 true only to his ideal, not to his fellow- men. Robespierre 
 had not deceived himself as he wrote, but he had deceived 
 St. Just, and therefore the young " Archangel of Death " 
 spoke with the added strength of faith, than which nothing 
 leaps more readily from the lips to the ears. Can we 
 doubt it ? There is a phrase which convinces. When 
 he ends by telling them what it is they save by sacrificing 
 one idol, when he describes the Republic, he uses the 
 phrase common to all apostolates, the superb " les 
 mots que nous avons dits ne seront jamais perdus sm: la 
 terre ''—the things which they had said would never be 
 lost on earth. 
 
 It ended. No one voted ; the demand of the Com- 
 mittee passed without a murmur. The Convention was 
 never again its own mistress; it had sUenced and con- 
 demned itself.^ 
 
 Meanwhile at the Luxembourg the magistrate D^nizot 
 was making the preparations for the trial. Each prisoner 
 was asked the formal question of his guUt, and each 
 
 ' Robespierre's notes for St. Just's report were published by M. France 
 in 1841 among the "Papiers trouv^s chez Robespierre." 
 
 ^ "La Convention Nationale aprfes avoir entendu les rapports des 
 Comit^s de Surety gen^rale et du Salut Public, d^crfete d'accusation 
 Camille Desmoulins, H&ault, Danton, Phillippeaux Lacroix ... en con- 
 sequence elle declare leur mise en jugement. " These were the last words 
 of St. Just's speech, and formed his substantive motion. 
 
 " Ce d^cret est adopts k I'unanimit^ et au milieu des plus vifs appland- 
 ssements."—ilf o»i<cur, April 2, 1794 (13th Germinal, year II.). 
 
256 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 replied in a single negative, but Danton added that he 
 would die a Kepublican, and to the question of their 
 defence rephed that he would plead his own cause. 
 Then, at half-past eleven they were transferred to the 
 Conciergerie. 
 
 From that moment his position becomes the attitude 
 of the man fighting, as we have known it in the crisis of 
 August 1792 and of the calling up of the armies. Keady 
 as he had always been to see the real rather than the 
 imaginary conditions, he recognised death with one chance 
 only of escape. He knew far better than did poor Des- 
 moulins the power of a State's machinery; he felt its 
 grasp and doubted of any issue. The people, for Des- 
 moulins, were the delegators of power ; for Danton the 
 people were those who should, but who did not rule. 
 To hve again and enter the arena and save the life 
 of the Republic the people must hear his voice, or else 
 the fact of government would be more strong than all 
 the rights and written justice in the world. 
 
 He was like a man whose enemy stands before him, 
 and who sees at his own side, passive and bewildered, a 
 strong but foohsh ally. His ally was the people, his 
 enemy was Death. 
 
 Therefore we have of his words and actions for the 
 next four days two kinds : those addressed to death 
 and those to his ally. Where he desires to touch 
 the spirit of the crowd — in what was for their ears — • 
 we have the just, practical, and eloquent man apologising 
 for over-vehemence, saying what should strike hardest 
 home — an orator, but an orator who certainly uses 
 legitimate weapons. 
 
 But there is another side. In much that he said in 
 prison, in all that he said on his way to the scaffold, he 
 is simply speaking to Death and defying him. The 
 inmost thing in a man, the stock of the race, appears 
 without restraint; he becomes the Gaul. That most 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 257 
 
 un-northern habit of defiance, especially of defiance to 
 the inevitable and to the strongest, the custom of his 
 race and their salvation, grows on his lips. 
 
 He insults Death, he jests; his language, never chaste 
 or self-conscious, takes on the laughter of the Rabelaisian, 
 and (true Rabelaisian again) he wraps up in half-a-dozen 
 words the whole of a situation. 
 
 Thus we see him leaning against the window of his 
 prison and calling to Westermann in the next cell, " Oh ! 
 if I could leave my legs to Couthon ^ and my virihty to 
 Robespierre, things might still go on." And again when 
 Lacroix said, " I will cut my own hair at the neck, so 
 that Sanson the executioner shall not meddle with it," 
 Danton replied, " Yet will Sanson intermeddle with the 
 vertebrae of your neck." So he meets death with a broad 
 torrent of words; and that a civilisation accustomed 
 rather to reticence should know what this meant in him, 
 my readers must note his powerful asides to Desmoulins 
 and to H^rault, coinciding with the fearful pun in which 
 he tried to raise the drooping courage of D'Eglantine. 
 
 Also in his prison this direct growth of the soil of 
 France " talked often of the fields and of rivers." Shake- 
 speare should have given us the death scenes of so 
 much energy, defiance, coarseness, affection, and great 
 courage. 
 
 In the Conciergerie they spent the rest of the day 
 waiting for the trial, and this time Danton was next to 
 Westermann, to whom and to Desmoulins he said, " We 
 must say nothing save before the Committees or at the 
 trial." It was his plan to move the people by a public 
 defence, but his enemies in power had formed a coimter- 
 plan, and, as we shall see, forestalled him. 
 
 ^ Couthon was a cripple. Once (later) in the Convention it was called 
 out to him "Triumvir," and he glanced at his legs and said, "How could 
 I be a triumvir ? " The logical connection between good legs and trium- 
 virates was more apparent to himself than to those whom he caused to bo 
 guillotined. 
 
 B 
 
258 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Desmoulins, " the flower that grew on Danton," was 
 still bewildered. So he remained to the end ; at the foot 
 of the scaffold he could not understand. " If I could only 
 have written a No. VII. I would have turned the tables." ^ 
 " It is a duel of Commodus ; they have the lance and I 
 have not even a reed." To that man, his equal in years,^ 
 but a boy compared with him in spirit, Danton had 
 always shown, and now continued to show, a pecuHar 
 affection. He treated him hke a younger brother, and 
 never made him suffer those violent truths with which 
 all France and most of his friends were familiar in his 
 mouth. So now, and in the trial, and on the way to the 
 scaffold, his one attempt was to calm the bitter violence 
 and outbrnrst of Camille. 
 
 There are two phrases of Danton's which have been 
 noted on this first day passed at the Conciergerie, and 
 which cannot be omitted, though in form they have not 
 his diction, yet in spirit they might be his; they are 
 recollections presumably of something of greater length 
 called to Westermann. 
 
 The first : " On such a day ' I demanded the institu- 
 tion of the Revolutionary tribimal. I ask pardon of God 
 and of man." 
 
 The second: "I am leaving everything at sixes and 
 sevens ; one had better be a poor fisherman than meddle 
 with the art of governing men." There you have the 
 real Danton — a reminiscence of some strong and passionate 
 
 ' We have the fragments of this " No. VII.," which was not published. 
 See M. Claretie's C. Desmoulins, p. 274 of Mrs. Cashel Hoey's trans- 
 lation. 
 
 ^ Danton would have been thirty-five in October. Desmoulins had 
 been thirty-four in March — not thirty-three, as he said at the trial. I 
 give this on the authority of M. Claretie, who in his book quotes the birth- 
 certificate, which he himself had seen (March 2, 1760). 
 
 • March 10, 1793. Exception has been taken to the whole sentiment 
 by Dr. Robinet, but great, or rather unique, as is his authority, I cannot 
 believe that an appeal — especially an exclamatory appeal of this nature — 
 was foreign to his impetuous and merciful temper. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 259 
 
 utterance put into this undantonesque and proverbial 
 form. A real sentiment of his — all of him; careless 
 of life, intense upon the interests of life, above all upon 
 the futiure of the Revolution and of France, knowing the 
 helpless inferiority of the men he left behind. And in 
 the close of the phrase it is also he ; it is the spirit of 
 great weariness which had twice touched him, as sleep 
 an athlete after a day of games. It was soon to take 
 the form of a noble sentence : " Nous avons assez servi 
 — aliens dormir." 
 
 On the 13th (April 2, 1794), about ten in the morn- 
 ing, they were led before the tribunal. 
 
 The trial began. 
 
 It must not be imagined that the Dantonists alone 
 came before the tribvmal to answer for their particular 
 pohcy. There had originated under Robespierre (and later 
 when he alone was the master it was to be terribly abused) 
 the practice of confusing the issues. Three groups at least 
 were tried together, and the Moderates sat between two 
 thieves — for D'Eglantine on a charge of embezzlement 
 alone, Guzman, the Freys as common thieves and spies to 
 the Republic, were associated on the same bench. Four- 
 teen in all, they sat in the following order : — Chabot, 
 Bazire, Fabre, Lacroix, Danton, Delaunay, H^rault, Des- 
 moulins, Guzman, Diederichsen, PhiUippeaux, D'Espagnac, 
 and the two Freys. D'Eglantine occupied "the arm- 
 chair," and it will be seen that the five — the Moderates — 
 were carefully scattered. 
 
 The pohcy was a dehberate one ; it was undertaken 
 with the object of prejudicing public opinion against the 
 accused. Nor was it permitted to each group to be 
 separate in accusation and in its method of defence. They 
 were carefully linked to each other by men accused of 
 two out of the three crimes. 
 
 Herman was president of the tribunal, and sat facing 
 the prisoners ; on either side of him were Masson-Denizot, 
 
26o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Foucault and Brav4 the assistant-judges. They say that 
 Voullaud and Vadier, of the lower committee, appeared 
 behind the bench to watch the enemies whom they had 
 caught in the net. Seven jurors were in the box to the 
 judges' left, by name Renaudin (whom Desmoulins chal- 
 lenged in vain), Desboisseaux, Trinchard, Dix-Aout, Lu- 
 mifere, Ganney, Souberbielle,^ and to these we must add 
 Topino-Lebrun, whose notes form by far the most vivid 
 fragment by which we may reconstruct the scene. The 
 jury of course was packed.^ It was part of the theory of 
 the Revolutionary Government that no chance element 
 should mar its absolute dictatorship. It was practi- 
 cally a court of judges, absolute, and without division of 
 powers. 
 
 At a table between the President and the prisoners sat 
 Fouquier-TinviUe, the public prosecutor ; and finally, on 
 the judges' right was the open part of the court and the 
 door to the witnesses' room. 
 
 Here was a new trial with a great and definite chance 
 of acquittal, a scene the like of which had not been seen 
 for a year, nor would be seen again in that room. The 
 men on the prisoners' bench had been the masters, one of 
 them the creator, of the court which tried them ; they 
 were evidently greater and more powerful than their 
 judges, and had behind them an immense though infor- 
 mal weight of popularity. They were public men of the 
 first rank ; their judges and the public prosecutor were 
 known to be merely the creatures of a small committee. 
 More than this, it was common talk that the Convention 
 might yet change its mind, and even among the jury it 
 was certain that discussion would arise. 
 
 By the evidence of a curious relic we know that the 
 
 ' Wallon, Tribunal Rholutionnaire, vol. iii. p. 156. 
 
 ^ It is known that Fleuriot and Fouquier were alone wben the jury 
 were " chosen by lot. " This appeared at the trial of Fouquier. For the 
 notes of Lebrun, see Appendix X. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 261 
 
 Committee actually feared a decree or a coup-de-main 
 "which would have destroyed their power. This note 
 remains in the archives, a memorandum of a decision 
 arrived at ia the Committee on the early morning of the 
 13 th or late ru the night of the 12 th. 
 
 "Henriot to he vrritten to, to tell him to issue an order that 
 the President and the Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal are not to be arrested." 
 
 Then in another hand : 
 
 " Get four members to sign this." 
 
 Finally, the memorandum is endorsed in yet another 
 hand: 
 
 " 1 3<A Germinal. — A policeman took this the same 
 day." 1 
 
 It wni thus be seen that the Committee was by no 
 means sure of its ground. It had indeed procured through 
 St. Just the decree preventing Danton from pleading at 
 the bar of the Convention and permitting his trial, but it 
 would require the most careful manoeuvring upon their 
 part to carry through such an affair. As we shall see, 
 they just — and only just — succeeded. 
 
 The whole of the first day (the 13 th Germinal, 2nd 
 of April 1 794) was passed in the formal questions and in 
 the reading of accusations. Camille, on being asked his 
 age and dwelling, made the blasphemous and striking 
 answer which satisfied the dramatic sense, but was not a 
 true reply to the main question. 
 
 Danton gave the reply so often quoted : " I am Dan- 
 ton, not unknown among the revolutionaries. I shall be 
 living nowhere soon, but you will find my name in Wal- 
 halla." The other answers, save that of H^rault, attempted 
 no phrases. 
 
 Yet Guzman would have made more point of his 
 assertion if he had chosen that moment to say, " I am 
 Guzman, a grandee of Spain, who came to France to taste 
 
 ^ WaJlon, Tribtmal Rivolutionnaire, vol. iii. p. 155. 
 
262 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 liberty, but was arrested for theft ; " while the two Freys 
 missed an historic occasion in not replying, "We are 
 Julius and Emanuel Frey, sometime nobles of the Empire 
 under the title of Von Schonfeld, now plain Jews em- 
 ployed by the Emperor as spies." 
 
 The public prosecutor read the indictment. First at 
 great length Amar's report on the India Company. The 
 details of the accusations which cost Fabre his life need 
 not be entered into here. Suffice it to say that it was an 
 indictment for corruption, for haying suppressed or altered 
 for money the decree of the Convention in the autumn 
 before, and being accomplice in the extra gains which this 
 had made possible — one of those wretched businesses with 
 which Panama and South Africa have deluged modern 
 France and England. It is an example of the methods of 
 the tribunal that Fouquier managed to drag in Desmou- 
 lins's name because he had once said, " People complain 
 of not being able to make money now, yet I make it 
 easily enough." 
 
 The second group, the Freys, Guzman, the unfrocked 
 priest D'Espagnac, and Diederichsen the Dane, were 
 accused of being foreigners working against the success 
 of the French armies, and at the same time lining their 
 pockets. In the case of three of them the accusation was 
 probably true. It was the more readUy beheved from the 
 foreign origins of the accused, for France was full of spies, 
 while the name of a certain contumacious Baron de Bartz 
 made this list sound the more probable. 
 
 Finally, the small group at which they were really aim- 
 ing (whose members they had already mixed up with the 
 thieves) was indicted on nothing more particular than the 
 report of St. Just — virtually, that is, on Kobespierre's notes. 
 Danton had served the King, had drawn the people into the 
 place where they were massacred in July 1791, did not 
 do his duty on the i oth of August, and so forth — a vapid 
 useless summary of impossible things in which no one 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 263 
 
 but perhaps St. Just and a group of fanatics believed. 
 With that the day ended, and they were taken back to 
 prison. 
 
 On the next day, the 14th Germinal (3rd of April 
 1794), Westermann, who, though already arrested, had 
 only been voted upon in Parliament the day before, 
 appeared on the prisoners' bench, and sat at the end after 
 Emanuel Frey. He was the last and not the least noble 
 of the Dantonists, with his great stature, his clumsy in- 
 tellect, and his loyal Teutonic blood. 
 
 "Who are you?" they said. "I am Westermann. 
 Show me to the people. I was a soldier at sixteen, and 
 have been a councillor of Strasbourg. I have seven 
 wounds in front, and I was never stabbed in the back 
 till now." 
 
 This was the man who had led the loth of August, 
 and who had dared, in his bluff nature, to parley with the 
 Swiss who spoke his language. 
 
 It was after some little time pased in the interrogation 
 of the prisoners who had been arrested for fraud, especially 
 of D'Espagnac, that the judge turned to Danton. 
 
 In the debate and cross-questioning that followed we 
 must depend mainly upon the notes of Lebrun,^ for they 
 are more living, although they are more disconnected, than 
 the official report. We discover in them the passionate 
 series of outbursts, but a series which one must beheve to 
 have had a definite purpose. There was neither hope of 
 convincing the tribunal nor of presenting a legal argument 
 with effect. What Danton was trying to do in this court, 
 which was not occupied with a trial, but merely in a 
 process of condemnation, was to use it as a rostrum from 
 which he could address the people, the general pubhc, 
 
 ' See Appendix X. The speeches which I have written here are 
 reconstructed from these notes, and I must beg the reader to check the 
 consecutive sentences of the text by reference to the disjointed notea 
 printed in the Appendix, 
 
264 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 upon whose insurrection he depended. He perhaps de- 
 pended also on the jury, for, carefully chosen as they were, 
 they yet might be moved by a man who had never failed 
 to convince by his extraordinary power of language. He 
 carries himself exactly as though he were technically what 
 he is in fact — a prisoner before an informal group of exe- 
 cutioners, who appeals for justice to the crowd. 
 
 He pointed at Cambon, who had sat by him on the 
 Committee, and said, " Come now, Cambon, do you think 
 we are conspirators ? Look, he is laughing ; he believes 
 no such thing." Then he turned, laughing himself, to 
 the jury and said, "Write down in your notes that he 
 laughed." 
 
 Again, he uses phrases like these : " We are here for 
 a form, but if we are to have full liberty to speak, and if 
 the French people is what it should be, it will be my 
 business later to ask their pardon for my accusers." To 
 which Camille answered, " Oh, we shall be allowed to 
 speak, and that is all we want," and the group of Indul- 
 gents laughed heartily. 
 
 It was just after this that he began that great harangue 
 in answer to the questions of the judge, an effort whose 
 tone reaches to this day. It is, pe rhaps, the most striking 
 example of a personal appeal that can be discovered. The 
 opportunities for such are rare, for in the vast majority of 
 historical cases where a man has pleaded for his Hfe, it 
 has either been before a well-organised court, or before a 
 small number of determined enemies, or by the lips of 
 one who was paid for his work and who ignored the art 
 of political oratory. The unique conditions of the French 
 Revolution made such a scene possible, perhaps for the 
 only time in history. 
 
 The day, early as was the season, was warm, the 
 windows of the court, that looked upon the Seine, were 
 open, and through the wide doors pressed the head of a 
 great crowd. This crowd stretched out along the corridor, 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 265 
 
 along the quays, across the Pont Neuf, and even to the 
 other side of the river. Every sentence that told was 
 repeated from mouth to mouth, and the murmurs of the 
 crowd proved how closely the great tribune was followed. 
 In the attitude which had commanded the attention of 
 his opponents when he presented the first deputation 
 from Paris three years before, and that had made him 
 so striking a figure during the stormy months of 1793, 
 he launched the phrases that were destined for Paris 
 and not for his judges. His loud voice (the thing ap- 
 pears incredible, but it is true) vibrating through the 
 hall and lifted to the tones that had made him the 
 orator of the open spaces, rang out and was heard beyond 
 the river. 
 
 " You say that I have been paid, but I tell you that 
 men made as I am cannot be paid. And I put against 
 your accusation — of which you cannot furnish a proof nor 
 the hint of a proof, nor the shadow nor the beginning of 
 a witness— the whole of my revolutionary career. It was 
 I who from the Jacobins kept Mirabeau at Paris. I have 
 served long enough, and my life is a burden to me, but I 
 will defend myself by teUing you what I have done. It was 
 I who made the pikes rise suddenly on the 20th of June 
 and prevented the Thing's voyage to St. Cloud. The day 
 after the massacre of the Champ de Mars a warrant was 
 out for my arrest. Men were sent to kill me at ArcLs, 
 but my people came and defended me. I had to fly to 
 London, and I came back, as you all know, the moment 
 Garran was elected. Do you not remember me at the 
 Jacobins, and how I asked for the Republic ? It was I 
 who knew that the court was eager for war. It was I, 
 among others, who denounced the policy of the war." 
 
 Here a sentence was heard : " What did you do against 
 the Brissotins ? " 
 
 Now Danton had, as we knowj done all in his power 
 to save the men who hated him, but whom he admired. 
 
266 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 It was no time for him to defend himself by an explana- 
 tion of this in the ears of the people who had never under- 
 stood, as he had, the height of the men who followed 
 Vergnaud ; but he said what was quite true : " I told 
 them that they were going to the scaffold. When I 
 was a minister I said it to Brissot before the whole 
 cabinet." 
 
 He might have added that he had said to Guadet in 
 the November woods on the night before he left for the 
 army, " You are headstrong, and it will be your doom." ^ 
 
 Then he went back again to the list of his services. 
 " It was I who prepared the i oth of August. You say I 
 went to Arcis. I admit it, and I am proud of it. I went 
 there to pass three days, to say good-bye to my mother, 
 and to arrange my affairs, because I was shortly to be in 
 peril. I hardly slept that night. It was I that had Man- 
 dat killed, because he had given the order to fire on the 
 people. . . . You are reproaching me with the friendship 
 of Fabre D'Eglantine. He is still my friend, and I still 
 say that he is a good citizen as he sits here with me. 
 You have told me that my defence has been too violent, 
 you have recalled to me the revolutionary names, and you 
 have told me that Marat when he appeared before the 
 tribunal might have served as my model. Well, with 
 regard to those names who were once my friends, I will 
 tell you this : Marat had a character on fire and unstable ; 
 Robespierre I have known as a man, above all, tenacious ; 
 but I — I have served in my own fashion, and I would 
 embrace my worst enemy for the sake of the country, and 
 I will give her my body if she needs the sacrifice." 
 
 This short and violent speech, which I have attempted 
 to reproduce from the short, disjointed, ill-spelt notes of 
 Lebrun, hit the mark. The crowd, the unstable crowd, 
 which he contemned as he passed to the guillotine, moved 
 like water under a strong wind ; and his second object also 
 • See p. 199. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 267 
 
 was reached, for the tribunal grew afraid. These phrases 
 would soon be repeated in the Convention, and no means 
 had been taken to silence that terrible voice. The Presi- 
 dent of the court said to him that it was the part of an 
 accused man to defend himself with proofs and not with 
 rhetoric. He parried that also with remarkable skill, say- 
 ing in a much quieter tone which all his friends (they 
 were now growing in number) immediately noted : " That 
 a man should be violent is wrong in him I know, unless 
 it is for the public good, and such a violence has often 
 been mine. If I exceeded now, it was because I found 
 myself accused with such intolerable injustice." He raised 
 his voice somewhat again with the words, " But as for 
 you, St. Just, you wUl have to answer to posterity," and 
 then was silent. 
 
 When the unhappy man who had taken upon his 
 shoulders the vile duty of the political work that day, 
 when Herman was himself upon his trial, he said, " Re- 
 member that this affair was out of the ordinary, and was 
 a pohtical trial," when a voice rose from the court, 
 " There are no political trials imder a Republic." He 
 would have done well, obscure as he is before history, to 
 have saved his own soul by refusing a task which he 
 knew to involve injustice from beginning to end. 
 
 It was at the close of that day that three short notes 
 passed between Herman and the public prosecutor, 
 Fouquier-Tinville. Herman wrote, " In haK an hour I 
 shall stop Danton's defence. You must spin out some of 
 the rest in detail." Tinville answered, " I have some- 
 thing more to say to Danton about Belgium ; " and Her- 
 man replied, " Do not bring it in with regard to any of 
 the others." This little proof of villany, which has sur- 
 vived by so curious an accident (it is in the Archives to- 
 day),^ closed the proceedings of that hearing. 
 
 ' Wallon, Tribunal RivohUiormavre, iii. 169, quotes Archivet, W. 342, 
 Dottier 641, 1st Part, No. 34. 
 
268 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The next day, the 15 th of Germinal (4 th April), 
 Danton himself said little. It was given over mainly to 
 the examination of Desmouluis ; and as with Danton it 
 had been rumours or opinions, so with Desmoulins only 
 the vague sense of things he had written were brought in 
 to serve as evidence in this tragic farce. 
 
 Fouquier, the distant cousin of Camille, to whom he 
 owed the post in which he was earning his bread by 
 crime,^ tried to put something of complaint agaiast the 
 nation and of hatred to the Republic into his reading 
 of the Old Cordelier. Even in his thin unpleasant voice 
 there was only heard the noble phrase of Tacitus, and — it 
 is a singular example of what the tribunal had become — 
 they dared not continue the quotation because every 
 word roused the people in the court. But Camille, so 
 great with the pen, had nothing of the majesty or the 
 strength of Danton. His defence was a weak, disconnected 
 excuse, and, like all men who are insufficient to them- 
 selves, he was inconsistent. 
 
 H^rault made on that same day a far finer reply. 
 Noble by birth, holding by his traditions and memories to 
 that society which he himself had helped to destroy, and 
 of which Talleyrand has said, " Those who have not known 
 it have not lived ; " accustomed from his very first youth 
 to prominence in his profession and to the favour of the 
 court, he remained to the last full of contempt for so 
 much squalor, and he veiled his eyes with pride. 
 
 "I understand nothing of this topsy-turvydom. I 
 was a diplomat, and I made the neutrality of Switzerland, 
 so saving 60,000 men to the Republic. As for the priest 
 you talk about, who was guillotined in my absence at 
 Troyes, I knew him well. He was a Canon, if I remember, 
 
 ^ Fouquier had written a letter to his distant relative Desmoulins, 
 begging for some employment, on August 20, 1792, just after the success 
 of Danton's party, in which Desmoulins had of course shared. It is by no 
 means dignified and almost servile. See Claretie, Deammilins, English 
 edition, p. 318. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 269 
 
 and by no means a reactionary. You are probably joking 
 about it. It is true he bad not taken the oath, but he 
 was a good man ; he helped me, and I am not ashamed 
 of my friendship. I will tell you something more. On 
 the 1 4th of July two men were killed, one on either side 
 of me." He might have added, " I was the second man 
 to scale the Towers." 
 
 It was not until the day's proceedings had been drawn 
 out for a considerable time that a sentence was spoken, 
 the full import of which was not understood at the time, 
 but which was, as a fact, the first step in those four 
 months of irresponsibility and crime which are associated 
 with the name of Robespierre, and which hang like a 
 weight around the neck of the French nation. Lacroix 
 had just said with a touch of legal phraseology, '' I must 
 insist that the witnesses whom I have demanded should 
 be subpoenaed, and if there is any difficulty about this, I 
 formally demand that the Convention shall be consulted 
 in the matter ; " when the public prosecutor answered, 
 " It is high time that this part of the trial, which has be- 
 come a mere struggle, and which is a public scandal, 
 should cease. I am about to write to the Convention 
 to hear what it has to say, and its advice shall be exactly 
 followed." 
 
 Both the public prosecutor arid the judge signed the 
 letter. The first draft which Fouquier had drawn up was 
 thought too strong, and it appears that Herman revised 
 it.^ " Citoyens Repr^sentants, — There has been a storm 
 in the hall since this day's proceedings began. The 
 accused are calling for witnesses who are among your 
 deputies. . They are appealing to the people, saying 
 that they will be refused. In spite of the firmness of the 
 president and of all the tribunal, they continue to pro- 
 test that they wUl not be silent antU their witnesses are 
 
 ^ This is M. Wallon's opinion, who gives both versions, and from whom 
 I take so much of this description. See Tribunal Bivolutiomnaire, iii. 177. 
 
270 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 heard, unless by your passing a special decree." [This was 
 false, and was the only part of the letter calculated to 
 impress the Parliament.] " We wish to hear your orders 
 as to what we shall do in the face of this demand ; the 
 procedure gives us no way by which we can refuse 
 them." 
 
 But note the way in which the letter was presented to 
 a Parliament in which there yet remained so much sym- 
 pathy for the accused, and the way in which it was 
 received. St. Just appeared in the tribune with the letter 
 in his hands, and, instead of reading it, held it up before 
 them and made this speech : — 
 
 " The public prosecutor of the Eevolutionary Tribunal 
 has sent to teU you that the prisoners are in full revolt, 
 and have interrupted the hearing, saying they will not 
 allow it to continue until the Convention has taken 
 measures. You have barely escaped from the greatest 
 danger which has yet menaced our new hberty, and this 
 revolt in the very seat of justice, of men panic-stricken 
 by the law, shows what is in their minds. Their despair 
 and their fury are a plain proof of the hypocrisy which 
 they showed in keeping a good face before you. Innocent 
 men do not revolt. Dillon, who ordered his army to 
 march on Paris, has told us that Desmoulins's wife received 
 money to help the plot. Our thanks are due to you for 
 having put us in the difficult and dangerous post that we 
 occupy. Your Committees will answer you by the most 
 careful watching," and so forth. When the Convention 
 had had laid before them every argument and every 
 flattery which could falsify their point of view, he proposed 
 the decree that any prisoner who should attempt to 
 interrupt the course of justice by threats or revolt should 
 be outlawed. 
 
 As they were about to vote, Billaud Varennes added 
 his word, " I beg the Convention to listen to a letter 
 which the Committees have received from the pohce con- 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 271 
 
 cerning the conspirators, and their connection with the 
 prisoners." The letter is not genuine. Even if it were, 
 it depends entirely upon the word of one obscure and un- 
 trustworthy man (Laflotte), but it did the work. The 
 Committees, as we know, were names to conjure with. 
 Their secret debates, their evident success, the fact that 
 their members had been chosen for the very purpose of 
 guarding the interests of the Republic, aU fataUy told 
 against the prisoners. The decree passed without a vote. 
 Robespierre asked that the letter might be read in full 
 court, and his demand was granted. It was from that 
 letter, from this obscure and uncertain origin, that there 
 dated the legend of the " conspiracy in the prisons " 
 which was to cost the hves of so many hundreds. 
 
 It was at the very close of this day, the 4th of April, 
 that the decree of the Convention was brought back to 
 the tribunal. Amar brought it and gave it to Fouquier, 
 saying, " Here is what you wanted." Fouquier smiled and 
 said, " We were in great need of it." It was read in the 
 tribunal. When Camille heard the name of his wife 
 mentioned in connection with St. Just's demand he cried 
 out, " Win they kill her too ? " and David, who was sitting 
 behind the judges, said, "We hold them at last."* 
 
 The fourth day, the i6th Germiaal (sth AprU), the 
 court met at half-past eight in the morning, instead of at 
 the ordinary hour of ten. Almost at once, before the 
 accused had time to begin their tactics of the day before, 
 the decree was read. The judge, relying on the law which 
 had already been in operation against others, and which 
 gave the jury the right to say after three days whether 
 they were satisfied, turned to them, and they asked leave 
 to dehberate. 
 
 Before the prisoners had passed into the prison Des- 
 moulins had found time to tear the defence which he had 
 written into small pieces, and to throw them at the feet 
 
 > All this appears in the trial of Fouquier. 
 
272 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 of the judge. Danton cried out, and checked himself in 
 the middle of his sentence. All save poor Camille had 
 kept their self-control. He, however, clung to the dock, 
 determined on making some appeal to the people, or to 
 the judges, or to posterity. Danton, who calmed him a 
 few hours later at the foot of the scaffold, could do no- 
 thing with him then, and it was in the midst of a terrible 
 violence that the fifteen disappeared. 
 
 The prisoners were taken back to the Conciergerie, 
 but in their absence occurred a scene which is among the 
 most instructive of the close of the Revolution. One of 
 the jury could not bring himself to declare the guilt of 
 men whom he knew to be innocent. Another said to 
 him, " This is not a trial ; it is a sacrifice. Danton and 
 Robespierre cannot exist together; which do you think 
 most necessary to the Repubhc ? " The unhappy man, 
 full of the infatuation of the time, stammered out, " Why, 
 
 Robespierre is necessary, of course, but " " It is 
 
 enough ; in saying that you have passed judgment." 
 And it came about in this way that the unanimous 
 verdict condemned the Indulgents. LhuilHer alone was 
 acquitted. 
 
 Of what passed in the prison we only know from the 
 lips of an enemy,' but I can see Danton talking still 
 courageously of a thousand things; sitting in his chair 
 of green damask and drinking his bottle of Burgundy 
 opposite the silver and the traps of D'Eglantine.' They 
 were not taken back to hear their sentence ; it was read 
 to them, as a matter of form, in the Conciergerie itself. 
 Ducray read it to them one by one as they were brought 
 into his office. Danton refused to hear it in patience ; 
 he hated the technicality and the form, and he knew 
 that he was condemned long ago. He committed himself 
 to a last burst of passion before summoning his strength 
 
 ' They are given in Clar^tie's Desmonlins in the Appendix. 
 ' See the list of the prisoner's effects in Clar^tie's Desnumlint . 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 273 
 
 to meet the ordeal of the streets, and followed his anger 
 by the insults which for days he had levelled at death. 
 Then for a few hours they kept a silence not undignified, 
 save only Camille, unfitted for such trials, and moaning 
 to himself in a corner of the room, whom Danton con- 
 tinually tried to console, a task in which at the very end 
 of their sad journey he succeeded. It was part of his 
 broad mind to imderstand even a writer and an artist, he 
 who had never written and had only done. 
 
 It was between half-past four and five o'clock in the 
 evening of the same day, the Sth of April 1794, that the 
 prisoners reappeared. Two carts were waiting for them 
 at the great gate in the court of the Palais — the gate 
 which is the inner entrance to the Conciergerie to-day.^ 
 About the carts were a mmierous escort mounted and 
 with drawn swords, but the victims took their seats as 
 they chose, and of the fifteen the Dantonists remained 
 together. H^rault, Canulle, Lacroix, Westermann, Fabre, 
 Danton went up the last into the second cart, and the 
 procession moved out of the courtyard and turned to the 
 left under the shadow of the Palais, and then to the left 
 again round the Tour de I'Horloge, and so on to the quay. 
 They passed the window of the tribunal, the window from 
 which Danton's loud voice had been heard across the 
 river ; they went creaking slowly past the old Mairie, past 
 the rooms that had been Roland's lodgings, till they 
 came to the corner of the Pont Neuf ; and as the carts 
 turned from the trees of the Place Dauphine on to the 
 open bridge, they left the shade and passed into the full 
 blaze of the westering sun within an hour of its setting. 
 
 Early as was the season, the air was warm- and 
 pleasant, the leaves and the buds were out on the few 
 trees, the sky was vmclouded. All that fatal spring was 
 summerlike, and this day was the calmest and most 
 
 • This gate may be seen to-day just to the right of the great staircase 
 in the court of the Palais de Justice. It has an iron grating before it. 
 
 S 
 
274 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 beautiful that it had known. The light, already tinged 
 ■with evening, came flooding the houses of the north bank 
 till their glass shone in the eyes. There it caught the 
 Caf^ de ^]^;cole where Danton had sat a young lawyer 
 seven years before, and had seen the beauty of his first 
 wife in her father's house ; to the right the corner of the 
 old Hotel de Ville caught the glow, to the left the Louvre 
 flamed with a hundred windows. 
 
 Where the light poured up the river and came re- 
 flected from the Seine on to the bridge, it marked out the 
 terrible column that was moving ponderously forward to 
 death. A great crowd, foolish, unstable, varied, of whom 
 some sang, some ran to catch a near sight of the " Indul- 
 gents," some pitied, and a few understood and despaired 
 of the Republic — all these surging and jostling as a 
 crowd will that is forced to a slow pace and confined by 
 the narrowness of an old thoroughfare, stretched from 
 one end of the bridge to the other, and you would have 
 seen them in the sunlight, brilliant in the colours that 
 men wore in those days, while here and there a red cap 
 of Uberty marked the line of heads. 
 
 But in the centre of this crowd and showing above it, 
 could be seen the group of men who were about to die. 
 The carts hidden by the people, the horses' heads just 
 showing above the mob, surrounded by the sharp gleams 
 that only come from swords, there rose distinguished the 
 figures of the Dantonists. There stood H^rault de 
 Si-chelles upright, his face contemptuous, his colour high, 
 " as though he had just risen from a feast." There on 
 the far side of the cart sat Fabre D'Eglantine, bound, ill, 
 collapsed, his head resting on his chest, muttering and 
 complaining. There on the left side, opposite Fabre, 
 is Camille, bound but still frenzied, calling loudly to the 
 people, raving, " Peuple, pauvre Peuple ! " He still kept 
 in his poet's head the dream of the People ! They had 
 been deceived, but they were just, they would save him. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 275 
 
 He wrestled with his ropes and tore his shirt open at the 
 bosom, clenching his bound hands — clutched in his 
 fingers through all the struggle shone the bright hair of 
 Lucille. Danton stood up immense and quiet between 
 them. One of those broad shoulders touched D'Eglantine, 
 the other Desmoiilins ; their souls leant upon his body. 
 And such comfort as there was or control in the central 
 group came out like warmth from the chief of these 
 friends. 
 
 He had been their leader and their strength for five 
 years ; they were round him now Uke younger brothers 
 orphaned. The weakness of one, the vices of another, 
 came leaning for support on the great rock of his form. 
 For these were not the Girondins, the admirable stoics, of 
 whom each was a sufficient strength to his own soul: 
 they were the Dantonists, who had been moulded and 
 framed by the strength and genius of one man. He did 
 not fail them a moment in the journey, and he died last 
 to give them courage. 
 
 As they passed on and left the river, they lost the 
 light again and plunged into shadow; the cool air was 
 about them in the deep narrow streets. They could see 
 the light far above them only, as they turned into the 
 gulf of the Rue St. Honor^ down which the lives of men 
 poured hke a stream to be lost and wasted in the Place de 
 la Revolution. Up its steep sides echoed and re-echoed 
 the noise of the mob like waves. They could see as they 
 rolled slowly along the people at the windows, the men 
 sitting in the caf^s or standing up to watch them go by. 
 One especially Danton saw suddenly and for a moment. 
 He was standing with a drawing-book in his hand and 
 sketching rapidly with short interrupted glances. It was 
 David, an enemy. 
 
 Then there appeared upon their left another sight; 
 it was the only one in that long hour which drove 
 Danton out of his control : it was the house of Duplay. 
 
276 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 There, Udden somewliere behind the close shutters, wa3 
 Robespierre. They all turned to it loudly, and the 
 sentence was pronounced which some say God has 
 executed — that it should disappear and not be known 
 again, and be hidden by high walls and destroyed. 
 
 The house was sUent, shut, blockaded. It was like a 
 thing which is besieged and which turns its least sentient 
 outer part to its enemies. It was beleaguered by the 
 silent and imseen forces which we feel pressing every- 
 where upon the living. For it contained the man who 
 had sent that cartload of his friends to death. Their 
 fault had been to preach the permanent sentiments of 
 mankind, to talk of mercy, and to recall in 1794 the 
 great emotions of the early Revolution — the desire for 
 the RepubUc where every kind of man could sit and 
 laugh at the same table, the Republic of the Commensales. 
 They were the true heirs of the spirit of the Federations, 
 and it was for this that they were condemned. Even at 
 this last moment there radiated from them the warmth 
 of heart that proceeds from a group of friends and lovers 
 till it blesses the whole of a nation with an equal affection. 
 Theirs had been the instinct of and the faith in the happy 
 life of the world. It was for this that the Puritan had 
 struck them down; and yet it is the one spirit that 
 runs through any enduring reform, the only spirit that 
 can lead us at last to the Republic. 
 
 In a remote room, where the noise of the wheels 
 could not reach him, sat the man who, by some fatal 
 natural lack or some sin of ambition imrepented, had 
 become the Inquisitor — the mad, narrow enemy of mercy 
 and of all good things. 
 
 For a moment he and his error had the power to 
 condemn, repeating a tragedy of which the world is never 
 weary — the mean thing was killing the great. 
 
 Nevertheless, if you will consider the men in the 
 tumbril, you will find them not to be pitied except for 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 277 
 
 two things, that they were loved by women Avhom they 
 could not see, and that they were dying in the best and 
 latest time of their powerful youth. All these young 
 men were loved, and in other things they should be 
 counted fortunate. They had with their own persons 
 already transformed the world. Here the writer knew 
 that his talent, the words he had so carefully chosen and 
 with such delight in his power, had not been wasted 
 upon praise or fortune, but had achieved the very object. 
 There the orator knew and could remember how his 
 great voice had called up the armies and thrown back 
 the kings. 
 
 But if the scene was a tragedy, it was a tragedy of 
 the real that refused to follow the unities. All nature 
 was at work, crowded into the Revolutionary time, and 
 the element that Shakespeare knew came in of itself — the 
 eternal comedy that seems to us, according to our mood, 
 the irony, the madness, or the cruelty of things, was 
 fatally present to make the day complete ; and the 
 grotesque, Uke a discordant note, contrasted with and 
 emphasised the terrible. 
 
 Fabre, who had best known how omnipresent is this 
 complexity — Fabre, who had said, "Between the giving 
 and taking of snuff there is a comedy" — furnished the 
 example now. Danton hearing so much weakness and 
 so many groans from the sick man said, " What is your 
 complaint ? " He answered, " I have written a play 
 called ' The Maltese Orange,' and I fear the police have 
 taken it, and that some one will steal it and get the 
 fame." Poor Fabre ! It is lost, and no one has the 
 ridicule of his little folly, Danton answered him with a 
 phrase to turn the blood : " Tais toi ! Dans une semaine 
 tu feras assez de vers," and imposed silence. Nor did 
 this satisfy Fate ; there were other points in the frame- 
 work of the incongruous which she loves to throw round 
 terror. A play was running in the opera called the 
 
278 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 " I oth of August ; " in tliis the Dantonists were repre- 
 sented on the stage. When the Dantonists were hardly 
 buried it was played again that very night, and actors 
 made up for H^rault and the rest passed before a public 
 that ignored or had forgotten what the afternoon had 
 seen. More than this, there was already set in type a 
 verse which the street-hawkers cried and sold that very 
 night. For the sake of its coincidence I will take the 
 liberty of translating it into rhymed heroics : — 
 
 " When Danton, Desmoulins, and D'Eglantine 
 Were ferried over to the world unseen, 
 Charon, that equitable citizen, 
 Handed their change to these distinguished men. 
 ' Pray keep the change,' they cried ; ' we pay the fare 
 For Couthon, and St. Just, and Robespierre.' " ' 
 
 Danton spared only Camille, and as he did not stop 
 appealing to the people, told him gently to cease. " Leave 
 the rabble there," he said, " leave them alone." But for 
 himself he kept on throwing angry jests at death. " May 
 I sing ? " he said to the executioner. Sanson thought 
 he might, for all he knew. Then Danton said to him, 
 " I have made some verses, and I will siag them." He 
 sang loudly a verse of the fall of Kobespierre, and then 
 laughed as though he had been at the old caf4 with 
 his friends. 
 
 There was a man (Arnault of the Academy) who 
 lived afterwards to a great age, and who happened to be 
 
 ^ The original of this I take from Olar^tie, who quotes P. A. Lecomte, 
 Mtmorial sur la Rivolution Franfaiie. 
 
 " Lorsqu'arriv^s au bords du PhWg^ton 
 Oamille Desmoulins, D'Eglantine et Danton, 
 Payferent pour passer ce fleuve redouatble 
 Le nautounier Charon (citoyen Equitable) 
 A nos trois passagers voulait remettre en mains 
 L'exc^dant de la taxe impos^e aux humains. 
 ' Garde,' lui dit Danton, ' la somme toute entiire ; 
 Je paye pour Coathon, St. Just et Robespierre.' " 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 279 
 
 crossing the Rue St. Honor4 as the carts went past. In 
 a Paris that had all its business to do, many such men 
 came and went, almost forgetting that politics existed 
 even then. But this batch of prisoners haunted him. 
 He had seen Danton standing singing with laughter, he 
 hurried on to the Rue de la Monnaie, had his say with 
 Michael, who was awaiting him, and then, fuU of the 
 scene, ran back across the TuUleries gardens, and pressing 
 his face to the railings looked over the great Place de la 
 Revolution. The convoy had arrived, the carts stood at 
 the foot of the guillotine, and his memory of the scene is 
 the basis of its history. 
 
 It was close on six, and the sun was nearly set behind 
 the trees of the ^fitoUe; it reddened the great plaster 
 statue of Liberty which stood in the middle of the Place, 
 where the obelisk is now, and to which Madame Roland 
 dehvered her last phrase. It sent a level beam upon the 
 vast crowd that filled the square, and cast long shadows, 
 sending behind the guillotine a dark lane over the people. 
 The day had remained serene and beautiful to the last, 
 the sky was stainless, and the west shone like a forge. 
 Against it, one by one, appeared the figures of the con- 
 demned. H^rault de S^chelles, straight and generous in 
 his bearing, first showed against the light, standing on 
 the high scaffold conspicuous. He looked at the Garde 
 Meuble, and from one of its high windows a woman's hand 
 found it possible to wave a farewell. Lacroix next, 
 equally alone; Camille, grown easy and self-controlled, 
 was the third. One by one they came up the few steps, 
 stood clearly for a moment in the fierce light, black or 
 framed in scarlet, and went down. 
 
 Danton was the last. He had stood unmoved at the 
 foot of the steps as his friends died. Trying to embrace 
 H^rault before he went up, roughly rebuking the execu- 
 tioner who tore them asunder, waiting his turn without 
 passion, he heard the repeated fall of the knife in the 
 
28o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 silence of the crowd. His great figure, more majestic 
 than in the days of his triumph, came against the simset. 
 The man who watched it from the Tuilleries gate grew 
 half afraid, and tells us that he understood for a moment 
 what kind of things Dante himself had seen. By an 
 accident he had to wait some seconds longer than the 
 rest ; the executioner heard him muttering, " I shall never 
 see her again ... no weakness," but his only movement 
 was to gaze over the crowd. They say that a face met 
 his, and that a sacramental hand was raised in absolution.* 
 He stood thus conspicuous for a moment over the 
 people whom he had so often swayed. In that attitude 
 he remains for history. When death suddenly strikes a 
 friend, the picture which we carry of him in our minds is 
 that of vigorous life. His last laughter, his last tones of 
 health, his rapid step, or his animated gesture reproduce 
 his image for ever. So it is with Danton; there is no 
 mask of Danton dead, nor can you complete his story 
 with the sense of repose. We cannot see his face in the 
 calm either of triumph or of sleep — the brows grown level, 
 the lips satisfied, the eyelids closed. He will stand 
 through whatever centuries the story of the Revolution 
 may be told as he stood on the scaffold looking west- 
 ward and transfigured by the red sun, still courageous, 
 still powerful in his words, and stiU instinct with that 
 peculiar energy, self-forming, self-governing, and whole. 
 He has in his final moment the bearing of the tribune, 
 the glance that had mastered the danger in Belgium, the 
 force that had nailed Roland to his post in September, 
 and that had commanded the first Committee. The 
 Republic that he desired, and that will come, was proved 
 in his carriage, and passed from him into the crowd. 
 
 ' It was Madame G^ly who told this to Despoi's grandfather. Clar^tia 
 has mentioned it. But Michelet must have heard from the family abont 
 this same priest (Eer^navant le Breton), for according to Madame Q4ij it 
 was he who married Danton for the second time. 
 
THE DEATH OF DANTON 281 
 
 When Sanson put a hand upon his shoulder the 
 ghost of Mirabeau stood by his side and inspired him 
 with the pride that had brightened the death-chamber 
 of three years before. He said, " Show my head to the 
 people ; it is well worth the while." Then they did what 
 they had to do, and without any kind of fear, his great 
 soul went down the turning in the road. 
 
 They showed his head to the people, and the sun set. 
 There rose at once the confused noise of a thousand 
 voices that rejoiced, or questioned, or despaired, and 
 in the gathering darkness the Parisians returned through 
 the narrow streets eastward to their homes. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ROBESPIERRE 
 
 I DKSiEE in this additional chapter to show what place 
 Danton filled in the Revolution by describing the mad- 
 ness and the reaction that followed his loss ; and the 
 extent to which his influence, in spite of these, was per- 
 manent. 
 
 When Danton disappeared, one man remained the 
 master of the terrible machiae which he had created. It 
 remains to show what were the fortunes of his work when 
 death had come to complete the results of his abdication. 
 
 The genius of the dead man had foreseen a necessity, 
 had met it with an institution, and that institution had 
 proved his wisdom by its immense success. France was 
 one within, and was beginning on her frontiers the war 
 whose success was not to end until it had rebuilt all 
 Europe. This unprecedented power dominated a country 
 long used to centralisation, and was strengthened by the 
 accidents of the time, by the even play of the government 
 over a surface where all local obstacles had broken down, 
 by the tacit acquiescence of every patriotic man (for it 
 was the thing that saved the nation), by the very abuse 
 of punitive measures. This power was destined to change 
 from a machine to a toy. 
 
 They say the children of that time had little models 
 of the guillotine to play with. The statement is pic- 
 turesque and presumably false, but it will serve well for a 
 simile. A man unused to action, dreaming of a perfect 
 state which was but a reflection of his own intensely 
 
ROBESPIERRE 283 
 
 concentrated mind, acquired the control of the guillotine. 
 Unfortunately the model was of full size. 
 
 The punishment of death had hitherto been inflicted, 
 for the most part, with a clear and definite, though often 
 with an immoral, object. In the hands of Kobespierre it 
 was used to defend a theory and a whim. The men of 
 the time loved their country ardently, and believed with 
 the firmness of a large and generous faith in those prin- 
 ciples upon which all our civilisation is at present based. 
 France and the Republic were, in their minds, one thing, 
 and a thing which they spared no means to make survive 
 the most terrible struggle into which any nation has ever 
 dared to enter. They killed that they might be obeyed 
 in a time which verged on anarchy, and they desired to 
 be obeyed because, but for obedience to government, 
 France and all her liberties would have perished. Such 
 a motive for punishment is just, and its execution is 
 honest. 
 
 By the side of this and beyond it were the excesses, 
 those excesses in protest against which Danton himself 
 had died. Execrable as were these, infamous as will ever 
 remain their most conspicuous actors, Hubert and Carrier, 
 they were prompted by a motive which is of the com- 
 monest and the most easily understood in human affairs. 
 They were actions of revenge. Danton had said once 
 and sincerely, " I can find no use for hate." It was the 
 key to his successful effort, by far the most creative in a 
 time when all was energy, that no part of his strength 
 was lost in personal attack, hardly any in personal defence. 
 This could no more be said of his contemporaries than it 
 can be said of the bulk of men in any nation, even in 
 times of order and of peace. And everywhere, in Nantes, 
 in Lyons, in the Vendue, in the accusation of Marie 
 Antoinette, from the very beginning of the Terror, this 
 hate had surged and broken. The Girondins were put to 
 death on a charge full of the spirit of revenge ; and as the 
 
284 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 autumn grew into winter, in the very crisis of that oppres- 
 sion by which the nation had been saved, the accusations 
 became trivial, the process of justice more and more of a 
 personal act, depending in the provinces on the temper of 
 an emissary, in Paris upon the summary judgment of the 
 Committee and the Tribunal. 
 
 But all this had so far been comprehensible. With 
 the advent of Robespierre to full power we have to deal 
 with a phase of history which will hardly be understood 
 in happier times. Danton, who saw straight, who under- 
 stood, and who, when the victories began, found leisure to 
 pity, is a type whose extremes are the romance, whose 
 moderation is the groundwork of history. We have to 
 deal in him with an enthusiast who is also a statesman, ia 
 whom the mind has sufficient power to know itself even 
 in its violence, and to return dehberately within its usual 
 boundaries after never so fantastic an excursion. With 
 Hubert again we know the tjrpe. Those are not rare in 
 whom passions purely personal domLaate all abstract con- 
 ceptions, and whose natures desire the horrible in litera- 
 ture during times of peace, and satisfy their desire by 
 action during their moments of power. 
 
 But with Robespierre an absolutely different feature 
 is presented : the man who could laugh and the man 
 who could hate, the right and the left wing have dis- 
 appeared, and there is left standing alone a personality 
 which had gradually become the idol of the city. He 
 could neither laugh nor hate ; the love of coimtry itself, 
 which illuminates so much in the Revolution, and which 
 explains so many follies in the smaller men, even that was 
 practically absent ia the mind of Robespierre. His char- 
 acter would have fitted well with the absence of the 
 human senses, and should some further document discover 
 to historians that he lacked the sense of taste, that he was 
 colour-bliad, or that he could not distinguish the notes of 
 music, these details would do much to complete the im- 
 
ROBESPIERRE 285 
 
 perfect and troubling picture. For in the sphere that is 
 above, but co-ordinate with, physical life, all those avenues 
 by which our fellow-beings touch us more nearly than 
 ideas were closed to him. 
 
 It is possible that he may take, centuries hence, the 
 appearance of majesty. He had the reserve, the dignity, 
 the intense idealism, the perfect belief in himself, the 
 certitude that others were in sympathy — all the charac- 
 teristics, in fine, which distinguish the Absolutists and the 
 great Reformers. In his iron code of theory we seem to 
 hear the ghost of a Calvin, in his reiterated morals and 
 his perpetual application of them there is the occasional 
 sharp reminiscence of a Hildebrand. The famous death 
 cry, " I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I 
 die in exile," is not so far distant from " - . . de mourir 
 pour le peuple et d'en etre ahhorre." 
 
 We are accustomed to clothe such figures with a 
 solemn drapery, and to lend them, at great distances of 
 time, a certain terrible grandeur. Eobespierre is too near 
 us, he is too well known, and his reforms failed too utterly, 
 for this to be now the case with him. Yet it may well 
 happen that some one else treading in the same path, 
 and succeeding, will see fit to build a legend round his 
 name. 
 
 What then was the ideal which he pursued — this 
 " one idea," which stood so perpetually before him as to 
 exclude the sight of all human things, of sufferings, of 
 memories, of patriotism itself? It was the civic ideal of 
 Rousseau, in so far as he conformed to it, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 The ideas of the great reformers must of their nature 
 be simple — unworkably simple. But Robespierre's idea 
 was less than simple — it was thin. Now and again in 
 the history of upheavals a type has been defined with 
 special formulae, which in its original shape could never 
 have survived the conditions of active existence, but which 
 
286 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 was real enough to receive accretions, and robust enough 
 to bear moulding until at length it became the living 
 nucleus of a new society, changed, transformed in a 
 thousand details, yet in its main lines the ideal of the 
 founder. With aU the great reforms of the world some 
 such type has been present ; the Puritan, the knight of 
 chivalry, were at first but a faint figure realised in a few 
 phrases. 
 
 Rousseau himself had created such a type, and it has 
 smnidved ; for what permanent fortunes a century is insuffi- 
 cient to show. The Republican citizen of Jean-Jacques 
 stood in the generation which succeeded him the centre 
 of a new society ; in a thousand shapes he really lived. 
 Thomas Jefiferson, William Cobbett, were Hving men to 
 whom this ideal stood for model ; not in its details, but in 
 its main lines. Such noble men are to be met to-day on 
 every side. 
 
 But Robespierre saw reflected in his mind a figure at 
 once more detailed and less human, and one too sharply 
 defined to be capable of any moulding or of any trans- 
 ference into the real world. For him this ideal citizen 
 was nevertheless the one good thing, the one soiind basis 
 of a State. This ideal citizen existed (did men only 
 know it) in each individual ; all men could be made to 
 approach the type ; only a very few were opposed to its 
 success, and it was a sacred duty to break their criminal 
 eifort. The figure stood ever before him, it dominated 
 his every thought, it was the sacred thing before which 
 his essentially mystical mind was perpetually at worship. 
 But he could see nothing beyond or on either side of it ; 
 concrete impressions faded on the unhealthy retina of 
 his mind. For there was a mirror held up before his 
 eyes, and the figure on which he dwelt was himself. 
 
 Thus intensely concentrated upon a certain individual 
 type, it was in his nature to forget the reactions of a 
 community. He saw in society a few evils prominent, 
 
ROBESPIERRE 287 
 
 authority witiiout warrant, arbitrary rule (that hateful 
 thing), servility in the oppressed (the main impediment to 
 any reform). He was bhnd to the interplay, the organic 
 quality in a State, which our own time so ridiculously 
 exaggerates, but which the eighteenth century as a whole 
 neglected. Rousseau had put admirably the metaphor of 
 contract as explaining the bond of society. Robespierre, 
 interpreting him, conceived of contract as the simple and 
 all-sufficient machinery of a State. The error gave his 
 attempt a mechanical and an inhuman appearance over 
 and above its rigidity of dogma. Rousseau, like aU the 
 great writers, gave continual glimpses of the insufficiency 
 of language ; he let his audience see in a hundred phrases, 
 in a recurrence of qualifications, that his words were no 
 more than the words of others, hints at realities, at the 
 best metaphors brought as near as possible to be the true 
 reflection of ideas. Robespierre read him, and has re- 
 mained among the words entangled and satisfied. Rous- 
 seau was perpetually insisting upon a point of view, calling 
 out, " Come and see." He had discovered a position from 
 which (as he thought) the bewildering complexity of 
 human affairs appeared in a just and simple perspective. 
 But Rousseau never asserts that such a view will have the 
 same colouring to all men ; on the contrary, at his best 
 he denies it. He trusts to the main aspect of his theory 
 for a main result in the State, to an agreement among 
 men of good-will for the harmonising of conflicting details. 
 Robespierre, as the high-priest of that gospel, had come 
 and had seen, but the perfect citizen and the perfect state 
 of his vision must be realised in every tittle as he had 
 observed them. Once again a great message was destined 
 to be sterilised and almost lost through the functionary 
 of its creed. 
 
 Such was the man who had slowly supplanted Danton. 
 A mind whose type of aberration is common to all nations 
 had supplanted the typical Frenchman who had organised 
 
288 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the defence of France, and in the place of one whom his 
 enemies perpetually reproach with an excess of vigour 
 and manhood, a theorist of hardly any but intellectual 
 emotions was master. 
 
 What gave him his great ascendancy, his practically 
 absolute power ? It was due, in the first place, to the 
 popularity whose growth was the feature of the later 
 Revolution. That popularity was real in the number 
 of his followers and in the sincerity of their profession. 
 It must be remembered that hitherto he had stood on 
 the side of leniency in public action, while in words he 
 had expressed always accurately, sometimes nobly, the 
 ideals upon which the nation was bent. He had, from a 
 constitutional incapacity for real work, been only in the 
 background of those crises which had left behind them 
 an increasing crowd of malcontents. Not he, but Danton, 
 had made the loth of August. No one had coimected 
 his name with the massacres of September. The neces- 
 sity of government was not his interpretation of the 
 defeats in Belgium ; the creation of that government was 
 another's; its latent benefits reflect no merit upon hini 
 now; its immediate rigours exposed him to no special 
 vengeance at the time. Not he, but Marat, is the obvious 
 demagogue whom the visionary Girondin girl marks out 
 as the enemy. To Camot would turn the hatred of those 
 whom the great conscription oppressed. The Christian 
 foundation of France had others than Robespierre to 
 curse for the Masque of Reason and for the suppression 
 of public worship. He had stood behind Desmoulins 
 when the reaction of Nivose and Frimaire was at work; 
 he had approved and was thought the author of that trial 
 and execution in which Hebert had suffered the sentence 
 already pronounced upon him by the best of France. In 
 fact, he had stood in nothing as the extremist or as the 
 tyrant till the day when he permitted the arrest of 
 Danton. He had been rather the voice of a strong public 
 
ROBESPIERRE 289 
 
 opinion than the arm which, when it acts at the orders of 
 unreason, becomes hated by its own ftirious master. Thus 
 upon the negative side there was nothing to prevent his 
 sudden attainment of power. 
 
 In the second place, his name had been the most pre- , 
 sent and the most famihar from the earUest days of the ' 
 Revolution. He had sat in the Assembly of the Com- 
 mons five years before, a notable though hardly a noted 
 figure, with some stories siu-rounding him, with quite a 
 reputation in his provincial centre; he had been, since 
 first the Jacobin Club became the mouthpiece of the piu:e 
 RepubHcans, the conspicuous leader of the Society. The 
 force of continuity and tradition counts for little in the 
 history of this whirlwind, but such as it is it explains to 
 a great degree the ascendancy of Robespierre. He alone 
 was never absent, he alone remained to chant a ceaseless 
 chorus to the action of the drama. His name was famUiar 
 to excess ; but it was hardly an epoch at which men grew 
 weary of hearing a politician called " the just." Besides 
 this famiUarity with his name, certain virtues — and those 
 the most cherished of the time — were in fact or by repu- 
 tation his. None could accuse him of venality; his sin- 
 cerity was obvious — indeed, it was the necessary fruit of 
 his narrow mind. The ambition from which we cannot 
 divorce his name was apparent to but few of his contem- 
 poraries, and was not fully seized even by his enemies 
 till he had started on that short career of absolute power 
 which has stamped itself for ever upon the fortunes of 
 his country. Thus habit, the strongest of forces, was 
 his ally. 
 
 In the third place, circumstances quite as much as 
 his own action had left him (as far as one can follow the 
 mysteries of the Committee) sole director of an excep- 
 tional executive. On account of the illusions and neces- 
 sities of the people «uch a position was not immediately 
 recognised as tyrannical. The machine was theirs, working 
 
 T 
 
290 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 for them and made by them; all the better if an idol 
 of theirs held the levers ; he would make the most trusty 
 of servants. Robespierre was not master in theory. Even 
 committees were not the masters in theory. Theory was 
 everything to France in the year II., and in theory the 
 Convention was master. Nay, even the Convention was 
 only master because — in theory again — the sovereign, 
 the nation, was behind it. The majority of the Conven- 
 tion, and it alone, is the technical authority. Robespierre's 
 name was not to be discovered at the foot of those hsts 
 of the condemned which his monstrous policy constructed, 
 and at the end of his four months he fell because the 
 theoretical master, the Convention, acted as it chose, and 
 no sufficient force dared to deny its right. 
 
 He starts then upon the closing act of the play, the 
 one figure whom all regard, and into whose hands the 
 police, the committees, the juries, and (by their own dis- 
 order) the majority of the Convention itself have fallen. 
 
 The new reign began on the 6th of April, exactly a 
 year to a day since the Committee of Public Safety had 
 been established. It was Germinal, the month of 
 seeds that grow under ground, the most significant and 
 the most terrible of the new names. M. Zola has chosen 
 it for the title of his greatest work ; it was the other day 
 on the dying lips of a poor wretch in Spain whose mad- 
 ness also turned upon social injustice. 
 
 The following of Robespierre did not hesitate to show 
 at once its tendencies and even its dogmas — for it held a 
 religion. That same day, the 6th of April — 1 7th Ger- 
 minal of the year II. — Couthon came from the Committee 
 with a proposition for the Parliament to discuss the 
 establishment of a national worship of God. A new note 
 had been heard in the clamour ; soon in the clear silence 
 of suspense it is to be the only sound, saving the duU 
 accompaniment of the two guillotines. This or that 
 occasional freak of theory or dramatised ribaldry the 
 
ROBESPIERRE 291 
 
 Terror had already known ; unlimited power defended by 
 inexorable severity had developed many strange decrees, 
 dissociated from the general life and dying as they rose — 
 absurdities whose chief purpose would seem to be the 
 interest they have afforded to foreigners. But iu these 
 there had been no system. The Mass was being said on 
 aU sides when the churches were supposed to be closed. 
 Even as the Feast of Reason was being held at Notre 
 Dame, vespers were chanted at St. Germains. One thing 
 alone had been the purpose and had given the motive 
 force to nine months of agony endured — the salvation 
 of Revolutionary France. But when Couthon spoke it 
 was not France, nor common rights and liberties which 
 were proposed as the object of the defence — it was 
 Robespierrian Rousseau. In two months we shall have 
 the worship of the Supreme Being, in three the reaction ; 
 in less than four the high-priest of this impossible system 
 is to fall; yet his dieam and his power will be almost 
 enough in their fall to drag down the Republic. 
 
 Five days more saw " the rest of the factions " sacri- 
 ficed to this new personal terror. Gobel, who had always 
 been afraid, and whose conscience had been turned like a 
 weathercock away from the nearest pike; the wives of 
 Desmoulins and of Hubert (for women, as the Terror 
 increased, were suspected, sometimes rightly, of being the 
 best at plotting) ; Chaumette, who had helped Hebert to 
 put up his theatricals in Notre Dame — they were all 
 tried, and in this trial it is again not the Revolution, but 
 Robespierre pure and simple whom we hear arguing and 
 condemning through the mouths of the court. 
 
 One of the accused " has wished to efface the idea of 
 the divinity." Another has " interfered with the worship 
 of his fellow-citizens" (this was said to Chaumette, who 
 must have thought it even at that moment something 
 of a platitude). To a third the reproach is made of 
 " changing the mode of worship without authority." We 
 
292 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 are on the highroad to those last six weeks in which 
 trial of any kind and definite accusation itself was absent. 
 The details of one man's opinion are become the num- 
 berless dogmas of a creed, and of a creed that kills 
 unmercifully. And yet even as he asserted his creed its 
 mechanical impotence appeared in violent contrast with 
 the humanity that the Puritan was persecuting. For 
 Lucille Ughted her face radiantly when she was condemned, 
 and said, " I shall see him in a few hours." 
 
 Three days more — the 17th of April — and the 
 machinery was further centralised. St. Just demanded 
 that the poHtical prisoners should be taken from every 
 part of France to be judged in Paris. The popular com- 
 missions — mere gatherings to denounce without proofs 
 and without' forms— were actively used all over the 
 RepubUc. In Paris the commission was to be the feeler 
 for the central machine. And such was the incapacity 
 of the Dreamer, " who had not vrits enough to cook an 
 Ggg," that this new feature in the machinery was not even 
 organised : it was a government of mere rigid absolutism 
 resting on bases that were rapidly becoming mere anarchy. 
 But even as the system, such as it was, developed, as the 
 central power grew more rigid, and the thing to be 
 governed more decayed, Danton, who had been MUed 
 that it might exist, pursued it. It was due to his work 
 that the wrestling on the frontier was showing a definite 
 issue. The advance had begun. 
 
 With his death the diplomacy of France had ceased. 
 The phrase of Robespierre's, which he had so successfully 
 combated, had reappeared in vigour : the " nation would 
 not treat with her enemies." But the organisation of her 
 armies, the levies, the rigid discipline, the arms were tell- 
 ing. That aspect of the national energy had grown more 
 healthy as the central brain grew more diseased and vain. 
 Robespierre was threatening Camot vaguely in the Com- 
 mittee, but Carnot was at work and was saving France. 
 
ROBESPIERRE 293 
 
 St. Just himself, when he is upon the frontier, appears in 
 a capacity worthy of admiration, for he has there to deal 
 with a thing in action. His energy is as fierce as ever, 
 but its object is victory over a national enemy, and not 
 the triumph of a jejune idea. He had better have re- 
 mained with the soldiers. 
 
 In Paris the Commune had been seized. The enemy 
 whom all had feared, whom even Danton had to the last 
 conciliated, was fearlessly grasped. The mayor was broken 
 simply, and replaced by a servant of the rulers ; the 
 Sections protested with the last of their vitality, but the 
 Club denounced them, and they disappeared — even an 
 attempt at martyrdom is to give the idol yet more gilt. 
 Then the news of Turcoing came to Paris. It was little 
 more than a happy rumour, a battle whose importance 
 seems greater to us now than it did to contemporaries. 
 But Pichegru, the peasant, had prepared a good road for 
 Jourdan, and Fleurus was the direct result of Turcoing. 
 Barrfere long after called these victories " the Furies," which 
 swept upon and destroyed the fanatic in power. 
 
 With every point of good news the Terror was less 
 necessary, yet Robespierre's action grew as the national 
 danger disappeared. Even Lord Howe's great victory of 
 the 1st of June did little to check the sentiment of re- 
 lief. The Vengeur went down and left a force of many 
 ships to the French navy for ever. The food reached 
 port, and the eyes of Frenchmen were not directed to the 
 sea, whose command they knew themselves to have gained 
 and lost before then with but little resulting change ; they 
 turned, as they have always and wiU ever turn, to the 
 frontier of the north-east, the wrestling-ring upon whose 
 fair level was to be decided the fate of all their sacrifice 
 and of all their ideals, and Paris every day grew more 
 hopeful of the result, Robespierre more blind to every- 
 thing except his vision. On the 8 th of June — the 20th 
 Frairial — he capped the edifice of his national religion 
 
294 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 with the Feast of the Supreme Being ; on the i oth he 
 forged the last piece of the machinery which was to make 
 that rehgion the moral order of the new era by force. 
 
 In the connection of these dates we see the whole 
 man and the time. Three weeks pass from the first 
 definite victory against the allies to the law of the 22nd 
 Prairial. That short time widened the breach between 
 the armies and the government till it became an impass- 
 able gulf. The fruit of that schism wag to appear much 
 later, but already its elements were clear. Of the two 
 parts of Danton's work one had become national, healthy, 
 representative ; the other, which had been designed for 
 similar action, had finally become a thing of personalities 
 and of theories. The armies were in full success, the 
 Terror was menaced, and was doomed. 
 
 In this feast of the Almighty, Robespierre was insanely 
 himself. He wore his bright-blue coat, perhaps to typify 
 the bright sky which we have all worshipped for so many 
 thousand years. In his little white hand, that never had 
 been nor could be put to a man's work, he held the typical 
 offerings of fruit and corn. His head was bent forward 
 a little, and he looked at the ground. The men who stood 
 up boldly in the attitudes of Mirabeau and of the Tribunes 
 were dead or in the armies. 
 
 Remove the scene by hundreds of years, and tell it 
 of a primitive people in some mountain valley, it assumes 
 a simplicity and a grandeur as legend. Their old tradi- 
 tions (let us say) have been lost or stolen from them. 
 They are casting about for a lawgiver and for a starting- 
 point. A pure idealist is found, draconian in his method, 
 but ascetic and sincere in his life, laying down as neces- 
 sary for the state a clear and simple morality, basing all 
 ethics on the recognition and the worship of God. If we 
 make that picture we have some idea of what passed 
 through the mind of the little clique which still sur- 
 rounded Robespierre, some conception of the picture which 
 
ROBESPIERRE 295 
 
 still half-fascinated the crowd. For Robespierre himself 
 it was intensely true; he lived seons and myriads of 
 leagues away in time and space from humanity, intent 
 upon his dream. 
 
 But in sight of the mummery stood Notre Dame. 
 Not a man there but had been baptized in the Christian 
 faith; a history more complex and more eventful than 
 that of perhaps any other nation was the inheritance and 
 the future of that crowd. And even as the game was 
 being played, the real France on the Sambre and in the 
 plains of Valenciennes was carrying out the oldest of 
 struggles in defence of the first of rights. The scene has 
 been laughed at and despised suiEciently by aliens within 
 and without the French nation ; let it suffice for this book 
 to insist upon its unreaUty, and to assert that its prin- 
 cipal actor was genuine because he Hved in the unreal. 
 
 The lafr of the 22nd of Prairial followed this feast. 
 It was the establishment of a pure despotism, arbitrary, 
 absolute, personal. Already the trials were centralised in 
 Paris since the demand of St. Just had been made. The 
 Commune had been captured, the popular commissions 
 used, even the Presidency of the Convention had be- 
 come the appanage of one man and his associates. This 
 new law proposed the final step. After it was passed the 
 trials were to be conducted without proofs, and without 
 witness or pleading, for they were to be nothing more 
 than a formal process. The Committee once satisfied of 
 guilt, the tribunal was merely to condemn. To be upon 
 the lists was virtually to be dead. It was the end of civil 
 government, the declaration of a state of siege. And that 
 at th6 moment when the armies sent every day better and 
 better news. The Convention debated with Robespierre 
 in the chair ; it hesitated and it nearly condemned the 
 proposal. There was a conflict in the minds of some 
 between the admiration — almost the adoration — of a man ; 
 in the minds of others, between fear and the necessity 
 
296 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 apparent to all of relaxing the machinery which only the 
 national danger had called into being. 
 
 Robespierre came down from the chair and spoke. 
 The even, certain voice which carried away his admirers, 
 which terrified his opponents, succeeded, and the law was 
 passed. Those who find it easy to judge the time, who 
 think it may all be explained by the baseness or the 
 pusillanimity of the ParUament, should note the appeal 
 which he made to the Moderates even then — an appeal 
 which had always been successful, which, when his death 
 drew near, he made at last (and for the first time) in 
 vain. 
 
 For the Moderates, the Plain, the "Marsh," saw in him 
 a kind of saviour, the just man, the slayer of the Moun- 
 tain, the master who would be terrible only for a little 
 time, and would soon restore peace when he had esta- 
 blished a dogma of moral order. Were Moderates ever 
 slow to give fpU power for the sake of order ? 
 
 The next tlay some one saw that the new law touched 
 the Parliament itself. Self-defence, the most sacred, per- 
 haps the only, right of a prince, occurred to them, and 
 they protested. They passed a resolution that no member 
 could be taken before the Revolutionary Tribunal with- 
 out their consent. The following day Robespierre again 
 appears, again appeals to the " Marsh." The men of 
 order saw at once that no danger applied to them, that 
 the disorderly fellows up on the benches of the Left alone 
 were in danger. The resolution was repealed. On that 
 day, the 24 th of Prairial of the year II. — 12 th of June 
 1794 — the whole of France was at his feet, save the 
 armies. 
 
 The France which had made the Revolution, and 
 which Danton had loved, defended, and saved, was in the 
 Ardennes and before Ypres. There were two main bodies. 
 One, on the left, in the plains by the frontier towns, was 
 opposed to a united force of English and Austrians ; the 
 
ROBESPIERRE 297 
 
 other, on the right, in the woods and deep ravines of the 
 Ardennes, was opposed to a strong series of Austrian posts. 
 These armies were not separated, but the enemy held the 
 angle between them. Away on the extreme right Jourdan 
 held the Moselle valley. Pichegru had come back to the 
 army of the left, which in his absence had won Turcoing, 
 and at whose head Soudham, Moreau, and Macdonald had 
 fought and succeeded. On the right St. Just was throw- 
 ing into the attack upon the Sambre all the energy which 
 had saved, before this, the army of Alsace. Five times 
 the attempt had been made to pierce the Austrian lines, 
 and five times it had failed. Coburg lay on both sides 
 of the river ; Charleroy, on the right bank, was his 
 strong place. The Deputies on mission, St. Just and 
 Lebas, the same whom we shall see standing by Robes- 
 pierre at the end, were present at the last decisive check 
 before Charleroy itself. With the Sambre thus held, the 
 southern army was immobUised; the successes of the 
 army of the north seemed almost valueless, for Coburg 
 held the angle between the two. Nevertheless, Turcoing 
 bore great fruit, for it convinced the Austrians that 
 reinforcements were needed to meet the French advance 
 in the north. The allies were like a man fighting with a 
 sword in each hand against two opponents. Wounded in 
 the right hand, he must cross rapidly with the sword in 
 his left, and so expose his left side. Thus Coburg left 
 the Sambre a little more exposed in order to provide tem- 
 porary reinforcements agaii;st the army that had just 
 won Turcoing. St. Just and Carnot were enemies; the 
 young Robespierrian was planned to replace the organiser 
 whom Danton had recognised ; nevertheless, they agreed 
 at this supreme moment upon the necessary action. St. 
 Just from the army, Carnot from the Ministry of War at 
 Paris, called up Jourdan from the Moselle with over forty 
 thousand men. 
 
 They are wrong who imagine that Napoleon invented 
 
298 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the attack by concentration on the weakest point ; so far 
 as the large lines of a campaign go he inherited it from 
 the early Republican generals. Leaving strong places un- 
 occupied, careless of holding (for example) this position 
 on the Moselle, the hurried march northward was deter- 
 mined on, and a supreme effort against the Austrian 
 lines. 
 
 By this junction was formed that " Army of the 
 Sambre-et-Meuse " which to this day gives a theme for 
 one of the noblest marching-songs of the French soldiery. 
 Under Jourdan were men whose names alone have some- 
 thing of the quality of bugle-calls. Ney, and Kleber, and 
 Marceau were leading them. There ran through this new 
 army a kind of prescience, the foreknowledge of victory, 
 an unaccustomed feeUng of expansion and of hope. Soult 
 speaks of it as his awakening ; and there is a fine phrase 
 in the memoir of a contemporary which gives us some 
 echo of its enthusiasm : " We always seemed to be march- 
 ing into the dawn ; " they felt in every rank that the 
 balance was turning, and that France was to be saved. 
 
 A sixth attempt was for a sixth time foiled. The 
 seventh succeeded. The Austrian line was broken and 
 Charleroy surrounded ; in a week it fell. The capitula- 
 tion was hardly achieved when the army of Coburg 
 appeared to the north-east upon the heights that com- 
 mand the left bank of the river, a plateau called that of 
 Fleurus. 
 
 It was upon the 25 th of June that the armies met 
 and fought with blazing hay about them and ripe harvest 
 that had caught fire. Kleber recovered the left wing, as 
 Cromwell at Naseby, after it had given way. Marceau 
 obstinately held the right in front of Fleurus, as Davoust 
 did at AusterUtz ten years later. And towards evening 
 the watchers in the balloon above the French ranks saw 
 in regular and stiff retreat the last army of the old world. 
 By the end of Messidor the English were in Holland, the 
 
ROBESPIERRE 299 
 
 Austrians upon the Rhine, the whole of Belgium was in 
 the hands of the Republic. 
 
 The sun which set upon the death of Danton had 
 risen again. 
 
 So in Robespierre's own coimtry his fall was prepared 
 by circumstances. At Arras, his birthplace, one could 
 almost hear the guns of Fleurus; he and his thin soul 
 belonged to those plains of the north where the Norman 
 and the Burgundian, and the ProvenQal and the Gascon, 
 bom in more generous places, were driving the enemy 
 before them. 
 
 St. Just came back from the front. He at least had 
 seen on what Revolutionary France was really bent, and 
 in what she was vigorous. With the superb courage that 
 belonged to his energy and his youth he had led the 
 charges. Living with the soldiers, he had seen more 
 closely, and with more accuracy than is common in 
 visionaries, the needs of an army. Why did he coma 
 back to continue the insane drama whose seven weeks of 
 action count more with the enemies of France than all 
 her centuries ? 
 
 Because the armies and their victories, though afford- 
 ing proof of what the nation was and of what it required, 
 could afford that proof only to a just and even mind. The 
 soldiers themselves did not express a political opinion; 
 their whole mind was bent upon the breaking of the line, 
 the attempt in which they had succeeded. Of Paris, Revolu- 
 tionary in the last few months, they knew little. They 
 judged it as our contemporaries do — on hearsay ; and it 
 seemed to them that there stood in the capital a powerful 
 Committee fuU of patriots, who had by an intense, an 
 almost furious energy, saved them — the soldiers. Men 
 who risk their lives every day and see death constantly 
 are not likely to be horror-stricken at an excess of rigour 
 in government. In their eyes a number of men had 
 fallen, places had changed, the central power was sur- 
 
300 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 rounded by a tumult, but they had been clotted and fed 
 almost by a miracle — their battles had been made possible. 
 The year since the great conscription had drawn them 
 from their homes had been for them a struggle of con- 
 tinual promise, ending in a great achievement. Already 
 the soldier was half -professional ; the eager volunteer of 
 1892, full of his politics, had given place to a type which 
 the -wanton policy of the old regime was forging to its 
 own destruction. For it was forging the veterans who 
 cared more and more for the Revolutionary thing, and 
 less and less for the discussions and the theories, till at 
 last they produced the Empire. 
 
 St. Just therefore could not warn Robespierre. St. 
 Just himself had learnt no lesson. His ideal was still 
 in his eyes the salvation of France, and even of the 
 world; the victory of Fleurus only made it the more 
 possible to carry his ideal out in action. He had seen 
 the emigrants who were taken in that battle spared for 
 the first time by the French soldiery, but he did not 
 recognise the tremendous import of this, nor appreciate 
 what our own time has thoroughly learnt, that it is the 
 success or the failure of the national defence which rules 
 the temper of a nation. 
 
 When the news of Fleurus became known in Paris 
 the law of Prairial had been in action for nearly three 
 weeks. By the time the victory and its meaning had 
 fully sunk into the mind of the capital half the short 
 period of Robespierre had expired. How much was due 
 to fear upon his part, how much to mere blindness, we 
 cannot tell, but the very moment when the necessity for 
 the Terror patently disappeared was the moment chosen 
 by him for the aggravation of his system. 
 
 He attacked the Moimtain. 
 
 It will be remembered that the Convention had feared 
 for itself when it gave the full power into his hands. On 
 the 1 1 th of June Bourdon from the Oise had carried a 
 
ROBESPIERRE 301 
 
 motion which would have defended the deputies, but 
 which Robespierre had caused to be cancelled upon the 
 following day. 
 
 With an attack, however, appearing as a reality 
 instead of remainiag as a threat, even the " Marsh " grew 
 afraid. He put into his speech an excellent maxim, that 
 " not success of armies abroad or on the frontier are the 
 greatness of a nation, but the virtue of its private citizens 
 within" (21st Messidor) — a truth appearing perhaps at 
 the very worst moment, for it translated itself at once 
 in the minds of his audience into "the victories mean 
 nothing to me ; the guillotine is for the defence not of the 
 nation but of my dogmas." And his faith went on sacri- 
 ficing its innumerable victims. 
 
 Another and a final element was added to the forces 
 against him. The Committee began to refuse his leader- 
 ship. It must be remembered that Robespierre was not 
 absolute master in the sense in which (for example) an 
 English general would be master of an Indian province 
 after the suppression of a mutiny. Circumstances, im- 
 mense popularity, above all the kind of men who com- 
 posed the great Committee, are the explanation of his 
 power. His power was a fact, but a fact based on no 
 theoretical right, and therefore possessed of no elements 
 of endurance. Even the Committee was in the eyes of 
 all the governed, and of some of its own members, only 
 the servant of the national welfare. Two men upon it 
 were Robespierrians — Couthon and St. Just; one was a 
 turncoat by nature — Barrfere ; two more were men of the 
 H^bertian type, most vmreHable for an idealist to deal 
 with — BUlaud and Collot. Finally there remains Camot, 
 the worker, and four others — the two Prieurs, Lindet 
 and St. Andr^. 
 
 Robespierre could be virtually a master, but a master 
 only on the tolerance of superior though latent force. 
 He could inspire terror by the common knowledge that 
 
302 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 the machinery was in his hands, that its terrible punish- 
 ment was practically his to inflict at pleasure. But 
 something put it into his hand, and something could 
 take it away. It cannot be too often repeated, if we 
 wish to understand the Revolution, that from the fall 
 of Lafayette to the 13th of October 1795 there was no 
 disciplined armed force at the service of the Govern- 
 ment, there was nobody better armed or better drilled 
 than the man in the street — not even gunners, the first 
 necessity of modern masters, for the very artillery was 
 amateur; above all, there was no armed body whose 
 members obeyed without question, who were, as a good 
 army must be, a rigid instrument of government framed 
 upon a device which multiplies a hundredfold the strength 
 of each man in the public service. The " strong men " 
 of history, whom our reactionaries delight to honour, 
 have always had such an instrument at their disposition, 
 but when there is no one to fire at a command, your 
 strong man is like any other, save that he is a little 
 weaker for shouting. 
 
 What then was the ultimate master which permitted 
 Robespierre to rule ? It was composed of several forces, 
 and in its division is to be found the secret of its 
 inertia. 
 
 Firstly, the Convention, mutilated as it was, was 
 granted by all to be the nearest representative of the 
 nation. What the majority voted was done. It exercised 
 a very great moral influence, and if it had shown that 
 influence so slightly, it was because its organisation was 
 contemptible — a mass of individuals, with no traditions 
 of action or of grouping, a crowd in which the fear 
 of each that another might be his enemy caused the 
 sum of its individual cries to be anything but the inte- 
 grate expression of its corporate will. Well, this crowd 
 had had one formidable enemy. The right of the Con- 
 vention had been combated by the force of the well- 
 
ROBESPIERRE 303 
 
 organised Commune. The Commune used to be a mirror 
 of at least half of Paris ; it had lost this character. It 
 was nothing now but a group of Robespierrians, and the 
 Convention was the stronger for the change. 
 
 Secondly, there was the material force — the populace 
 of Paris. They had not risen hitherto save for one or 
 two motives — the estabhshment of the national defence, 
 the prevention of a political reaction ; and they had been 
 more turbulent and more dangerous where the first than 
 where the second was their cause for action. 
 
 Thirdly, the regular initiative was in the hands of 
 a majority of the Committee of Public Safety. 
 
 The moment therefore that the majority of the Com- 
 mittee refused to follow Robespierre's lead, he would have 
 had to ascend the tribune of the Convention, and in one 
 of those speeches which carried to some such genuine 
 conviction, but to many others such still more genuine 
 fear, he would have had to obtain a majority for the 
 reconstruction of the great Committee. 
 
 Now a dehberative Assembly which is not strictly 
 organised upon party lines, which has no aristocratic 
 quality and no great (because traditional) corporate pride, 
 is very strongly influenced by what we call " PubUc 
 Opinion." It hears reports from the whole nation, is 
 composed of every kind of man, regards itself moreover 
 as in duty boimd to hsten to the voices outside, meets 
 in its lobbies and during its recesses every species of 
 expression. 
 
 Such a jury is therefore the very worst before which 
 a popular idol could present itself when some strong 
 adverse action had just shown his reputation to be falling. 
 Outvoted in Committee, condemned in ParUament, the 
 man who had but just now been supreme would have 
 to turn to whatever he could find of physical force to 
 support him. 
 
 But that physical force in the case of Robespierre 
 
304 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 was only the populace of Paris, and a populace moreover 
 whose one organising centre — the Commune — had been 
 weakened by himself. Once suppose him forced to 
 depend upon a rising of the people, and the weakness of 
 his position is apparent ; even were he still the pohtician 
 of the majority, it would be a long step from approving 
 of his pohcy to risking one's life in a civil tumult, con- 
 scious that one was attacking every form of constituted 
 authority, and presumably the opinion of the whole 
 nation, for no principle, from no necessity, but to save 
 a man. As we shall see, the rising to defend him com- 
 prised but a small knot of men, and totally failed. 
 
 The man who had not the wits to cook an egg 
 prepared his own ruin. Carnot, whose one idea was to 
 work and save the frontier, he openly menaced. Robes- 
 pierre meditated the inconceivable folly of replacing 
 Garnet's science by the blind activity of St. Just. In 
 alienating Carnot and losing that possible ally, Robespierre 
 lost five of his colleagues on the Committee. The end of 
 Messidor saw him in a kind of voluntary isolation, letting the 
 fatal machine work on, while he stood off from the levers. 
 
 He seems to have just felt two doubts disturbing the 
 serenity of his fanatical complacency. First, whether 
 after all he was going down to posterity as he saw him- 
 self to be — the maker of a new France, " the terror of 
 oppressors and the refuge of the oppressed." (One day 
 his eyes filled when the noise of the tumbrils reached 
 him, and he said, '' I shall be remembered only as a slayer 
 of men." So wrapped up in himself, he had not yet 
 heard an echo of what all men were saying.) Secondly, 
 he wondered whether his perfect state was so near as ha 
 had thought. The killing went on, and he got no nearer. 
 The " anti-patriots," the " anti-revolutionaries," the " anti- 
 Robespierres " (though he did not think of them so) 
 passed perpetually eastward and westward daily from 
 the prisons to the two guillotines 
 
ROBESPIERRE 305 
 
 By the irony of whatever rules and laughs at men, 
 events caused the first mutterings to rise among the 
 Extremists. The Terror was too mild, and above all the 
 men with hearts of beasts — the remainder of the H^bertists 
 — hated a policy which included, however fantastically, 
 the ideal and the worship of God. They hated his half- 
 aUiance with whatever was Christian in the Convention, 
 and his perpetual appeals to the Moderates. 
 
 The Lower Committee had a partially independent Ufe. 
 It was known to be the policy of Robespierre to submit 
 this body, as he had submitted all the other organs of 
 government, to the great Committee of PubUc Safety. 
 Hence it was in this Lower Committee of General Security 
 — menaced as a function and as individuals, thoroughly 
 in touch, by its position, with the poUce — that the con- 
 spiracy arose. The majority of its members joined it, and 
 from the Higher Committee BUlaud and Collot adhered. 
 On the 7th of Thermidor (25th of July T794) the storm 
 burst. Barrfere read his report to the Convention, and it 
 was an open menace to Robespierre. 
 
 The origins of that report merit a certain discussion. 
 We have seen that from the first the reports, directed by 
 the Committee, were usually written by Barrfere, and were 
 read to the Convention by him. On the other hand, we 
 can discover usually in the style, and always in the 
 opinions of the reports, the action of whoever led in the 
 councils of the Committee. Thus, in the document of 
 this nature of which so much mention is made in chapter 
 vi., the spirit, and evidently many of the actual phrases, 
 are the work of Danton. 
 
 Who drew up Barrfere's report, whether (possibly) it 
 was his own work when he saw opinion shifting away from 
 Robespierre, or whether, as is more probable, it was in- 
 spired by Billaud and Collot, and permitted by the five 
 neutrals, we cannot tell. The main fact is this, that the 
 Committee had at least permitted to be made in its name 
 
3o6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 a public declaration hostile to the man who, through the 
 Committee, had ruled France. 
 
 The report repudiated in detail the poUcy of the past 
 seven weeks ; it insisted on the importance of the vic- 
 tories, on the iniquity of further Hsts of victims. For 
 the first time in four months the Convention acted 
 freely ; it ordered the report to be printed and to be sent 
 to all the Communes of France. 
 
 On the next day Robespierre came for the last time 
 into his accustomed place. He gave his last speech to 
 the Parliament. He was to appear once more, but never 
 again as the orator and the leader. Reading, as was his 
 wont, not declaiming, in the slow even voice that had 
 compelled such attention, such enthusiasm, and such fear, 
 he made the last of his declarations. This speech, if no 
 other, should be read to understand the man. Here 
 a theory stated with power and with precision ; there a 
 description of those without whose condemnation the 
 theory could not be reahsed. A noble ideal based upon 
 the scaffold ; a dogma and a detailed persecution side by 
 side. He read it slowly from end to end, proving to 
 himself, and, as he thought, to his audience, the perfection 
 of his ideal, and the necessity of the terrible road towards 
 it. But his audience heard nothing of the ideal; they 
 heard only the description of themselves. 
 
 Men of all kinds, the mere demagogues, were in that 
 summary, the personal enemies, the financiers. It seems 
 that on the manuscript from which he read even Cambon's 
 name was written. But in this extreme crisis, when he 
 was denouncing the first men in order to save his 
 own position, he was no longer Robespierre. It made 
 no difference to his fate, yet we judge him with more 
 accuracy when we know that he omitted the name of 
 Cambon, and that he did not pronounce that of Carnot, 
 whom he had threatened in private. It was an attempt 
 at compromise. 
 
ROBESPIERRE 307 
 
 The Convention heard him and his threat. Of his 
 theories they had heard enough for years. Yet such was 
 the power of his slow clear utterance, of the reverence 
 which his following commanded, and of the idea which he 
 expressed so well, and in which all at heart believed, that 
 they voted the printing and the dissemination of the 
 speech. Cambon and Billaud-Varennes rose to demand 
 the repeal of the vote. The great unwieldy assembly, or 
 rather its great unwieldy neutral faction, hesitated, con- 
 ferred, and yielded to the demand. Then Robespierre 
 was doomed. 
 
 As he was reading, as the distribution of the speech 
 and then its repeal were being voted, there hung above his 
 head and that of the Parliament the flags taken in 
 the new victories from the English and Austrians at Tur- 
 coing, at Landrecies, at Quesnoy, at Cond^ at Valenciennes, 
 at Fleurus, and it was they that turned the scale. 
 
 When the evening came the Club met, the Httle 
 society of the Jacobins, which was still the most indepen- 
 dent and the most vital force in Paris. It had dared to 
 elect a president for its debates whose whole poHcy was 
 antagonistic to Robespierre ; yet now it heard him and 
 remembered its old idol. He re-read, in the same tone, 
 but in a more familiar surrounding and with ampler 
 diction, the speech of the morning, and his hearers grew 
 wild with enthusiasm. They hissed and they turned out 
 Billaud and Collot, who had dared to be present ; they 
 cried out to Robespierre that they would follow him 
 always towards the perfect RepubHc ; and David, an ex- 
 cellent artist and a bad man, cried to him from the back, 
 " I will drink the hemlock with you ! " but he was afraid 
 even to acknowledge his master when Robespierre came 
 to die. 
 
 The Jacobins that night were ready to rise for Robes- 
 pierre. As so many minorities have been in that city of 
 convictions and of intense enthusiasms, they were ready to 
 
3o8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 impose themselves and their creed upon the capital and 
 upon France ; but they did not know to what a handful 
 they had been reduced in the last seven weeks. All night 
 the conspiracy against Robespierre worked hard. Boissy 
 D'Anglas, the leader of the " Marsh," was brought over. To 
 him and his followers Robespierre was pointed out as 
 the tyrant; to what was left of the Mountaia he was 
 denounced as the moderate and the compromiser. But, 
 above all, he was, to the great bulk of the Convention, the 
 enemy who had destroyed all civil order in pursuit of his 
 mad theories, and who had even held the victories of no 
 account. 
 
 The Parliament met the next morning, on the 9th of 
 Thermidor (27th of July). It was a year to a day since 
 Robespierre had joined the great Committee ; but it was 
 for the condemnation of Robespierre that they met. The 
 great hall waited for a coming tumult. First into the 
 tribune went St. Just, with his beautiful face and strong 
 bearing, determined in oratory as in the battles to strike 
 at once and lead a charge. He was eloquent, for he was 
 trying to save his friend ; he boldly attempted argument, 
 a compromise, anything ; called it " saving the Repubhc." 
 " Let us end his domination if you will, but let the 
 government still be that of the Revolution, and let 
 us draw up such rules as shall save us from arbitrary 
 power without destroying the motive force of the national 
 demand." The sentiment was precisely that of the Con- 
 vention, but the speaker was known to be merely the 
 young bodyguard of their enemy. 
 
 TalUen called out from the right, "Pull back the 
 curtain," and, though the fellow was an actor, he 
 had struck the right note. St. Just could never defend 
 Robespierre ; it would have been a cloak for continuing 
 the Terror. The Convention applauded, and from ap- 
 plause turned to crying down St. Just in a public roar of 
 fear and hatred. 
 
ROBESPIERRE 309 
 
 Then twice Robespierre tried to speak; the hubbub 
 silenced him. During a lull in the storm they voted 
 the arrest of Henriot. It meant the transference of such 
 pitiful armed force as he commanded from the hand of 
 a friend to that of an enemy. Robespierre made a last 
 effort to rescind that order. He was not heard. 
 
 TaUien was given the tribune by the Speaker (Collot 
 was Speaker that day, and Collot had been turned out by 
 the Jacobins the night before). Tallien spoke theatri- 
 cally, as he always did, but to the point. Robespierre, he 
 said, had plotted to destroy the assembly for his pur- 
 poses ; he quoted the speech of the day before. While 
 Barrfere, the turncoat, stood looking this way and that, 
 not knowing how things would turn. Once more Robes- 
 pierre attempted a reply; he only raised a storm that 
 drowned his voice. 
 
 When he saw that full speech was denied him, he 
 turned from the place where he stood towards the 
 " Marsh," the Moderates, and said, " I appeal to you who 
 are just and who are not conspiring with these assassins ; " 
 but the " Marsh " was lost to him — they also cried him 
 down. 
 
 A little silence followed. They saw Robespierre 
 attempting for a fifth time to speak, but the agony of 
 the night and the fearful struggle of the morning had 
 overcome him at last : his voice could not be heard 
 though he tried to articulate. Garnier of the Aube 
 called to him across the floor of the hall, "The blood 
 of Danton chokes you." It was the truest thing said in 
 that wild meeting. 
 
 Before the silence was broken, Louchet, an unknown 
 man, rose and proposed the arrest, saying openly what 
 all thought : " No one will deny that Robespierre has 
 played the master ; let us vote his arrest." Then Robes- 
 pierre found his voice. He went up four steps above 
 his usual seat, to a place where, high up and from the 
 
3IO THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 left, from the summit of what had been the Mountain in 
 the old days, he could see the whole of that multitudi- 
 nous assembly, with whose aid he had hoped to regene- 
 rate France and to save mankind. Beneath him as a 
 host, like the dim pictures of Martin's Milton, rank on 
 rank, he saw so many heads that it must have seemed 
 to him a nation. He remembered all his dreams of a 
 perfect state, of men living in equahty, with no one 
 oppressed and no one oppressing, of a government based 
 upon the clear will of all, and upon the civic virtues 
 which he had preached, till there should rise the perfect 
 Republic, an exemplar for aU the nations. He saw that 
 he was doomed, and with him all his dreams. Perhaps, 
 also, he saw the armed despotism which he had twice 
 prophesied coming in his place. To the last he did not 
 understand his foUy, and he replied to the demand of 
 Louchet, " Vote for my death." 
 
 Le Bas, who had been with St. Just in the Ardennes, 
 who had helped to make the great army of Sambre-et- 
 Meuse, and Robespierre the younger, another honest man, 
 came and did what David faUed to do — they said they 
 would die with him, and took his hands in theirs. The 
 Committee passed to the vote, and the three were taken 
 away with St. Just and with Couthon. The scene that 
 follows is the end of the Revolution in Paris. 
 
 Twice at least in the course of the preceding five 
 years Paris had risen against the law and had removed 
 an obstacle or a man for the sake of the Revolution. 
 The random Municipality of 1789 (which for all its dis- 
 order was the parent of the puissant modern system of 
 Communes) is an example in point ; the 2nd of June is 
 another. Ultimately the people of Paris were the only 
 force on which government rested, and it was to them 
 that the final appeal was made. 
 
 The Commune possessed the initiative in this matter — 
 it wa-s the sole centre of Paris in theory ; and now that 
 
ROBESPIERRE 311 
 
 the clubs were all in decay (save the Jacobins), now that 
 the great orators were exiled or dead, and that the Sec- 
 tions themselves did not meet, the Commmie was also 
 the only centre in fact. But the Commune, it will be 
 remembered, had become a Robespierrian thing. It 
 determined to rise against the Convention. 
 
 The Convention had ordered the arrest of Henriot, 
 who was commander of the armed force (such as it was) 
 of the town. It sent his successor, Hesmart to do the 
 work. But the head of a number of pikes and guns 
 would not submit to a man who represented only the 
 law, and instead of Hesmart arresting Henriot, it was 
 Henriot who arrested Hesmart. 
 
 Meanwhile the other officers of the Commune dis- 
 played the same energy, the same rapidity of execution 
 and design which under better leaders and for a better 
 cause had hitherto succeeded. Lescot-Payot (the Robes- 
 pierrian mayor who had been put into the place of Pache 
 on the 2 1st of Floreal), and Payan the national agent, 
 were at the head of the movement. They sent orders to 
 the prisons to refuse the arrested deputies, they gave 
 Henriot the formal order to employ his full force and 
 act. They raised the Jacobins. They formed a com- 
 mittee of nine who were to take over the government; 
 they ordered the arrest of their principal enemies in the 
 Convention, and most important of all, they convened the 
 Sections. 
 
 They had only a night to work in — the 9th Ther- 
 midor to the loth — and their work had the energy of a 
 fever ; but the greatest factor of all was lacking — the fever 
 did not spread. The inertia of the people, even their 
 disapproval, was evident as they proceeded ; the majority 
 of such Sections as did meet stood aloof from or con- 
 demned the cause of Robespierre. 
 
 While it was stUl just hght, between eight and nine in 
 the evening, Robespierre, whom the keepers of the Luxem- 
 
312 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 burg prison had refused, was brought to the Mairie, and 
 there one after the other all the arrested deputies came, 
 profiting by the official routine; for the Mairie was the 
 " right place " officially for prisoners when a difficulty 
 arose as to imprisonment within Paris.- But official 
 routine had a strange bedfellow that night, for while the 
 officials took the prisoners there, the small band of rebels, 
 who knew of no place more friendly, brought there also 
 those whom they had delivered by force. Robespierre 
 was again with the strongest of his friends — his brother, 
 St. Just, Couthon; he was surrounded by an organised 
 and legal body, the Commune, which had risen in. his 
 defence; they passed to the Hotel de VUle, and outside, 
 on the Place de Gr^ve, there gathered between ten o'clock 
 and eleven a fairly large group of the National Guard. 
 But there was no order among them, nor any accurate 
 knowledge among their officers as to what was to be done. 
 From the windows of the room where Robespierre and 
 his companions sat, there could be dimly seen a moving 
 crowd of mingled citizens and guards, discussing rather 
 than preparing for action. 
 
 Robespierre refused to put himself at the head of the 
 movement ; at least it is only thus that we can explain 
 the delay and the confusion. He was to the last the 
 strange mixture of lawyer and pedant and idealist. He 
 would not act without the legal right, for his pedantry 
 forbade it, nor move with an armed minority, because, 
 iudged by his theories, it would have been a crime. Per- 
 haps at the very last he decided to move : there exists a 
 document authorising a march on the Convention, and at 
 its base the first three letters of his name — the signature 
 unfinished, interrupted. 
 
 MeanwhUe the Convention had found a new energy 
 and a power of corporate action to which it had been long 
 a stranger — each man there was defending his life. Le- 
 gendre, with a small force, went and closed the Jacobins, 
 
ROBESPIERRE 313 
 
 Barras was given the command of such armed men as 
 could be gathered; the two committees sent emissaries 
 who appealed with success to the Sections. The Con- 
 vention was the law which had always meant so much 
 to the people; it was the authority of the constitu- 
 tion. Its majority, obeyed when it was in lethargy, 
 could not but be successful when it awoke. AU Paris 
 defended it. 
 
 At midnight one of the sudden thunder-showers which 
 are common in the Seine vaUey at that season cleared 
 what was left of the crowd before the Hotel de Ville. 
 They had discussed both sides, and they had not decided 
 — hardly an army for rebellion ; they had doubted what 
 business they had there, and with the rain they went 
 home. Yet it was not till two hours after, in the early 
 morning, that the Uttle band of the Convention came into 
 the square. They found it almost empty, with here and 
 there a small group standing on the wet cobble-stones, 
 sleepy but curious. 
 
 Bourdon and a few policemen went into the Hotel de 
 ViUe and found no defenders. They went up to the room 
 where the conspirators sat. 
 
 Robespierre was on the ground with his jaw broken by 
 a pistol-shot. 
 
 At half-past seven in the evening of that day (the 
 loth Thermidor) twenty-two of the Robespierrians were 
 taken in three carts to the guillotine. Robespierre him- 
 self, half-unconscious from his wound, stood propped 
 against the side of the cart, his head bandaged, his arms 
 bound, his chin upon his breast. Ropes also bound his 
 body to the sides of the tumbril. He passed the house 
 where Duplay had sheltered him, and where he had hidden 
 himself, so as not to hear the noise of the executioners' 
 carts. Now beneath him the heavy wheels were making 
 the same sound on the ruts of the Rue St. Honor6. At 
 a cross-street the cart stopped to let pass the funeral of 
 
314 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Madame Aigu^, who had killed herself the day before from 
 fear of Robespierre. 
 
 As they neared the Place of the Revolution, where 
 Louis and Danton had suifered, probably at the turning 
 of the Rue St. Honor^, where the guillotine came in sight 
 and where Danton had sung his song, a woman came for- 
 ward from the crowd — doubtless some one whom his 
 tyranny had directly bereaved— and struck Robespierre a 
 blow. For sixteen hours he had not spoken nor made a 
 sign, but when he felt through this blow the popular 
 hatred, he made a gesture of contempt and of despair ; 
 he shrugged his shoulders, but kept his innumerable 
 thoughts within the bandages. " Be mourir pour le peuple 
 et d'en Un ahhorri." 
 
 Then — so the greatest of French historians tell us — 
 France marched down a broad road to the tomb where 
 she has left two millions of men. 
 
 But the armies of the great twenty years cannot be 
 stated in the terms of one man's ambition, nor summed 
 up in any of the simple formulae which a just hatred of 
 Csesarism has framed to explain them. At the root of 
 every battle of the Empire was the organisation and the 
 enthusiasm of 1793. The tactics of Austerlitz and of 
 Jena were learned in Flanders; the enthusiasm of the 
 Guard itself came in clear descent from the exaltation of 
 the Sambre-et-Meuse. 
 
 In this book we have attempted to judge the first man 
 of a great crisis in relation to his time ; it is still more 
 essential that, when we consider the after-effects of his 
 action, a whole nation under arms should stand in the 
 right historical framework, its gigantic effort part and 
 parcel of a supreme necessity. 
 
 We can understand, we can speak rationally, and there- 
 fore truly, of Danton, when we show him above all loving 
 and defending France and the Revolutionary Thing : that 
 
ROBESPIERRE 315 
 
 same appreciation will make us follow clearly the con- 
 tinuous development of his action. It is hardly too much 
 to say that, until Tilsit, the Frencii had to advance or be 
 "crushed — nation, creed, and men. 
 
 The men and the armies must be for us the men and 
 the armies that gave a new vigour to Europe ; the details 
 of their action should not be the matter of our judgment, 
 but their relation to the whole conmaunity — its needs, its 
 defence, its faith. 
 
 As the time grows greater between that period and our 
 own, a just proportion imposes itself. The flame which, 
 close at hand, burnt in a formless furnace is beginning to 
 assume a certain shape. From a standpoint so distant 
 that no living memory bridges the gulf, we can measure 
 the light, the heat, and even the fuel of that flame. 
 
 As to its final meaning in our society, every day makes 
 that clearer ; and, to change the metaphor, this much be- 
 comes more and more apparent, that through whatever 
 crises the Western civilisation is to pass, and whatever form 
 its edifice will finally take, when the noise of the buUding 
 is over, the corner-stone, with its immense strength and its 
 precision of line, was planned by the philosophy and was 
 hewn by the force of the Revolution. Civilisations die, and 
 ours was dying before that wind swept across Europe. 
 
 It would have been a poor excuse for leaving unre- 
 moved the rubble, the dust, and the putrescence of the old 
 world to have pleaded that the decay was the action of 
 centuries, and that old things alone were worthy of rever- 
 ence. Old things alone are worthy of reverence, but old 
 things which have grown old upon just and sure founda- 
 tions, to which time has added ornament and the satis- 
 faction of harmonious colour, without destroying the main 
 lines, and without sapping the strength by which they 
 live. 
 
 The new foundations alone stand at the present day. 
 They are crude, they satisfy nothing in us permanently, 
 
3i6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 they are very far from affording that sentiment of content 
 which is the first requisite of a happy civiHsation. But 
 time will do in this case, as it has always done in every 
 other, the work of harmony and of completion. The final 
 society will not be without its innumerable complexity of 
 detail, its humour, and its inner life. Certainly it will not 
 long remain a stranger to the unseen ; but it will be built 
 upon 1793. 
 
 Meanwhile the light grows on the origins. The per- 
 sonal bitterness which the struggle produced has passed. 
 It is a pious memory in this or that family in France to 
 give itself still the name of a Revolutionary faction ; but 
 the hatred that has produced confusion ia honest critics, 
 and that has furnished such ample material for false his- 
 tory, that hatred is disappearing in France. The ven- 
 dettas have ceased, and the grosser of the calumnies are 
 no longer heard. The history of the Revolution began to 
 be possible when Louis Blanc sat down to curse the up- 
 heaval that had killed his father, and ended by producing 
 the work which more than any other exalted the ex- 
 treme Revolutionary ideal. 
 
 The story of that time is now like a photographic 
 negative, which a man fixes, washing away the white 
 cloud from the clean detail of the film. Point after 
 point, then more rapidly whole spaces, stand out pre- 
 cise and true. And the certitude which he feels that the 
 underlying picture is an accmrate reminiscence of Nature 
 comes to us also when we make out and fix some passage in 
 the Revolution, cleared of its mass of hearsay, of vitupera- 
 tion, of ignorance, and of mere sound. 
 
 We are beginning to see a great picture, consonant in 
 its details, and consecutive in its action. The necessity of 
 reform ; the light of the ideal striking men's minds after a 
 long sleep, the hills first and afterwards the plains ; privi- 
 lege and all the interests of the few alarmed and militant ; 
 the menace of attack and the preparation of defence ; the 
 
ROBESPIERRE 317 
 
 opposition of extremes on either side of the frontier, grow- 
 ing at an increasing speed, till at last, each opposite 
 principle mutually exciting the other, as armatories their 
 magnets, from a Uttle current of opinion rose a force that 
 none could resist. The governments of the whole world 
 were for the destruction of the French people, and the 
 French people were for the rooting out of everything, 
 good and evU, which was attached, however faintly, to the 
 old regime. 
 
 The rhetoricians passed in the smoke of the fire, un- 
 substantial, full of words that could lead and inspire, but 
 empty of acts that could govern the storm. From their 
 passing, which is as vague as a vision, we hear faintly the 
 " Marseillaise " of the Girondins. 
 
 The men of action and of the crisis passed. They 
 burnt in the heat they themselves had kindled, but in 
 that furnace the nation was run, and forged, and made. 
 Then came the armies : France grown cold from the cast- 
 ing-pit, but bent upon action, and able to do. 
 
 Wherever France went by, the Revolutionary Thing 
 remained the legacy of her conviction and of her power. 
 It remains with a kind of iron laughter for those who 
 judge the idea as a passing madness. The philosophers 
 have decided upon a new philosophy ; the lawyers have 
 clearly proved that there has been no change ; the rhetoric 
 has been thoroughly laughed down, enthusiasm has grown 
 ridiculous, and the men of action are cursed. But in the 
 wake of the French march citizens are found who own the 
 soU and are judged by an equal code of laws ; nationahties 
 have been welded, patriotism has risen at the call of the 
 new patriotic creed ; Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, 
 Italy have known themselves as something more than the 
 delimitations of sovereigns. Nor was there any abomina- 
 tion of the old decay, its tortures, its ignominies, its 
 privileges, its Kcensed insults, or its slaveries, but she 
 utterly stamped them out. In Germany, in Austria, in 
 
3i8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Italy, they disappeared. Only in one dark corner they 
 remained — the great Northern field, where France herself 
 grew powerless from cold, and from whence an unknown 
 rule and the advance of relentless things menaces Europe 
 now. 
 
 But with the mention of that frozen place there comes 
 a thought older than all our theories — the mourning for 
 the dead. Danton helped to make us, and was killed: 
 his effort has succeeded, but the tragedy remains. The 
 army at whose source he stood, the captain who inherited 
 his action, were worn out in forging a new world. And I 
 will end this book by that last duty of mourning, as we 
 who hold to immortality yet break our hearts for the 
 dead. 
 
 There is a legend among the peasants in Russia of a 
 certain sombre, mounted figure, unreal, only an outline 
 and a cloud, that passed away to Asia, to the east and to 
 the north. They saw him move along their snows 
 through the long mysterious twilights of the northern 
 autumn in silence, with the head bent and the reins in 
 the left hand loose, following some enduring purpose, 
 reaching towards an ancient solitude and repose. They 
 say it was Napoleon. After him there trailed for days 
 the shadows of the soldiery, vague mists bearing faintly 
 the forms of companies of men. It was as though the 
 cannon-smoke of Waterloo, borne on the light west wind 
 of that June day, had received the spirits of twenty years 
 of combat, and had drifted farther and farther during the 
 fall of the year over the endless plains. 
 
 But there was no voice and no order. The terrible 
 tramp of the Guard and the soimd that Heine loved, the 
 dance of the French drums, was extinguished ; there was 
 no echo of their songs, for the army was of ghosts and 
 was defeated. They passed in the silence which we can 
 never pierce, and somewhere remote from men they sleep 
 in bivouac round the most splendid of human swords. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE ON THE CORDELIERS 
 
 The spot once occupied by the Cordelieis is among the most in- 
 teresting in Paris, and it is of some importance to sketch its 
 history and to reconstruct its appearance at greater length than 
 ■was possible in the text. 
 
 All the land from St. Germains des Prfes up north-vfards along 
 the hillside had belonged to that abbey since its foundation, 
 when the first dynasty of Frankish kings had endowed the 
 foundation with a great estate carved out of what had once been 
 the Boman fiscal lands on the south bank. Bound the abbey 
 itself a few houses had gathered, forming the "Faubourg" (or 
 suburb) of " St. Germains " ; but the greater part of the estate was 
 open field and meadow. When Philip Augustus built his great 
 wall round Paris it cut through the estate, leaving the Church 
 and Abbey of St. Germains outside the city, but enclosing a small 
 part of the fields within its boundary. 
 
 You may trace the line of the wall at this day by noting the 
 street " Rue de Monsieur le Prince," once called " Bue des FossSs 
 Monsieur le Prince," and running on the line of the outer ditch. 
 The wall ran not twenty yards east of the modern street and 
 exactly parallel to it. A portion of it may yet be seen in that 
 neighbourhood, a great hollow round built into the wall of one 
 of the houses, a cobbler's shop in the Cour du Commerce ; it ia 
 one (the last, I beUeve) of the half-towers which flanked Philip 
 Augustus's waU. 
 
 In the beginning of the thirteenth century, very shortly after 
 the death of St. Francis, the first preachers of the new Order 
 
 2.1 ^ 
 
322 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 which he had founded came to Paris. It was the moment when 
 the University was climbing up the hill, building its colleges, 
 having possessed its charter for some years, and already a strong, 
 organised, wealthy, and therefore conservative body. This order 
 of preachers, wandering, intensely new, and founded by a mystic 
 whose place in Christendom was not yet finally determined, were 
 bound to come into collision with the spirit of the place. It 
 must be remembered that the thirteenth century was not tran- 
 sitional, but, on the contrary, a time of settled order. For a 
 century it had known the Roman law; it had everywhere the 
 Gothic architecture ; it had systemised and made legal the rough 
 accidents of feudal custom ; it was wealthy, proud, and successful. 
 On it there falls one of those creations which are only possible in 
 a time of energy, and yet which almost invariably quarrel with 
 the period that has produced them. An Order devoted to sim- 
 plicity, making of holy poverty the foundation of the inner life, 
 specially created for the poor (whom the growing differentiation 
 of society was beginning to debase), the early Franciscans were 
 essentially revolutionary, because they built on the great founda- 
 tions of all active and permanent reform — I mean the appetite for 
 primitive conditions, and the determination to break through the 
 net of complexity which the long growths of time weave about a 
 conservative society. 
 
 The rich Abbey of St. Germains gave them asylum. It was 
 proud to possess dependants, it was great enough to afford bene- 
 volent experiments, and it took pleasure in offending the Univer- 
 sity, which was an upstart in its eyes, and was beginning to show 
 as a powerful rival in the affairs of the south side of Paris. The 
 Franciscans, therefore — whom the populace already called the 
 " Cordeliers " from the girdle of rope about their habit — were 
 permitted to settle in that little corner of their estate which had 
 been cut off by the building of the town wall, and they occupied 
 a triangle of which the wall formed the south-western, a lane 
 (afterwards called " Rue des Cordeliers ") the northern, and an 
 irregular line bounding one of the University estates the south- 
 eastern side. 
 
 This was in 1 230. St. Louis was still a boy of fifteen. The 
 little foundation was, for the University, nothing but an unwel- 
 come neighbour whom it could not oust, and for the Abbey of 
 
APPENDIX I 323 
 
 St Gennains nothing but a guest. Their provisional tenure did 
 not permit them a peal of bells nor a public cemetery. 
 
 St. Louis, however, grew into a manhood which, for all its 
 piety, had a wonderful grasp of the society around it. The saint 
 who was never clerical, and the Capetian who in all things was 
 rather for the spirit than the letter, became their principal sup- 
 port. The Papacy, having once (though reluctantly) recognised 
 the Franciscan movement in the interview between Innocent III. 
 and its founder, continued in the succeeding generation to protect 
 it. From a distance, where the quarrels of the University affected 
 it little, the Holy See decided more than one dispute in favour of 
 the new-comers, and the Franciscans of Paris flourished exceed- 
 ingly. By 1240 the full privileges of an independent foundation 
 were granted. They have their public service, their cemetery, 
 and their bells. St. Louis helps them to build a new chapel by 
 giving them, in 1267, part of the great fine which he levied on 
 Enguerrand de Coucy. They succeed at last in obtaining the 
 recognition of the University ; they are permitted to teach ; they 
 number among their lecturers Duns Scotus and St. Bonaventure ; 
 and they become one of the most famous of the colleges. 
 
 During the Middle Ages (apart from certain minor structures 
 and a few private houses which had been permitted to rise on 
 their laud, and which were technically known as the "d^pen- 
 dances"), three principal groups of buildings marked the founda- 
 tions. First, the monastery itself, a somewhat irregular mass, 
 running (as a whole) north and south, and separated from the 
 Eue des Cordeliers by a little court or garden. Secondly, running 
 'from the northern end of this convent, and forming, as it were, a 
 letter L with the main building, was the chapel, lying, of course, 
 east and west, and forming the southern side of the Rue des 
 Cordeliers, upon which was the principal porch. Thirdly, run- 
 ning also east and west, but separated from the other buildings by 
 a short space, was the hall. 
 
 This famous monument, the only part of the college that has 
 been preserved, stood well back from the street, and in the middle 
 of the convent grounds. It was on the eastern side of the monas- 
 tery, and hence in the ground plan balanced (so to speak) the 
 church, which lay to the west of that main building; this was so 
 designed that its western end faced about the middle of the college. 
 
324 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 I have called it a hall because its use exactly corresponded to 
 that of our college halls in the English universities. I mean, it 
 ■was at once a refectory and lecture-room. It was approached by 
 a little lane running up through the grounds under the side of the 
 convent, later hemmed in with houses. 
 
 Here not only were the voices of the great scholars heard and 
 the subtleties of the fourteenth century, but also Etienne Marcel 
 called the States General of 1357. From hence that Danton of 
 the medisBval invasion sent out his messengers to the Feudality. 
 Here the District gathered for the elections of 1789 i here the 
 Club met in 1791 and urged the debate that finally produced the 
 Kepublic of the next year. It was here also that the three watch- 
 words of the Eepublio were devised ; here Herbert veiled the 
 Declaration; and here the last few words of 1794 were spoken. 
 Here the century, which owes more perhaps to that site than to 
 any place in France, has collected a museum of surgery, where you 
 may see anomalies preserved in spirits, skeletons hung on wires, 
 and other objects, interesting rather than sublime. 
 
 As for the college and its estate, they continued for some three 
 hundred years — that is, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six- 
 teenth centuries — to increase in importance. It is a matter of 
 common knowledge how soon the pure ideals of St. Francis had 
 to compromise with the world. This Order, like all others, became 
 wealthy, rooted, and traditional. The Cordeliers, as Paris grew, 
 found themselves possessed of a most valuable plot, whose ground- 
 value continually increased. They reserved the garden to the 
 west, but for the rest — and especially around the buildings and 
 along the lanes — houses were built. When the wall of Philip 
 Augustus was first embedded by the growth of the city, and 
 afterwards in part destroyed, the Cordeliers bought an extension 
 to their estate, so that it stretched a little beyond the new street 
 of " the Fosses," which had been built on the site of the ditch. 
 In 1580 their old thirteenth-century chapel (which must have 
 been one of the best bits of early Gothic in Paris) was burnt 
 down, and a larger one in the style of the time was put up by the 
 piety of Henry IV. Throughout the seventeenth century the 
 house seems to have suffered from a decay which continued 
 throughout the succeeding hundred years, and culminated in the 
 disasters of the Bevolutionary period. They permitted the aliena- 
 
APPENDIX I 325 
 
 tion of a strip to the west of their grounds, through which the 
 municipality drove in 1673 the new street which, in compliment 
 to the Order, they called " Rue de I'Observance," after the name 
 of their rule. 
 
 "With this exception no important change occurred to change 
 the aspect of the quarter until the Revolutionary period with 
 which we have to deaL 
 
 We are, after this general description, in a position to recog- 
 nise the site of the Cordeliers in modern Paris. As you go down 
 the Boulevard St. Germains, just before you reach the Boulevard 
 St. Michel (going east), you see a street leading off at a slight 
 angle to the right. It is the Rue de I'Ecole de M^decine, the 
 college after which it is named facing both on this street and on 
 the Boulevard. This street is merely the Rue des Cordeliers 
 broadened and modernised. As you go a few yards up this streetj 
 you see on your left the great court of the college, and if you 
 stand at its gate and look at the opposite side of the street, at 
 the new buildings which are now the lecture-rooms and theatres 
 of the Faculty, you are looking at the site of the old church, 
 which has disappeared during this century. The street has been 
 broadened by taking down the southern side, so that the church 
 would actually have overlapped the modern street. Continuing, 
 you pass on your right the open yard leading up to what was 
 the hall of the Cordeliers, and is now the museum of surgery 
 (the Mus^e Dupuytren), and a few yards farther brings you into 
 the Boulevard St. MicheL Following this very broad avenue for 
 twenty yards at the most, you may note a new street, the " Rue 
 Racine," turning off to the right. This did not exist in Danton'a 
 time, but it lies nearly on the line that separated the Cordeliers 
 from the Coll%e d'Harcourt (at present the LycSe St Louis). As 
 a fact, the line was a trifle to the south of the Rue Racine, and of 
 course more irregular. The Rue Racine in its turn leads you into 
 that old street the " Rue de Monsieur le Prince." If you turn 
 again to the right and go down this some hundred yards, you are 
 still following the boundary of the Cordeliers, till you reach the 
 "Rue Antoine Dubois." This is identical with the old "Rue 
 de I'Observance,'' spoken of above, and a few steps down this 
 ■hort street leads you to the starting-point in the " Rue de I'EcoIe 
 
326 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 de MMecine." Such a modem itinerary wovdd describe as nearly 
 as is now possible the circumference of the college and estate of 
 the Cordeliers. The quadilateral comprised by these four street*, 
 the Rue de I'Ecole de Mddecine, the Rue Racine, the Rue M. da 
 le Prince, and the Rue Antoine Dubois, is the site of the famous 
 convent and its grounds. 
 
 To reproduce the quarter in 1788 we have to imagine the 
 following changes : — The Rue de I'Ecole de M^decine, very nar- 
 row, flanked for the greater part of its southern side with the 
 church and old wall of the convent. It leads into a little narrow 
 street called the "Rue de la Harpe," which went right up the 
 hill, and would correspond to a strip taken in the exact centre of 
 the present Boulevard St. Michel. The first few buildings here, 
 notably the Church of St. Come, were stUl on the Cordehers' 
 estate. Just above them, however, began the grounds and build- 
 ings of the " College d'Harcourt." As we have observed, the Rue 
 Racine did not exist, nor anything corresponding to it. To follow 
 the boundaries of the estate you would have had to let yourself in 
 by a side-door, and then you might have followed a long, irregular 
 wall which separated their land from the CoUege d'Harcourt 
 This wall, after passing through a great garden, came out on the 
 Rue Monsieur le Prince, and the rest of one's circuit would be 
 much what it is to-day. 
 
 finally, to see the building as Danton saw it, you must 
 imagine a half-deserted place, rich, but somewhat unfrequented, 
 like certain old legal Inns that once stood in London, old walls 
 appearing here and there from between houses of a century's date ; 
 a mass of irregular buildings, of garden and of private house 
 hopelessly intermingled ; while up a narrow and dark passage 
 stood the Hall, which was still the best preserved part of the 
 college, and with which alone his name is associated. 
 
II 
 
 NOTE ON CERTAIN SITES MENTIONED IN 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 It may be of interest to those who desire to study with some par- 
 ticularity the personal history of Danton to know where are to be 
 found in modern Paris the places with which we have found him 
 personally connected in this book. 
 
 His first offices were in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles. This 
 ■treet has disappeared in the improvements which included the 
 prolongation of the Eue de Rivoli. This office in the Rue des 
 Mauvaises Paroles occupied almost exactly the same spot, which 
 can be recognised to-day in the following manner. As you go 
 along the northern side of the Rue de Rivoli going east, you come 
 to a point 500 yards or so from the Louvre, from whence you begin 
 to see the Tour St. Jacques just peering round the southern 
 aide of the street. The shops which are then upon your left hand 
 and the pavement upon which you stand correspond to the position 
 of the old mansard house in which Danton served his apprentice- 
 ship. It was here that he had his first offices ; it was from this 
 that he bought the busiaess of Monsieur M. de Paisy ia the Rue 
 de la Tissanderie. 
 
 Concerniag the position of these offices in the Rue de la Tis- 
 sanderie, which he moved into, I have been able to learn nothing. 
 There is a curious little record in the police archives of Paris — 
 Danton complaining that he could not work on account of the 
 noise that a saddle-maker made in the exercise of his trade in the 
 same house. In this little document, which is quoted by Monsieur 
 Claretie in his " Life of Camille Desmoulins." the house is men- 
 tioned as being "just opposite the Eue des Deux Portes"; but aa 
 an inference to be drawn from the same record is that he left 
 immediately after for some other lodging in the same street, this 
 does not help us much. 
 
328 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 I have said in the text that Dan ton lived, during the six years 
 ■which were those of his active political life, in a house of the 
 Passage du Commerce. I have also mentioned in the text the 
 fact that Dr. Robinet mentions a short residence in the Rue 
 des Fosses Saint Germaina. I have given, moreover, in the 
 same passage my reasons for following M. Aulard in rejecting 
 this first address. It seems proved that, after he left the Rue de 
 la Tissanderie, he moved with his wife to the corner house of the 
 Passage du Commerce. This was his home during the whole of 
 the Revolution, and it is worth while to describe its position and 
 character with some care. 
 
 In the first place, it has disappeared ; the construction of the 
 Boulevard St. Germains destroyed all that end of the Cour du 
 Commerce. If you are going along the Boulevard St. Germains 
 from the west towards the University, you pass on the right the 
 statue of Dan ton. It is erected on an open triangle of ground, 
 formed by the junction of the Boulevard and of the Rue de I'Ecole 
 de M^decine. The apex of this triangle, not twenty yards from 
 the statue, marks the site of the old house in which Danton and 
 Desmoulins lived, and in which they were arrested before their 
 trial. 
 
 The old quarter was a network of narrow streets, and where 
 the Boulevard St. Germain now stands, an intricate block of 
 houses, with courtyards and passages, not unlike the similar 
 intricate masses which you will find in the City of London, 
 formed the northern side of the Rue des Cordeliers (that is to 
 say, the modern Rue de I'Ecole de M^decine). A narrow alley, 
 known as the Cour de Commerce, joined this Rue des Cordeliers 
 by a still narrower passage. Danton's house was the corner house, 
 as is proved by the mention in the inventory that some rooms 
 looked upon this passage and some upon the Rue des Cordeliers. 
 
 Of course he did not occupy the whole of it, but, in the Parisian 
 custom, which had already obtained for more than a century, he 
 took a flat, and two rooms (used as a lumber and as a servant's 
 bedroom) were added from the entresole below. This flat was 
 just such an apartment as a similar bourgeois householder would 
 have in Paris to-day : a dining-room, two bedrooms, a study, a 
 little library, a drawing-room, a kitchen, and oflices, bmlt round 
 the staircase and courtyard or well of the house. 
 
APPENDIX II 329 
 
 I have been unaWe to find any mention of the rental which 
 ■was paid, but a guess at something like ;^iSo a year in that 
 quarter at that time for such a flat would, I think, not be 
 extravagant. The corresponding flat above, Desmoulins took 
 after his romantic marriage in December 1790, but he did not 
 begin to occupy the house until the early part of 1791. It was 
 here that his little Horace was born ; it was here that his wife 
 and Danton's passed the terrible night of the loth of August, and 
 it was here, in the great bedroom overlooking the Kue des Cor- 
 deliers, that Danton's wife died in February 1793. 
 
 As to the furniture of the little apartment, it may be described 
 as follows : — The drawing-room was not very large, but there had 
 been spent upon it the most considerable sum in the furnishing 
 of the house. It figures for very nearly a third in the valuation, 
 which may be read in Appendix VII. The white furniture, which 
 was the mark of the eighteenth century, was its principal note ; it 
 is also worth observing that the household was sufficiently cramped 
 for room to use the cupboards in the drawing-room as wardrobes. 
 The principal bedroom was well furnished, but, as you will find 
 to be the case in such houses in Paris, the study, the dining-room, 
 and the spare room to the side of the study were very bare. It 
 is also remarkable that the lumber-room held nothing but two 
 trunks and an old double bedstead. It was the household of a 
 man who made every effort to maintain his position before his 
 wife's friends, but who was not wealthy, and who had evidently 
 arranged the scale of his expenditure considerably below the 
 probable receipts which an office such as his would have brought 
 in. I should much doubt whether as much as ;^soo a year would 
 go out on such an establishment, though he was certainly receiving 
 ;^iooo. We know the reason of this ; he had to pay off by every 
 means in his power the debt which he had incurred in buying the 
 practice. WhUe he lived in this house, and until the office was 
 suppressed in 1790, he continued to keep his business rooms in 
 the Rue de la Tissanderie. It may be worthy of mention that 
 he kept two servants, and that his apartment was on the first, 
 whilst that of Desmoulins was on the second floor of the house. 
 
 As to the CordeKers, on which the preceding note is written, 
 the hall in which their meetings were first held still exists (as 
 we have said in the text) under the title of Mus^e Dupuytren, 
 
330 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 The Church of the Cordeliers, into which they afterwards moved, ha* 
 disappeared, but the last locale of the club (when the Municipalitj 
 had turned them out of the church in 1791) still remains, and is 
 to be discovered at No. 105 Eue Thionville. Dan ton's father-in- 
 law had been master of a c&ii on the Quai de I'Ecole. This house 
 still remains. If I am not mistaken, it was altered slightly during 
 the restorations of the Second Empire. It is the house which now 
 stands at the south-western corner of the Place de I'Ecole, and 
 which faces the quai on one side and the square on the other. 
 The street and quay outside M. Charpentier's caf6 was, however, 
 somewhat oblique to the modern street, and ran less east than 
 west, more south-east than north-west, than it does to-day. 
 
 The quay has been raised and the old fountain in the Place 
 de I'Ecole destroyed. Otherwise the quarter is much the same. 
 The caf6 became famous later for its draught players, a reputation 
 that still continues. 
 
Ill 
 
 NOTE ON THE SUPPOSED VENALITY OF 
 DANTON 
 
 I WILL not go in this note into any of the general consideiations 
 which have led the greater part of modern historians to reject the 
 legend of Danton's yenality. These general considerations are by 
 far the strongest arguments upon which we can rely in this matter, 
 hut I trust that the character which I have attempted to draw in 
 the text of the book wUl furnish them in sufficiency. 
 
 Neither do I desire to insist in this note upon the unquestion- 
 able value of the two principal modern authorities in England and 
 in France (Mr. Morse Stephens and M. Aulard), who both of 
 them regard the question as finally settled in Danton's favour. I 
 have insisted sufficiently upon this in the text. What I shall 
 attempt to do is to quote the contemporary accusations, to deter- 
 mine how much reliance can be placed upon them, to show their 
 character, and to describe in what way and to what extent they 
 aie explained by documents which have since come to light. 
 
 First of all, a list of those contemporaries who took his venality 
 for certain. It is very formidable. 
 
 Mirabeau (letter to Lamarck, Thursday, loth March 1791). — 
 ..." Montmorin has told me ... of particular schemes . . . 
 for instance, that Beaumetz and . . . D'Andr^e dined yesterday 
 alone and got Danton's confidence . . . and then proposed to 
 demolish Vincennes in order to make themselves popular. Denton 
 got 30,000 livres yesterday, and I have the proof that Danton 
 inspired the last number of Desmoulins' paper. ... If it ia 
 possible I intend to risk 6000 livres, but at any rate they will 
 be more innocently distributed than the 30,000 livres of Danton." 
 Here is a categorical statement in which a man says what the 
 court had often said (and Mirabeau was then an agent of the 
 
 33« 
 
332 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 court), "I have managed Danton at such and such a price/' and 
 the passage gives us indirectly the name of Montmorin. The date 
 should be noted. 
 
 Bertrand de Molleville, a far less practical and a far less 
 careful man than Mirabeau, also a singularly untrustworthy 
 authority, has the following : — Memoirs Particuliers, i. 354. — "By 
 the hands of this man Durand, under the ministry of De Mont- 
 morin, Danton received more than 50,000 francs to propose certain 
 motions of the Jacobins. He was fairly faithful in keeping this 
 contract, but stipulated that he should be left free as to the means 
 he employed." . . . Again . . . "In the first debates upon the 
 king's trial the infamous Danton, whose services had been so dearly 
 paid out of the Civil List, was one of those who displayed the 
 greatest violence. I was the more alarmed as this scoundrel was 
 at the moment (Autumn 1 792) a most powerful and dangerous man 
 in the Assembly. The ardent zeal which I felt for the safety of the 
 king, and which would have made me think all means legitimate, 
 suggested this means against Danton to neutralise the rage of the 
 monster ; and though the method I took required a lie, I did not 
 hesitate to employ it without the least scruple. I wrote to him 
 on the nth December: — 'I must not leave you ignorant, Sir, of 
 the fact that I have found in the papers of the late Monsieur 
 Montmorin notes of the dates of the sums which have been paid 
 out of the secret service money, including a receipt in your hand- 
 writing. Hitherto I have made no use of this document, but I 
 warn you that I have enclosed them in a letter which I am writing 
 to the President of the Convention, and I will have them printed 
 and placarded on the corners of the streets if you do not conduct 
 yourself well in the trial of the king.' As a fact, Montmorin had 
 shown me these papers a year before, though he had not given 
 them to me. But Danton knew they existed, and knew how 
 intimate had been my relations with Montmorin. He did not 
 reply to the letter, but I saw in the published prints that he had 
 got himself named deputy in a mission to the army of the North. 
 He only returned at the end of the king's trial, and contented 
 himself with voting for death without giving any opinion." 
 (Particular Memoirs, ii. 288-291.) I would have the reader to 
 specially mark this extract, to which I shall return at the end of 
 my note, as it can be easily proved by internal evidence to be • 
 
APPENDIX III 333 
 
 falsehood. It is, indeed, of more value to any one who desires to 
 write a life of Bertrand himself, than it is to one who is writing 
 the life of Danton. 
 
 Thirdly, Lafayette says (Memoirs, iii. 83-85) : " Danton, whose 
 receipt for 100,000 francs was in the hands of Montmorin, 
 asked for Lafayette's head; that was running a great risk, hut he 
 depended on the discretion of Lafayette and on his keeping a 
 secret. For Lafayette to have spoken would have been to have 
 signed the death-warrant of Montmorin, who had paid Danton in 
 order to moderate his anarchic fury." And again (iv. 328-330), 
 he says of Danton : " He was a vulgar tribune and incapable of 
 turning the masses from evil by persuasion or by respect, but he 
 knew how to flatter their passions, &c. &c. ... I knew him 
 from the first week of the Eevolution in the district of Cordeliers, 
 whither I had been attracted. After the 6th October he took 
 money from Montmorin, whom he caused in consequence to be 
 assassinated on the 2nd September. In connection with this 
 secret he said to me once, ' General, I know you do not know me, 
 I am more of a Monarchist than you.' ... I have learnt since 
 from the person to whom Madame Elizabeth told it that he had 
 received, about the loth August, a considerable sum to give the 
 movement a direction in the king's favour, and, indeed, he got the 
 royal family sent to the Temple. He said to a friend of the king, 
 ' It is I who wUl save him or kiU him.' " 
 
 Fourthly, there is Brissot (iv. 193-194). "Among the stipen- 
 diaries of Orleans was . . . Danton. I have seen the receipt for 
 500,000 francs which were paid him by Montmorin. He was 
 sold to the court in order to thrust the Revolution into the 
 excesses which would make it odious to the great bulk of French- 
 men." 
 
 Fifthly, Madame Roland (who has so much to say against a 
 character so profoundly antipathetic to her) has this special 
 passage on his corruption (Dauban's edition, 1864, pp. 254-255): 
 "He went to Belgium to augment his wealth, and dared to 
 admit a fortune of 1,400,000 francs, to assume luxury," &c. &c. 
 
 Sixthly (if it is worth quoting), among the papers that 
 Robespierre left, in the notes that formed the basis of St. Just's 
 report, are the words — "Danton owed an obligation to Mirabeau ; 
 it was Mirabeau who got him repaid the price of his practice. It 
 
334 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 has even been said that he was paid twice. I heard him admit 
 to Fabre certain thefts of shoes belonging to the army.'' 
 
 Such are the contemporary accusations. There are the follow- 
 ing points to be noted with regard to them. No one says that he 
 himself paid money ; the sums of money are very various. They 
 are paid, according to some, on a few definite occasions ; according 
 to others, upon all occasions. Finally, every accusation that has 
 any definite basis at aU pivots round the name of Montmorin. 
 "Montmorin held the receipt," "Montmorin told me," and so 
 forth. Now, if we remember that Montmorin held the receipt for 
 a legitimate and open reimbursement (see Appendix VI.), and then 
 compare the accusations with what we know of the men and of 
 the time, if we then proceed to check these merely general conclu- 
 sions by matters of absolute knowledge drawn from the valuations 
 upon Danton's estate at various moments of his life, we shall agree 
 with the more modern authorities who have worked with the 
 documents before them, that Danton is innocent of actions to 
 the charge of which his uncertain temper and his lack of solid 
 social surroundings laid him open. 
 
 In the first place, let us consider the words of the accusations 
 which appear above, and which include all those of any importance. 
 
 That of Mirabeau is what you would expect from such a man ; 
 it is quiet, contemptuous, treating of Danton as something on the 
 very last level of the time. But if we take the specific accusation 
 and separate it from all general points of view, we find this much : 
 that Montmorin has been talking to him with regard to what 
 "those fellows" were doing. "In connection with this," says 
 Mirabeau, "Danton got 30,000 yesterday" to work such and such 
 a political move. The grave feature in the quotation is the way 
 in which Mirabeau, who understood men and who had a good 
 grasp of Paris, treats Danton's venality as being something well 
 known, gives a particular example of it, and passes at once to 
 other things. But the specific accusation is hearsay from Mont- 
 morin, and, as I have said, it is always Montmorin's name which 
 crops up when this gossip is on foot. 
 
 I would, therefore, sum up the value of Mirabeau's accusation 
 somewhat as follows : — " If we could prove that Danton was a 
 spendthrift, and that large sums of money passed through his 
 hands for his personal pleasures, then Mirabeau's chance remark, 
 
APPENDIX III 335 
 
 while it would be worthless in a court of law, ought to have some 
 small weight before history. Mirabeau was (on a higher plane) a 
 hon viveur such as Danton was reputed to be, and the circles in 
 which the men moved touched each other especially in the point 
 of their good living ; but if we can iind that Danton did not, as a 
 fact, spend nor invest great sums of money, then the accusation 
 is simply a common error based upon a remark of Montmorin's, 
 suited to the current impression of Danton's character, but dis- 
 proved by the known facts of Danton's life. 
 
 Bertrand de MoUevUle's accusation is of particular value to 
 any one who is concerned, as I am, in attempting to get to the truth 
 in this matter. It is the only one which is perfectly categorical 
 and detailed. In proportion as it is categorical and detailed it is 
 untrue. If you wish to know whether a man has committed a 
 certain crime, and you hear a nimiber of witnesses against him, one 
 of whom only gives careful evidence with dates, details, and so 
 forth, and if you can then prove that this witness has lied upon 
 all the points which supported his principal accusation, you are 
 in a fair way to winning your case. 
 
 De MoUevUle begins by making the sum 500,000 francs. It 
 seems enormous. It is a sum which no man could receive and 
 spend in a few days' debauch without attracting the attention of 
 the whole city, which no man could invest without leaving some 
 obvious accession of property, and he puts the receipt of this sum 
 as coming under Montmorin's ministry — that is, at a time when 
 public order was secured, when the course of the registries, the 
 transmission of property and so forth, were in the fullest light. 
 
 He gives the name of the man who handed him the sum, and 
 calls him Durand. On this point it is impossible to say yes or no, 
 but we can say with absolute certitude that the incident of the 
 letter upon which Bertrand de Molleville makes the whole matter 
 turn, is an untruth added to an untruth. In the first place, he 
 makes Danton "violent in his demands against the king." This 
 accusation is absolutely false. 
 
 When the trial of the king was mooted, Danton did speak 
 (notably on the 6th of September), with some decision in favour 
 of the king's being brought to trial upon particular points. He 
 expressed himself in that speech with very great energy upon 
 this particular feature of the trial, that the king merited con- 
 
336 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 demnation because he had obviously and openly betrayed the 
 nation, — a thing which nobody doubted, which nobody denied, 
 and which Louis himself and his advisers would simply have 
 met by saying (at a later epoch of course), "We called in the 
 foreigner as a necessary police in the time of anarchy ; we 
 desired to save France by its betrayal" So far, however, from 
 Danton being a leader of the attack on Louis or of the demand 
 for his trial, that attack and that demand were as spontaneous aa 
 anything the Convention ever did ; and Danton followed rather 
 than led, as a glance at the Moniteur can prove. 
 
 In the much more important debates wherein the life of Louis 
 was first implicitly and then explicitly at stake, Danton was 
 absent, and in the days of November there is no question at all 
 but that Danton's one preoccupation was to reconcile the Mountain 
 with the Girondins. 
 
 De MoUeville goes on to give his letter a date — such things 
 are done on purpose, as a rule, in order to give a special character 
 of legal evidence to one's accusations. He says that he wrote the 
 letter on the nth of December, that Danton on receiving the 
 letter was frightened, and without replying to it got himself put 
 upon the mission to the army of the North. 
 
 Now Danton left for the army of the North on the ist of 
 December, and if the letter was written at aU (which I doubt), 
 it was written at a time when Danton, being absent, could not 
 possibly have acted as De MoUeville said he did. He could not 
 have "asked" to go on a mission (he did not ask, but was sent), 
 and have started on the ist in consequence of a letter written on 
 the nth. 
 
 Finally, De MoUeville says he came back to vote on the 
 punishment of the king, but had been coerced by the letter into 
 merely voting for death without giving his opinion. This again 
 is a lie. If there is anything remarkable to the historian in the 
 vote Danton gave on the i6th January 1793, and in the speech 
 which he made before his vote, it is that he, by nature so wary, 
 should have discovered in this crisis a violent manifestation of 
 opinion and motive. I have amply shown in the text that we 
 could only reconcile those abnormal days in Danton's life by some 
 extreme shock to the emotions. Some represent him as suffering 
 » violent rebuff from his political opponents; some consider the 
 
APPENDIX III 337 
 
 ■eene of misery and impending death which he found in his home 
 on returning from his long journey. He demanded a simple 
 miy'ority vote ; he spoke violently against the appeal to the people ; 
 and when he voted for the death of the king he turned to the 
 Bight and said, " I am not a statesman ; I am not one of those 
 who are ignorant of the duty of not compromising with tyrants, 
 and who do not know that kings can only be struck on the head, 
 who do not know that we can expect nothing from the kings of 
 Europe save by force and by arms. I vote for the death of the 
 tyrant" 
 
 If these are the words, and if that is the action of a man 
 terrorised by a letter into a silent and furtive vote, then evidence 
 has no meaning. 
 
 De MoUeviUe, I think, can in this, as in nearly all his his- 
 torical evidence (with the exception of that which turns upon the 
 personal habits of the king, where he has the details of a valet), 
 be dismissed. 
 
 "With Lafayette, again, we have that half-truth and half-lie 
 which runs through all his accusations. "The receipt for 1 00,000 
 francs was in the hands of Montmorin." This was true. The 
 mna was not quite 100,000, it was 61,000 (Appendix VI.) ; but 
 the receipt did exist, and to any one who did not know that aU 
 the men occupying positions on the Council had been reimbursed, 
 it might look like a receipt for a bribe, or might be twisted into 
 meaning such. It is impossible for us to discover whether La- 
 fayette meant to tell an untruth, as we can prove De Molleville 
 did ; he may in this matter have been perfectly loyal, for there 
 was a note found among his papers after his death (Memoirs, iii. 
 84-85), saying that "a position on the Councils was only worth 
 10,000, and had been reimbursed at 100,000 as a bribe." "We 
 now know from the discovery of so many receipts that from 
 60,000 to 80,000 was the regular price of reimbursements, but 
 Lafayette might easily have been ignorant of this, and have 
 jumped to a false conclusion. 
 
 As to his mention of Madame Elizabeth's having told the man 
 who told him that Dan ton had been paid before the loth August, 
 the old man's memory is certainly turning to the remark which 
 many witnesses heard from the lips of that saintly woman just 
 before the attack on the Tuileries, when she said wibh simplicity 
 
 y 
 
338 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 (she knew nothing at all of tlie characters of the Revolution save 
 what she might hear from the courtiers), " Well, we can count on 
 Danton ; he has been paid." That is not evidence. If Danton 
 was paid to make the loth of August turn in favour of the 
 monarchy, and if, as Lafayette hints, he had attempted to make it 
 BO turn, he certainly took the most extraordinary way of defend- 
 ing his employers. One might as weU say that Lord Chatham's 
 principal object in the taking of Quebec was the defence of the 
 French power in Canada. For the loth of August was openly 
 and directly an attack upon the ancient crown of France, to over- 
 throw it and to substitute in its place a new regime, and Danton 
 worked at it as indefatigably as a general before a battle would 
 work. 
 
 The remark, " General, I am more monarchist than you,'' reads 
 to me like truth ; it is exactly what Danton would have said. 
 He despised Lafayette as much as any one man can despise 
 another. He believed right up to the moment of the war that 
 the existing fact of the monarchy was worth all the theories in 
 the world as a nucleus for the new regime, and he saw the 
 emptiness of Lafayette's vanity. He may quite probably have 
 met it upon some occasion as direct as that which Lafayette has 
 given us, and Lafayette, in the abundance of his folly, may quite 
 easily have misunderstood the meaning of his criticism. 
 
 Brissot is an admirable example of how the false rumours 
 arose. He says : " I have myself seen the receipts which Mont- 
 morin held from Danton." 
 
 Now, as we have seen, that receipt (to any one who did not 
 know the details of the transaction) might quite honestly appear 
 a damning piece of evidence, and it is without question the 
 document round which the great mass of accusations have been 
 built. 
 
 As to Madame Roland, I cannot imagine what flight of feminine 
 inaccuracy made her put down a fortune of ;^6o,ooo to her enemy's 
 name. If a witness in any other circumstances than revolution 
 should tell one that a young lawyer and politician had secretly and 
 suddenly become possessed of this sum, he would be reputed mad. 
 In such a time, however, anything seems possible to an enemy, 
 and we must rely upon the simple fact that Danton can be de- 
 finitely proved neither to have spent, invested, nor left a tenth of 
 
APPENDIX III 339 
 
 ■ueh a sum. It seems to me that this accusation of Madame 
 Koland's is on a par with that other extreme remark that she had 
 known "the Dantons living on i6s. a week, which they borrowed 
 regularly from their father-in-law," and this "at the opening of the 
 Revolution," a time when we know him positively to have been 
 defending cases involving half a million pounds in the issue of the 
 trial, and when we know him to have had for clients some of the 
 richest men in France. 
 
 Now, the papers that prove Danton's financial position are 
 quite simple. He was cut off suddenly ; they were all seized, and 
 they all remain. Unless he spent huge sums in debauch (sums 
 like those of Orleans), or unless he buried the money, he cannot 
 have received much more than what openly appears. He entered 
 his married life, with a debt of ^^2500 secured on his office. He 
 enjoyed a good practice for four years ; he was reimbursed to some- 
 what less than the value of his office, and on his death the sum 
 sequestrated by the State, and later refunded to his sons, tallies with 
 this small fortune. 
 
IV 
 
 NOTE ON DANTON'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE 
 MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER 
 
 The arguments for and against Danton's responsibility in this 
 matter must necessarily be of a more general order than those 
 ■which can be advanced for and against his character in regard to 
 money matters. There are but one or two really definite facts 
 upon either side, and, as the purport of these notes is to deal 
 with actualities, I will treat of these known facts only. 
 
 In the first place, it must be clearly understood that Danton 
 did not shrink from, and was not unsympathetic with, the extreme 
 measures of the Revolution. His position with regard to them is 
 perfectly clear in history, and is simply this — his violence was 
 persuaded that an exceptional time required, almost as a method 
 of government, the most exceptional terrors. 
 
 But, on the other hand, Danton was a man to whom not only 
 a useless massacre but a useless anything was detestable. Death 
 in itself, the infliction of death on others, even the death to 
 which he himself was led, never seemed to him a matter of vast 
 moment. It is a common fault in courageous men to have this 
 disregard for the life of others and of oneself, but I deny that 
 you will ever discover Danton causing the death of a single 
 human being unless it is in the furtherance of his policy. 
 
 In the second place, consider what is actually known to have 
 proceeded from his mouth, (i) Quite early in the Revolution (in 
 June 1 791) he demanded the head of Lafayette, and he pro- 
 bably meant it; (2) he boasted of, or confessed to, being the 
 author of Mandat's death ; (3) in the course of speeches which 
 led up to the establishment of the Revolutionary tribunal he 
 speaks in favour of the extreme penalties and of the terror that 
 they would inspire, always as a means to an end, and as a means 
 to be employed without hesitation. Let me quote but one sen- 
 
APPENDIX IV 341 
 
 tence from the speech of the loth March 1793 to illustrate what 
 I mean : — "I feel to what a degree it is necessary to take judicial 
 measures by which we may punish the counter-revolutionaries. 
 This tribunal should be erected in order to replace for them the 
 supreme tribunal of popular vengeance. It is very difiScult to 
 define a political crime, but if a man of the common people for 
 his sort of misdeed gets punished at once, is it not necessary that 
 extreme laws, something out of the common running of our social 
 machinery, should be passed to terrify rebels and to strike the 
 guUty t In this matter the safety of the people demands from 
 you extreme methods and the measures of terror." 
 
 I^aHy, we know that Danton was, on the whole, the guide of 
 that earlier part of the Terror between May and August 1793, in 
 which (as he thought) the system was doing necessary work 
 without which the nation could not have been saved. 
 
 Now, let us set against these what we definitely know of 
 Danton's character which would lead us to a conclusion that he 
 would not have countenanced massacre. 
 
 Ko one questions the fact that the leading motive in Danton's 
 mind was the establishment of a strong government around or 
 in the place of a weak monarchy. He was a true descendant of 
 the lawyers of the Code. The massacres of September took place 
 at a moment when he was using the whole of his personal energy 
 in trying as well as may be to supply that Government. He 
 guides the ministry in Paris ; he dominates Boland as a man 
 might dominate a woman. It was of supreme importance to such 
 a scheme that the thin ice between government and anarchy in 
 the days that preceded Valmy should not be broken. The mas- 
 sacre of September broke it; there was a week of anarchy in 
 Paris. There is the first great argument against Danton's com- 
 plicity with the massacres. 
 
 It must, however, be remembered that a theory exists, by no 
 means untenable, which would make Danton argue something in 
 this fashion : " Once let the popular fury have full rein against 
 what it regards as the internal enemy, and I shall have the dis- 
 appearance of that disturbing factor of royalist reaction in Paris, 
 while on the part of the mob I shall have the lassitude and shame 
 that foUow excess; they are not difficult to govern." It is only a 
 personal opinion, but it seems to me that in a mind of Danton's 
 
342 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 type, downright and practical to excess, such a far-reaching and 
 subtle idea as the last would hardly occur, and that the massacres 
 must have produced on him an especial annoyance, because they 
 were the breakdown of a system the support of which occupied 
 his every eflfort. 
 
 Secondly, Danton's allusions to the massacres of September 
 were always of a more definite and more reasonable nature than 
 those of his colleagues, The attitude which he adopts with 
 regard to them after their occurrence is this : " There was no 
 public force, none of that disciplined government which I postu- 
 late as the first necessity of the Eevolution ; nothing on earth 
 could prevent them, and they occurred in spite of every governing 
 power." So much for generalities. 
 
 Now let us turn to one or two points which have been made 
 the basis of a definite accusation against Danton in this matter. 
 
 Firstly : that he knew that the massacres were coming, and 
 withdrew from prison more than one of his friends on the eve of 
 the uprising. This I take to be true, or rather I am certain of it; 
 but one would have to be very ignorant of the time not to know 
 that all Paris expected the massacres, and that those who were at 
 all in touch with the Commune knew two or three days before 
 that anything illegal might be done. To have worked to prevent 
 them, in which Danton might have employed his energy, would, 
 as I have said in the text, have been to risk that which he 
 most desired, and to risk it for the sake of saving the prisoners. 
 Certainly he did not desire to save them as passionately as he 
 desired to remain at the helm and build up a government; he 
 preferred to keep his influence over the city. That accusation 
 is just. 
 
 Secondly, it is aflBrmed with justice that Danton, from the 
 peculiar position of the ministry which he occupied, fiUed the 
 prisons, which were afterwards gutted. It is true that on Danton, 
 as Minister of Justice, and above all as a general power in the 
 Cabinet, the responsibility of arresting the prisoners rests; but 
 was this action taken with a knowledge of what the consequences 
 would be nearly a month later t Certainly not. It would show 
 a complete ignorance of what happened in the last fortnight of 
 August to say that an action taken just after the i oth was taken 
 with a yiew to something that would occur on the and of Sep- 
 
APPENDIX IV 343 
 
 tember. The state of public feeling in tbose four weeks went 
 through a most violent crisis, and one might say that the intensity 
 of the feeling against the Koyalists and the foreigners was not 
 only a hundred-fold greater when Verdun was actually falling 
 than it had been just after the success against the Tuileries, but 
 different in quality as well. 
 
 Thirdly, there is one detailed accusation — the circular which 
 Marat sent out to the Departments. If it can be proved that this 
 circular was approved of, that its distribution was aided by Danton, 
 then we shall have a definite piece of evidence which cannot be 
 overridden. Now let me describe what that circular was, and 
 see how far we must blame circumstances, how far the carelessness, 
 and how far the deliberate act of the minister. All the accounts 
 are much the same. Madame Eoland says, " Sent out above the 
 signature of the Minister of Justice." Bertrand de MolleviUe is 
 also perfectly definite (Memoirs, ix. 310) — "Sent by the minister 
 Danton." 
 
 The examination of the documents seventy years later has 
 given more accurate results to history than the memoirs of con- 
 temporaries, whether they are truthful and enthusiastic like 
 Madame Boland, or frankly dishonest like Bertrand de Molle- 
 viUe. Bougeart was at the pains of looking up the original 
 documents at the archives of the police. What appears in this 
 document (Bougeart, pp. 1 21-122) is a series of signatures, 
 Panis, Sergent, Marat, &c., that is, the Committee of Surveillance 
 appointed by the Commune. There is no trace of any ministerial 
 signature, and even the stamp which was used in the ofiice by the 
 clerks for everything that passed officially through the Ministry 
 of Justice is not attached to the sheet. What did happen was 
 this. The circulars were sent out in envelopes which bore the 
 official mark of the Ministry. It is as though some act of a body 
 in London, let us say, shoxild be distributed to the provinces 
 in the blue envelopes of Her Majesty's Service. That is all, 
 either for or against Danton, that remains of the incident of the 
 circular. 
 
 Now it is certain that Danton had not at that time openly 
 broken with Marat. Moreover, Danton had not actually quar- 
 relled with the Commune, though he certainly treated it with 
 contempt. But Danton had no conceivable object in helping 
 
344 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Marat to distribute the circulars unless he himself was openly on 
 Marat's side. A man of his character would either have signed, 
 or else, had he known that the circulars were going out, he would 
 have forbidden their distribution; he would have taken some 
 definite line. Whyl Because the distribution of the citcular 
 was bound to condemn him to a very definite position — ^here is a 
 man who has stood aloof from a very violent conspiracy, a con- 
 spiracy whose authors came out at last in the open day and 
 gloried in what they had done. They wrote the most violent 
 of all their manifestoes, containing such phrases as " the 
 ferocious prisoners have been put to death by the people ; " " it 
 was an act of justice indispensable to our Committee," and so 
 forth. It would be quite impossible to send out unwittingly such 
 a circular as that without knowing that one was compromising 
 oneself and definitely entering the most extreme party of the 
 Parisians. It is inconceivable, therefore, that he would have lent 
 official envelopes for the purpose, and have said, " So far I will 
 help you, but I will not help you more than that." You might 
 as well suppose an English official in India, of the stronger kind, 
 saying, " I will allow you, an unofficial personage, to send out the 
 order for an illegal execution from this office, but I will not put 
 my name to it." 
 
 Again, how comes it that this document alone, of all those 
 sent from the Minister of Justice at the time, goes out in the 
 official envelope, but bears in itself no mark whatsoever of the 
 Ministry of Justice 1 How was it that the officials in the country 
 towns, among the mass of papers that they received from the 
 Ministry in Paris, should receive this single one without any 
 stamp or signature, and should then discover that it had pro- 
 ceeded from a body which had nothing on earth to do with the 
 Ministry of Justice 1 There are but two replies possible to thia 
 question — either that the envelopes were taken from the Ministry 
 by one of the clerks (several of whom we know to have been 
 intimately linked with the Commune), or that Danton timidly 
 lent envelopes but refused to do anything further. Of these two 
 replies, the second appears to me absolutely at variance not only 
 with Danton's own character but also with the general routine of 
 a great office. I cannot conceive the Cabinet Minister offering, in 
 the very gravest conditions, a few blue envelopes, when a whole 
 
APPENDIX IV 345 
 
 political party desire from him a definite pronouncement on one 
 aide or the other. 
 
 Finally, it may be aaked, could these envelopes go out without 
 his knowledge! To that I answer that such a thing might be 
 done from any government office to-day. It was, moreover, a 
 time of revolution; the whole complicated organism had been 
 shaken and partly transformed ; there was confusion in every 
 department of the building, and even under these conditions 
 Danton was doing far more work than depended upon his office. 
 I think, therefore, that it is eminently possible that the circulars 
 should have been sent out by one of the clerks without his know- 
 ledge; and the fact that no signature was used, and that the 
 documents did not even pass through one of the many hands 
 whose duty it was to affix the formal stamp, still further corro- 
 borates the view that the circulation of the appeal was surrep- 
 titious. 
 
 As to the accusations such as that of Lafayette (Memoirs, 
 iv. 139, 140), "He commanded the massacre of September and 
 paid the murderers, who went all covered with blood to get their 
 money from Roland," I attach no importance to them at alL 
 Even the phrase in which Danton is supposed to have saluted the 
 return of the murderers from Versailles is very doubtful. It does 
 not occur in any contemporary account ; it is not in the Moni- 
 tear ; it is not in the " Revolutions de Paris ; '' Madame Roland 
 does not quote it, even on hearsay ; it is not one of Peltier's 
 inventions, and I have some difficulty in tracing it to its origin. 
 
 I think, then, that the general position of Danton during the 
 days of September may be summed up as follows. He did not 
 regard the lives of the prisoners as being of the first importance ; 
 he did not use what would have been to his certain knowledge a 
 useless energy in protesting ; he did not (as he might conceivably 
 have done) form a special and vigorous tribunal to replace that 
 which was on the point of acquitting L. de Montmorin. By all 
 those, therefore, who would regard public order and a security for 
 life as being more important than the success of a political idea, 
 or the integrity and defence of a nation, he can be accused of a 
 criminal negligence in the matter of the massacres of September. 
 He certainly cannot be accused of having designed them ; he 
 cannot be accused on any definite proof of having approved them. 
 
346 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 and he cannot be accused of having failed to share in the regret 
 and misery which that terrible blunder caused. If we may judge 
 the attitude of his mind by comparing it with that of contem- 
 poraries, rather than by comparing it with our own attitude in a 
 time of security and order, we may say that the massacres taught 
 him a more definite lesson than they taught to Boland, for they 
 caused him to pursue a policy of conciliation and to strengthen 
 the government; that, on the other hand, he did less to stop 
 them than Manuel did ; and that in a comparison with men whom 
 we know to have been honest, such as Roland himself, or by a 
 contrast with men whom we know to have been evil, such as 
 Hubert, or whom we know to have been frenzied, such as Marat — 
 judged in the midst of all this, Danton will appear responsible to 
 history for having been guilty of indifference at a moment when 
 he might have saved his reputation by protesting, though perhaps 
 his protest would not have saved a single life. 
 
 The object of tlie remainder of this Appendix is to pro- 
 vide for the reader certain documents that illustrate the 
 statements and the Hne of argument in the text. Of 
 these documents but few have been translated, because 
 only a few appeal to any one but a special student of the 
 Revolution, or are necessary to the understanding of this 
 book. 
 
 By far the most important of the documents here 
 printed is the last, Barr^re's report of the 29th of May 
 1793. Hitherto unpublished, it furnishes (to my mind) 
 the most complete explanation of the somewhat com- 
 plicated manoeuvres pursued by the Committee, manoeuvres 
 which permitted the revolution of May 31st and June 2nd. 
 
 To each document a short preface has been attached 
 for the purpose of explaining its origin and of mentioning 
 the authorities (if any) in which it can be found. 
 
SHORT MEMOIR by A. R. C. db St. ALBIN 
 
 This memoir was published for the first time as an article 
 in the Critique Franfaise of the 15 th of March 1864. 
 It was so published by the author himself, and, though 
 appearing seventy years after Danton's death, is not with- 
 out importance. De St. Albin, who is better known by his 
 first name of Rousselin, had some personal acquaintance 
 with Danton (though he was but a boy at the time) and he 
 lived to a great age. He had, moreover, an acquaintance 
 with the family after the Revolutionary period. These 
 circumstances make his testimony decisive on aU non-con- 
 troversial points and valuable on many others. 
 
 The criticisms to be made against his account are 
 obvious. It is too florid ; it errs also in giving an amiable 
 and somewhat mediocre character to the statesman him- 
 self and to all his relatives and surroundings. We have 
 in it but a poor expression of the energy that was Danton's 
 chief character, and which the writer's own mind cannot 
 reflect. It was, moreover, written so very long after the 
 events which it describes that in more than one place an 
 error of date or number has been committed; especially 
 in the incident of Barentin at the close of the memoir, 
 with which M. Aulard finds so much fault, and in the 
 amount of his wife's dowry, which was not 40,000 but only 
 20,000 Uvres. On the other hand, it is fresh, full of per- 
 sonal recollections, written by a trustworthy man, and 
 gives many interesting details on the earUer and less 
 
 known part of Danton's life. 
 
 347 
 
348 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 " La famille de Danton n'a point k se pr^valoir d'une antique 
 noblesse. Le nom de Danton est commun dans la contree 
 d'Arcis-sur-Aube, 11 est apparu avec un certain bruit, en 1740, 
 dans les querelles du jans^nisme. Parmi les pieces de theatre 
 destinies k populariser ces discussions th^ologiques, il en est une 
 intitul^e La Banqueroute des marchands de miracles, qui est 
 signee du P. Danton. On a suppose, non sans raison, qui cet 
 eccl6siastique 6tait un grand-oncle du conventionnel. 
 
 "George-Jacques Danton naquit k Arcis-sur-Aube le 26 octo- 
 bre 1759. II etait fils de Jacques Danton, procureur au bailliage 
 d'Arcis, qui avait 6pous^, en 1754, Jeanne-Madeleine Gamut. 
 Le pfere mourut le 24 f^vrier 1762, Sg6 d'environ quarante ans, 
 laissant sa femme enceinte et quatre enfants en bas &ge, deux 
 fiUes et deux garfons. Georges-Jacques Danton resta sous la tutelle 
 de sa m^re, femme dou^e de toutes les qualit^s qui commandent 
 I'estune. C'est par la sensibility et la douceur du caractfere que 
 la m^re de Danton ^levait et gouvernait sa jeune famille. Georges, 
 celui de ses enfants dont l'ext6rieur indiquait le plus de force et 
 de volenti, ^tait le plus docile envers elle. Sa jeune ind^pendance 
 6tait bien vite soumise quand sa mfere parlait k son coeur. La 
 tendresse obtenait ce que la crainte aurait vainement tent6 
 d'arracber. Madame veuve Danton eut un beureux auxiliaire 
 pour le soutien de sa maison dans son pfere, entrepreneur dea 
 ponts et chaussees de la province de Champagne. Celui-ci donna 
 les premieres lefons k son petit-fils : il voyait avec joie sea m&les 
 dispositions. 
 
 " II est int^ressant de noter quel fut le milieu dans lequel 
 Danton passa ainsi ses premieres ann^es, et nous avons trouv^ dans 
 un auteur contemporain, le passage suivant qui nous semble curieux: 
 
 " ' La ville d'Arcis-sur-Aube est compos^e d'hommes indfepen- 
 dants ; I'air y est vif, les hommes sont robustes ; la rivifere de 
 I'Aube, qui traverse le pays, est navigable en tout temps, le 
 commerce maritime occupe les natifs ; quand les marins ne sont 
 pas occup^s k I'eau, ils font des bas ; ils sont laborieux, iudustrieux. 
 Arcis n'est comparable k aucune partie de la Champagne ; les lois 
 y sont observ^es comme si elles n'existaient pas, par le seul senti- 
 ment de I'ordre ; les seigneurs de I'ancien regime avaient toujoura 
 rencontrfe des opposants dans des hommea chez qui Tamour de !• 
 liberty eat inn^.' 
 
APPENDIX V 349 
 
 " L'enfance de Danton n'eut rien de remarquable ; il fut ^lev^, 
 smvant I'usage du pays, k peu prfes comme un enfant de la nature. 
 
 " II avait ^t^ nourri par une vache, ce qui est usit6 en Cham- 
 pagne, quand lea m^res ne sont pas assez fortes pour allaiter leurs 
 enfants. La vache nourrice de Danton fut un jour aperjue par 
 un taureau 6chapp6, qui se pr^cipita sur elle et donna au pauvre 
 enfant un coup de corns qui lui arracha la Ifevre. Cast 4 cette 
 cicatrice que tenait la difFormit6 de sa Ifevre superieure. 
 
 "En grandissant, Danton, comme tous les Itres dou^s d'une 
 force extraordinaire, ^prouvait le besoin de I'exercer. 11 voulut 
 un jour faire preuve de vigueur, prendre sa revanche et lutter 
 contre un taureau. D 6tait difficile qu'il sortit vainqueur de la 
 lutte. TJn coup de come lui ^crasa le nez. 
 
 " Ces accidents aiiraient i\\. le rendre prudent, mais il n'y a 
 gufere de prudence la oil il y a grande surabondance de vie. Un 
 jour le robuste enfant croit pouvoir faire marcher devant lui les 
 pores de la ferme qui obstruaient I'entr^e de la maison. II les 
 attaque k coups de fouet ; mais son pied glisse, il tombe, et les 
 pores devenus furieux, se ruent sur lui et lui font une terrible 
 blessure, assez semblable k celle dont Boileau fut victime dans 
 ■on enfance, au dire d'Helv^tius, qui attribuait k cette blessure la 
 disette de sentiment qu'il pretendait remarquer dans les ouvrages 
 du po^te. Quel que soit le merits de cette appreciation, elle ne 
 serait pas applicable k Danton. Sa virility avait 6t6 compromise, 
 non perdue, et il conserva toute son 6nergie et toute sa hardiesse. 
 Bien ne I'arr^tait : chaque jour il donnait de nouveUes preuves 
 de t^m^rite. A peine fut-il r^tabli de ce malheureux accident, 
 qu'entratn^ par sa passion pour la natation, il faiUit se noyer et 
 fut atteint d'une fifevre maligne, k laquelle vint se joindre une 
 petite v6role trfes grave, accompagn^e du pourpre. Tout semblait 
 ainsi se r^unir pour le defigurer. 
 
 "Pour faire contracter k son enfant quelques habitudes de 
 discipline, la mfere de Danton le remit d'abord k la surveillance 
 d'une maltresse d'^cole ; celle-ci n'avait pas le temps ou la volenti 
 d'user avec lui d'indulgence. Danton trouva quelque dififdrence 
 dans la comparaison de ce nouveau regime avec les tendresses de 
 sa mfere et de son aieul : non moins s6v6re que la demoiselle 
 Lambercier de J. -J. Rousseau, la maitresse d'^cole croyait ne 
 pouvoir se passer de verges pour diriger les enfants, et Danton 
 
350 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 lui av»it paru avoir les premiers droits k ses corrections. Tous 
 ses contemporains se Rouvenaient de I'avoir vu faire trop souvent 
 I'^cole buissonni^re et employer les heures de classe h, barboter 
 dans I'Aube. II pr^f^rait la liberty de vivre k I'ennui de r^p^ter 
 les caract^res de I'alphabet. II avait cependant d'heureuses apti- 
 tudes et apprenait rapidement; mais toute habitude r^gl^e ^tait 
 antipathique h, sa nature. 
 
 " A huit ans, il fut d^barrassS de la rigoureuse maitresse, et 
 transvase, comme il le dit lui-mSme, dans une institution sup^rieure. 
 Le chef de cette institution croyait aavoir assez de latin pour en 
 enseigner les Elements. Quand les premiers principes de la gram- 
 maire ne sont pas montr^s avec une habile m^thode aui jeunes 
 intelligences, elle leur oflfre peu d'attrait. 
 
 "Danton en avait peu-§tre un peu moins pour Lhomond que 
 pour le jeu de cartes. A peine le devoir termini, en bite il courait 
 avec quelques camarades dans un coin pour faire sa partie. Des 
 biUes ou des gateaux Itaient le b6n6fice du gagnant. Souvent 
 vainqueur, il partageait toujours avec le vaincu. Quand il se 
 trouvait seul, il lisait ou allait se promener ans les bois ou dans 
 les champs. 
 
 " Pour modifier cette humeur un peu sauvage, les parents de 
 Danton crurent devoir le mettre dans une maison religieuse. 
 
 "Quoiqu'il ne fdt point destin6 k I'^tat eccl&iastique, on le 
 plaga d'abord au petit s^minaire de Troyes; maia la monotonie de 
 cette maison lui devint bient6t p6nible. Pendant tout le temps 
 qu'U y resta, il obeerva la r^gle, mais il ne pouvait soufirir que 
 Ba r^cr^ation fdt subitement interrompue par un coup de cloche, 
 Cette cloche, disait-il, si je suia encore forcS de Fentendre longtemps, 
 finira par sonner mon enterrement. 
 
 "Tin reproche mal fond^ et regu publiquement du sup^rieur 
 d^cida Danton h, solliciter sa sortie du s^minaire. 
 
 " Le fait suivant peut etre racont^ comme trait de caract^re : 
 La pension, dans cette maison, dtait modique. Les ^Ifeves n'avaient 
 de vin qu'en le payant s^par^ment k la fin de chaque ann^e. Tous 
 les dimanches on distribuait des cartes, qui ^taient une esp^ce de 
 billet au porteur. En prdsentant cette carte au distributeur, on 
 recevait une mesure de vin appel6e roquille. Danton ^tait g6n6r- 
 eux, et un de ses grands plaisirs alors ^tait de r^galer ses camarades 
 en leur passant des cartes de roguilles, surtout k ceux qu'il savait 
 
APPENDIX V 351 
 
 n'avoir pas la bourse bien garnie. Sa gdn&osit6 alia si loin, que, 
 lorsqu'on fit le compt^ g4n6ral et la proclamation publique de tous 
 ceux qui avaient bu du vin, il se trouva 6tre celui qui avait fait 
 una plus grande consommation de roquilles. La veille du depart 
 pour les vacances, le superieur du petit s^minaire adressa ces 
 paroles k Danton : Mon ami, vous pouvez vous flatter d'itre le plus 
 grand buveur de la communauti. A ces mots, tous les rires 
 d'^clater sur lui ; il ne r^pondit pas, mais il se promit bien de ne 
 plus boire de roquiUes au petit s^minaire. Malgi^ une veritable 
 bont^, Demton ^tait peu enduiant, et on Favait surnomm^ I'anti- 
 superieur, et m§me le republicain. 
 
 " A peiae revenu h. Arcis-sur-Aube, il d^clara h, sa mfere qu'il 
 ne rentrerait plus au petit s^minaire : " II y a Ik, dit-il, des habi- 
 tudes qui ne me vont pas, et que je ne pourrai jamais comprendre. 
 L'ann^e suivante, on le mit dans une pension la'ique. Ses etudes 
 n'y perdirent rien, car il eut depuis des succes qu'il n'avait pas 
 obtenus aupaiavant. H fit ainsi sa seconde, et y remporta la 
 piesque totality des prix. . . . 
 
 "Nous arrivons au mois de juin 1775. On appreud que 1« 
 sacre de Louis XVI. va s'accomplir k Reims. Danton avait d6jk 
 plus d'une fois entendu les imprecations dont toute la France 
 couvrait la m^moire de Louis XV. A I'age de seize ans il en 
 savait assez pour abhorrer I'emploi des lettres de cachet, qui 
 6taient si prodigu6es sous ce rfegne scandaleux. Le professeur 
 avait annonc6 qu'il donnerait I'^v^nement du sacre du nouveau 
 monarque comme texte d'amplification : Pour bien se pinitrer de 
 son sujet, dit Danton d'un ton decide, il faut se servir de ses yeux. 
 Je mis curieux de voir comment se fait un roi. 
 
 " Son projet n'est confix qu'k quelques fidfeles camarades qui 
 lui prltent de I'argent pour sa route. II part sans pr^venir son 
 maitre; il traverse son pays d'Arcis sans voir ses parents, dans 
 la crainte de les trouver opposes h son pfelerinage. Aprfes avoir 
 franchi vingt-huit lieues sans encombre, il arrive k Heims, se 
 glisse partout ; il suit attentivement toutes les ceremonies du sacre, 
 et il entend le jeune monarque, la main sur I'Evangile, prononcer 
 le serment de rigner par les lois et pour le honheur de la nation. 
 Que des reflexions fait naltre un pareil spectacle dans un cerveau 
 ardent, d^jk prompt k concevoir de rapprochements ! 
 
 " A son retour de Reims, les amis de Danton 6taient impatienta 
 
352 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 de I'entendre raconter tout ce qu'il avait vu. Get appareil na 
 I'avait pas Imerveilld, la richesse des decors de la cath^drale ne 
 I'avait pas s^duit. II raisonnait assez dijb, pour sentir que ce 
 n'^tait gui'ire plus qu'une pompe vaine, encore dispendieuse pour 
 la France d^jk si ob6r6e. Le jeune voyageur sYgayait en parlant 
 de ce nombreux essaim d'oiseaux de toute espfece auxquels on avait 
 donn^ la vol^e dans I'dglise : " Plaisante liberti, disait-il, que de 
 voltiger entre quatre raurs, sans avoir de quoi manger ni poser son 
 nid /" II comparait aussi les oiseaux babillaids aui courtisans 
 qui entouraient d6jk le nouveau roi, par continuation de leur 
 d^vouement pour le d^funt. A I'entendre debiter avec autant 
 de simplicity que de malice ses reflexions sur le luxe, on peut 
 entrevoir que I'^colier moraliste, devenu grand, ne sera pas sans 
 quelque exigence envers la royaut6, et sans quelque s^v^rit^ envers 
 les agents qui vivent des abus. 
 
 " Danton, revenu h. Troyes, ^prouva des difficult^s pour rentrer 
 k sa pension. Sa sortie, k I'insu du mattre, avait indispos^ celui- 
 ci. Le voyageur, soumis et repentant, proteste qu'il n'a Ue d 
 Reims que pour se mettre en mesure de /aire en connaissance de 
 cause son devoir d' amplification sur le sacre. II produit eflfective- 
 ment un morceau des plus brillants, mais ou il se defend d'intro- 
 duire les observations hardies ^chapp^es dans la familiarity de la 
 conversation, qui ne peuvent se presenter dans une narration 
 ^crite, dont les convenances sont la premifere rfegle. Le mattre, 
 satisfait et surpris du m^rite de rceuvre, en fait lecture k sea 
 61feves. II dit qu'il aurait donne la premiire place d, Vauteur $'il 
 n'avait fait I'ecole huitsonniere. Les camarades de Danton s'unis- 
 sent avec enthousiasme k I'appr^ciation du maJtre; ils admirent 
 comment I'enfant prodigue, leur ayant fait un r^cit aussi piquant, 
 aussi jovial de son voyage, avait pu en mime temps mettre dans 
 son style autant de reserve et de noblesse. C'est ainsi que Danton 
 fait admettre ses excuses, et sa gr&ce est devenue une espfece de 
 triomphe. Tl reprend sa classe, dont les travaux allaient bient6t 
 »e terminer. L'6poque des compositions pour les prix annuels 
 approchait ; se fiant k sa facility, Dantou ne semble pas se pre- 
 parer au concours. Mais d^s que les sujets de composition sont 
 donnas, il rassemble tons les efforts de son intelligence et obtient 
 toutes les couronnes. II diploic d'admirables moyens dans le 
 discours fran^ais, la narration latine et la po^sie. Imagination, 
 
APPENDIX V 353 
 
 jugement, exactitude, saillie dans la pens^e, force, ^l^gajice, 
 originality dans I'expression, rien ne lui manque, et le i8 aoAt 
 1775 fut peut-Stre le plus beau jour de sa vie. Le nom de 
 DarUon-Gamut (qui 6tait celui de sa mire pour le distinguer d'un 
 homonyme son condisciple) fut r^p6t6 au bruit des fanfares. Si 
 le laur^at fut heureux, ce fut surtout en apportant ses lauriers 4 
 sa mfere, objet de son culte et de son amour ; cette pi4t6 filiale, 
 d^s lors le plus vif de ses sentiments, demeurera la m@me dans 
 son coeur pendant tout le cours de sa vie, quelles qu'en soient 
 les violences ou les distractions; plus tard, il la montra mieux 
 encore, et I'homme auquel il voua la haine la plus tenace fut 
 un miserable soup^onn^ d'avoir manqu^ de respect k Madame 
 Dan ton. 
 
 " Lorsqu'un ^colier se distinguait au coUfege, on songeait k la 
 carrifere que lui ouvriiaient ses talents. 77 faut en faire un jpretre 
 ou un procureur. Le cur6 de Barberey, prfes Troyes, d^signait 
 ddjk Danton pour qu'il lui succ^d^t dans son presbytfere ; mais le 
 moment de sdjour que Danton avait fait au s^minaire ne lui avait 
 pas inspire la vocation eccl^siastique. II avait besoin de liberty, 
 il lui fallait les franches allures, I'ind^pendance. II demandait 
 une profession lib^rale, il d^sirait etre avocat. . . . D^mosthfenes 
 et Cic^ron, qu'il venait de commencer k connaltre n'dtaient-ils pas 
 des avocats ? La famiUe r^unie ayant d^f^r6 au vcbu de Danton, 
 il fut d6cid6 qu'il irait k Paris et qu'U travaillerait cbez un pro- 
 cureur pour y apprendre la procedure en mSme temps qu'il ferait 
 ses etudes de droit, pour se preparer au barreau. 
 
 "Ici vient se placer une circonstance int^ressante qui fait 
 honneuT k Danton et qui fournit une nouvell6 preuve de sa 
 tendresse pour ses parents. Madame veuve Danton, demeur^e 
 seule avec sa nombreuse famUUe, s'^tait remari^e pour lui donner 
 un soutien. Elle avait ^pous6 M. Recordin, estimable n^gociant, 
 dont la bont6 est rest^e proverbiale dans le pays : bon et brave 
 comme Recordin. Par suite de sa facility dans ses relations, les 
 affaires de la maison Recordin se trouvferent embarass^es. Danton, 
 loin d'exiger les comptes qu'il avait droit de demander de la 
 fortune qui lui revenait de son p^re, fut le premier k offrir des 
 secours k son beau-pfere ; il mit k sa disposition tout ce qui lui 
 appartenait; U aUa jusqu'k engager la portion du bien de ses 
 tantes qui devait lui ^choir un jour, ne craignant pas d'ali^ner 
 
 Z 
 
354 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 son pr&ent en son avenir. 11 faut mettre ses affaires en rlgle, 
 disait-il, quand on fait un grand voyage. 
 
 " Tels furent les pr^paratifs du depart. 
 
 " Tons les t^moignages de ses camarades, parents et amis, 
 d^posent de la delicatesse de Danton sous tous les rapports ; 4 
 Texception du prSt de quelques 6cus qui lui furent offerts par 
 ses camarades pour le voyage de Reims, il n'a jamais demande 
 d'argent i qui que ce soit, dans les moments oil, soit comma 
 dcolier, soit comme clerc de procureur, il a pu 6prouver de cea 
 genes de jeune homme qui rendent hardi aux emprunts. 
 
 "Danton arrive a Paris en 1780 dans la voiture du messager 
 d'Aicis-sur-Aube, qui ^tait I'ami de sa famiUe, et qui voulut lui 
 faire la conduite gratuitement. II se logea h I'auberge du Cheval 
 noir, tenue rue Geoffroy-Lasnier par un nomm^ Layron, qui ^tait 
 rh6te le plus fr6quent6 par les Champenois. Danton avait tr^s 
 peu de fonds, et il dut se mettre immddiatement au travail : il 
 entra chez un procureur appel6 Vinot. Ce procureur commenja par 
 lui demander un modMe de son ecriture, qu'il ne trouva pas belle. 
 Les procureurs de ce temps-Ik voulaient de ces ^critures promptes 
 et faciles, propres h, produire de larges grosses, de longues requetes. 
 Le jeune Cbampenois d^clara francbement qu'il n'etait pas venu 
 pour etre copiste. Ce ton d'assurance imposa au procureur Vinot. 
 II dit : J'aime I'aplomb, il en faut dans notre etat. 
 
 "Danton fut admis comme clerc, avec la nourriture et le loge- 
 ment. II 6tudia la procedure non sans quelque d^golit ; il fut 
 cbarg^, comme on dit dans le mdtier, de faire le palais, C'est 
 la premifere initiation des jeunes clercs aux affaires. Elle com- 
 mence k les mettre en relation avec les choses et les personnes du 
 monde judiciare, et leur donne les 616ments de la pratique par de 
 petits plaidoyers sommaires et des explications contradictoires qui 
 leur ouvrent les idees et leur apprennent k se conduire dans le laby 
 rintbe oil ils sont destines h vivre. 
 
 "Danton rempliasait aa fonction de clerc avec intelligence et 
 exactitude ; ses recreations les plus babituelles 6taient toujours 
 I'esorime, la paume et la natation, sa passion favorite ! dont il 
 usait fr^quemment ; c'^tait le besoin meme de son temperament. 
 II 6tait assez habile h, cet exercice pour etre cite au premier rang ; 
 il y trouva un encouragement digne de son Emulation. II sauva 
 plusieurs fois de la mort des camarades qui auraient p^ri s'il n'etait 
 
APPENDIX V 355 
 
 venu au secours de leur imprudence et de leur faiblesse. Quel- 
 ques-uns d'entre eux ont raconW les tours de force vMtables que 
 Danton ex^cutait dans les courants les plus difficiles de la riviere. 
 De I'endroit mSme oil ils prenaient leurs 6bats, on voyait les tours 
 de la Bastille, et plus d'une fois les baigneurs ont entendu Danton, 
 dressant sa tite comme un triton, jeter une menace du c6t^ de la 
 prison d'Etat et s'^crier de sa voix vibrante : Ce chateau fort 
 suspendu sur notre tete m'offiisque et me g^ne. Quand le verrons- 
 nous ahattu ? Pour mot, ce jour Id, fy donnerait un fier coup de 
 pioche I 
 
 " Les constitutions les plus robustes sont souvent les plus 
 expos^es, parce que cette exuberance de force donne plus de 
 s6curit6. Danton, k la suite d'une double partie de natation et 
 d'escrime, fut encore attaient d'une grave maladie. Longtemps 
 retenu au lit, alors que son corps ^tait r^duit k I'Lnaction, il ne 
 pouvait se livrer \ ses exercices habituels, mais son imagination 
 ne restait point inactive. Avec son infatigable ardeur de lecture, 
 il s'obstina k lire V Encyclopedie tout entifere, et il avait achev^ ce 
 labeur si considerable avant que la convalescence flit termin^e. 
 II trouvait encore le temps de lire les grands publicistes dont les 
 principes et la morale politique commenfaient h, devenir les guides 
 du sifecle. Montesquieu qu'il devait souvent citer, fut de sa part 
 I'objet d'une dtude tout particulifere, et, apr^s avoir lu VEsprit des 
 lots, il disait : Quel horizon nouveau s'ouvre devant moil Je n'ai 
 qu'un regret, e'est de retrouver dans I'ecrivain qui vous porte si loin 
 et si haut, le president d'un parlement. De Montesquieu, Danton 
 passa bientot h, Voltaire, k J. -J. Rousseau, puis k Beccaria, qui 
 apparaissait alors. Danton ne tarda pas k savoir par ccBur I'admir- 
 able petit ouvrage de cet auteur, le traits Des delits et des peines, 
 q.ii allait reformer la legislation criminelle du monde ; afin de se 
 preparer des couleurs de style pour le jour oil il aurait k parler 
 aux foules, afin d'apprendre, k revetir les questions sociales des 
 belles images de la nature, Danton etudia particuliferement VHis- 
 toire naturelle de Buffon : au moyen de sa puissante m^moire il 
 en retenait et r^citait des pages entiferes. Voilk d'amples pro- 
 visions d'instruction qui pourront trouver un jour un utile emploi 
 dans la carrifere de I'homme public ! Tout en dedaignant la littera- 
 ture frivole et n'ayant jamais lu de romans que les chefs-d'oeuvre 
 consacres qui sont des peintures de moeurs, Danton apprit en 
 
3S6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 mSme temps la langue italienne assez pour lire le Tasse, I'Arioste 
 et ni§me le Dante. II faisait aussi des vers avec facility, quelques- 
 ans m^me adress^s, en tout bien et tout honneur, k une personne 
 qui nYtait pas indigne de les lui inspirer, k la femme de sou 
 procureur. 
 
 " Mais tous ces d^lassements litt&aires dtaient en dehors de la 
 profession qu'U voulait exercer. lis ne lui firent point n^liger 
 I'apprentissage de la procedure et du droit. 
 
 " II lui restait maintenant i. devenir de licenci6 avooat, et 
 comme il avait gard6 un bon souvenir de la ville de Reims, il alia 
 se faire recevoir avocat dans cette ville. Champenois de coeur, il 
 ^tait heureux de contribuer de tous ses moyens k I'honneur de son 
 pays natal. II avait toujours de bonnes saiUies b, son service, et 
 ne manquait pas une occasion de citer des hommes distingu^ 
 dans les lettres et les arts de diverses 6poques qui appartenaient 
 h, la province de Champagne. Parmi les contemporains, Danton 
 pouvait du reste trouver plus d'un exemple & I'appui de son 
 patriotique enthousiasme : c'est ainsi qu'il parlait souvent de 
 quelques notabilit^s qu'U connaisaait, tels que le savant Grosley, 
 I'avocat Linguet. 
 
 " De retour de Reims h. Paris, Danton, apr^s avoir achev^ son 
 stage, s'essaya au barreau de la capitale pendant quelque temps. 
 Charge d'une affaire, entre autres, pour un berger contre le 
 seigneur de son village, il eut I'occasion de produire, en cette 
 circonstance, quelques-uns des sentiments qu'U devait plus tard 
 d^velopper davantage sur un grand th^itre. II r^clama avec 
 autant de vigueur que d'adresse les principes de I'^galit^ devant 
 la loi II gagna sa cause devant la cour de parlement qui, comme 
 on se le rappeUe, n'^tait alors compos^e que de nobles et de privi- 
 l^gi^s. Nous ne sommes encore qu'en 1 785. Le factum de Danton 
 fut imprimS : il ^tait concis, substantiel, ^nergique — nous n'avona 
 pu en retrouver la trace. — Cette premiere lutte soutenue par 
 Danton fit sensation au palais et valut au jeune avocat des 
 t^moignages d'estime de Gerbier, Debonnifere, Hardouin et da 
 toutes les sommit^s du barreau de cette 6poque. Linguet, qui se 
 connaissait en style, et qui, nous I'avons vu, 6tait de Reims, lui 
 adressa k ce sujet de vifs encouragements. 
 
 " Mais les t^moignages de ces hommes ^minents, qui assuraient 
 & Danton un eucc^s d'honneur, ne le menaient point k la fortune ; 
 
APPENDIX V 357 
 
 il s'en ^loignait meme k mesure que son talent aurait it Ten 
 rapprooher davantage, car il recherchait la clientele du pauvre 
 autant que d'autres recherchaient la clientMe da riche. II pensait 
 qu'en th^se g^n^rale le pauvre est le plus souvent I'opprim^, 
 qu'ainsi il a le droit de piioritS !l la defense. D'apr^s ce piincipe 
 de conduite, ceux qui ont dit que Danton n'avait point fait fortune 
 au barreau, pouvaient ajouter qu'il ne I'y aurait jamais faite. . . . 
 
 " S'ennuyant peut-€tre un peu, comme on a pu I'entrevoir, dans 
 sa profession d'avocat, Danton ne demandait point de distraction 
 k des plaisirs qui auraient pu prendre sur les ressources n^cessaires 
 k son existence. Gagnant fort peu dans ses travauz de palais, il 
 n'aurait pas voulu ajouter k la gSne de sa position en contractant 
 des dettes; il ^tait fort rang^, toujours avec une petite r^erve 
 d'^cononiies qui lui permettait de rendre des services sans en 
 demander lui-mSme. Aprfes son frugal repas chez un traiteur, 
 dont la maison ^tait nonun^e VHdtel de la Modestie, il prenait une 
 demi-tasse de caf^ et jouait quelques parties de dominos. Ajoutez, 
 de temps en temps, le spectacle d'une trag^die classique au 
 Th^tre-Frangais, Yoilh, toute la d^pense et tons les amusements 
 du jeune avocat. 
 
 " Un caii oh se rendait le plus habituellement Danton s'appe- 
 lait Cafe de I'Eeole, parce qu'il ^tait situd sur ce quai, presque au 
 coin de la place qui a conserv6 ce nom. C'6tait un rendez-vous 
 tr^a frequent! par les hommes de loi qui se trouvaient rapproch^ 
 du CMtelet et du Palais de Justice. La rigueur du costume et 
 de la coiffure, esp&ce de signalement perpetual, avait cet avantage 
 qu'on n'^tait pas tente de se commettre. 
 
 " Les mattres des caf^s, alors peu nombreux dans Paris, ^taient 
 eux-m@mes des bourgeois d'honnSte allure. Us maintenaient le 
 bon ton de leur maison par leur civilit& lis faisaient rarement 
 fortune, h. I'exception de deux ou trois qui ^taient de premier 
 rang. Le Gafi de I'Eeole n'^tait pas pr^cis^ment k ce niveau ; mais 
 il 6tait I'un de ceux qui avaient la meilleure reputation. Nous 
 croyons voir encore le maitre de la maison avec sa petite perruque 
 londe, son habit gria et sa serviette sous le bras, II 4tait rempli 
 de provenances pour ses clients, et il en Otait traits avec une con- 
 sideration cordiale. Une femme des plus recommandables et fiUe 
 de la maison, aussi douce que gracieuse, tenait le comptoir. 
 Faimi lea habitues, qui paraissaient s'arretei avec un int^rSt 
 
3S^ THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 particulier k ee comptoir, on put remarquer un jeune avocat qui, 
 d'abord fort gai et jovial, parut quelque temps aprfes plus s^rieux. 
 Ce jeune avocat 6tait Danton ; il avait cru d'abord ne causer que 
 g^n^ralement et sans consequence avec les dames du comptoir ; 
 son coeur s'y 6tait pris, et Danton 6tait amoureux. Mademoiselle 
 Gabrielle Charpentier n'avait pas song^ h, se d^fier des assiduit^s 
 de Danton ; elle se trouva bient6t, k son insu, pr^occup^e du 
 mime sentiment. Sans Stre dans le secret de cette inclination, le 
 pere et la m^re Charpentier ne furent pas trfes surpris quand la 
 main de leui fille leur fut demand^e par le jeune avocat. La 
 vivacity de son caractfere leur fit craindre un moment de consentir 
 k cette union ; mais il avait su toucher le coeur de Gabrielle. 
 Lorsqu'on disait : Qu'il est laid I elle r^p^tait, presque comme 
 I'avait dit une femme au sujet de Lekain : Qu^il est heau I Elle 
 admirait son esprit, que Ton trouvait trop piquant ; son ftme, que 
 Ton trouvait trop ardente ; sa voix, que Ton trouvait forte et 
 terrible, et qu'elle trouvait douce. 
 
 " II fallait cependant prendre des renseignements sur ce pr6- 
 tendant. M. Charpentier visita particuliferement les procureurs 
 chez qui Danton avait travaill6, et les avocats avec lesquels il 
 avait htk, en rapport au barreau. II n'y eut qu'une voix en sa 
 faveur. D'aprfes des renseignements aussi satisfaisants, les bons 
 parents ne s'informferent point de sa fortune ; ils y tenaient peu, 
 quoique en ayant eux-memes une assez modeste. Pourtant, ils 
 donnaient en mariage k leur fille une somme de 40,000 francs, ce 
 qui 6tait ' pour I'^poque une dot considerable. lis imposaient k 
 leur gendre une seule condition, c'est qu'il exergat un 6tat ; c'est 
 qu'il fdt occupe. La profession d'avocat au parlement etait sans 
 doute une profession honorable et libre, mais trop libre peut-etre, 
 et qui ne commandait pas un travail assez assidu. Danton promit 
 de remplir les voeux de son beau-pfere ; il s'exprima dans des 
 termes si chaleureux, que le pfere et la mfere Charpentier se mireiit 
 k aimer Danton presque autant que leur fille. 
 
 "Des amis de Danton lui conseill^rent d'acheter une charge 
 d'avocat aux conseils. M. et Madame Charpentier offrirent g^n^- 
 reusement la dot de leur fille ; mais ce n'etait que 40,000 francs, 
 et il en fallait 80,000 ! Des Champenois devours propos^rent 
 de completer ce qui manquait pour le payement de la charge. 
 
 " lis s'en rapportaient tous k la d61icatesse et k la probity de 
 
APPENDIX V 359 
 
 Danton; sa bonne conduite 6tait sa caution. Le mariage n'ayant 
 plus de cause de retard, les bans publics, le consentement de sa 
 mfere arriv^ d'Arcis-sur-Aube, Georges -Jacques Danton et Gabrielle 
 Charpentier furent unis, et le meme jour il entra, comme il le 
 disait gaiement, en puissance defemme et en charge d'officier minis- 
 teriel ; le m.tm.e jour, mari et avoeat aux conseils. 
 
 "Les avocats aux conseils r6unissaient les doubles fonctions 
 d'avocats et de procureurs ; ayant peu de procedure k faire, ils 
 avaient I'avantage de rester maltres de leurs affaires et de ne pas 
 subir, comme les avocats des autres cours, la loi d'un procureur 
 preoccup6 du desir d'attirer k lui tous le b^n^fices. Les fonctions 
 des avocats aux conseils avaient aussi quelque chose d'6minem- 
 ment propre h, Clever Fame des jeunes gens ; leur mission consistait 
 souvent h, redresser les torts du parlement et des cours sup^rieures. 
 lis communiquaient journellement avec les maltres des requites, 
 avec les conseiUers d'Etat, avec les hommes du plus haut rang, qui 
 ^taient obligfe de recourir k leur minist6re pour lutter contre les 
 usurpations dont ils avaient k se plaindre. 
 
 " Les avocats aux conseils avaient ainsi I'occasion, en discutant 
 avec les ministres eui-memes, soit pour les attaquer, soit pour les 
 d6fendre, d'apprendre h. connattre les rapports des autorit^s entre 
 elles, la vraie distinction des pouvoirs, Torganisation civile dans 
 toute son 6tendue, I'ordre social dans son ensemble : c'6tait une 
 excellente 6cole pour creer des ^conomistes, des politiques, des 
 I6gislateurs. 
 
 "En exposant le role et la mission des avocats aux conseils, 
 nous aurions peut-Stre dH expliquer que tels 6taient au moins la 
 pens^e et le droit de I'institution. Faut-il constater maintenant 
 ce qu'6tait en fait I'institution 1 Sur le nombre de soixante 
 membres composant I'honorable confr^rie, on voyait plusieurs 
 hommes distingu^s qui sentaient la dignity de leurs fonctions, 
 traitaient leurs clients avec g^n^rosit^ et delicatdsse, les affaires avec 
 science, appKcation et courage. Mais tous, il faut bien le dire, 
 n'avaient pas un sentiment aussi 61ev^ de leurs devoirs, et il en 6tait 
 quelques-uns dont I'^mulation consistait a faire beaucoup de grosses. 
 
 " Au moment oil Danton fut reju avoeat aux conseils, c'6tait 
 en 1787; il avait vingt-huit ans, sa femme en avait vingt-cinq. 
 Dans ce moment, I'Ordre dtait divise en trois partis plus ou moins 
 actifs. 
 
36o THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 " Les anciens voulaient cr^er un syndicat, k la tSte duquel ils 
 auraient 6t6 tout naturellement places. 
 
 "Les jeunes arrivants appartenaient aux id^es nouvelles, et ne 
 voulaient etre ni conduits ni ^conduits. 
 
 "Un troisi^me parti se composait des hommes mod^rds et 
 pacifiques qui, aimant le repos avant tout, et, comme on a dit 
 depuis, la paix partout et toujours, ne voulaient se meler k aucune 
 action et pr^feraient laisser faire le mal h. leur detriment plut6t 
 que de se mouvoir en aucun sens et se laisser d^ranger meme par 
 un progr^s qui leur eUt ^td utile, mais qui aurait pu les desheurer. 
 
 " On a d6ja pressenti k quel parti Danton avait iA se rallier. 
 II ne m^connaissait pas la discipline qui doit pr^sider h, la bonne 
 organisation d'une compagnie judiciaire ; mais il croyait que la 
 force et la puissance r^elles des compagnies sent dans leur ind^- 
 pendance, comme le talent mSme des membres de ces corporations 
 ne peut se passer de la dignity du caract^re. 
 
 " L'homme qui, en entrant dans une compagnie, dessine ses 
 opinions avee une ^nergique rudesse, peut s'attendre k rencontrer 
 bien des luttes et bien des hostilit^s. 
 
 " Voulant juger la valeur du nouvel arrivant, les avocats, soua 
 pr^texte de bienvenue, et sans I'avoir averti k I'avance, lui firent 
 subir une 6preuve en latin. On lui imposa pour sujet I'eipose de 
 la situation morale et politique du pays dans ses rapports avec la 
 justice. C'^tait, comme Danton I'a dit depuis, lui proposer de 
 marcher sur des rasoirs. . . . II ne recula point. Saisissant 
 meme comme une bonne fortune la difficulty inattendue dans 
 laquelle on croyait I'enlacer, il s'en tira avec ^clat, et laissa ses 
 auditeurs dans IMtonnement de sa presence d'esprit et de la 
 decision de son caractfere. II ne craignit point d'aborder la 
 politique qui commenjait k p6n6trer en toute affaire, et qui 6tait 
 peut-@tre ici une cause secrete du pifege qui lui dtait tendu. On 
 esp^rait surprendre en d^faut un jeune avocat qui levait la tete et 
 annonjait des principes d'ind^pendance. Danton, en homme de 
 talent habile k triompher des plus grandes difficult^s, osa parler 
 des choses les plus actuelles ; il dit que, comme citoyen ami de 
 son pays, autant que comme membre d'une corporation consacr6e 
 k la defense des int^r6ts priv^s et publics de la soci6t6, il d&irait 
 que le gouvernement sentlt assez la gravity de la situation pour y 
 porter rem^e par des moyens simples, naturels et tir^s de son 
 
APPENDIX V 361 
 
 autorit^ ; qu'en presence des besoins imp^rieux du pays, il fallait 
 se r^signer k se sacrifier ; que la noblesse et le clergd, qui 6taient 
 en possession des richesses de la France, devaient donner I'exemple ; 
 que, quant k lui, il ne pouvait voir dans la lutte du parlement, qui 
 6clatait alors, que I'int^rlt de quelques particuliers puissants qui 
 combattaient les ministres, mais sans rien stipuler an profit du 
 peuple. II d6clarait qu'k ses yeux I'horizon appaiaissait sinistra, 
 et qu'il sentait venir une revolution terrible. Si seulement on 
 pouvait la reculer de trente ann^es, eUe se ferait amiablement par 
 la force des choses et le progr&s des lumiferes. II r6p^ta dans ce 
 discours, qui ressemblait au cri propli6tique de Cassandre : Malheur 
 a ceux qui provoquent les revolutions, malheur a cewx qui les font I 
 
 " Plusieurs fois les vieux avocats qui avaient tendu ce pifege k 
 Danton voulurent interrompre son improvisation. lis avaient cru 
 entendre des mots qui les effrayaient, tels que 'm,otV:S 'poip/ulorum, 
 ira gentium, solus populi suprema lex. . . . Les jeunes gens qui, 
 rdcemment sortis des colleges, avaient le droit de comprendre le 
 latin mieux que les anciens, qui I'avaient oubli6 ou ne I'avaient 
 jamais su, r^pondaient k leurs vieux confreres qu'ils avaient mal 
 entendu, que le r^cipiendaire 6tait rest6 dans une mesure parfaite, 
 irr^prochable. 
 
 " Espdrant constater plus f acUement dans le texte d'une redac- 
 tion ^crite les pens6es imprudentes qu'ils avaient cru saisir en 
 ^coutant ses paroles, les anciens demandferent que Danton deposit 
 son discours de reception sur la table de la cbambre du conseil. 
 Danton r^pondit qu'il n'avait rien ecrit. II avait d^jL pour systime 
 d'6crire le moins possible. Ainsi qu'U I'a dit depuis, on n'^crit 
 point en revolution. II ajouta d'ailleurs que si Ton d^sirait porter 
 un jugement sur les paroles qu'il avait prononc^eB, il ne pr^tendait 
 pas s'y opposer. II etait assez certain de sa pens^e et de sa 
 memoire pour r^p^ter avec fid^Ht^ toute son improvisation. . . . 
 Le remade eilt et^ pire que le mal. L'ar^opage trouva que c'^tait 
 d^jk bien assez de ce qu'on avait entendu, et la majority s'opposa 
 avec vivacite k la recidive. 
 
 " Le cabinet achet6 par Danton 6tait loin, au moment oA il en 
 devint titulaire, de poss^der une clientfele nombreuse. II n'en fut 
 pas moins toujours d'un grand desint^ressement vis-irvis de ses 
 clients. 
 
 "II se montrait peu exigeant dans la question des honorairea, 
 
362 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 meme lorsqu'il avaifc gagn6 sa cause. Lorsque son client venait 
 s'acquitter envers lui, il lui arrivait souvent de dire : c'est trap, et 
 de rendre ce qu'il appelait le trap. Dans certaines aifaires per- 
 dues, il refusait toute remuneration. ' Je n'ai point de debours^s, 
 disait-il, puisque je n'ai point fait d'^critures, et que j'ai laiss^ k 
 la r^gie son papier timbrd.' II lui arrivait, bien qu'il ne f1lt pas 
 riche, de donner lui-m6me des secours d'argent k des clients 
 malheureux. 
 
 " Une pareille conduite ne m^ne pas rapidement h, la fortune. 
 Cependant le cabinet de Danton s'ameiiora en trfes peu de temps. 
 En dirigeaut dignement ses affaires, il gagnait de vingt a vingt- 
 cinq mille francs par an ; son sort de pfere de famille etait assure. 
 
 "Dans ce temps oil la France etait encore divisee en provinces, 
 les classes inferieures pouvaient se rtelamer des grands seigneurs 
 de leur pays, et ceux-ci aimaient souvent par vanite autant que 
 par humanite h, prot^ger leurs vaasaui. La maison de Brienne 
 etait de Champagne, prfes Arois-sur-Aube. Danton etait connu du 
 comte de Brienne, ancien ministre de la guerre, et de I'arclievlque 
 de Sens, alors premier ministre. II comptait parmi ses clients M. 
 de Barentin. II avait des conferences avec lui pour ses affaires 
 particuliferes, et plusieurs fois, apr^s les avoir traitees, M. de 
 Barentin s'entretenait avec son avocat des affaires publiques. La 
 mani^re superieure dont Danton voyait les choses avait frappe 
 M. de Barentin et lui avait laisse une vive impression de sa 
 capacit4 
 
 " Devenu garde des sceaux, M. de Barentin se souvint aussitot 
 de son avocat et lui fit demander s'il voulait etre secretaire de la 
 chancellerie ? Danton, dans un long entretien qu'il eut avec ce 
 ministre, lui exposa avec details un plan qu'il croyait pouvoir 
 eloigner les decliirements que I'opposition des parlements allait 
 enfanter. Quelques-uns de ces parlements venaient d'etre exiles : 
 Danton pensait que leur rappel n'etait pas une chose de la plus 
 grande urgence. II fallait avant tout les enlacer dans la partici- 
 pation aux reformes ; ils en etaient autant les adversaires que la 
 noblesse et le clerge, dont ils faisaient en quelque sorte partie et 
 dont ils avaient les privileges. Tous les priviiegies enfin, quels 
 que fussent leurs costumes, qu'ils eussent un manteau de noblesse, 
 une soutane de pretre ou une robe de palais, tous, selon I'opinion 
 de Danton, devaient contribuer aux charges qui ne pesaient que 
 
APPENDIX V 363 
 
 sur le tiers Etat, c'est-k-dire sur I'immense majority ; la nation 
 attendait Tall^gement du fardeau intolerable qu'elle ne pouvait 
 plus supporter, la resignation etait 6puisde. . . . 
 
 " Si ces ideas etaient acceptees, le roi, etant h leur t§te, se 
 trouverait conqu^rir dans I'interfit de tous une puissance sup^rieure 
 k tous les interits particuliers. U pourrait realiser les demandes 
 de la raison et donner, par un progr^s r^el, toute satisfaction aux 
 lumiferes du siede et k la philosophie, interpr^te des vrais besoins 
 de rhumanite. 
 
 " En resume, le plan confu par Danton tendait k faire acoom- 
 plir par le roi une reforme progressive qui, laissant en place les 
 pouvoirs etablis, les rendit, k leur insu ou malgre eux, les instru- 
 ments de cette equite pratique qui aurait fortifie k la fois tous les 
 organes du mecanisme social. M. de Barentin parla du projet de 
 Danton k I'arcbev^que de Sens. On panit I'approuver. Dans 
 I'intervalle, la cour repudia ce syst^me trop net et trop decisif 
 pour ses allures. Le parlement fut rappeie, Brienne croyait en 
 avoir gagne les principaux membres. 
 
 "Mais trois mois apr^s — novembre 1787 — lorsque le roi fut 
 oblig^ de venir k Paris tenir un lit de justice k ce meme parlement 
 pour obtenir I'enregistrement d'un edit portant creation de divers 
 emprunts jusqu'k concurrence de 450 millions, Louis XVI rencon- 
 tra la plus violente opposition dans cette cour qu'on croyait reduite. 
 II voulut vaincre I'opposition en exUant les plus recalcitrants, les 
 conseUlers Freteau, Sabatier, de Cabre et le due d'Orieans. . . . 
 Au mois de mai suivant, 1788, le mgme parlement rendit un artSt 
 qui redama avec vehemence ' les lois fondamentales de I'Etat ; le 
 droit de la nation d'accorder des subsides, le droit des cours du 
 royaume de verifier les edits, de verifier dans cbaque province les 
 volontes du roi, et dp n'en accorder I'enregistrement qu'autant 
 qu'elles seraient conformes aux lois constitutives de la province, 
 ainsi qu'aux fondamentales de I'Etat ; I'immovabilite et I'inde- 
 pendance des magistrats, le droit pour cbaque citoyen de n'ltre 
 jamais traduit en aucune manifere devant d'autres juges que ses 
 juges naturels designes par la loi ; le droit, sans lequel tous les 
 autres sont inutUes, de n'^tre arrete, par quelque ordre que ce soit, 
 que pour ^tre remis sans deiai entre les mains des juges compe- 
 tents ; protestant la cour du parlement contre toute atteinte qui 
 serait portee aux principes exprimes.' 
 
364 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 "M. de Barentin proposa de nouveau k Danton d'etre secr^ 
 taire du sceau. Celui-ci remercia en disant que Wtat de la 
 question politique 6tait change. ' Nous n'en sommes plus aux 
 riformes modestes ; ceux qui les out refus^es ont refus6 leuT 
 propre salut ; nous sommes, dit-il plus nettement que jamais, d 
 la veille d'une revolution. Eh. quoi ! ne voyez-vous pas venir 
 Tavalanche ? . . . 
 
 A, R. C. DU Saint-Albin." 
 
VI 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS 
 
 Showing the Price Paid for Danton's Place at the Conseils dw 
 Roi, THE Sources from which he Derived the Money for 
 ITS Payment, and the Compensation Paid on its Suppression 
 in I79I. 
 
 The three documents from which I quote below are of 
 the utmost importance to a special study of Danton, be- 
 cause they give us most of our evidence a& to the value of 
 his post at the Conseils du Roi, and permit us to under- 
 stand his financial position during the first years of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 They are three in number : — 
 
 (a) The deed of sale by which Danton acquired the 
 post from Me. Huet de Paisy. This deed was discovered 
 by Dr. Robinet (from whose " Vie Priv^e de Danton " I 
 take all the documents quoted) in the offices of a Parisian 
 solicitor, Me. Faiseau-Jaranne of the Rue Vivienne. This 
 gentleman was the direct successor in his business of the 
 M. Dosfant who drew up the deed seventy years before. 
 
 I have quoted only the essential portions of this exceed- 
 ingly interesting piece of evidence. They give us the date 
 of the transaction (March 29, 1787), the price paid, 78,000 
 livres, or rather (seeing that Danton acquired the right to 
 collect a debt of 1 1,000) 67,000 livres net (say ;^26oo) ; the 
 fact that some ;^2ooo of this was paid down out of a 
 loan raised for him by his relations in Champagne and his 
 future father-in-law, while some £160 he paid out of his 
 savings, and the rest remaiaed owing. The receipt of 
 
 1789, which I have attached at the end of the extract, 
 
 36s 
 
266 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 shows us that by that time the balance had been paid 
 over to Me. Huet de Palsy, including interest at 5 per 
 cent. Incidentally there is mention of Danton moving 
 to the Rue de la Tissanderie, whence we shall find him 
 drawing up his marriage-contract. 
 
 (&) The marriage-contract between Danton and Antoi- 
 nette Charpentier, contains all the customary provisions 
 of a French marriage-contract, and is witnessed by the 
 usual host of friends, such as we find witnessing Des- 
 moulins' contract, three or four years later. It tells us, 
 among other things, the position of his stepfather Re- 
 cordain and the weU-to-do connections of the Charpen- 
 tiers; but the point of principal interest is the dowry 
 — 20,000 livres, that is, some ;£'8oo — of which the greater 
 part (;£'6oo) went to pay his debt on the place he held 
 as Avocat ^s Conseils, and the fact that he had remaining 
 a patrimony of some ;£'500. 
 
 (c) The acknowledgment of the sum due as compensa- 
 tion to Danton when the hereditary and purchasable office 
 which he had bought was put an end to. All students of 
 the period know the vast pother that has been raised on 
 this poiat, the rumour that Danton was overpaid as a 
 kind of bribe from the court, &c. &c. All the direct 
 evidence we have of the transaction is in these few lines. 
 They are just hke all the other forms of reimbursement, 
 and are perfectly straightforward. 
 
 The amount is somewhat less than we should give in 
 England under similar circumstances, for (i) the State 
 does not aUow for the entrance-fees (10,000 Hvres), which 
 Danton had had to pay, and (2) it taxes him 12 per 
 cent, for the probable future taxation which would have 
 fallen by death, transference, &c., on the estate. Finally, 
 he gets not quite 70,000 hvres for a place which cost him 
 first and last 78,000. 
 
 To recapitulate : the general conclusions which these 
 documents permit us to draw with regard to Danton's 
 financial position are as foUows : — The price of the practice 
 
APPENDIX VI 367 
 
 he bought ■was 68,000 livres ; of this, 56,000 was paid down, 
 a sum obtained by borrowing 36,000 from Mdlle. Duhattoir 
 (a mortgagee discovered by the family solicitor, Millot), and 
 15,000 from his future father-in-law, Charpentier, the re- 
 maining 5000 being paid out of his own pocket. 
 
 He thus remains in debt to Me. Huet de Paisy, the 
 vendor, in a sum of 1 2,000 livres at 5 per cent, interest. 
 
 To this must be added a sum of 10,000 Hvres entrance- 
 fee, which he presumably pays by recovering a debt of 
 somewhat larger amount (11,000) which he had bought 
 along with the practice. 
 
 When he marries, his wife's dowry cancels his debt to 
 Charpentier and leaves him 5000 livres over, he possessing 
 at that time in land and houses at Arcy some 12,000 — in 
 aU 17,000 hvres or their value are in hand in the summer 
 of 1787, and his total liabilities at the same date are the 
 36,000 to Mdlle. Duhattoir and the 12,000 to Me. de Paisy, 
 He starts his practice, therefore, with 31,000 hvres, or about 
 ;^i200 of net hability. The practice was lucrative; we 
 know that he is immediately concerned with three im- 
 portant (chancery cases ; he becomes the lawyer of two of 
 the wealthiest men in the kingdom; he Hves modestly. 
 We know that he pays the 12,000 with interest in 
 December 1789, and though we do not possess the receipt 
 for Mdlle. Duhattoir's repayment, it is eminently probable 
 that, under such conditions, he could easily have met a 
 debt of less than ;£'8oo out of four years' successful practice 
 in a close corporation, which of necessity dealt with the 
 most lucrative cases in the kingdom. I think, therefore, one 
 may regard the reimbursement which he received in 179 1 
 as presumably free from debt, and see him in no financial 
 difficulty at any period of the Kevolution. This opinion 
 has the advantage of depending upon the support of all 
 those who have lately investigated the same documents — 
 MM. Aulard, Robinet, earlier Bougeart (but he is a special 
 pleader), and finally Mr. Morse Stephens in England. 
 
368 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 (a) From the Deed of Sale between Huet de Paisy and 
 Danton, 29/A March 1787. 
 
 " Par devant les conseillers du Roi, notaires, &c . . . 
 
 "... Me. Charles-Nicholas Huet de Paisy, ^cuyer, ancien 
 avocat au Parlement et fes conseils du Roi, demeurant k Paris, 
 Rue de la Tissanderie, paroisse de St. Jean en Gr^ve ... a 
 vendu ... a Me. Jacques-Georges Danton, avocat au Parlement, 
 demeurant a Paris, Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, paroisse St. Ger- 
 main I'Auxerrois . . . I'^tat et office h&iditaire d'avocat h& con- 
 seils du Roi, faisant un des 70 cr^^s par ^dit du mois de septembre 
 
 1738. ... 
 
 " Le dit Me. Huet de Paisy vend en outre en dit Me. Danton la 
 pratique et clientele attach^es au sous dit office, et consistant en 
 dossiers, liasses, &c. . . . 
 
 "Cette vente est faite . . . par ledit Me. Danton qui s'y 
 oblige d'entrer au heu . . . dudit Me. Huet de Paisy. . . . Moy- 
 ennannant la somme de 78,000 livres . . . dont 68,000 sont le 
 prix de la pratique et 10,000 les charges acooutum^^s. . . . 
 
 " Ledit Me. Huet de Paisy reconnait avoir refu sur les 68,000 
 livres (prix de la pratique) la somme de 56,000 livres dont autant 
 quittances. Quant au 12,000 livres de surplus Me. Danton pro- 
 met et s'oblige de les payer dans quatres ann^es du jour de aa 
 reception audit office avec I'int^ret sur le pied du dernier vingt 
 . . . (S per cent.). 
 
 "Declare en outre une . . . somme de 11,000 livres lui ^tre 
 l^gitimement due par . . . {Then follow the details of this debt to 
 the office. Danton consents to pay the 68,000 on condition that he 
 may collect this debt from the client of the office, and specially 
 mentions the fact that, if he is not given full powers to collect, the 
 price shall be not 68,000, but only 57,000 livres). . . . 
 
 "A ces pr&entes est intervenu Me. Frangois- Jacques Millot, 
 procureur au Parlement, demeurant k Paris, rue Percee, paroisse 
 St. S^verin. Fond^ de la procuration sp^ciale pour ce qui suit du, 
 Sieur Franfois Lenoir, mattre de poste, et dame Marie-Genevi^ve 
 Camus, son Spouse, de dame Elisabeth Camus, veuve du Sieur 
 Nicolas Jeannet et de demoiselle Anne Camus, fille majeure, 
 demeurant tous h, Arcy-sur-Aube, passes en brevet devant Morey 
 
APPENDIX VI 369 
 
 notaire k Troyes, en presence de t^moins, le deux d^cembre 
 dernier, I'original de laquelle dftment contr&16 l^galis6 a M certi- 
 £6 veritable et d^pos6 pour minute k Me. Dosfant, I'un des notairea 
 soussign^s, par acte du vingt-huit du present mois. Lequel a, par 
 ces pr^sentes, rendu et constitu^ lesdits Sieur et dame Lenoir, dame 
 veuve Jeannet et demoiselle Camus, cautions et r^pondants solid- 
 aires dudit Me. Danton envers ledit Me. Huet de Paisy, ce faisant 
 les oblige solidairement avec lui, sSpar^ment les uns avec lea 
 autres au payement desdites douze mille livres qui reatent duea 
 sur ladite pratique, int^iSts d'icelle, et au payement des dix miUe 
 livres, prix du corps dudit office aux ^poques oi-dessus fix^es, h 
 quoi ledit Me. Millot, audit nom, aflfecte, oblige et bypoth^uo 
 sous ladite solidarity, g^n^ralement tons les biens, meubles et 
 immeubles, presents et k venir de ses constituants. 
 
 " Ledit M. Danton declare que dans, les cinquante-six mille 
 livres par lui ci-dessus paydea, il y a trente-six mUle livres qui 
 proviennent des deniers qu'il a emprunt^s k demoiselle Franfoise- 
 Julie Dubauttoir, demoiselle majeure, et quinze mille livres qu'il 
 a emprunt^es du Sieur Frangois-J^rdme Charpentier, contr61eur 
 des fermes, sous le cautionnement desdits Sieur et dame Lenoir, 
 dame veuve Jeannet et demoiselle Camus. . . . ( What follows ia 
 the receipt in full, signed by Huet de Paisy in December 1789.) 
 
 "Et le trois d^cembre mil sept cent quatre-vingt-neuf, est 
 comparu devant les notaires k Paris, soussign^s, ledit Me. Huet de 
 Paisy, nomm6 et qualifi^ en Facte ci-devant, demeurant k Paris, 
 rue des Couronnes, prfes de Belleville, — Lequel a reconnu avoir 
 regu dudit Me. Danton aussi ci-devant nomm6, qualifi^ et domi- 
 cilii, k ce present, la somme de treize mille cinq cent livres com- 
 pos^e, 1° des douze mille livres qui, sur le prix du traits ci-devant, 
 avaient 6t6 stipul^es payables en quatre ann^es du jour de la re- 
 ception dudit Me. Danton et sur lesqueUes ce dernier devait 
 exercer I'effet de la garantie contract^e par ledit Me. de Paisy, 
 par le traits ci-devant, relativement k I'affaire du Sieur Papilloa 
 de la Grange, de I'effet de laquelle garantie, quoique cette affaire 
 ne soit pas encore termin^e, ledit Me. Danton d6charge ledit Me. 
 de Paisy ; 2" et de quinze cents livres pours les int6r§ts de ladite 
 somme de douze mille livres ^cbus jusqu'au premier octobre 
 dernier qu'ils ont cess4 de courir, de convention entre les parties ; 
 de laquelle somme de treize mille cinq cents livres et de toutes 
 
 2 A 
 
37° THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 choses au sujet dudit traits, ledit Me. Huet de Paisy quitte et 
 dfeharge Me. Danton ; — Dont acte fait et pass6 k Paris, en I'^tude, 
 lesdits jour et an et ont sign^. 
 
 (i) From the Marruge-Contract of Dantom and Mdlle. 
 Charpentier, 9/A June 1787. 
 
 " Par devant lea conseillers du Roi, &c. . . . 
 
 "Me. Georges-Jacques Danton, avocat ha conseils du Roi, de- 
 meurant k Paris, rue de la Tissanderie, paroisse de Jean en Gr^ye, 
 fils du defunt Sieur Jacques Danton, bourgeois d'Arcis-sur-Aube, et 
 dame Jeanne-Madeleine Camus, sa veuve actueUement Spouse du 
 Sieur Jean Reordain n^gociant audit Arcis-sur-Aube, de present 4 
 Paris, log6e chez ledit sieur, son fils, k ce present, stipulant le dit 
 Me. Danton d'une part. 
 
 " Et Sieur Franjois- Jerome Charpentier, controleur des Fennea, 
 et dame Angelique-Octavie Soldini, son Spouse . . . demeurant k 
 Paris, quai de I'Ecole, paroisse de St. Germain I'Auxerrois, stipu- 
 lant pour . . . demoiselle Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier leur 
 fille majeure . . . d'autre part. 
 
 "... Ont arr6t^ les conventions civiles dudit mariage . . . 
 h, savoir . . . 
 
 {Then follow the names of the witnesses to the contract ; their 
 only importance is the idea they give us of the social position of the 
 two bourgeois families concerned. They include Papillon, a surgeon/ 
 Dupont, a lawyer of the Chatelet; Duprat and Oousseau, barristers; 
 Wislet, a banker ; Mme. Tavaval, widow of a painter to the Court, 
 and so forth.) . . . 
 
 "... Les biens dudit futur ^poux consistent : — 
 
 "(1°) Dans I'office d'avocat aux conseils . . . ach^t6 & Me. 
 Huet de Paisy . . . le 2 9 mars dernier . . . moyennant la Bomme 
 de 68,000 livres qu'il doit en entier soit audit Me. Huet de 
 Paisy, soit aux personnes qui lui ont pr^te les sommes qu'il a 
 payees comptant. 
 
 " (2°) Dans de terres, maisons et heritages situ^ audit Arcis- 
 sur Aube et aux environs de valeur de la somme de 12,000 
 livres. . . . 
 
 "Les pfere et mfere de ladite demoiselle lui donnent en dot 
 , . . une Bomme de 18,000 livres . . . pour s'acquitter de cette 
 
APPENDIX VI 371 
 
 Bomine ils . . . d^chargent ledit Me. Danton de celle de 15,000 
 livres qu'ils lui ont pi^t^e, et qui a 6W employee par lui au paye- 
 ment de partie du priz . . . attachde k I'ofiSce dudit Me. Huet de 
 Paisy. . . . 
 
 " lis ont pr^sentement pay^ audit Me. Danton les 3000 livres 
 completant les dix huit milles livres. 
 
 " Enfin ladite demoiselle future Spouse apporte ... la somme 
 de 2000 livres provenant de ses gains et ^pargnes." 
 
 (The remainder of the document is a statement of the " com- 
 munity property " in marriage and the settlements made in case of 
 decease, the whole regulated by the " custom of Paris." They have 
 no interest for this book.) 
 
 (c) From the Note LiQuiDATrac Danton's Place at the Coh- 
 
 S£n.S DU Roi AND HIS ReCEIPT FOR THE REIMBURSEMENT, Btb 
 
 and nth of October 1 791. Held by de Montmorin in his 
 Office. 
 
 "Nous, Louis-C^sar-Alexandre-Dufresne Saint-L^on, commis- 
 saire du Boi, directeur gdn^ral de la liquidation. 
 
 "Attendu la remise k nous faite des titres originelas . . . 
 concernant I'office d'avocat ha conseUs du Eoi dont ^tait titulair^ 
 . . . le Sieur Georges-Jacques Danton. 
 
 " Ledit office Uquid6 . . . par d^cret de I'Assembl^e Nation- 
 ale . . . sanctionn^ par le Boi le deux octobie, & la somme de 
 69,031 livres 4 sols. . . . Avons delivr6 au Sieur Danton ... la 
 pr^sente reconnaissance definitive de la dite somme de 69,031 
 livres 4 sols, qui sera pay^e k la caisse de I'extraordinaire. 
 
 " M. Georges- Jacques Danton, avocat fes conseils, en presence 
 des soussign^ ... a reconnu ... la liquidation . . . de I'office 
 d'avocat ka conseils du Boi dont ^t^ titulair^ . . . ledit Georges- 
 Jacques Danton . . . savoir. 
 
 "(1°) 78,000 livres . . . principale moyennant laqnelle il a 
 acquis I'office le 29 Mars 1787. 
 
 " (2") 240 livres pour le remboursement du droit de mutation. 
 
 "(3°) 4^^ livres 4 sols pour celui du Marc d'or. 
 
 "(4°) 125 livres pour celui des frais de Sceau. 
 
 Deduction faite de 9750 pour le huiti^me du prix retenu. ... 
 
372 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Au moyen du paisement effectif qui sera fait audit Sieur Danton da 
 . . . 69,031 livres 4 sols . . . quitte et d^charge I'^tat, It 
 Dufresne de Saint-L^on et tous autr^s de ladite somme de 69,031 
 livres 4 sols . . . &c." (The remainder of the document is the 
 mention of the original deed of sale having been shovm to the 
 liquidator, and the correction of certain clerical errors in a former 
 document.) 
 
VII 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTS 
 
 Showing the Situation of Danton's Apartment in the Cour 
 DE Commerce, its Furniture and Value, &c. 
 
 The extracts given below are of a purely personal in- 
 terest, and do not add anything material to our knowledge 
 of the Kevolution. On the other hand, they are of value 
 to those who are chiefly concerned with Danton's person- 
 ality, and with the details of his daily life. They show 
 what kind of estabUshment he kept, with its simple furni- 
 ture, its two servants, its reserve of money, &c., and enable 
 us to make an accurate picture of the flat in which he 
 lived, and of its position. It is from them that I have 
 drawn the material for my description of the rooms in 
 Appendix II. on p. 329. Incidentally, they teU us the 
 profession of M. Chai-pentier's brother (a notary), give us a 
 view of the rehgious burial practised in the spring of 1793, 
 show us, as do many of his phrases elsewhere, the entire 
 absence of anti-clericalism in Danton's family as in his 
 own mind, the number of the house, the name of its pro- 
 prietor, Danton's wardrobe, his wine, the horse and carriage 
 which he bought for his hurried return from Belgium, and 
 many other petty details which are of such interest in the 
 study of an historical character. 
 
 Like most of the documents quoted iu this Appendix, 
 they are due to the industry and research of Danton's 
 biographer, Dr. Robinet, and wiU. be found in his Memoir 
 on Danton's private life. They are three in number : — 
 
 (a) The various declarations of Thuiller, the justice of 
 the peace for the Section du Th44tre Fran9ais. He put 
 
374 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 seals upon the doors and furniture (as is the French 
 custom) upon the death of Danton's first wife. This death 
 occurred on February ii, 1793, while Danton was away 
 on mission in Belgium, and the visit of the justice of the 
 peace is made on the following day, the 12th. Danton 
 returns at once, and the seals are removed on various 
 occasions, from the 24th of March to the 5 th of April, in 
 the presence of Danton himself, or of his father-in-law, 
 Charpentier. 
 
 (b) The inventory which accompanied the sealing and 
 unsealing of the apartments. 
 
 (c) The raising of the seals which were put upon the 
 house after Danton's execution. Interesting chiefly for the 
 astonishing writing and spelling of the new functionaries. 
 
 AH the three were obtained by Dr. Robinet from the 
 lawyers who have succeeded to, or inherited from, the 
 original '' Etudes " where the documents were deposited. 
 
 " Cejourd'hui douze f^vrier mil sept cent quatre-vingt-treize, 
 I'an deuxifeme de la K6publique frangaise, dix heures du matin, 
 nous, Claude-Louis Thuiller, juge de paix de la section du Th^tre- 
 Franfais, dite de Marseille, k Paris, sur ce que nous avons appria 
 que la citoyenne Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, Spouse du cito- 
 yen Georges-Jacques Danton, d6put6 i la Convention Nationals, 
 ^tait d^c^d^e le jour d'hier en son appartement, rue des Cordeliers, 
 cour du Commerce, dans I'^tendue de notre section, et attendu 
 que ledit citoyen Danton est absent par commission nationale, 
 nous sommes transports avec le citoyen Antoine-Marie Berthout, 
 notre secrStaire-greffier ordinaire, en une maison sise ii Paris, rue 
 des Cordeliers, cour du Commerce, et parvenus b. I'entrSe de I'esca- 
 lier qui conduit k I'appartement dudit citoyen Danton, nous avons 
 trouv6 des pretres de la paroisse de Saint-Andr6-des-Art3 et le 
 cortege qui accompagnait I'enl^vement du corps de la d. Charpen- 
 tier, Spouse dudit citoyen Danton, et Stant months au premier 
 ^tage au-dessus de I'entresol et entrSs dans I'appartement dudit 
 citoyen, dans un salon ayant vue sur la rue des Cordeliers, noug 
 y avons trouvS et par-devant nous est comparue la citoyenne 
 Marie Fougerot, fiUe domestique dudit citoyen Danton. — Laquelle 
 
APPENDIX VII 375 
 
 nous a dit que ladite citoyenne Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, 
 Spouse dudit citoyen Danton, est d^c^d^e dans la nuit du dimanche 
 au lundi dernier en Tappartement oil nous sommes, par suite de 
 maladie ; que ledit Danton est absent par commission de la Con- 
 vention Nationale; que la mfere de ladite d^funte Charpentier a 
 envoy6 chercher hier son fils encore en bas &ge, qu'elle compar- 
 ante, le citoyen Jacques Fougerot, son frfere qui, depuis quinze 
 jours, habite la maison oil nous sommes, et la citoyenne Catherine 
 Motin, aussi fille domestique dudit citoyen Danton, sont les seuls 
 qui restent dans I'appartement dudit Danton; que les clefs des 
 meubles et effets ^tant dans I'appartement oil nous sommes out 
 dt6 prises et emport^es par la mfere de ladite d^funte Charpentier 
 qui 6tait pr^sente k ses derniers moments ; qu'elle vient d'envoyer 
 chercher lesdites clefs chez le citoyen Charpentier, qui demeure 
 quai de I'llcole. Et a sign^ M. Fougerot. 
 
 " A I'instant est comparu le citoyen Franjois-J^rQme Charpen- 
 tier, demeurant k Paris, quai de I'ficole, n» 3, section du Louvre. — 
 Lequel nous a repr^sent6 un paquet de clefs." 
 
 {a) Extracts from the " Apposition des ScELLfo " by M. Thuiller, 
 Justice of the Peace, on February 12, 1793, and from the 
 "Vacations" by the same. 
 
 " Surquoy nous, Juge de Paix susdit . . . avons appos^ nos 
 scell^ comme il suit. Premierment dans le dit salon ayant vu 
 sur la rue des Cordeliers . . . dans \m petit salon 6tant en suite 
 ayant meme vue . . . dans la chambre k coucher dtant en suite et 
 ayant mSme vue. . . . 
 
 " Le citoyen Charpentier a fait observer des louis que ledit 
 citoyen Danton avait remis k sa femme pour payer aux mandats 
 de ceux qui viendraient le rejoindre dans la Belgique. — Des 
 sceU^s . . . sur une porte d'un cabinet noir qui communique avec 
 une petite chambre k coucher . . . sur la porte d'entr^e dudit 
 cabinet noir . . . dans une chambre dernifere le salon ayant vue 
 BUT la cour du Commerce . . . dans un anti-chambre prfes de la 
 cuisine ayant vue sur la cour du Commerce. . . . Dans une chambre 
 de domestiques k I'entresoL . . . Dans la petite saUe audessous. 
 . . . Dans la salle k manger ayant vue sur la cour du Com- 
 merce. . . . Dans une chambre en suite k toilette. . . . Dans 
 la cuisine. . . . Dans la cave. . . . 
 
376 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 "Et le 24 fevrier 1793, I'an deuxifeme de la E^publique fran- 
 5aise, est comparu devant nous le citoyen Georges-Jacques Danton, 
 depute k la Convention . . . lequel nous a requis . . . de proc^der k 
 la levde des dits scell^s . . . apposes aprfes le dec^s de la dite 
 dame (the word " citoymne" is evidently still a little unfamiliar) 
 Antoinette Charpentier. . . . 
 
 " Ensuite k la requisition des parties nous nous sommes . . , 
 transport's dans une maison, rue du Pseon, Hotel de Tours . . . 
 oil il a iti proc'de k I'estimation d'un cabriolet, d'un cheval, dune 
 jument et harnais. . . . Le C. Antoine-Franfois Charpentier, notair', 
 demeurant rue du I'Arbre-Sec, a comparu . . . et le C. Franfois- 
 Jerome Charpentier, n*. 3 Quai de I'Ecole. ..." 
 
 (The rest of the document is a long account of the raising of the 
 seals on various occasions, from March i to April 5. It contains 
 nothing of interest.) 
 
 (b) Summary of the Inventory taken in Danton's House 
 AFTER HIS First Wife's Death, 25/A February 1793. 
 
 " L'an mil sept cent quatre vingt-treize, le deuxifeme de la 
 K'publique fran9aise, le vingt-cinq fevrier, huit heures du 
 matin. 
 
 " A la requite de Georges- Jacques Danton, depute a la Conven- 
 tion Nationale, demeurant, etc . . . il va etre par lesdits notaires a 
 Paris soussign's, proc6d6 k I'inventaire de tous les biens, meubles, 
 &c. . . . dans les lieux composant I'appartement du premier 6tage 
 
 d'une maison situ'e a Paris, rue des Cordeliers, passage du Com- 
 merce, appartenant au Sieur BouUenois." 
 
 (Here follow the details of the Inventory, of which I give a 
 summary in English.) 
 
 Livrea 
 In the Cellar. — Three pieces of Burgundy, 62 bottles of 
 claret, 92 bottles of Burgundy, a small barrel of white 
 wine ........ 600 
 
 In the Kitchen. — The usual batterie de cuisine of a French 
 
 household, enumerated in detail, and valued at . 208 
 
 In the Pantry and Offices of the Kitchen. — A few chairs, a 
 
 pair of scales, cups, saucers, and so forth . . 98 
 
 In a Bedroom adjoining, and giving on the Cour de Commerce. 
 — The usual furniture ; probably a dressing-room. Here 
 was the watch found on Danton after his execution, his 
 
APPENDIX VII 377 
 
 Livrea 
 
 writing-table, &c. : the whole, including dishes in the 
 cupboard and a. stove ..... 264 
 
 In a larger Bedroom giving on the Rue des Cordeliert. — After 
 the usual furniture, a small piano, a guitar, two looMng- 
 glasses, and a writing-table .... 990 
 
 In a little Room opening out of this. — Usual furniture of a 
 small study or boudoir, furnished in the white wood of 
 the period ....... 470 
 
 In the Drawing-room. — The furniture, mostly grey and white, 
 
 no piece worth any special mention . . . 992 
 
 A large cupboard near the chimney contained some summer 
 clothes put away, and the sword which Danton had 
 worn in the old Bataillon of the Cordeliers. The whole 
 valued at . . . . . . 332 
 
 In a little Room looking on an inner court (evidently used as 
 a Library, the list of whose books will be found on 
 p. 380) : — Furniture, chiefly bookcases, to the value of 160 
 
 In a little Lumber-room. — Three empty trunks and a bed . 16 
 
 In two little Rooms adjoining. — Furniture (mostly put away) 214 
 
 The rest of the inventory mentions the household linen, 
 the clothes, the plate, and the jewels. The summary 
 is as follows : — 
 
 Household linen, in all . . . . . 734 
 
 Clothes, including every item .... 925 
 Plate, including several wedding presents, marked with 
 
 initials ....... 291 
 
 Knives and forks other than plate . . . .20 
 
 Jewellery (including two women's rings, set with brilliants, 
 
 and a wedding-ring) ..... 509 
 
 This gives us the whole value of the furniture, clothing, &c., in 
 the house, and it amounts to a total of just over 9000 livres, 
 that is, about ;^36o. There was ;^So in money in the house, 
 which he had left with his wife before going off to Belgium. 
 
 (c) Extracts from the Raising or the Seals after 
 Danton's Death. 
 
 " L'an trois de la E^publique une et indivisible, cejourd'hui 
 vingt-cinq messidor, neuf heures de matin, k la requite du bureau 
 du Domaine national du d6partement de Paris et en vertu de son 
 
378 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 arrSt4 en datte du seize susdit mois, sign6 Eennesson et Guillotin, 
 portant nomination de nous Jourdain, pour en notre quality de 
 commissaire dudit bureau, h, I'effet de nous transporter, assists do 
 deux commissaires civils de la section du Th^&tre-FranQaia, et 
 d'un commissaire de toute autorit6 constitute qui aurait fait 
 apposer des scell^s dans la demeure de feu Jacques-Georges 
 Danton, condamnd k mort le seize germinal, an deuxi^me, par le 
 Tribunal E^volutionnaire ^tabli k Paris, y proc6der k la lev6e 
 d'iceux, et pareillement k celle de ceux dudit bureau du domaine 
 national en ladite demeure, sise rue des Cordeliers, n° 24, le tout 
 en presence du citoyen Charpentier, beau-pfere dudit feu Danton 
 et tuteur d'Antoine et Franfois-Georges Danton, enfants mineurs 
 dudit deffunt, et de la citoyenne feue Antoinette-GabrieUe Cbar- 
 pentier, fiUe dudit citoyen Cbarpentier, ayeul et tuteur desdits 
 mineurs ; faire ensuite concurremment avec ledit tuteur, et en pre- 
 sence du la citoyenne seconde femme en secondes noces dudit 
 Danton, ou de son fond^ de pouvoir, le recoUement des meubles 
 et effets dudit deffunt sur I'inventaire qui en a 6t6 pr^cMemment 
 fait, ensuite mettre le logement cy-dessus d^signd, et pareillement 
 les titres et papiers, meubles et effets qui se trouveront k la 
 disposition dudit citoyen Charpentier au nom et quality qu'U pro- 
 cMe, moyennant d^charge valable, destituer le gardien preposd k 
 la garde des scell^s, duquel remise lui sera faite par extrait de 
 ladite destitution. 
 
 " Nous, Jean-Baptiste Jourdain cy-dessus qualiffie, demeurant 
 audit Paris, rue de la Libert^, n° 86, section du Theatre -Franjais. 
 
 " Etant accompagn6 des citoyens Beurnier et Leblanc, commis- 
 saires adjouits au comity civil de la susdite section, requis par 
 nous audit comity civU, sommes ensemble et en vertu de I'arrlt^ 
 ci-dessus datte, transports en la demeure sus ditte, rue des Corde- 
 liers, ditte de I'Sleolle de Sant6, audit n° 24, entr6 de la cour du 
 Commerce, oil Stant nous avons requis le citoyen Desgranges, 
 gardien, de nous faire ouverture lors de I'intervention dudit citoyen 
 Charpentier et de la citoyenne G61y, seconde femme dudit Danton. 
 
 " Olos le present k deux heures de relevSe dudit jour, vingt- 
 cinq messidor, an troisi^me de la E6publique une et indivisible, 
 et ont lesdits citoyens Charpentier et G61y, ainsi que nos adjouits 
 et ledit citoyen Desgranges, signSs le present avec nous, aprSa 
 
APPENDIX VII 379 
 
 lecture, approuv6 trente-neuf mots ray^s comme nuls, ainsi sign^ 
 G^ly, Charpentier Le Blanc, Desgranges, Jourdain et Beumier. 
 Plus has est 6orit. Enregistr^ k Paris, le premier thermidor an 
 3*. Be9U quatre livres. Sign6 Caron. Deux mots rayds nuls k 
 la pr^ente. 
 
 " Pour cqppie conforme, d^livr^e par nous, membres du bureau 
 du Domaine national du d^partement de Paris. 
 
 " A Paris, le sept thermidor an troisi^me de la Bepublique une 
 et indivisible. 
 
 Sigai Bbnessok, Duchatel. 
 
 ** Collationn^ k I'original, d^pos^ aux archives de Seine-et-Oise. 
 
 L'arehiviste, 
 Saintb-Mabib M^vni." 
 
 The lack of education in the Robespierrian functionary 
 b worth noting. 
 
VIII 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DANTON'S LIBRARY 
 
 No part of the very scanty evidence we possess upon 
 Danton's personal life and habits is of more value than this 
 little list. It is the small and carefuUy chosen bookcase 
 of a man thoroughly conversant with English and Italian 
 as well as with his own tongue. He buys a work in the 
 original almost invariably, and collects, in a set of less than 
 two hundred works, classic after classic. He has read his 
 Johnson and his Pope ; he knows Adam Smith ; he has 
 been at the pains to study Blackstone. It must be care- 
 fully noted that every book he bought was his own choice. 
 There were only a few legal summaries at the old home at 
 Arcis, and Danton was a man who never had a reputation 
 for learning or for letters, still less had he cause to buy a 
 single volume for effect. I know of few documents more 
 touching than this catalogue, coming to the light after 
 seventy years of silence, and showing us the mind of a man 
 who was cut off suddenly and passed into calumny. He 
 had read familiarly in their own tongues Babelais and 
 Boccaccio and Shakespeare. 
 
 The folloviing volumes are in English : — 
 
 A translation of Plutarch's Lives . 
 
 8 voli. 
 
 Dryden's translation of Virgil 
 
 . 4 » 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 . . 8 ., 
 
 Pope 
 
 . . 6 „ 
 
 Sussini's Letters ..... 
 
 . I voL 
 
 The Spectator 
 
 . .12 vols. 
 
 Clarissa Harlowe ..... 
 
 . . 8 „ 
 
 380 
 
APPENDIX VIII 
 
 381 
 
 A translation of Don Quixote (probably Smollett's) 4 vols. 
 
 „ „ Gil Bias 4 „ 
 
 Essay on Punctuation i voL 
 
 Johnson's Dictionary (in folio) .... 3 vols. 
 
 Blackstone ,1 voL 
 
 Life of Johnson ....... 3 toIb. 
 
 Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations " (number of vols. 
 
 given as 23, probably an error) 
 Bobertson'a History of Scotland . . . , 2 „ 
 
 II >f America . . , . 3 „ 
 Works of Dr. Johnson j „ 
 
 The follovdng are in Italian : — 
 
 (The names are not given in Italian by the lawyer, and I can 
 only foUow his version.) 
 
 Yenuti : History of Modem Bome ... 3 voli. 
 
 Guischardini : History of Italy . . . . 4 „ 
 
 Fontanini : Italian Eloquence . , . • 3 » 
 
 Denina's Italian Bevolutions . , . . s „ 
 
 Garo's translation of Virgil . . . . . 3 „ 
 
 Boccaccio's Decameron 3 „ 
 
 Ariosto • 5 » 
 
 Boiardi's edition of the " Orlando Furioso " . • 4 » 
 
 M^tastase (t) 8 „ 
 
 Dalina (?) j „ 
 
 Beichardet (7) 3 „ 
 
 Davila : History of the French Civil Wars . , 2 „ 
 
 " Letters on Painting and Sculpture " . . • 5 « 
 
 H Morgante de Pulci, lamo . . . • 3 n 
 
 ITie remainder (except one or two legal books and dastia) 
 are in French. 
 
 Metamorphoses d'Ovide, traduit par Banier, in 4to . 4 volsi 
 
 CEuvres de Bousseau, 4to . . . , . 16 „ 
 
 Maison Bustique, 4to 3 „ 
 
 Lucrice, traduit par La Grange, 8vo . . . 3 „ 
 Amours de Daphnis et Chlo^, 4to, Paris, 1745 
 
38i 
 
 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 CEuvres de Lucien, traduit du grec, 8vo 
 
 de Montesquieu, 8vo , , 
 
 de Montaigne, 8vo . , . 
 
 de Malby, 8vo .... 
 
 Completes d'Helv^tius, 8vo . 
 
 Philosophie de la nature, 8vo, 
 Histoire Philosophique, de I'Abb^ Raynal, 8vo 
 CEuvres de Boulanger, 8vo . . 
 CaractSres de la Bruyfere, 8vo . 
 CEuvres de Brantome, 8vo . 
 
 de Rabelais, 8vo 
 
 Fables de La Fontaine, avec les figures de Fessard, 
 
 8vo 
 
 Contes de La Fontaine, avec belles figures, 8vo 
 CEuvres de Scarron, 8vo 
 
 de Piron, 8vo . 
 
 de Voltaire, i2mo . . 
 
 Lettres de S6vign6, 1 2 mo . . 
 CEuvres de CorneiUe, 1 2 mo . . 
 
 de Racine, 12 mo . . 
 
 de Gresset, i2mo . . 
 
 de Molifere, 12 mo , , 
 
 de Cr6billon, 12 mo . . 
 
 de Fi6v6 (sic), 12 mo . 
 
 de Regnard, 1 2mo . , 
 
 Traits des Dalits, i2mo 
 
 Le Sceau Enlev4 1 2mo 
 
 Tableau de la Revolution Fran^aise, 
 
 Dictionnaire de Bayle, folio . 
 
 C6sar de Turpin, 4to . 
 
 CEuvres de Pasquier, folio . 
 
 Histoire de France de Velly, Villaret et Gamier, 
 
 i2mo ..... 
 Histoire du P. H^nault, 8vo . 
 
 Eccl^siastique de Fleury, 4to 
 
 d'Angleterre de Rapin, 4to 
 
 Dictionnaire de I'Acad^mie, 4to 
 Corpus Doctorum, 4to . 
 Dictionnaire Historique, 8vo 
 
 6 yol& 
 
 5 
 
 i> 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 13 
 
 » 
 
 4 
 
 II 
 
 7 
 
 II 
 
 10 
 
 II 
 
 S 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 11 
 
 8 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 n 
 
 6 
 
 n 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 7 
 
 II 
 
 7 
 
 II 
 
 91 
 
 II 
 
 8 
 
 •1 
 
 6 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 8 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 5 
 
 If 
 
 4 
 
 II 
 
 I 
 
 vol. 
 
 3 
 
 vols. 
 
 13 
 
 cahiers 
 
 S 
 
 vols. 
 
 30 .. 
 
 *S II 
 «s .. 
 16 „ 
 
 « II 
 
 I vol. 
 8 vols. 
 
APPENDIX VIII 
 
 383 
 
 Abr4g^ de I'Histoire des Voyages, 8vo . . • ^3 vols. 
 
 Dictionnaire d'Histoiie Naturelle de Bomard, 8vo . 15 
 Virgile de DeBfontaines, 8vo .... 4 
 
 (Euvres de BufFon, 12 mo, figures . . . • 58 
 
 H^rodote de Larcher, 8vo J 
 
 CEuvres de D6inosthfenes et d'Eschyle, par Auger, 
 
 4to 4 
 
 Histoiie Ancienne de RoUin, 12 mo . • -14 
 Couis d'Etudes de Coudillac, i2mo . . .16 
 Histoire Modeine, i2mo . . . , ' $0 
 
 du Bas-Empire, i2mo . . . .32 
 
 Corpus Juris Civilis, folio 3 
 
 Encyclop^die par Ordre de Matikes, toutea les livrai- 
 sons excepts la dernifere (i). 
 
 The whole is valued at just over a hundred pounds (2800 livres). 
 
IX 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMOIR WRITTEN IN 1846 
 BY THE SONS OF DANTON. 
 
 This memoir was written by Danton's sons. Both sur- 
 vived him, the one by fifty-five, the other by sixty-four years 
 (1849, 1858). Their fortune was restored to them by the 
 EepubUc two years after their father's death (13th April 
 1796). Their guardian, Charpentier (their maternal grand- 
 father), died in 1 804 ; they then were taken in by Danton's 
 mother, Mme. Recordain, who was still living at Arcis. 
 She died in October 18 13, a year in which the youngest 
 came of age, and they sold out the greater part of the land 
 in which Danton's fortune had been invested, and appear 
 to have put the capital into one of the new factories which 
 sprang up after the peace. In 1832 we find them partners 
 and heads of a cotton-spinniag establishment at Arcis, 
 which they maintain tUl their deaths. They left, unfortu- 
 nately, no surviving sons. 
 
 The manuscript was written for Danton's nephew, the 
 son of a younger brother. This nephew became inspector 
 of the University of Paris, and lent the MSS. to several 
 historians, among others, Michelet and Bougeart. It finally 
 passed into the possession of the latter, who gave it to Dr. 
 Robinet. This writer printed it in the appendix of the 
 " Vie Privfe," from which I take it. 
 
 It is not a precise historical document, such as are the 
 official reports, receipts, &c., upon which much of this book 
 depends. Thus, it ignores the dowry of Mdlle. Charpentier 
 and the exact date of the second marriage ; it is weak on 
 
 some points, especially dates, but there attaches to it the 
 
 384 
 
APPENDIX IX 385 
 
 interest due to the very quality from which these errors 
 proceed — I mean its familiar reminiscences. While the 
 memory of these men, advanced in life, is at fault in details, 
 it is more likely to be accurate in the motives and ten- 
 dencies it describes than are we of a hundred years later. 
 
 "Eien au monde ne nous est plus cher que la m6moire de notre 
 pfere. Elle a 6t6, elle est encore tous les jours calomni^e, outrages 
 d'une mani^re affreuse ; aussi notre d&ir le plus ardent a-t-il tou- 
 jours 6t6 de voir I'histoire lui rendre justice. 
 
 " Georges- Jacques Danton, notre p^re, se maria deux fois. II 
 6pousa d'abord en juin 1787, Antoinette-Gabrielle Charpentier, 
 qui mourut le 10 f^vrier 1793. Dans le cours de cette meme 
 ann^e 1793, nous ne pourrions pas indiquer I'^poque precise, il 
 ^pousa, en secondes noces, Mademoiselle Sophie G^ly, qui vivait 
 encore il y a deux ans (noua ne savons pas si elle est morte depuis). 
 Notre pfere en mourant ne laissa que deux fils issus de son premier 
 mariage. Nous somnes nia I'un le 18 juin 1790, et I'autre le 
 2 f6vrier 1792; notre pfere mourut le 5 avrU 1794; nous n'avons 
 done pas pu avoir le bonbeur de recevoir ses enseignements, sea 
 confidences, d'etre initios k ses pens^es k ses projets. Au moment 
 de sa mort tout chez lui a &t6 saisi, confisqu6, et plus tard, aucun 
 de ses papiers, k I'exception de ses titres de propri6t6, ne nous a 
 6t6 rendu. Nous avons 6t6 61ev6s par M. Franjois-Jerdme Char- 
 pentier, notre grand- p^re maternel et notre tuteur. II ne parlait 
 jamais sans attendrissement de Danton, son gendre. M. Charpen- 
 tier, qui habitait Paris, y mourut en 1 804, k une 6poque oil, sans 
 doubt, il nous trouvait encore trop jeunes pour que nous puissiona 
 bien appr^cier ce qu'U aurait pu nous raconter de la vie politique 
 de notre pfere, car il s'abstint de nous en parler. Du reste, il avait 
 environ quatre-vingts ans quand il mourut ; et, dans ses derni^rea 
 ann^es, son esprit paraissait beaucoup plus occup6 de son avenir 
 dans un autre monde que de ce qui s'^tait pass^ dans celui-ci. 
 Aprfes la mort de notre grand-pfere Charpentier, M. Victor Char- 
 pentier, son fils, fut nomm6 notre tuteur. II mourut en 18 10. 
 Quoiqu'il habitat Paris, noua revlnmes en 1805 k Arcis, pour ne 
 plus le quitter. La fin de notre enfance et le commencement de 
 notre jeunesse s'y ^coulferent auprfes de la m^re de notre pfere. EUe 
 ^tait afi'aiblie par I'^e, les infirmity et les chagrins. O'^tait tou- 
 
 2 B 
 
386 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 jours les yeux remplis de larmes qu'elle nous entretenait de son 
 fils, des innombrables t^moignages d'affection qu'il lui avait donnfe, 
 des tendres caresses dont il I'accablait. Elle fit de frequents voyages 
 Ji Paris ; il aimait tant k la voir k ses c6tds ! II avait en elle une 
 confiance entifere ; elle en 6tait digne, et, s'il e<it eu des secrets, 
 elle les eftt connus, et nous les eussions connus par elle. Trha 
 souvent elle nous parlait de la Revolution; mais, en embrasser 
 tout I'ensemble d'un seul coup d'oeil, en appr^cier les causes, en 
 suivre la marche, en juger les hommes et les ^v^nements, en dis- 
 tinguer tous les partis, deviner leur but, d^meler les fils qui les 
 faisaient agir, tout cela n'dtait pas chose facile, on conviendra : 
 aussi, quoique la mfere de Danton e<it beaucoup d'inteUigence et 
 d'esprit, on ne sera pas surpris que, d'aprfes ses r^cits, nous n'ayons 
 jamais connu la Revolution que d'une mani&re extrSmement con- 
 fuse. . 
 
 " Sa mfere, d'accord avec tous ceux qui nous ont si souvent parW 
 de lui pour I'avoir connu, et que notre position sociale ne fera, 
 certes, pas suspecter de flatterie, sa mfere nous I'a toujours d^peint 
 comme le plus bonngte homme que Ton puisse rencontrer, comme 
 I'homme le plus aimant, le plus franc, le plus loyal, le plus d^sin- 
 t^resse, le plus gdnfereui, le plus d6vou6 k ses parents, k ses amis, 
 k son pays natal et a sa patrie. Quoi d'^tonnant, nous dira-t-on ? 
 Dans la bouche d'une mfere, que prouve un pareil ^loge 1 Rien, 
 sinon qu'elle adorait son fils. On ajoutera : Est-ce que pour juger 
 un homme la post^rit^ devra s'en rapporter aux declarations de la 
 mfere et des fils de cet homme 1 Non, sans doute, elle ne le devra 
 pas, nous ne convenons. Mais aussi, pour juger ce mfime homme 
 devra-t-elle s'en rapporter aux declarations de ses ennemis 1 EUe 
 ne le devra pas davantage. Et pourtant que ferait-elle si, pour 
 juger Danton, eUe ne consultait que les ' M6moires ' de ceux qu'il 
 a toujours combattus 1 . . . 
 
 " On a reproche k Danton d'avoir exploit^ la Revolution pour 
 amasser scandaleusement une fortune ^norme. Nous aUons prouver 
 d'une manifere incontestable que c'est k trfes grand tort qu'on lui a 
 adresse ce reproche. Pour atteindre ce but, nous allons comparer 
 retat de sa fortune au commencement de la Revolution avec I'^tat 
 de sa fortune au moment de sa mort. 
 
 " Au moment oh la Revolution edata, notre pfere ^tait avocat 
 ftux conseils du RoL C'est un fait dont il n'est pas n^cessaire de 
 
APPENDIX IX 387 
 
 fournir la preuye : ses ennemis euz-mSmes ne le contestent pas. 
 Nous ne pouvons pas ^tablir d'un mani^re precise et certaine ce 
 qu'il possMait k cette ^poque, cependant nous dlsons que, s'il ne 
 poss^dait rien autre chose (ce qui n'est pas prouv6) il possedait au 
 tnoins sa charge, et voici sur ce point notre raisonnement : — 
 
 " (1°) Quelques notes qui sont en notre possession nous prouvent 
 que Jacques Danton, notre grand-pfere, d^cM6 h, Aicis, le 24 f^vrier 
 1762, laissa des immeubles sui le finage de Flancy et sur celui 
 d'Arcis, il est done presumable que notre pfere, n^ le 26 octobre 
 1759, et par consequent rest^ mineur en trfes bas Sge, a it poss^der 
 un patrimoine quelconque, si modique qu'on veuiUe le supposer." 
 
 [Here follow guesses as to how he paid for his place in th« 
 Conseils. They are of no importance now, as we possess the docu- 
 ments which give us this (p. 365). The only point of interest in 
 the passage omitted is the phrase, " probably our mother brought 
 some dowry.'' We know its amount (p. 366), but the sentence 
 is an interesting proof of the complete dislocation which Germinal 
 produced in the family.] 
 
 " Nous allons ^tablir que ce qu'il possMait au moment de sa 
 mort n'etait que I'^quivalent k peu pr^s de sa charge d'avocat aux 
 conseils. Nous n'avons jamais su s'il a Hi fait des actes de partage 
 de son patrimoine et de celui de ses femmes, ni, si, au moment de 
 la confiscation de ses biens, il en a ^t^ dress^ inrentaire, mais nous 
 Savons tr^s-bien et tr^-exactement ce que nous ayons recueiUi de 
 sa succession, et nous allons le dire, sans rester dans le vague sur 
 aucun point, car c'est ici que, comme nous I'avons annonc^, nos 
 arguments vont 4tre bas^s sur des actes authentiques. 
 
 " Nous ferons observer que I'^tat que nous allons donner com- 
 prend sans uistLaction ce qui vient de notre pfere et de notre m6re. 
 
 " Une loi de f^vrier 1791 ordonna que le prix des charges et 
 offices supprim^s serait rembourse par I'Etat aux titulaires. La 
 charge que Danton possedait ^tait de ce nombre. Nous n'avons 
 jamais su, pas mSme approximativement, combien eUe lui avait 
 colite. II en rejut le remboursement sans doute, car precis^ment 
 vers cette ^poque, il commenga k acheter des immeubles dont voici 
 le detail : — 
 
 "Le 24 mars 1791, il achate aux enchferes, moyennant quarante- 
 huit miUe deux cents Uvres, un bien national provenant du clergd^ 
 
388 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 consistant en une ferme appel^e Nuisement, situ^e sur le finage da 
 Chassericouit, canton de Chavanges, arrondissement d'Arcis, d^- 
 partement de I'Aube, k sept lieues d'Arcis. . . . Danton avait 
 achet^ cette feime la somme de quarante-huit mille deux cents, 
 ci 48,200 liv. 
 
 A reporter . . . 48,200 liy 
 "12 avril 91.— n achate aux enchferes du district 
 d'Arcis, par I'entremise de mattre Jacques Jeannet- 
 
 Boursier 
 
 [Then follows a list of purchases made in the month of April 
 1 79 1, of which the most important is an extension to the house at 
 Arcis — the total of these is 33,600 Uvres ; and in October 1791 a 
 few acres of land in the town and a patch of wood for 3160 livres. 
 Then foUows the sum total.] 
 
 "Total du prix de toutes les acquisitions d'immeubles faites 
 par Danton en mil sept cent quatre-vingt-onze : quatre-vingt-quatre 
 mUle neuf cent soixante livres, ci . . • . 84,960 liv. 
 
 " On doit remarquer qu'il est presumable que la plus grande 
 partie de ces acquisitions a dti €tre pay^e en assignats qui, k cette 
 ^poque, perdaient d6jk de leur valeur et dont, par consequent, la 
 valeur nominale 6tait sup^rieure a leur valeur r^eUe en argent, 
 d'oii il r^sulterait que le prix r^el en argent des immeubles ci-dessus 
 indiqu^s aurait 6t6 inferieur k 84,960 livres. 
 
 " Depuis cette derni^re acquisition du 8 novembre 1791 jusqu'k 
 sa mort, Danton ne fit plus aucune acquisition importaate : — 
 
 [Here then is what Danton left.] 
 
 "(1°) La ferme de Nuisement (vendue par nous le 33 JuiUet 
 
 "(2°) Sa modeste et vieiUe maison d'Arcis, avec sa d^pend- 
 ance, le tout contenant non plus 9 arpents, 3 denr^es, 14 carreaux 
 (ou bien 4 hectares, 23 ares, 24 centiares) seulement, comme au 
 13 avril 1 791, 6poque oft il en fit I'acquisition de Mademoiselle 
 Piot, mais par suite des additions qu'il y avait faites, 1 7 arpents, 
 3 denrdes, 52 carreaux (ou bien 786 ares, 23); 
 
 "(3°) ^9 iirpents, i denr^es, 41 carreaux (898 ares, 06) de pr6 
 et saussaie ; 
 
APPENDIX IX 389 
 
 "(4") 8 arpents, i denr^e, 57 carreaux (369 ares, 96) de boie; 
 "(5**) 2 denr^es, 40 carreaux (14 ares, 07) de terre situ^e dans 
 I'enceinte d'Aicis. 
 
 "Nous d^clarons k qui voudra I'entendre et au besoin nous 
 d^clarons sous la foi du serment, que nous n'avons recueilli de la 
 succesaion de Georges-Jacques Danton, notre p^re, et d'Antoinette- 
 Gabrielle Charpentier, notre m^re, rien, absolument rien autre 
 chose que less immeubles dont nous venons de donner I'^tat, que 
 quelques portraits de fanulle et le buste en pUtre de notre m^re, 
 lesquels, longtempii apr^s la mort de notre second tuteur, nous 
 furent remis par son Spouse, et que quelques eflfets mobiLiers qui 
 ne m^ritent pas qu'on en fasse l'6num6ration ni la description, 
 mais que nous n'en avons recueilli aucune somme d'argent, aucune 
 cr^ance, en un mot rien de ce qu'on appelle valeurs mobili^res, h 
 I'exception pourtant d'une rente de 100 fr. 5 p. 100 dont MM. 
 Defrance et D^tape, receveurs de rentes h, Paris, rue Chabannais, 
 n° 6, ont op6r6 la vente pour nous le 18 juin 1825, rente qui avait 
 ^t^ acbet^e pour nous par I'un de nos tuteurs. . . . 
 
 " On pourra nous faire une objection qui m^rite une r^ponse ; 
 on pourra nous dire : Vous n'avez recueiUi de la succession de votre 
 p^re et de votre m^re que les immeubles et les meubles dont vous 
 venez de faire la declaration, mais cela ne prouve pas que la fortune 
 de votre p^re, au moment de sa mort, ne se composat que de ces 
 seuls objets ; car sa condamnation ayant entrain^ la confiscation de 
 tous ses biens sans exception, la R^publique a pu en vendre et en 
 a peut-@tre vendu pour des sommes considerables. Yous n'avez 
 peut-@tre recueilli que ce qu'elle u'a pas vendu. 
 
 " Voici notre r^ponse : — 
 
 " Les meubles et les immeubles confisqu^s k la mort de notre 
 pfere dans le d^partement de I'Aube et non vendus, furent remis 
 en notre possession par un arrSt^ de I'administration de ce d^parte- 
 ment, en date du 24 germinal an IV. (13 avril 1796), arrfet^ dont 
 nous avons une copie sous les yeux, arrSt^ pris en consequence 
 d'une petition presentee par notre tuteur, arr@te base sur la loi du 
 14 floreal an III. (3 mai 1795), qui consacre le principe de la 
 restitution des biens des condamnes par les tribunaux et les coin< 
 
390 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 missions r4voIutionnaires, bas^ sur la loi du 2 1 prairial an III (9 
 juin 1 79S), qui l^ve le s^questre sur ces biens et en rfegle le mode 
 de restitution ; enfin, arrSt^ bas^ sur la loi du 1 3 thermidor an TTT. 
 (31 juillet 1795), dent il ne rappelle pas les dispositions. 
 
 " Uadmiuistration du d^partement de I'Aube, dans la mSmo 
 deliberation, arr§te que le produit des meubles et des immeublea 
 qui ont 6ti vendus et des int^rlts qui ont ^t^ perjus depuis le 14 
 flor^al an III. (3 mai 1 795), montant k la somme de douze mille 
 quatre cent cinq livres quatre sous quatre deniers, sera restitu^ k 
 notre tuteur, en bons au porteur admissibles en payement de 
 domaines nationaux jprovenant d'emigres seulement. Nous ne 
 Savons pas si notre tuteur rejut ces bons au porteur ; s'il les refut, 
 quel usage il en fit ; nous savons seulement qu'il n'acheta pas de 
 biens d'emigres. II r&ulte ^videmment de cet arrets de I'admiius- 
 tration du d^partement de I'Aube, que dans ce d^partement le 
 produit des meubles et immeubles provenant de Danton et vendua 
 au profit de la R^publique, ne s'est pas Hevi au-dessus de 1 2,405 
 livres 4 sous 4 deniers. C'^tait le total de I'dtat de reclamation 
 prdsente par notre tuteur dans sa petition, et lout le monde- 
 pensera, comme nous, qu'U n'aura pas manqu^ de faire valoir toua 
 nos droits. On peut remarquer que dans cet arr^te il est dit que 
 ces 12,405 livres sont le montant du produit des meubles et des 
 immeubles vendus, et des interets qui ont ete perfus depuis le 14 
 floreal an III (3 mai 1 795). . . . Mais si d'un c6te on doit ajouter 
 12,405 livres, d'un autre cote on doit retrancber 16,065 livres qui 
 restaient dues aux personnes qui ont vendu k notre pfere les 
 immeubles dont nous avons herite. . . . 
 
 " II est done etabli d'abord que dans le departement de I'Aube, 
 le prix des meubles et des immeubles qui ont ete vendus n'a pas 
 pu s'eiever au-dessus de 12,405 livres; ensuite que notre pfere, au 
 moment de sa mort, devait encore 16,065 livres sur le prix d'acqui- 
 sition des immeubles qu'il y possedait. . . . 
 
 " Maintenant nous allons citer quelques faits authentiques qui 
 pourront faire apprecier la bonte de son coeur. Nous avons vu 
 precedemment que ce fut en mars et en avril 1791 qu'il acheta la 
 majeure partie, on pourrait meme dire la presque totalite des 
 immeubles qu'il possedait quand il mourut. 
 
 " Voici un des sentiments qui agitaient son coeur en mars et en 
 anil 1791. II desirait augmenter la modeste aisance de sa m^re, 
 
APPENDIX IX 391 
 
 de sa bonne mfere qu'il adorait. Veut-on savoir ce qu'il s'empressa 
 de faire k son entree en jouissance de ces immeubles qu'il venait 
 d'acheter I Jetons un regard sur I'acte que nous tenons dans les 
 mains. II a ^t^ pass^ le 15 avril 1791 (deux jours aprfes la vente 
 faite & Danton par Mademoiselle Piot) par-devant M" Odin que en 
 a gard^ la minute, et M° Etienne son collSgue, notaires k Troyes, 
 Danton y fait donation entre-vifs, pure, simple et irrevocable, d sa 
 m^re de six cents livres de rentes annuelles et viagferes, payables 
 de six mois en six mois, dont les premiers six mois payables au 15 
 octobre 1791. Sur cette rente de 600 livres, Danton veut qu'en 
 cas de d^c^s de sa mfere, 400 livres soient reversibles sur M. Jean 
 Becordain, son mari (M. Eecordain dtait un homme fort ais^ 
 lorsqu'il ^pousa la mfere de Danton j il 6tait extremement bon ; sa 
 bontd allait meme jusqu'^ la faiblesse, puisque, par sa complaisance 
 pour de pr^tendus amis dont il avait endoss^ des billets, U perdit 
 une grande partie de ce qu'il avait apport^ en mariage, n^anmoins 
 c'^tait un si excellent homme, il avait toujours it6 si bon pour les 
 enfants de Jacques Danton, qu'ils le regardaient comme leur 
 veritable pfere ; aussi Danton, son beau-fils, avait-il pour lui beau- 
 coup d'affection). Le vif ddsir que ressent Danton de donner aux 
 donataires des marques certaines de son amiti^ pour eux, est la 
 aeule cause de cette donation. Cette rente viagfere est k prendre 
 sur la maison et sur ses d^pendances, situ^es k Arcis, que Danton 
 vient d'acqu^rir le 13 avrU 1791. Tel fut son premier acte de 
 prise de possession. 
 
 "On remarquera que cette propri^t^, au moment oil Made- 
 moiselle Piot la vendit, ^tait lou^e par eUe k plusieurs locataires 
 qui lui payaient ensemble la somme de 600 livres annuellement. 
 Si Danton etit ^t^ ricbe et surtout aussi ricbe que ses ennemis ont 
 voulu le faire croire, son grande coeur ne se fUt pas content^ de 
 faire h, sa mSre une pension si modique. Pour faire cette donation 
 Danton auralt pu attendre qu'il vint k Arcis ; mais U ^tait si press6 
 d'ob^ir au sentiment d'amour filial qu'il ^prouvait que, dfes le 1 7 
 mars 1791, il avait donn^ b, cet effet une procuration sp^ciale k M. 
 Jeannet-Bourcier, qui ex^cuta son mandat deux jours aprfes avoir 
 achetd pour Danton la propri^t^ de Mademoiselle Piot. Aussitdt 
 que la maison ^tait devenue vacante et disponible, Danton, qui 
 aimait tant Stre entour^ de sa famille, avait voulu que sa mfere et 
 son beau-p^re vinssent I'liabiter, ainsi que M. Menuel, sa fenmie 
 
392 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 et leurs enfants (M. Menuel avait dpous^ la sceur atn^e de 
 Dan ton). 
 
 " Au 6 aoftt 1792 Danton ^tait k Arcis ; on ^tait k, la veille 
 d'un grand ^v^nemenfc qu'il pr^voyait sans doute. Au milieu des 
 mille pens^es qui doivent alors I'agiter, au milieu de l'inqui6tude 
 que doivent lui causer les perils auxquels il Ta s'exposer, quelle 
 id^e pr^domine, quelle orainte vient I'atteindre? 11 pense b, sa 
 mfere, il craint de n'avoir pas sufl&samment assur^ son mort et sa 
 tranquillity ; en voioi la preuve dans cet acte pass^ le 6 aout 1792 
 par-devant M® Finot, notaire k Arcis. Qu'y Ut-on? 'Danton 
 voulant donner k sa mfere des preuves des sentiments de respect et 
 de tendresse qu'il a toujours eus pour elle, il lui assure, sa vie 
 durant, une habitation convenable et commode, lui fait donation 
 entre-vifs, pure, simple et irrevocable, de I'usufruit de telles parts 
 et portions qu'elle voudra cboisir dans la maison et d^pendances 
 situdes h Arcis, rue des Fonts, qu'il a aquise de Mademoiselle Piot 
 de Courcelles, et dans laquelle maison sa mfere fait alors sa demeure, 
 et de I'usufruit de trois denr^es de terrain k prendre dans tel 
 endroit du terrain qu'elle voudra choisir, pour jouir desdits objets 
 k compter du jour de la donation. Si M. Jean Recordain suivit h 
 sa femme, donation lui est faite par le mime acte de I'usufruit 
 de la moiti^ des objets qu'aura choisis et dont aura joui sa 
 femme. . . . 
 
 " Voici encore une pifece, pen importante en elle-m§me k la 
 v^ritd, mais qui honore Danton et qui prouve sa bontd : c'est un- 
 p^tition en date du 30 thermidor an II. (17 aotlt 1794), adress^e 
 aux citoyens administrateurs du d^partement de Paris, par Mar- 
 guerite Hariot (veuve de Jacques Geoffrey, charpentier k Arcis), 
 qui expose que par acte pass^ devant M." Finot, notaire k Arcis, le 
 II d^cembre 1791, Danton, dont elle ^tait la nourrice, lui avait 
 assur^ et constitu^ une rente viagfere de cent livres dont elle de- 
 vait commencer k jouir k partir du jour du dicha de Danton, 
 ajoutant que, de son vivant, il ne bornerait pas sa g^ndrosit^ k 
 cette somme. Elle demande, en consequence, que les administrae 
 teurs du d^partement de Paris, ordonnent que cette rente viagfere 
 lui Boit pay^e k compter du jour du d^cfes et que le principal en 
 soit prdlev^ sur ses biens confisqu^s au profit de la Republique. 
 Nous ne savons pas ce qui fut ordonn^. Cette brave femme, que 
 notre p^re ne mauquait jamais d'embrasser avec effusion et k 
 
APPENDIX IX 393 
 
 pliisieurs reprises chaque fois qufil venait k Arcis, ne lui surv^cut 
 que pendant peu d'ann^es. ' 
 
 " La recherche que nous avons f aite dans les papiers qui nous 
 Bont restds de la succession de notre grand'mfere Kecordain, papiers 
 dent nous ne pouvons pas avoir la totality, ne nous a fourni que 
 ces trois pieces authentiques qui t^moignent en faveur de la bont^ 
 de Danton dans sa Tie priv^e. Quant aui traditions orales que 
 nous avons pu recueillir, elles sont en petit nombre et trop peu 
 caractdristiques pour 6tre rapport^es. Nous dirons seulement que 
 Danton aimait beaucoiip la vie champltre et les plaisirs qu'elle 
 pent procurer. II ne venait k Arcis que pour y jouir, au milieu 
 de sa famille et de ses amis, du repos, du calme et des amusements 
 de la campagne. II disait dans son langage sans recherche, k 
 Madame Kecordain, en I'embrassant : ' Ma bonne mfere, quand 
 aurai-je le bonheur de venir demeurer auprfes de vous pour ne plus 
 vous quitter, et n'ayant plus k penser qu'k planter mes choux ? ' 
 
 " Nous ne savons pas s'il avait des ennemis ici, nous ne lui en 
 avons jamais connu aucun. On nous a tres-souvent parl6 de lui 
 aveo ^loge ; mais nous n'avons jamais entendu prononcer un mot 
 qui lui fftt injurieux, ni meme defavorable, pas meme quand nous 
 ^tions au college ; Ik pourtant les enfants, incapables de juger la 
 port^e de ce qu'ils disent, n'h^sitent pas, dans une querelle 
 occasionn^e par le motif le plus frivole, k s'adresser les reproches 
 les plus durs et les plus outrageants. Nos condisciples n'avaient 
 done jamais entendu attaquer la la m^moire de notre pfere, II 
 n'avait done pas d'ennemis dans son pays. 
 
 " Nous croyons ne pas devoir omettre une anecdote qui se rap- 
 ports k sa vie politique. Nous la tenons d'un de nos amis qui I'a 
 souveht entendu raconter par son pfere, M. Doulet, homme trSs re- 
 commandable et trfes digne de foi, qui, sous I'Empire, fut long- 
 temps maire de la vUle d' Arcis. Danton ^tait k Arcis dans le 
 mois de novembre 1793. TJn jour, tandis qu'il se promenait dans 
 son jardin avec M. Doulet, arrive vers eux une troisifeme personne 
 marchant k grands pas, tenant un papier k la main (c'^tait un 
 journal) et qui, aussitdt qu'eUe fut k port^e de se faire entendre, 
 s'^crie : Bonne nouveUe ! bonne nouveUe ! et elle s'approche. — 
 Quelle nouveUe 1 dit Danton. — Tiens, lis ! les Girondins sont 
 condamn^s et ex^cut^s, r^pond la personne qui venait d'arriver. — 
 Et tu appelles cela une bonne nouveUe, maUieureux t s'^crie Dan- 
 
394 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 ton k son tour, Danton, dont les yeux s'emplissent aussit6t de 
 lannes. La mort des Girondins une bonne nouTelle ? Miserable I 
 — Sans donte, r^pond son interlocuteur ; n'^tait-ce pas des fac- 
 tieux? — Des factieux, dit Danton. Est-ce que nous ne sommes 
 pas des factieux? Nous m^ritons tous la mort autant que les 
 Girondins; nous subirons tous, les uns aprfes les autres, le meme 
 sort qu'eux. Ce fut ainsi que Danton, le Montagnard, accueillit 
 la personne qui vint annoncer la mort des Girondins, auxquels 
 tant d'autres, en sa place, n'eussent pas manqu^ de garder 
 rancune. . . . 
 
 " La France aujourd'tui si belle, si florissante, te placera alors 
 au rang qui t'appartient parmi ses enfants gdn^reux, magnanimes, 
 dont leg efforts intr^pides, inouis, sont parvenus k lui ouvrir, au 
 milieu de difficult^s et de dangers innombrables, un chemin k la 
 liberty k la gloire, au bonheur. Un jour enfin, Danton, justice 
 complete sera rendue k ta m^moire ! Puissent tes fils avant de 
 descendie dans la tombe, voir ce beau jour, oe jour tant d&ir4" 
 
 Dantow. 
 
NOTES OF TOPINO-LEBRUN, JUROR OF THE 
 REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL 
 
 The interest of these notes is as follows: — They are the 
 only verbatim account of the trial which we possess. There 
 are of course the official accounts (especially that of 
 Coffinhal), and upon them is largely based the account in 
 M. WaUon's Trihvmal R^volutionnaire ; but these rough 
 and somewhat disconnected notes, badly spelt and abbre- 
 viated, were taken down without bias, and as the words 
 fell from the accused. Topino-Lebrun, the painter, was at 
 that time thirty-one years of age, a strong Montagnard of 
 course ; he hesitated to condemn Danton, but was overborne 
 by his fellows, especially by his friend and master David. 
 
 These notes were kept at the archives of the Prefecture 
 of Police until the year of the war. In 1867 M. Labat 
 made copies, and gave one to Dr. Robinet, and one to M. 
 Claretie. Each of these writers has used them in their 
 works on the Dantonites. The original document was 
 burnt when, in May 1871, the Commune attempted to 
 destroy the building in which they were preserved. 
 
 There are given below only those portions which directly 
 refer to Danton and his friends. 
 
 Au prisident, qui lui demande ses nom, prenoms, dge et domicile, 
 11 r6pond : Georges-Jacques Danton, 34 ans, n6 h, Arcis-sui-Aubo, 
 departement de I'Aube, avocat, d^put^ h. la Convention. Bientdt 
 ma demeure dans le n6ant et mon nom au Pantheon de I'histoire, 
 quoi qu'on en puisse dire ; ce qui est trfes slir et ce qui m'importe 
 peu. Le peuple respectera ma tSte, oui, ma tSte guillotin^e 1 
 
 39S 
 
396 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Sbanoe db 14 Germinal (13 Avril). 
 
 [Westermann having asked to be examined, the judge 
 said it was " una forme inutUe."] 
 
 Danton. Nous sommes cependent ici pour la forme. 
 
 Vest, insiste. Un juge vas {sic) I'mterroger. 
 
 Danton dit : Pourvu qu'on nous donne la parole et largement. 
 je suis sftr de confondre mes accusateurs ; et si Is peuple franfaia 
 est ce qu'il doit etre, je serai oblige de demander leur grice. 
 
 Camille. Ah ! nous aurons la parole, c'est tout ce que noua 
 demandons (grande et sincfere gaiety de tons les d^putfe accu«^s). 
 
 Danton. C'est Barrfere qui est patriote k present, n'est-ce-pas ? 
 (Aux jurfe) — C'est moi qui ai fait instituer le tribunal, ainsi je 
 dois m'y connaltre. 
 
 Vest. Je demanderai k me mettre tout nu devant le peuple, 
 pour qu'on me voye. J'ai re9U sept blessures, toutes par devant ; 
 je n'en ai refu qu'une par derriere : mon acte d'accusation. 
 
 Danton. Nous respeoterons le tribunal, parceque, &c. . , . 
 Danton montre Cambon et dit: Nous crois-tu conspirateure t 
 Voyez il rit ; il ne le croit pas. Ecrivez qu'il a rit. . . . 
 
 Danton. Moi vendu ? un homme de ma trempe est impayable ! 
 La preuve f Me taisais je lorsque j'ai ddfendu Marat ; lorsque 
 j'ai 6t^ d^cr^t^ deux fois sous Mirabeau ; lorsque j'ai luttd contra 
 La Fayette ? — Mon affiche, pour insurger, aux 5 et 6 octobre ! 
 Que I'accusateur (Fouquier-Tinville) qui m'accuse d'aprfes la Con- 
 vention, administre la preuve, les semi-preuves, les indices de ma 
 vdnalit^ ! J'ai trop servi ; la vie m'est k charges. Je demande 
 des commissionaires de la Convention pour recevoir ma denondation 
 sur le systime de dictature. 
 
 J'ai iti nomm^ administrateur par un liste triple, le dernier, 
 par de bons citoyens en petit nombre [that is, substitute in 
 December 1790]. 
 
 Je f orgai Mirabeau, aux Jacobins, de rester k son poste ; je I'ai 
 combattu, lui qui voulait s'en retourner h, Marseille. 
 
 Oil es ce patriote, qu'il vienne, je demande a etre confondu, 
 qu'il paraisse, j'ai empgch^ le voyage de Saint-Cloud, j'ai ^t^ d^cr6td 
 de prise de corps pour le Champ de Mars. 
 
APPENDIX X 397 
 
 J'ofire de prouver le contraire [that is, the contrary of St. 
 Just's statement that he was unmolested when he fled to 
 Arcis] et lisez la feuille de I'orateur : Des assassins furent envoy^a 
 pour m'assassiner h, Arois, Tune a fetfe arrfit^. — Un huissier vint 
 pour mettre le d^cret k execution, je fuyais done, et le peuplo 
 voulut en faire justice. — J'etais k la maison de mon beau-pfere ; 
 on I'investit, on maltraita mon beau-fr6re pour moi, je me sauvais 
 (st'c) k Londres, je suis revenu lorsque Garran fut nomm6. On 
 offirit k Legendre 50,000 ^cus pour m'6gorger. Lorsque les Lameth 
 . . . devenu partisans de la cour, Danton les combattit aux 
 Jacobins, devant le peuple, et demanda la K^pubUque. 
 
 Sous la legislature je dis : la preuve que c'est la cour qui veut 
 la guerre c'est qu'elle a [a word illegible] I'initiative et la 
 sanction. Que les patriotes se rallienfc et alors si nous ne pouvons 
 vous vaincre nous triompherons de 1' Europe (?). 
 
 — Billaud-Yarennes ne me pardonne pas d'avoir ^t^ mon secre- 
 taire. Quelle proposition avez-vous f aite centre les Brissotins 1 — La 
 loi de Publicola ! Je portai le cartel k Lou vet, qui ref usa. Je man- 
 quai d'etre assassin^ k la Commune. — J'ai dit a Brissot, en plein, 
 ConseU, tu porteras la tfite sur I'echafaud, et je I'ai rappel^ ici k 
 Lebrun. 
 
 — J'avai prepare le 10 aoiit et je fus k Arcis, parce que Danton 
 est bon fils, passer trois jours, faire mes adieux k ma mfere et r^gler 
 mes affaires il y a des t^moins. — On m'a revu solidement, je ne 
 me suis point couch6. J'etais aux Cordeliers, quoique substitut 
 de la Commune. Je dis au ministre Claviferes, que venait de la 
 part de la Commune, que nous aUions sonner I'insurrection. Aprfes 
 aToir r^gie toutes les operations et le moment de I'attaque, je me 
 mis sur le lit com me un soldat, avec ordre de m'avertir. Je sortis 
 il, une heure et je fus h la Commune devenue revolutionnaire. Je 
 fis I'arr^t de mort contre Mandat, qui avait I'ordre de tirer sur le 
 peuple. On mit le maire en arrestation et j'y restais (sic) suivant 
 I'avis des patriotes. Mon discours k I'Assembiee legislative. 
 
 — Je faisais la guerre au Conseil; je n'avais que ma voir, 
 quoique j'eusse de I'influence. 
 
 — Mon parent, qui m'accompagna en Angleterre [Mergez, a 
 volunteer in 1792, and later a general of Napoleon's] avait 
 dix huit ans. 
 
 — Je crois encore Fabre bon citoyen. 
 
398 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 — J'atteste que je n'ai point donn^ ma voix k d'Orl&ins, qu'on 
 prouve que je I'ai fait nommer. 
 
 — J'eAs 400 mille f. sur les 2 millions pour faire la rev., 200 
 mille livres pour choses secrltes. J'ai ddpens^ devant Marat et 
 Robespierre pour tous les commissaires des departements. Calo- 
 mines de Brissot. J'ai donne 6000 a Billaud pour aller k I'arm^e. 
 Les autres 200 mille, j'ai donn^ ma comptabilit^ de 130 mUle ek 
 le reste je I'ai remis. 
 
 . . . Fabre la dispordbilit6 de payer les commissaires, pare* 
 que Billaud- Varenne avait de refus^ (sic). 
 
 II n'est pas k ma connaissance que Fabre precha la fM^ralisme. 
 
 — J'embrasserais men ennemi pour la patrie, k laquelle je dc^ 
 nerais mon corps h, d^vorer. 
 
 Je nie et prouve le contraire. Ce fut Marat qui m'envoy* am 
 porte feuille et les pifeces, et j'avais fait arrSter Duport. be a 
 hth jug^ k Melun, d'aprfes une loi. Liu et Lametb ont v(rj/.u me 
 faire assassiner. Ministre de la Justice, j'ai fait executor la loi. 
 Pour mon fait, je n'avais pas de preuves judiciaires. 
 
 — La guerre feinte n'est que depuis quinze jours, et 1* Brissotins 
 m'ont pardieu bien attaqu4 Lisez le Moniteur. Barbaroux a fait 
 demander par le bataillon de Marseille ma tSte et ceUi»s de Marat 
 et de Robespierre. Marat avait son caractfere voicanwi, celui de 
 Robespierre tenace et ferme, et moi, je servais a, ma mani^re. — 
 Je n'ai vu qu'une fois Dumourier, qui me tS,ta pour le ministre : 
 ie repondis que je ne le serais qu'on bruit do canon. II m'ecri- 
 vit ensuite. — Plac^ Ik, Kelerman {sic) voulaii passer la Marne et 
 Dumourier ne le voulait pas ; embarrass^ et mon dictateur, je 
 Boutins le plan de Dumourier, qui reussit.~-Craignant la jalousie 
 de deux g&^raux, j'envoyai Fabre, etc. . . . avait vu Vesterman, 
 au 10, le sabre k la main. 
 
 — Je talonnai Servan et Laen^e ; je n'ai :onnu de plan militaire 
 que celui de Dumourier et de Kelerman. et Billaud fut nomm^ 
 par moi pour surveiller Dumourier ; U e« a rendu compte k la 
 legislature et aux Jacobin. Ordre d'examiner ce que c'etait . . . 
 cette retraite {sic). La Convention a envoy^ trois commissaires. 
 
 — Moi, ministre, j'embrassais la masse et les details de la Justice. 
 
 — Billaud m'a dit qu'il ne sarait pas si Dumourier 6tait un 
 traltre ; d'ailleurs c'etait une surabondance de patriotisme. 
 
 —Sur, la Belgique, r^p^te son dire aux Jacobins. 
 
APPENDIX X 399 
 
 — Le pi^ge des Brissots ^tait de faire croire que nous desorgani- 
 sions les armies. 
 
 — On me refuse des temoins, kllons je ne me defends plus ! 
 
 — Je vous fais d'ailleurs mille excuses de ce qu'il y a de trop 
 chaud, c'est mon caract&re. 
 
 — Le peuple dechirera par morceaux mes ennemis avant trois 
 mois. 
 
 SAancb du is Germinal (4 Ateil). 
 
 Herauli. Sur le petit Capet, nie le fait. — II fut nomm^ pour 
 la partie diplomatique avec Barrfere. Declare que jamais il ne 
 s'est m€le de negociations. Nie avoir jamais fait imprimer aucune 
 chose en diplomatic. Deforgues envoya Dubuisson. 
 
 Herault. Je ne congois rien k ce galimatliias. Je me suis 
 oppos^ k renvoi de Salavie. C'est un moyen employ^ par nos 
 ennemis. Envoy^ dans le Bas-Rhin par le Comit^, je travaillfe 
 (sic) avec Berthelemy {sic) k la neutrality de la Suisse et j'ai sauv6 
 k la Republique un armde de soixante-mUle hommes. — Jamais jo 
 n'ai communique k Proly rien en politique, il n'y en avait pas. 
 Au surplus, il fallait me confronter avec Proly. — J'ai ^t^ tromp^ 
 comme j'a jaie st fois [J. Jay St. Foil] comme la Convention, 
 comme jam bon [this does not mean ham, but Jean-Bon St. 
 Andr4], qui le voulait emmener secretaire, comme Colot Comme 
 Marat, Proly a kth port^ en triomphe. La Convention, par un 
 decret solemnel, a regu mes explications. Anacharsis me dit 
 vient (sic) diner avec moi, diner avec Dufourni, etc. . . . J'ai 
 laiss^ la veuve Chemineau, etc. L'huUlier ! c'est k I'instigation 
 de Clootz. 
 
 J'ai connu I'abb^ guillotine en troie [that is, in Troyes] 
 (tic), dans mon exU il ^tait chanoine et non refractaire. C'est 
 done un plaisanterie. H n'^tait pas soumis au serment, il m'avait 
 assist^ dans mon exil. 
 
 Au 14 juiUet, a la BastUle, j'ai eu deux hommes tu^s k mea 
 c6tes. Maltraite par mes parents, j'ai voyage, j'ai ^t^ incarcer^ 
 trois semaines en Sardaigne et je suis revenu, 
 
 Camille. Lors de sa dispute avec Saint-Just, celui-ce lui 
 dit qu'il le ferait p^rir, — j'ai denonce Dumourier avant Marat; 
 d'Orleans, le premier, j'ai ouvert la Revolution et ma mort va la 
 fenner. — Marat s'est tromp^ sur Proly. Quel est I'homme qui 
 
400 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 n'a pas eu son Dilon 1 Depuis le n° 4 [that is, of the Vievxe 
 Cordelier] je n'ai ^cris {sic) que pour me r^fcracter. J'ai 
 attach^ le grelot h. toutes les factions. On m'a encourag^ ! 4crit 
 {sic) etc. demasque la faction Hubert, 11 est bon que quelqu'un 
 le fasse. 
 
 Lacroix. Sur la declaration de Miajenski, rappeUe qu'il I'a 
 confondu, que la Convention a ^t^ satisfaite, et qu'il n'a pas ^t^ 
 accus^ pour cela. II dit : je fus envoy^ k Li^ge pour connaltre 
 des reproches faits k la Tresorerie, et vice-versk. Nous ^tiona 
 trois. Jamais je n'ai vu Dumourier en presence de Dumourier 
 (au lieu de Miacrinski ?). J'ai dit a Miajenski, sa legion man- 
 quant de tout, que je appuyerais devant mes coUegues, mais qu'il 
 etait etonnant que sur le pays ennemi ou ne d^crdtat pas que les 
 troupes etrangferes fussent payees. Je n'ai ni bu, ni mange aveo 
 Dumourier. Vu pendant six k sept jours toujours ensemble. 
 Danton, Gossuin et moi nous avions visits toutes les caisses de la 
 Belgique pour examiner les faits. — Dumourier ne voulait point 
 prater les mains au deorSt, je me levai et lui d^clarai que s'il ne 
 eignait pas \ I'beure, nous le ferions garrotter, etc. II signa 
 I'ordre a Eonsin. — La seconde fois nous nous rendimes k Bruxelles, 
 Dumourier ^tait en Hollande. — Tous mes collogues ont attests que 
 je preposai de me laisser aller auprfes de Dumourier I'observer et 
 le tuer mes coU^gues ne furent pas de cet avis. 
 
 . . 1900 et 600 livres de linge achet^ par Brune en pre- 
 sence des collegues, pour la table. II etait k bon march^. II dut 
 etre charge sur les voitures que ramenaient en France les restitu- 
 tions des eflfets pillds par les gen^raux, o'etait contenu dans une 
 malle k mon addresse. Je I'ai declare alors au comite de Salut. 
 Alors je I'ai reclamee. Ne confondez pas la premiere voiture 
 d'argenterie qui fut pilie, elle etait expediee par tous nos 
 collegues. 
 
 Danton. J'avais defie publiquement d'entrer en explication 
 sur I'imputation des 400,000. II resulte du proces-verbal qu'il 
 n'y a k moi que mes chiffons et un corset moUeton. Le bos, 
 Bomme, m'a donne communication. 
 
 Appeie aux Jacobins par mes collfegues, je dedarais {sic) que 
 le renouveUement etait contre-revolutionnaire : ce que portait {sic) 
 les pouvoirs des envoyes des societds populaires. — Billaud-Varennes 
 m'appuya et je fus charge de faire la proposition le 1 1 k la Con- 
 
APPENDIX X 401 
 
 vention. — Hubert, le lendemain, me d^non^a dans sa feuille ; et 
 voil^ le principe de la calomnie. 
 
 Je fu8 mdign^, au 31 mai, de voir un officier qui disait: il 
 n'y a ni Marais, ni Montagne ; qui distribuait de I'argent au 
 bataillon de Courbevoie j je . . . t^moin Panis, Legendre, Eobes- 
 pierre, Pache, Eobert-Lindet. Alors je montais {dc) k la tribune, 
 etc. . . . que nous n'etions pas libres. Au Comitfe, devant Pache, 
 le 2 juin, j'ai improuv^ la mesure maladroite de Hauriot. Nous 
 ravions pr^venu qu'en rentrant nous ddcrdterions les 32, mais que 
 ce n'^tait pas assez pour la chose pubHque, qu'U fallait purger la 
 Convention, et a propos^ 500,000 livres pour I'arm^e de Paris que 
 avait sauv6 la patrie. Barfere s'y opposa. C'est Barfere qui a 
 propose le d^cret d'accusation contre Hauriot; c'est moi qui ai 
 d^fendu Hauriot contre cela. Qu'on entende les t^moins, la Con- 
 vention a iti tromp^e. 
 
 — J'ai appall Tinsurrection en demandant cinquante revolution- 
 naires comme moi. La Convention m'appuya, I'avais dit trois 
 mois avant, il n'y a plus de paix avec les Girondins, ai-je la face 
 Hypocrite t 
 
 Hanriot crut que j'etais oppos^ k I'insurrection et alors je lui 
 dis : vas toujours ton train, n'aie pas peur, nous voulon constater 
 que l'Assembl6e est libre. 
 
 — Je n'ai jamais bu ni mang^ avec Mirande, et je proposal h. mes 
 collogues de I'arrlter, il s'y opposerent. 
 
 Je pris la main k Hanriot et lui dis : tiens bon. 
 
 H&rault. C'est moi qui ai d^couvert I'ordre sign4 au crayon 
 par Hauriot pour laisser passer la Convention, ainsi, etc. 
 
 Philippeaux. Arriv^ de mon d^pt j'ignorais les intrigues, je 
 fus tromp^ par Boland. Je me suis r^tract^ k temps. — Lorsque je 
 m'apergus du pi^ge tendu dans I'appel au peuple, je montai a la 
 tribune et j'abjurai et votai de suite comme la Montagne. J'ai 
 vot4 pour Marat (c'est faux, il n'a vot^ ni pour ni contre). Le 
 Comit^ ne r^pondant point k mes lettres, je suis venu ici. Le 
 Comity ne m'a point entendu. Alors, pour remplir mon devoir, 
 j'ai ^crit k la Convention, et I'^v^nement, sur Hubert, a prouv4, 
 etc. On a fait contre moi des adresses contre moi (sic) etc. On 
 a envoys de chez moi trois commissaires pour connaitre let faits et 
 Levasseur les a fait arrSter. 
 
 Vesterman. Lorsque Dumouriez etait en Belgique j'etais au 
 
 2 a 
 
402 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Hollande. Abandonn^ entre les ennemis, vivant de pillage, je 
 Buis arrivd a Envers (sic) avec ma legion. Le regiment de cavalrie 
 fut attaqu6. Je repoussai rennemi. 
 
 Acous6 de venir deux et tiois fois apporter les ddpSches de 
 Dumourier h, Gensonn^. 
 
 L'arni^e manquait de souliers, je fus envoy6 par Dumourier au 
 Conseil, et je les rapportai k I'arm^e. 
 
 Dumourier lui montra la lettre de roi de Prusse pour son 
 secretaire, qu'il avait renvoy^, je courus apr&s lui et I'arrltai de 
 mon pouvoir. Le second voyage pour porter le pli des articles 
 arrets (sic) entre les g^n^raux. 
 
 II a encore 6t6 envoy^ en otage k Mons, lors de I'evacuation. — 
 Troisifeme voyage pour amener Malus et d'Espagnac, et porta un 
 pacquet (stc) au pr&ident du comity diplomatique. — J'ai denonc^ 
 au (sic) Jacobins, au Comit4 le fils naturel de Proly, et on me rit 
 au nez. II engagea au d^jeun^ (sic) pour r^tablien Dumourier 
 aux Jacobins. Pourquoi ne m'a-t-on pas appel^ lors de la deposi- 
 tion de Miajenski ? J'etais ici, mand^ it la barre. Dumourier 
 m'a toujours ^loign^ de lui. A protests sur la capitulation 
 d'Anvers. Sur le fait de Lille. 
 
 Avant d'arriver h, Menbem Proly me denonca. Ici, on me 
 mis (sic) bors de la loi et un officier prussien me montra la feuille 
 de la Convention et m'engagea h. rester, qu'on me payerait, et 
 cbercba k m'effrayer en disant que les autres g^n^raux avaient ete 
 massacres. Voir au comit^ militaire. Je fus h, Lille avec ma 
 troupe. Je trouvai Mouton et vint (sic) prendre son ordre pour 
 venir k la barre. — J'ai pret^ serment avant, k Douai. Le d^cret 
 du 4 mai dit qu'il n'y avait lieu k m'accuser. J'etais d^nonc^ aux 
 comit^s, je ne connais point Talma. 
 
 Danton. C'est Barfere qui est patriote k present et Danton 
 aristocrate. La France ne croira pas cela longtemps. 
 
 Danton, dans la chambre des accuses. — Moi conspirateur 1 
 Mon nom est accotd de toutes les institutions r^volutionnaires : 
 lev^e, arm^e r^v., comity r6v., comity de salut public, tribunal 
 r^volutionnaire, C'est moi qui me suis donn^ la mort, enfin, et je 
 Buis un moddre ! 
 
 [Topino-Lebrun left no notes of the following day, the 
 1 6 Germinal.] 
 
XI 
 
 REPORT OF THE FIRST COMMITTEE OF 
 PUBLIC SAFETY 
 
 TREATING OF THE GENERAL CONDITION OF 
 THE REPUBLIC, AND READ BY BARRERE TO 
 THE CONVENTION ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 
 1793 
 
 This report ia the most impoitant appendix not only to this book, 
 but to any description of the two days that expelled the Girondins. 
 It is here published for the first time, and, though of some length, 
 will well repay the reading for any student of the Revolution. 
 
 I have dwelt sufficiently on its importance in the text, and I 
 can dismiss it here with a short introduction. 
 
 It is the first great result of the Committee which Danton had 
 helped to create, and of which he was the soul. It is the first step 
 taken by this new organ of government towards that dictatorship 
 to exercise which it had been called into existence. The enormous 
 amount of detailed work necessary to produce it shows us the 
 number of agents which the Committee must have possessed, and 
 their activity, as well as the industry of the members themselves, 
 for it had been at work but eight weeks. 
 
 Danton undoubtedly inspired the tone and direction of the 
 report, bat the somewhat florid style is Barrfere's own. Dr. 
 Kobinet thinks, however, that the last pages, from the section on 
 Public Instruction onwards, are in Danton's manner, and M. 
 Eoruard would even put it at the section on the Colonies, two 
 pages earlier. Even if this is the case, some sentences at least 
 were put in by Barrfere, for they betray his inimitable verbiage, to 
 which Danton was a stranger. 
 
 Of the important part the report played in the complicated 
 
404 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 history of the week May 26-June 3, 1793, enough has been said in 
 the text; it is only necessary to add here that no speech or memoir 
 contains such an indictment of the Girondin misgovemment as is 
 given indirectly by this list of ascertained facts in the condition 
 of France. 
 
 The reading of the report is mentioned in the Moniteur of May 
 31, but, contrary to their custom, they did not print it on account 
 of its great length. It seems to have been read in the afternoon 
 from about two to four, just before Cambon's motion was put to 
 the vote. I give the more important passages, about half the full 
 length of the document. 
 
CONVENTION NATIONALE 
 RAPPORT g6n6RAL 
 
 SUR. 
 
 L'6TAT DE la R6PUBLIQUE FRANgAISE 
 
 Faltf au nom du Comite dc Salut Public, dans la seance du 
 mercreM 29 mai, I' an second de la RepubRque: 
 
 Par Barrire, 
 
 Depute du dipartement des Haules- Pyrenees 
 
 Imprime par ordre de la Convention Nationale 
 
 C1TOTEN8, — Charg^ par les reprdsentans du peuple de leur parler 
 aujourd'hui des grands interSta qui les rassemblent, et des moyens que 
 nous avons employes depuis deux mois pour le salut de la patrie en 
 p6ril ; nous rdclamons d'abord de votre justice de remonter par la 
 pens^e, h, I'fepoque de notre nomination, et de voua rappeler en quel 
 ^tat se trouvaient alors la B^publique et toute les parties d'administra- 
 tion nationale. 
 
 Quoiqu'accablds par la tfiche pdrilleuse et grande que vous nous avez 
 impos^e, nous avons d& ob^ir. Votre confiance, notre zfele et I'amour 
 de notre pays ont dfl nous tenir lieu de facult^s. 
 
 Au-dehors se pr^sentait une guerre terrible 4 soutenir sur des fron- 
 tiferes d'une 6tendue immense et sur des c6tes ind^fendues. Audedans, 
 se propageaient des dissensions ciTiles, portant avec elles les deux 
 earact^res les plus funestes, le fanatisme royal et religieux, secouru par 
 des perfidies multipli^es dans I'intdrieur, et par des intelligences com- 
 binges audehors. 
 
 What follows is a general indictment of the results of 
 Girondin rule, with special and particular attacks on the 
 Ministry of War and on their fear of responsibility. 
 
 On Toyait dans toutes nos armies des besoins imp^rieuz et sans 
 fesee renaissans ; des secours nuls ou tardifs ; des approvisionnemens 
 
 40s 
 
4o6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 insuffisans ou de mauvaise quality et des administrations d^vorantes, 
 dont quelques-unes, n'ont d'autre but reel que d'agrandir la fortune de 
 beaucoup d'agioteurs et de quelques capitalistes. Dans nos ports des 
 travaux ralentis et une inertie coupable ; partout des traliisons ourdies 
 et des coalitions priparees ; des ^tats-majors k refaire ou k epurer ; des 
 armies h organiser ou k improviser ; des fonctionnaires civils et nuli- 
 taires k surveiller ou k remplacer ; des forces k crter sur toua les points 
 menacfe par les troubles ; des armes k fabriquer ; des canons k fondre ; 
 la marine k ciier ; I'esprit public k remonter avec ^nergie ; I'anarcliie k 
 attaquer ; la discipline k r^tablir ; des mouvemens contra-revolution- 
 naires k comprimer et un cahos d'int&ets, de plaintes, de passions, 
 d'abus, de pretentions et de prejug^s k ddbrouiller, au milieu d'une 
 correspondance journalifere et centuplde par ces circonstances actuelles. 
 Quel vast g^nie ou quel courage in6pui8able il edt fallu pour r^pondre 
 tout k coup k des circonstances aussi extraordinaires ou pour dominer 
 des ^vfenemens auasi impr^vus 1 Nous avons born^ notre t&clie k par- 
 courir d'abord toutes les parties du gouvemement provisoire, et k nous 
 f rayer ensuite une route au milieu de cet assemblage 6norme de forces 
 et de resistances, de bons et de mauvais principes. 
 
 Le premier obstacle qui s'est pr6sentd k nous, est venu du changement 
 dans le ministfere de la guerre, que avait precede notre 6tablissement. 
 
 Le second obstacle 6tait dans le minist&re de la marine n^lig^, 
 andanti m§me, par un sdrie de ministries royaux, et dont nous avons ^t^ 
 forces de faire changer le clief et plusieurs adjoints. 
 
 Lk s'est rompue, pour nous, la chaine des operations de ces deui 
 d^partemens, les plus importans dans un temps de guerre de terre et de 
 mer ; et nous nous sommea vus priv^s, tout k coup, de toutes les ressour- 
 ces de I'exp^rience. Nous n'avons pu recueillir, dans I'agglom^ration 
 des aflfaires de cette partie de I'administration publique, que des dtata 
 inexacts ou des lumiferes incertaines. 
 
 Un aper^u des deliberations du conseU exicutif nous a montr^, d'un 
 c6te, des travaux incohirens qui n'ont pu avoir aucune espfece de succ^s 
 k cause des evtoemens qui les dominaient ; de I'autre, des n^gligencea 
 funestes et des fautea graves que les ^vSnemens suivants out mieux fait 
 sentir. Depuis les bouches de I'Escaut, ouvertes par un usurpation de 
 la puissance souveraine, jusqu'aux extremitSs de la M^diterranee, qui 
 ont 6ti le theatre de nos revers, et de la versatility ministdrielle, nous 
 n'avons vu ni cette suite d'op^rations qui assurent les succfes, ne cette 
 pr6voyance des mesures qui diminuent les revers. Point d'ensemble, 
 point de conceptions vastes, point de vues hardies, point de plan arr§t6 
 point d'^nergie, et partout la terreur de la responsabilitd, marchant en 
 avant du miniatfere, tandis qu'il s'agit de marcher fiferement k la liberty, 
 sans regarder en arrifere. 
 
 Au mois d'octobre, la resistance k I'ennemi avait donn^ des concep- 
 tions et des forces au conseil ex^cutif. 
 
APPENDIX XI 407 
 
 Les 8UCC&8 du mois de novembre ont amolli le conseil. Jemmappea 
 a 6t& pour les ministres (sic) la Capouequi a d(Struit son 6nergie et 
 att^nuS ses travaux. 
 
 Le ddpartement de PintArieur, machine trop lourde, trop compliqude 
 pour un homme, quand il serait plein de talens et de moyens d'ex^cu- 
 tion, avait refroidi pendant longtemps I'esprit public et engourdi les 
 corps administratifs. II ^tait impossible que la main d'un seul homme 
 piit remuer oette machine ^norme surcharg^e de details, d'une adminis- 
 tration immense, d'opdrations mercantUes dont le succ&s est douteux, 
 dont le r^sultat exige de grands sacrifices, et dont le secret appeUe la 
 defiance. La seule ressource que ce ministfere disproportionn^ pouvait 
 trouver, 6tait dans les administrateurs d^partementaires, dont la plu- 
 part, insoucians sur les travaux qui leur sent confids, negligent de 
 
 correspondre, ou dont la conduite exag^r^e et sans mesure leur faisaib 
 m^nnaitre toute subordination. 
 
 Le d^partement de la guerre, dans lequel chaque ministre a port6 ses 
 prdjugfe et ses assertions, ses routines et ses haines ; le minist&re de la 
 guerre disorganise sans cesse par la frequents mutation de ses agens et 
 par la diversity de leurs principes ou de leurs opinions, presentait et 
 prtent encore un cahos inextricable, des abus sans nombre, et une im- 
 puissance r6elle dans tout homme que ne serait pas ne tr^s actif dans 
 la manidre d'ordonner et entreprenant sur toug les moyens de defense. 
 
 In what follows note the hand of Danton, almost his 
 phraseology in the second paragraph. 
 
 Le minist^re des affaires ^trangferes, couvert d'obscurit^s politiques, 
 ne pouvant avoir au milieu des defiances produites par la revolution et 
 des mouvemens irrdguliers de la guerre, ni fixity dans les operations, ni 
 vues suivies, ni projets determines, ni secrets dans les plans, a saisi 
 seulement le fll de quelques affaires importantes, et redonne maintenant 
 de I'activitie aux moyens nombreux dontl'interet de plusieurs gouverne- 
 mens prepare le succfes. 
 
 C'est de I'audace dans les conceptions politiques, c'est de I'ensemble 
 dans les mesures, c'est de la promptitude dans les moyens d'execution, 
 que depend la diplomatie nouveUe d'un peuple qui nait k la liberte. 
 
 Again, a direct attack on the Girondins, especially in 
 the characteristic phrase, " the paralysis of honesty." 
 
 Le ministfere de la marine enrayi longtemps dans les operations par 
 une probite paralytique, et par des sous-ordres inexperimentes ou sus- 
 pects, n'ayant donne ni protection au commerce, ni defense pour nos 
 c6te8, ni moyens au succfes de la course, ni activite aux grand armemens 
 dans nos ports, ni approvisionnemens suivis pour les flottes, reprend 
 
4o8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 sous un ministre nouveau son activity, nous promet une defense et una 
 marine. . . . 
 
 Here again is a half-concession to the Girondins, which 
 was part of the pohcy I have spoken of in the text. 
 
 Le conseil exdcutif en sent lui-mSme la ndcessite : et nous lui devons 
 la justice de dire, que ne se dissimulant pas cette caducity politique, 
 amende par les circonstances, par des ddnonoiationa muitipliees, et par 
 la presqu'impossibilit^ de tenir r^guliferement le gouvernail au milieu 
 de la tempSte ; le conseil ex^cutif d^ire et sollicite le renouvellement 
 du ministfere. . . . 
 
 DE L-ETAT MILITAIRE. 
 
 Presses entre la n^cesaiti de pourvoir sans dflai aux besoins de» 
 armies, et I'impossibilit^ d'approfondir en si peu de temps des plans 
 g^n^raux, nous avous recherche d'abord des armes. . . . 
 
 Des arretds du comity ont ordonn6 I'envoi des commissairea pour 
 d^nombrer subitement les armes et les canons qui se trouvaient dans 
 les fabriques et les manufactures nationales, et pour lea faire tranaporter 
 aux arm^ea et dans les d^partemens les plus denues de ce genre de 
 secours. Saint-Etienne, Ruel, Mont-C^nis, Indret, Toulouse, Lyon, 
 Charleville, Sedan, Maubeuge, ont re9u des ordres pressants sur set 
 objet. . . . 
 
 Divera arrSt^s ont ordonn^ le transport de vieiLles armes qui ae 
 trouvent dans diverses fabriques on arsenaux, pour les faire raccomoder 
 dans les diveraes villes dont la population ofifrait des ouvriers, et surtout 
 dans les d^partemens limotrophes des pays rSvolt^s. . . . 
 
 Lea ministrea et lea assemblies nationales ont mis trop peu d'im- 
 portance k la manufacture de Saint-Etienne, depuis le commencement 
 de la revolution. 
 
 Les ouvriers brlUaient du ddsir de travailler pour la republique, 
 mais le prix de I'arme ayant toujoura iti fixe au-dessous des d^bours^a 
 du fabricant, ils ont travaill^ pour les corps administratifs, dont la con- 
 currence a augments la valeur. Le fer et le salarie de I'ouvrier sont 
 augment^s de prix. 
 
 Des commiasairea du pouvoir ex^cutif viennent de requerir toua les 
 fabricans de porter k la commission de veriiication, toutes les armes qui 
 sont en leur pouvoir, pour etre exp6dier pour Bayonne, Perpignan, et 
 Toms. Les livraisons se font chaque jour. 
 
 Les commissaires s'occupent de redonner la plus grande activity i, 
 la manufacture d'armes de Saint-Etienne, qui second^e par le patriotiame 
 des ouvriera et de la municipality, portera la fabrication k quatre ou 
 cinq cents fusila ou piatoleta par jour. 
 
 II y a ^ Tulle un grand nombre d'armea k r^parer, le comity en a 
 
APPENDIX XI 409 
 
 fait distribuer k plusieura d^partemens mdridionaux ; le ministre de la 
 marine donne de I'activit^ k la manufacture de Tulle, pour armer nos 
 marins. Dans ce moment, le commissaire Bouillet, envoy^ par le con- 
 seil ex^cutif, est k Tulle, pour acc^l^rer la fabrication des armes nec^s- 
 sairea k la marine, et pour connaitre I'^tat des vieilles armes qu'on a 
 entass^s dans ce d^p6t. . . , 
 
 Tlie following passages indicate the motives of what 
 was to be the Terror, a system based, of course, upon the 
 necessity for commissariat. 
 
 VIVRES. 
 
 Lea vivres sont aussi n^cessaires que les armes ; on se plaint dans 
 quelques armies organises trop lentement, ou improvis^es trop k la 
 hate, pour que tout ce qui leur 6tait n^cessaire flit prepare, et ces 
 plaintes sont justes ; nous accdldrona Papproviaionnement des armies, 
 autant qu'il est en nous, par le miniatre et lea adminiatrations qui en 
 dependent. La latitude dea pouvoirs donnea k voa comit^s, peut aup- 
 pl^er la faibleaae du ministfere de la guerre I'insuffisance de ses agens, 
 et la malveillance ou la torpeur de aes regies. II est cependant dea 
 obstaclea 6prouv6s par lea r^giaseura et par leurs agens, & cauae des 
 craintes propag6es aur le manque de subaiatances, et le comit6 s'est 
 occup6 de faire cesser cea obstacles. 
 
 L'administration chargde de I'approvisionnement dea places de 
 guerre a pr^sentd au comity des dtata de situation rassurante aur I'ap- 
 provisionnement des places lea plus menac^es : il jui a montr^ lea 
 diapoaitiona g^n^ralea priaea pour les fournitures de aubsistances dana 
 toutes les divisions. II en r^sulte que les ^vfenemens impr^vua de la 
 Belgique, en ramenant subitement I'ennemi sur noa frontiferes, ont 
 contrari6 dea calculs et nous ont privd dea approvisionnementa faita 
 d'aprfes tm autre syateme ; mais le comite preaae les directeurs de 
 pourvoir aux approvisionnements, et avertit sans cease le ministre des 
 autrea beaoina des armies, k meaure que cea besoins ae dimontrent 
 ou que les plaintes nous parviennent. Un changement dans cette 
 administration, dont vous nous avez renvoyS I'examen, merite toute 
 notre sollicitude, et ae trouve etre la auite inevitable des change- 
 menta perpetuels dans le miniatfere de la guerre ; changement qui 
 entraine celui de ses principes et de ses moyena.' 
 
 ' Ce qu'il 7 a de certain d'apr&3 le r^sultat donn^ par la commiasion des aub- 
 sistances militaires, o'est que les armies sont approvisionn^es jusque vers le 
 premier ootobre ; I'arm^e d'ltalie, la plus mal approvisionn^e, a des subsist- 
 ances pour quelques mois, et Ton a d6j4 pripari pour elle d'autres appro- 
 TifioDnments. 
 
4IO THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Le partie de rhabillement et de I'dquipement, qui a co<it6 tant de 
 tr^sors k la nation, a ite mal fournie, mal adminiatrde, et pillie dans la 
 Belgique avec autant d'impudeur que de trahison. 
 
 Lea foumisseurs, plus avares que patriotes, ont distribu^ ^ toutes les 
 armies des ^toffes de mauvaise quality. Un force de prodigality nationale 
 payait les habita k Tavarice agioteuse qui les fournissait, et le soldat, 
 au milieu des fatigues et des perils de la guerre, 6tait sans babits ou en 
 portrait qui n'^taient pas de long usage. 
 
 Ces jours derniers il a d^fild devant vous un d^tacbement de braves 
 soldats du regiment ci-devant Conti, qui aUait vers les ddpartemens 
 r^volt^s. On n'aurait pas pr&ent6 au plus petit prince d'AUemagne, 
 ou au plus pauvre de I'ltalie, des troupes aussi mal vStues ; elles ont 
 paru devant les reprfisentans d'une nation qui ddpense pour la guerre, 
 cbaque mois, plus de millions que plusieurs rois de I'Europe n'ont de 
 revenu dans un an. . . . 
 
 L'arm^e des Ardennes, riunie k. celle du Nord, se forme sous lea 
 regards de commissaires actifs, et les recrues y abondent k un point 
 que votre comit6 a cru devoir les faire refluer vers I'arm^e du Nord. 
 
 The next allusion is interesting as showing us the 
 appreciation of what was to be the reinforcement of the 
 army of Sambre-et-Meuse. 
 
 L'arm^e de la Moselle a pris des positions avantageuaes. E6unie k 
 celle du Rhin, elles annoncent que Mayence pourra devenir le tombeau 
 des hordes prusaiennes. L'esprit est bon dans cette arm^e, distingu^e 
 par la discipline, et les recrues s'y encadrent tons les jours. 
 
 On s'occupe k faire camper et exercer I'arm^e des Alpes, dont le 
 recrutement est enti&rement effectu^. On fortifie tons les points de 
 defense, et on augments la garnison des places. Les reoruea nombreuses 
 qui y sont arrivdes ont foumi un exc^dant de vingt-un miUe hommea ; 
 vous avez dispose de huit mille contre les departemens r^voltds. Les 
 treize mille restans renforceront I'armde d'ltalie, diminu^e pour servir 
 k la defense de la Corse, formeront une reserve ou renforceront I'armie 
 des Pyrin^es orientales. 
 
 Le dipartement du Mont-Blanc s'est empress^ d'organiser plusieurs 
 bataillons et de prouver ainai son attachement k la R^publique ; ils 
 r&lament des armes, et nous esp^rons qu'avec des moyens mis dijk en 
 activity Us seront bientot arm^s. 
 
 La r^volte de Thonnes est appraisde et les coupables jugda. C'itait 
 la mfiche d'une mine prdparte aous le Mont- Blanc, et dont I'eiplosion 
 ^tait combinte avec la prochaine attaque dea Pi^montais et dea 
 Autrichiens. 
 
 L'armde d'ltalie se prepare k difendre ce que la valeur et la liberty 
 ont conquie k Nice. Mais des agitateurs y ont caus^ de la fermentation, 
 
APPENDIX XI 411 
 
 eomme dans I'armde des Alpes ; ils y tenaient deB propos injurieux k la 
 Convention nationale ; ila y parlaient de royaut^, et se servaient dii 
 moyen de la paye en assignats pour alttrer le bon esprit des troupes ; 
 des alarmes ont dUt jetties sur lea subsistances, dont le comit6 g'occupe 
 dans ce moment. 
 
 Le g^n^ral de I'arm^e d'ltalie a pris lea moyens proprea k d^couvrir 
 les agitateura et k lea faire conduire au tribvmal extraordinaire. 
 
 L'arm6e des Pyrdn^es a it& la plua ndglig6 et la plus mal pourvue 
 en armea et en munitions, et c'eat contre lea troupea les plus f ^roces et 
 les plua fanatiquea qu'elles doivent d^fendre lea plus belles contrtes de 
 la B^publique. 
 
 Auaai noua sommea accabl6a toua lea joura par dea relations mal- 
 heureuses qui ne sont que el triste rdsultat de la n^ligence de deux 
 anciena ministres de la guerre qui n'ont jamais su penser qu'il exist&t 
 une arm^e dea Pyr6n^ea. . . . 
 
 The wliole of the above is an interesting example of the 
 detailed methods of the Committee, with its reiteration 
 against the Girondin management of the war. It continues 
 in much the same spirit. 
 
 Du c6t4 de I'Oc^an, la trabison de quelque chef dea Miquelets et la 
 Mcbet^ d'une partie du regiment vingtifeme ont livr6 un point de la 
 frontifere. Une terreur panique produite par le mot de trahison et 
 par des malyeUlana aemSa dana les petits campa formSa aur I'extr^me 
 frontifere, a d6sorganis6 le peu de force qui y ^taient arriv^es, a de- 
 courag6 ceui qui y accouraient et foro^ d'abandonner Andaye et tout 
 le pays qui se trouve entre la rivifere de Nivelle et la fronti^re pour ne 
 former qu'un seul camp k Bidarre. 
 
 La diacipline k retablir, le courage k relever, Staient les premiers 
 besoina de cette arm^. 
 
 Nos commiasaires ae sont vus forces d'^tablir provisoirement un 
 rfeglement a^vfere de discipline. lis nous disent que I'ennemi abat 
 partout I'arbre de la liberty, fait lea incursions aur les maisona des 
 patriotea dana la partie franjaise abandonn^e ; maia les habitana dea 
 campagnes ont le couragede ne pas obfir aux requisitions du g^n^ral 
 espagnoL 
 
 U paralt qu'il n'eat fort que de notre faibleaae, et que si dea eecours 
 d'armes et d'artillerie sont port^s k noa frirea, notre territoire sera 
 bientdt ^vacu^. Le commandement de Bayonne eat confid au patriote 
 Courpon, et la citadelle de Saint-Espiit est d^fendue par dea r^publi- 
 caina. Vingt canons et quatre compagnies des canonniers de Paris y 
 ont &t& envoy^B en poste, et doivent avoir secouru cette frontifere le 14 
 de ce moia ; le camp de Bidarre se forme avec succ&s. 
 
 La division de I'armde dea Pyrdndes en deux grands parties, noua 
 
412 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 donnera plus de force pour une defense active au besoin : la terre y 
 produit des batalUons d'hommes libres ; nous leur devons des secour* 
 abondans, car ils ont 6te oubliiis jusqu'i present. On elit dit, en voyant 
 I'etat de ces frontiferes, que le complot dtait prSt, que la force devait 
 envahir le Nord, tandis que la perfidie et I'indefense livreraient le MidL 
 Mais I'intrepiditd et I'entliousiasme des M^ridionaux pour la liberty, 
 est un obstacle invincible au succfes des negligences minist^rielles, dea 
 trahisons int^rieures, et des succfes que le perfide Pitt a promise k 
 I'Espagne. Le camp se forme devant Bayonne et il a repris du terrain 
 du cote d'Andaye ; I'arm^e reprend I'attitude qui convient i, des 
 phalanges r^publicaines, et I'artillerie commence k y arriver avec dea 
 provisions. 
 
 L'affaire de la Vendee n'a iti envisag^e trop longtemps que comma 
 une affaire de police, ou une querelle elevte dans un coin d'un departe- 
 ment. 
 
 There follows a further indictment based upon a special 
 case. 
 
 L'armte des c6tes n'a jamais exists ; I'etat-major n'avait pas mSme 
 €t6 iormi ; quelques cbefs militaires avaient iti envoyes avec de faibles 
 moyens et de simples requisitions. On avait donni des ordres pour 
 que des cadres y fussent transportus ; Lis ont iti arr6tds dans leur 
 marche par la crainte ou Timpuissance momentan^e que nous avait 
 donni la trabison de Dumouriez. Des recrues y ont et^ rassemblees, 
 sans y trouver ni cadres, ni armes, ni un nombre suffisant d'officiers 
 gen^raux. . 
 
 Voili I'etat ou se tronvaient les armies au lo mai, ^poque k laquelle 
 le comity a demand^ inutilement la parole. . . . 
 
 Then a summary, the detail of which is well worth 
 following. 
 
 VOICI LE DERNIER ifcTAT. 
 
 II arrive des troupes k Bayonne ainsi que des canons. Le camp qui 
 ^tait k Bidard entre Bayonne et Saint-Jean de Luz a M portd, depuis 
 vendredi, entre Saint-Jean de Luz et Andaye. 
 
 L'arm^e des Pyrenees orientales qu'on esp6rait, au moyen des recrute- 
 mens, mettre en ^tat de contenir au moins I'Espagnol, a essuy6 presque 
 consdcutivement deux Rebecs qui compromettent la s1iret6 de cette 
 partie de la frontidre. Cette d^faite n'est due qn'k la gendarmerie 
 nationale ; mais un exemple prompt et s6vfere mettra un terme k cette 
 l&chet^ ou k cette trabison. 
 
 Aui Alpes nous venous d'etre menaces d'une attaque tr&s prochaine 
 ex^cut^e par des forces trfcs considerables, surtout dana la partie du 
 
APPENDIX XI 413 
 
 Var, d^bouch^ par lequel Tennemi peut menacer aussi Marseille et 
 Tonlon. Le comity de salut public a id prendre la seule mesure qui 
 itait en son pouvoir ; il a ordonn^ au g6n6ral Kellerman, le seul qui 
 e<it une connaissance suffisante des points de defense et de noe moyena 
 militaires dans cette partie, de s'y rendre avec la plus grande diligence, 
 afin de pr^venir, s'il est possible, les malheura que le moindre retard 
 pourrait amener. Le g6n^ral de I'armte d'ltalie a paru craindre que la 
 COUP de Naples ne vienne renforcer la coalition dans le midi. Mais le 
 ministre des affaires dtrangferes vient de communiquer des d^pSches qui 
 dtouisent ces nouvelles. 
 
 Kellerman s'est fait prdcSder par un courrier extraordinaire qui a 
 port6 k ses lieutenans les ordres pr^paratoires des operations auxquelles 
 I'ennemi peut le forcer. Ce g^ndral, investi de votre conflance et de 
 celle des troupes, ne pouvait 6tre remplace. On vous avait annonc6 
 d'abord qu'il se rendrait dans la Vendee ; mois les avantages remportds 
 un instant sur les r^volt^s, et la certitude de la prochaine arrivde de 
 Biron dans les d^partemens r^voltfe, out du faire changer la premifere 
 destination de Kellerman. L'armee d'ltalie a dea subsistances assurees 
 pour quelque temps. On a pris dea mesures pour la mettre k I'abri de 
 la disette. 
 
 Au Ehin, une action qui n'a servi q\x'k la destruction des hommes, 
 Bans avancer les affaires d'aucun parti, y laiase les choses & peu prfes 
 dans la meme situation qu'auparavant, avec cette difference, que le 
 changement de g^n^ral qui a 6t6 en partie force, peut iniiuer sur nos 
 ■ucc^s. II est bon d'observer que nos armies dans cette partie se trou- 
 vent avoii- en tete des forces les plus manoeuvriferes, et commandees par 
 les g6n6raux lea plus accrldites de 1' Europe. 
 
 Nos gtoeraux, au contraire, portds au commandement pour la 
 premifere fois, ne peuvent avoir la m6me habitude et les memes avan- 
 tages que ceux auxquels les grands mouvemens de guerre sont familiers. 
 Les approvisionnemens dans cette partie et les subsistances sont bien 
 assures. 
 
 Dans le Nord, notre situation eat trfes alarmante, et la Convention 
 doit connaltre tous ces maux ; eUe a besoin d'Stre inatruite par le mal- 
 heur, et de sentir les tristes effeta de sea diviaiona. 
 
 Notre arm^e, repouasde entre Combrai et Bouchain, quittant son 
 camp de Famars pour prendre plus loin celui de Coefar, abandonnant 
 k leuTS proprea forces Cond6 et Valenciennes, perdant ses communica- 
 tions avec Douay et Lille d'un c6te, et de I'autre avec Maubeuge el le 
 Quesnoy, est expos^e k de nouveaui revers, si la prdaence du general 
 Custine, qui a dft y arriver le 25, ne lui rend pas la discipline qui lui 
 manque et 1a coniiance sans laquelle il n'est point des ucc&a k obtenir 
 dans la guerre. 
 
 Si les efforts de ce gSn^ral ne sont pas promptement secondSs par 
 I'union des representana du peuple, la Convention doit s'attendre k 
 
414 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 tomber dans une situation plus embarrassante qu'au moment oh, pen» 
 dant la demifere campagne, les esclaves allemands entraient en Cham- 
 pagne, et menajaient Paris et la liberty. Alors d'hemeui haeards, ou 
 plut6t cette destinSe qui semble conduire la France, ont disparaltre deg 
 dangers auasi imminens ; mais doit-on compter sur une nouvelle faveur 
 de I'aveugle fortune ? ne devons-nous pas craindre une nouvelle in- 
 vasion, et pouvona-nous nous flatter quetoutes nos villes imiteront le 
 g&4reux devouement de celle de Maubeuge, qui nous ^crit le 26 de ce 
 moia : — " Ici on bat la g6n6rale dans cet instant : on a envoy6 une 
 partie de notre garnison dana la Vendee ; nous restons ; nous dejouerons 
 nos ennemis exterieurs et int^rieurs, ou nous mourrona librea. La ville 
 sautera si nos murs abattua permettent k I'ennemi de souiller notre 
 enceinte." 
 
 Quant aux beaoins de cette armee du Nord, peut-etre croira-t-on 
 difficilement que, malgr6 toutes nos d^penses, la demande qui vient 
 d'etre faite au comit4, qui a ite arretde par le commissaire g^ndial de 
 I'armde du Nord, et visde par les commiasaires de la Convention, monte 
 k la somme de 49 millions. 
 
 L'armde qui doit aneantir les revoltla s'organise ; il arrive un grand 
 nombre de bataillona k Tours ; lea postes de la rive droite de la Loire 
 Be renforcent, et I'on fait ddfiler des troupes en poste. Si les rebeUes 
 menajent cette rive, ils sont bors d'6tat d'ex^cuter ce project ; leurs 
 forces ce divisent, mais ila rentrent dans les pays couverts. Les princi- 
 paux cbefs des r^voltds sont subordonn^s aux prStres ; c'est une veri- 
 table croisade ; mais les babitans des campagnea commencent k se lasser 
 de cette horrible guerre, et murmurent. 
 
 D'un autre coti, on nous ^crit qu'il est parti, depuis notre dernier 
 guccfes, un courier de Bruxelles k Londrea, pour engager le cabinet de 
 Saint-James k accfl^rer un armament tendant k porter sur les cStes de 
 Bretagne des troupes, des armes, dea munitions, et k vomir sur nos 
 rivages un corps considiirable d'^migr^s de Jersey et Qiiernsey. 
 
 Le transfuge Cond^ a envoy6 k Jersey tous les ^migr^s bretons pour 
 6tre d^posda aur noa c6tes et y seconder un des rejetons de la famUle de 
 nos tyrana. 
 
 On se plaignait presque partout des commissaires des guerres ce 
 corps essentiel dea armies va etre chang^, amflior^ sur de nouvelles 
 bases et ^pure par des choix patriotiques. 
 
 Quant k la suppression de la paie en numeraire, toutes les armies 
 de la R^publique Font rejue sans peine ; ils sacrifient k chaque instant 
 leur vie k la liberty, comment s'occuperaient-il d'intdrSts p^cuniaires ? 
 mais ausai ils ont droit i plus de surveillance pour les approvisione- 
 mens et pour les aubaistances. Quelques compagnies de I'armee d'ltalie 
 seulement ont montr^ de la resistance ; maia lea agitateurs seront 
 dejou^a par la surveillance qui y a ^t^ etablie, et par les soins de voa 
 commiasaires. 
 
APPENDIX XI 415 
 
 Dans le choix des oflScieurs g^ndrauz, nous avons dft qnelqnefois 
 obSir auz defiances populaires et aux d^nonciations individuelles ; 
 mais tfest Ik un des maux attaches & la revolution, qui use beaucoup 
 d'hommes, qui en ^loigne un plus grand nombre, et qui pr^sente plus 
 d'accusations que de ressources. Sans doute aprfes les odieuses trahisons 
 qui ont afflig6 et qui affligent encore la rdpublique et d&organise deux 
 fois les armies, on peut, on doit m6me devenir defiant et soupjonneux ; 
 mais la ligne qui s^pare la defiance et la calomnie, est trop facile & de- 
 passer ; est si la d^nonciation juste est une action civique, I'accusation 
 int6ress^e est la honte de nos moeurs et la ressource de la haine. . . 
 
 Le comity, pour ne rien n^gliger dans cette terrible partie de la 
 guerre, a interrog6 des militaires instruits ; il s'est environne de leur 
 experience pour faire un plan de guerre auquel se rattacberaient des 
 plans de campagne pour chacune des armies. Jusqu'i pr^ent la 
 guerre de la Hbert^ a Hi faite sans plans, sans suite, sans pr^voyance 
 m@me ; il est plus que temps de tracer les limites dans les lesquelles la 
 guerre sera soutenue, dans quelle partie eUe sera defensive, dans quelle 
 autre elle sera offensive assigner ^ chaque arm^e la portion de frontiferes 
 qu'elle a & d^fendre, les points des ennemis qu'elle doit attaquer ou 
 couvrir. 
 
 In what follows regarding the Navy, we see the attempt 
 of the Committee, which we know was foredoomed to 
 failure, but which was a fine one, to meet the English 
 Power. The " error," as English critics have called it, of 
 rapidly putting in new officers was an unfortunate necessity. 
 
 DE LA MARINE. 
 
 Ici nous devons accuser ce systfeme perfide de Bertrand et de ses 
 semblables, qui, depuis plusieurs amines, semblait preparer, de concert 
 avec I'Angleterre, I'abaissement de la France, et assurer k nos plus 
 constans ennemis I'empire des mers. . . . Cest par la reunion des forces 
 navales, que nos ennemis ont esp&^ d'attaquer plus slirement notre 
 inddpendance, et de nous dieter de lois. Quoique par cette coalition 
 Ton ait tent^ aveuglement de faire passer la balance du pouvoir k une 
 nation maritime, d^ji trop puissante pour I'intdret du continent ; . . . 
 quoique, par la disorganisation passagfere de notre marine, par le 
 denuement de nos ports, par le ralentissement des travaui, on ait 
 esp^re de changer la destin^e de la r^publique francaise, ne craignons 
 pas que Ton parvienne k faire r^trograder la plus belle des revolutions. 
 
 La surveillance constante du comity, le zfele du ministre, et le 
 devouement de Tarm^e narale qui se forme, feront oublier tant de 
 trahisons ou d ne^gUgences, mais les moyen ne peuvent Stre que lents. 
 
4i6 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Des expeditions hardies, et confides k des hommes courageux sont 
 prepardes ; les plaintes du commerce ont iti enfin entendues d'apres 
 le dernier rapport du ministre, le cabotage va etre protdgd dans I'Ocean 
 par 34 canonnierea, 12 corvettes, 18 lougres, cutters ou avisos, et dans 
 la M^diterrande, par 18 corvettes, ou cannoniferes et 5 avisos, ind^- 
 pendamment des frigates dont il est inutile de faire connattre le 
 nombre et les stations, sans trabir les int6r6ts de la ddfense de la 
 rdpublique. . . . 
 
 II existe beaucoup d'officers capables ; I'abaissement des vains prd- 
 jugis qui siparaient I'armte commerciale de I'armie navale, nous assure 
 des ressources, mais il faut les surveiller et punir s6vferement la d^s- 
 obiissance ou la malversation ; avant de cboisir les officiers, eiamen et 
 impartiality ; aprfes le choix, confiance entifere, mais responsabilitd im- 
 pirieuse. Le secret aocompagnera nos operations, si les inquietudes du 
 commerjant ou les soupfons du zfele patriotique ne viennent pas les 
 altirer ou les contrarier ; les corps civils ne doivent pas s'immiscer dans 
 le secret des epdrations navales, ou bien nos ennemis le sauront bientSt, 
 et nous vaincrons sans nous laisser sortir de nos ports. 
 
 Le comite s'occupe des lois repressives que la discipline navale 
 reclame avec plus d'interSt que jamais. Une grande force s'organise 
 dans les ports de la Mediterrande, qui par notre position, doit Stre le 
 canal de navigation du commerce frangais. . . . 
 
 On s'occupe des moyens les plus propres k retirer les colonies de 
 retat malheureux oil elles se trouvent, depuis qu'une cour perfide 
 voulait faire la contre-rdvolution en France, par les malheurs de 
 I'Amerique ; et si, k c6te de nous, des Frangais veulent se rappeler 
 qu'ils descendant de Quillaume, tous les calculs de la politique insu- 
 laire pourront Stre deranges. 
 
 Le comite ne pent vous oflrir aucun r&ultat prdci"! et detailld dans 
 ce moment ; il serait m§me impolitique de la publier. Mais tout se 
 prepare, et quique les forces de la ripublique soient trfes inferieures k 
 celles des ennemis coalisis, le patriotisme les dirigera de manifere k 
 rappeler le courage des filibustiers, et les exploits des Bart et des Dugay- 
 Trouin. . . , 
 
 In foreign affiairs we have the Dantonesque idea of 
 pitting the Powers agamst one another, which, unfortu- 
 nately for France, fanatics who were in power later aban- 
 doned. The remark on the impolitic nature of the decree 
 of the 19th of December should be specially noted: it 
 comes direct from Danton. 
 
APPENDIX XI 417 
 
 DES AFFAIRES ETRANQfiRES. 
 
 . . . Le mmistdre anglais est forc^, malgrS son influence et son 
 orgueil avare, de voir Dantzick passer au pouvoir de la Prusse, sans 
 reclamation ; de voir la Pologne, se partager sans sa participation ; et 
 de se compromettre vis-Ji-vis la morale et I'esprit public de la nation 
 anglaise. Aussi I'intrigant Pitt, qui ne peut se dissimuler que le ministre 
 qui fait la guerre, traite rarement de la paix, sourtout chez une nation 
 6clair6e et tromp^e sur cette guerre par I'astuce profonde de son gou- 
 vemement, ne cesse d'invoquer sans cesse auprfes de la ligne, la cause 
 g^ndrale des cours. . , . 
 
 Le comite a chercW k reserrer le lien qui attache d^ji, par les relations 
 commerciales, le peuple Suisse et le peuple f ranjais ; et I'ambassadeur que 
 la Suisse a reju suit constamment le voeu tdmoign^ par la Convention 
 nationale, de s'allier avec les gouvememens justes et les peuples libres. 
 
 Nous apprenons que les peuples neutres et amis re9oivent avec 
 reconnaisance le d^cret du 1 5 avrU, qui eut servi plus utilement la liberty, 
 s'il eut 6t6 d'une date plus reculte, et si le d^cret impolitique du ig 
 d^cembre n'edt pas donn^ un nouveau pr^texte k la perfidie des cours 
 etrangferes. 
 
 Ce d^cret par lequel vous aviez declare que la France ne souffirirait 
 jamais qu'aucune puissance semel&t de sa constitution et de son gouverne- 
 ment, et qa'k son tour, elle ne s'immiscerait en rien sur les autres 
 gouvememens ; ce decret a augments subitement le nombre de nos 
 partisans dans la Suisse ; et le t^moignage d'un peuple simple et libre 
 a son prix auprfes des r^publicains. 
 
 Des n^gociations d'alliance ne sont plus des chimferes pour la France 
 libre. II est des puissances qui out senti que I'dWvation ou la mine 
 d'une nation int^ressent toutes les autres et que celles meme qui son! 
 le plus eioign^es du th^Stre de la guerre, sont souvent les victimes 
 de leur moderation ou de leur indifference. II est des allies pour 
 leur propre sdret^, peuvent soutenir nos int^rets, avec autant de 
 chaleur que de bonne foi. II est d'autres alliances que la politique 
 doit vous assurer, et d'autres qui seront dues en grandes partie k votre 
 dtat rdpublicain ; votre commerce ne peut que s'en feliciter. 
 
 L'ltalie voit avec int^ret le signe de la R^publique arbor^ dans sea 
 villes, si j'excepte les villes gouvemles encore par un pretre et par la 
 maison d'Autriche. . . . 
 
 Nous apprenons que la Russie a fait faire k la Porte la demands 
 officielle du passage d'une flotte, mena^ant de regarder le refus qu'on 
 pourrait lui en faire comme une declaration de guerre. La r^ponse a 
 ete dilatoire et sera negative ; les usurpations de la Russie trouveront 
 enfin des bornes. Cest k la politique europeenne k aider le mattre des 
 Dardanelles k les poser. . . . 
 
 2 D 
 
4i8 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Une suite de coalisatioB faite contre la France, avit jet^desobgtacle* 
 ^ I'arriv^e des chebecs h, Alger. On voulait encore vous alifiner cette 
 puissance, amie de la R^publique ; mais nous recevons la nouvelle que le 
 dey a reju, avec le plus vif int^rSt, lea deux chebecs que la E^publique 
 lui a renvoy&j et qu'il, a t^moigne les dispositions lea plus favorablea & 
 la France. . . . 
 
 There follows the French criticism of the Alien BUL 
 
 Un bill unfame, qui insulte k Itumanit^ et aux droits des nations, 
 a et^ promulgu^ par le gouvemement anglaia, et traduit en espagnol k 
 Madrid et dans les villes aua^atiques, par les intrigues de Tambassadeur 
 anglais. Ce bill, dont la haine pour la convention a dict6 les clauses 
 horribles contre les Franjais, vous portera sans doute h, user du droit de 
 repr^sailles. Le comit6 vous fera un rapport sur cet objet, ainsi que 
 Bur les diverses meaures k prendre contre la gouvemement anglais. 
 Des agens nombreux sont dassemiu^s dans 1' Europe, pour connaitre les 
 complots de nos ennemia au dedans et au dehors, et pour s'assurer des 
 v^ritables amis de la r^publique. 
 
 II r&ulte enfin, de toutes nos relations, que Dumouriez et ses aides- 
 de-camp, chaaafe du Stoutgard, n'ont pas re9u un meilleur accueil 4 
 Vursbourg, par ordre de I'^lectuer, quoiuqe dveque. Ainsi, les traitres 
 ne trouvent pas d'aayle mSme chez les deapotes i qui ils se sacrifient. 
 
 Matters concerning the Interior are comparatively vague, 
 for here the Conmaittee wished to compromise with the 
 Gironde ; but they are strong against civil war. 
 
 DE L'INTfiRIEUR. 
 
 , . . Quant aux approvisionnemens des armies et de la marine, les 
 commissaires ^prouvent des obstacles, en ne pouvant, d'apr^s le dernier 
 decret, acheter que dans les marches. 
 
 Le comitd s'est occupe ensuite de sonder la plaie et de connaitre la 
 source de toutea les agitations qui tourmentent la republique. 
 
 Ici des v^ritda doivent nous etre dficlar^es ; car, vous 6tes sur le 
 bord d'un abyme profond, et la Convention Nationale, au milieu de ses 
 divisions, a oubli6 qu'elle marchait entre deux ^cueila, et qu'elle 6tait 
 conduite par I'aveugle anarchie. 
 
 D'un c6t^, I'exeorable plan de la guerre civile, second^ par 1' Anglais, 
 et sans doute dirigee de Londres, de Rome et par des agens correspon- 
 dans k Puris, ^tandait sea ramifications sur toute la France, et principsile- 
 ment dans les pays qui ^taient, dupis la revolution, inf eat^s de fanatiame, 
 ou qui avaient it6 le th^tre des troubles fanatiques et des complots 
 contre-r^volutionnaires. 
 
APPENDIX XI 419 
 
 DHin autre c6te, nne alarme g^ndrale e'est r^pandue parmi les pro- 
 pri^tairea d'un territoire de vingt-sept mil le lieuei quarrdes, et ces 
 craintes ont eu pour base des motions exag^r6e8,adeB joumaux feuil- 
 lantia^s et des propos sauguinaires ; le m^contentemeut ne de noi 
 discussions personnelles a alt^r^ la confiance, mais vous Stes n^cei- 
 saires : les aristocrates, redoutant lea psissions des patriotes, ont excite 
 les hommes ^nergiques contre les mod^r^s auzquels ils se rattachent 
 Rourdement ; ils ont pr^par^ des mouyemens contraires. . . . 
 
 Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Rouen, prenez garde, la liberty vous 
 observe sur votre marche dans la revolution ; elle ne vous croira jamais 
 contraire k ses vues ; mais craignez d'etre stationnaires dans le mouve- 
 ment de I'opinion publique ; ^crasez avec nous les rdvolt^s, les anar- 
 chistes et les brigands ; mais aussi craignez le modSrantisme et les 
 intrigues de I'aristocratie qui veut vous efErayer sur les propri^t^ et sur 
 le commerce, pour vous redonner des nobles, des prStres et un roi. . . . 
 
 Au moment oil le comity a ^t^ formd, presque partout les adminis- 
 trations trop faibles ou trop au dessous des circonstances se ressentaient 
 de I'influence meurtriSre des passions particuli&res qui y correspon- 
 daient. . . . 
 
 A Lyon, I'aristocratie a un foyer plus profond qu'on ne peut le 
 penser ; eUe est second^e par I'dgo'isme et I'indifference. . . . 
 
 Mais les campagnes et les villes de department de Rhdne et Loire, 
 surtout ViUe&anche, pr^ente un autre esprit, et 14 surtout paraissent 
 ces signes heureux, Ik, sont entendues ces acclamations ^nergiques qui 
 caract^risent le patriotisme. 
 
 A Marseille oti tout annonce I'ardeur rdpublicaine, k Marseille oil 
 I'on voit presque k cbaque pas un arbre de la liberty ou une inscription 
 civique, k Marseille oil le pain, 6gal pour tout et de mauvaise quality, 
 se vend sept sols la livre, cette calamity est support^e sans murmurer, 
 oil I'on entend des plaintes contre les traitres, les 6goistei, les intrigans ; 
 od les seuls malheuri dont on soit afflige sont ceux qui frappent la 
 Bepublique entifere, Marseille a ^prouv^ des convulsions violentes ; mais 
 si la repression de quelques excds de la demagogic a fait craindre k de 
 bona citoyens que le moderantisme ne prSvaMt, le rdpubUcanisme n'en 
 triomphera pas moins des passions individueUes. Croyons que cette 
 grande cite ne ddgen^rera pas de sa renomm^e. 
 
 Nous avons k g^mir sur des exc^s commis k Avignon et k Aix ; ce 
 qui s'est pass^ d'irrdgulier & Toulon, relativement aux officiers de la 
 marine, vous sera rapports quand le comity aura fait le travail de cette 
 partie. 
 
 Le meilleur esprit r^gne dans ce moment k Perpignan ; la vieille 
 antipathic nationale contre I'Espagnol, y r^chaufF^ I'esprit r^publicain 
 que le d^partement des Pyr^nSes orientales avait dijk montr^ avec tant 
 d'4nergie le 21 Juin 1791. 
 
 Bayonne se rattache aux bons principes. Les trahisons lui ont donni 
 
420 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 de r^nergie ; mais si cette place est dans ce moment menac^e de pr^ 
 par Tennemi, le zfele des r^publicains mlridionaui la dfifendra contra 
 lea ennemis du dedans et du dehors. 
 
 Bordeaux ne cease de foumir k la liberty et k ees armies des tr&org 
 et des soldats ; elle va d^fendre en mSme temps les Pyr&ies et lea 
 Deux-Sfevres. 
 
 Les intentions manifestoes k Nantes ne se ressentent pas assez de 
 I'enthousiasme civique qui doit animer dans ce moment tous les citoyens. 
 Ses moyens auraient pu §tre plus efficaces ; il y a du mficontentement 
 et des craintes sur les eflfeta dea divisions intestines. 
 
 A Orleans, I'esprit public s'am^liore, depuis que I'aristocratie a it6 
 frapp^e par la loi r^volutionnaire ; mais cette ville a le droit d'obtenir 
 que les procedures faites par les commissairea soient bientot jugees, lea 
 coupables punis et les bons citoyens rassur^s. 
 
 Dans le d^partement de I'Allier, une correspondance intercept^e a 
 fait d(5couvTir des traines contre la liberty, eUes ^talent ourdies par dea 
 prStres dOport^s, de concert avec leurs agens k Mouling. Les corps ad- 
 ministratif 8, qui vivent dans la plus heureuse harmonie, ont mia en lieu 
 de sflrete lea ci-devant que leur conduite avait rendus suspects et les y 
 font garder avec soin et bumanit^, jusqu'i ce que la Eepublique n'ait plus 
 rien k craindre de sea ennemis intOrieurs et de ces enfans denatures. Le 
 peuple a partout applaudi i, cette ^nergie de sea magistrats, et il les a 
 secourus, parce que le peuple veut franchement la UbertO. 
 
 A Roanne, le moddrantiame est rfiduit en systfeme, et dans la erise 
 ot nous sommes, cette apatbie politique est le plus grand fl^au de la 
 R6publique, qui ne pent s'itablir que par le developpement de toute 
 rOnergie nationale. 
 
 A Tain, dans le dOpartement de la Dr6me, des patriotes, que 
 n'^taient qu'ais^s dans leur fortune (le patriotisme se trouve rarement 
 avec la fortune), se sont cotis6s, et, de concert avec le Maire, ont fait, 
 sans y 6tre contraints par la loi, mais par amour pour la patrie, une 
 cotieation, dont le produit a ^t^ employ^ k foumir du pain k un prix 
 mod^r^, pour les citoyens pen fortunes. C'est ainsi que dans les pro- 
 vinces meridionales, lea mceurs et I'humanit^ font plus que les lois et le 
 coeur des riches dans lea grandes citds. . . . 
 
 A Tours, radministration d'Indre et Loire, apprenant que les ennemis 
 ^taient k Loudun, et marchaient k Ohinon, a pris la rdsolution, par un 
 mouvement civique et spontan^, de se transporter toute enti&re au 
 milieu des dangers qui les mena9aient, et decides k s'ensevelir aoua lea 
 ruines de la ville, plutfit que de se rendre. Une commission y est restee. 
 Loudun a demeur^ sans defence. Quelques aristocrates en ont 6t& 
 heureusement chassis. 
 
 Poitiers, trop influence par des fanatiques et par des hommes d« 
 I'ancien regime, pent donner des esp6rances aui r^voltSs, et d^ji. I'ad- 
 ministration nous a fait craindre le r^sultat du mauvaia esprit d'una 
 
APPENDIX XI 421 
 
 partie de ses habitans, malgr6 I'^nergie connue des patriotes qu'elle 
 renferme. 
 
 Paris qu'on accuse sans cesse, qu'on agite presque toujours, tantfit 
 par des crimes, tantdt par des intrigues, tantdt par des passions person- 
 nelles, tant6t par des int^rfits secrets et 6t rangers, et plus souvent encore 
 par Taction prolongde ou I'exaltation des passions r^volutionnaires ; 
 Paris, receptacle de tant d'dtrangers, de tant de conspirateurs, doit 
 attirer tos regards. 
 
 The following passage on the Commune of Paris is 
 noteworthy for its non-committal character, in keeping with 
 the attempt to get rid of the Gironde, if possible, without 
 an insiirrection. 
 
 VouB devez contenir le conseil g^n^ral de la commune de Paris dans 
 lea limites que I'unit^ et I'indivisibilite de la R^publique exigent et que 
 la loi lui prescrit. Cest k vous qu'il appartient seul de dominer toutes 
 les ambitions politiques, de d6truire toutes lea usurpations legislatives ; 
 c'est i vous de r^pondre k la France du dep6t de pouvoir qui vous a it& 
 religieusement confix. 
 
 Vous devez aviser aui movemens indgaux et anarchiques que des 
 intrigans font passer dans plusieurs sections peuplees de bons citoyens, 
 et aui mouvemens aristocratiques qu'on pourrait cependant leur com- 
 muniquer. 
 
 Vous devez surveiller ^galement le moderantisme qui paralyse tout 
 et prepare la perte de la liberty, et les excfes le la demagogic dont les 
 Emigres et les ambitieux, deguises parmi nous, tiennent le secret et la 
 prix journalier. 
 
 L'esprit des habitans de Paris est bon, malgrd les vices de rfigoisme, 
 de I'avarice et de I'apathie d'un certain nombre de ses habitans. L'amour 
 de la liberty, qu'on a voulu tant de f ois y neutraliser, sort victorieux de 
 toutes les epreuves ; et nous pensons que Paris n'appartiendra jamais 
 qui' la liberty ; Paris qui a d^truit le tr6ne, ne souffrira pas qu'aucune 
 autorite usurpe le pouvoir national, qui est la propridte de tous, et qui 
 est le veritable lieu de tous les ddpartemens. 
 
 Malgre toutes les intrigues par lesquelles on a cherchd 4 emp6cher 
 Paris de prononcer son patriotisme en marchant centre les rdvoltes, 
 chaque section a fourni ou s'occupe de fournir son contingent pour for- 
 mer douze ou quatorze bataillons de mille hommes. . . . 
 
 I quote certain portions which show the fear of the 
 Committee, so often justified, with regard to foreign in- 
 trigue. 
 
422 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 FINANCES. 
 
 II « agiot^ le numeraire pour avilir I'asBignat ; il a fait hAOuer lei 
 ehkngei, par set op^rationB k la bourse. 
 
 DISSENTIONS OIVILES. 
 
 n a aUmentd le fanatisme de la Vendee ; il a found dcs hommes, 
 des armei et dea munitions.' 
 
 ROTALISME. 
 
 Cest I'anglais, qui a combing lea regreta et raviv^ lea espdrancei, 
 par I'exc^s du r^publicanisme qu'U a foments, par lea motions dea lots 
 agraires, dont il cherchait ensuite k faire imputer lea projeti k des 
 patriotea connua. . . . 
 
 GENERAUX. 
 
 Celui qui avait achet^ Arnold en Am^rique, a achetd Dumouriez en 
 Europe, et il a dH traiter de m@me lea militairea qui n'aiment paa la 
 republique. . . . 
 
 DE I/ORGANISATION SOOIALE. 
 
 L'anglais a semd Teflroi dans I'ame des propri^taires par des motions 
 sur lea partages des terres, et dana le coeur des commer^ans par le pillage 
 des magasins. . . , 
 
 ' Des traltres Be sont mSl^ dans les rangs des patriotes et dans les conrois da 
 I'artillerie qui allaient combattre les rivolt^s; le comity en a, fait arr^ter la 
 marche, et le comity de surveillance retient les principaoi auteurs de ce nouveau 
 complot. Malgr^ tant de surveillance, quelques soldats franjais, indignes de ca 
 nom, ont trahileur devoir et sont all^ grossir la horde des rebelles. Partout les 
 obstacles se multiplient ; partout les administrations veulent rigler les mouve- 
 mens des troupes et les commissaires veulent faire les fonctioni da g^n^rauz, dea 
 communes arrgtent k leur gr^ des armes qui ont une autre destination, et o'est 
 ainsi que toutes les forces s'attinuent et que les brigands ont des succis, 
 
 Mais du moins les rives qui correspondent aux perfides de (George 111. sont 
 garanties. Les trois divisions commandoes peir le g^nOral Canclaux, qui occupent 
 les ports intermediaires entre les Sables et Nantes, entretiennent la communica- 
 tion entre oes deux villes, et contiennent les brigands k une cartaina distance dai 
 cAtas. 
 
 La communication par terre, antra Nantes at Angers, est libra, on travailla i 
 r^tablir la libra navigation de la Loire entre ces deux villes. Quelques bateaux 
 armOs de canons sont prOparOs, et suffiront pour cette protection. 
 
 Diji, une victoira signage vieont de raviver toutes les espOrances da la patria, 
 A Saint-Maxent, I'artillerie et les approvisionnemens des rivoltOs sont la priz de 
 la premiire viotoire aignalia qua las patriotes viannent da remportar. 
 
APPENDIX XI 423 
 
 L'anglaig a imaging de la bloquer, de Faffamer, de I'incendier dans 
 868 ports, dans sea Edifices publics ; de dStruire son industrie ; il arm^ 
 tour k tour I'aristocrate centre le patriote, et le patriote contre raristo- 
 crate ; enfin, le peuple contre le peuple, esp6rant que le spectacle de 
 nos troubles 6tera au peuple anglais le courage de d^truire chez 
 lui le despotisme royal. 
 
 PERTE DE PARIS. 
 
 Cest au coeur que les assassins frappent ; c'est sur lea capitales que 
 les conqudrans dirigent leurs coups. On ne pouvait perdre Paris par 
 les arm^ ; ou a voulu perdre Paris par les d^partemens ; on y a semS 
 des terreurs pour le miner par la fuite des propri^taires et des riches ; 
 on a sem6 des id^es de supr^matie, pour sdparer, pour isoler les d^parte- 
 mens de Paris, 
 
 The danger of civil war and vigorous methods for 
 meeting it are the subject of the passages that follow. 
 
 DIVISION DU TERRITOIRE. 
 
 L'anglais enfin a esp^r^ diviser la France pour la morceler ou la 
 miner. Dans son d^lire, il a esp6r6 de voir una monarchie impuisaante 
 sfitablir dans le nord, et des r6publiques misdrables et divia^es se former 
 dans le midi. 
 
 J'ai d6voil6 le gouvernement britannique ; il n'eat plua k craindre. 
 
 Dans un trfea grand nombre de departemens on a proc6di i la 
 r^clusion des personnea notoirement suspectes d'incivisme et soup^on- 
 n^es d'entretenir des intelligences avec les ^migrds et les contre- 
 rfivolutionnairea. On en accuae g^n&alement lea prgtres et les moines, 
 les ^migr^s rentr^s impun^ment sur notre territoire, et les correspondanl 
 qui les soutenaient de leurs fortunes et de leurs eap^rancea. 
 
 On a dfi prendre des meaurea aSvferes, alors que toua les aristocrateg 
 correspondaient k la Vendue, et que des lettres intercept^es annon9aient 
 un rassemblement k Nantes. 
 
 Des arrestations nombreusea ont id Stre la suite de ces mfifiancea, 
 de ces trahiaona diaaeminies dans toute la France ; I'autorit^, dana lea 
 temps de revolution, a plus d'yeux et de bras que d'entrailles ; maia le 
 l^gislateur doit k toua lea citoyens cette justice exacte qui vient rdgt- 
 lariser lea premiers mouvemens et faire statuer sur la liberty indivi- 
 duelle avec lea precautions que les circonstances peuvent admettre. 
 Vous devez abattre ^galement toutes les aristocraties et toutea leg 
 tyrannies ; vous devez approuver vos commisaaires s'Us ont bien fait, 
 
424 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 les blSmer et le3 punir s'ils ont viol6 les droits des citoyens. Le comitS 
 pense que le comit^ de legislation et de slirete gln^rale doivent pro- 
 poser incessamment una loi qui rfegle le mode de jugement de la 
 Wgitimite de ces arrestations, et qui renvoie aux tribunaui les 
 coupables ou laiss&t en r^clusion ceux qui ne sont que notoirement 
 suspects. 
 
 Les d^partement de I'Ain voit I'esprit public se r^tablir parmises 
 habitans. 
 
 La conspiration qui a ^clat^ dans I'Ouest semblait se montrer dans 
 les ddpartemens de I'Ardfeche, du Gard, de la Haute Loire et du Cantal ; 
 mais les administrateurs et vos commissaires sont parvenus k les vi- 
 primer. Ces troubles de la Lozfere ont un earaot^re plus fort ; mais le 
 patriotisme de ce dipartement et de ses voiains y mettra bientSt un 
 terme. 
 
 Les tribunaux ont s^vi contre les coupables ; nous avions craint que 
 vos commissaires n'eussent d^pass^ leurs pouvoirs dans le d^partement 
 de I'Ardfeche, et nous les aurions defire k votre s^vfere justice pour 
 donner I'eiemple de la punition de ceux qu'on aflfecte d'appeler des 
 proconsuls, pour empecher le bien qu'ils peuvent faire ou en em- 
 poisonner les r&ultats ; mais un d^cret avait dijk mis hers de la loi 
 les coupables complices de Defaillant. 
 
 La trabison de Dumouriez que tout annonce avoir en des branches 
 trfes etendus, a 6t6 un trait de lumifere ; elle a frapp6 es administra- 
 tions et les citoyens d'un coup 61ectrique. Tons nos moyens ont 
 centuple par cet ^vfenement destin^ k les paralyser ; mais de tous les 
 maui prepares insensiblement dans les d^partemens frontiferes comma 
 dans le centre, comme au milieu de nous le plus grand, le plus effray- 
 ant par ses progr^s, est la marclie impr^vue des contre-revolutionnaires 
 nobiliares, sacerdotaux et Emigres qui, du fond de la Vendde et du 
 Morbihan remontent la Loire, menacent nos cites de I'interieur, et 
 emploient k la fois, des moyens de terreur et de persuasion. . . . 
 
 Les r^voltes ont plusieurs corps de rassemblement. Le principa 
 qui s'etait port^ k Tbouars, ^tait, suivant les uns, de quinze mille 
 suivant la dernifere relation envoyde pair un de nos commissaires, il 
 6tait de vingt k vingt-cinq mille hommes armds, partie de piques, 
 partie de fusils ; ils trainent avec eux, treize pi&ces de canon, selon 
 les uns, et d'aprfes le dernier succes de Thouars, trente pieces 
 d'artillerie. 
 
 lis sont commandos par des ci-devant nobles et accompagnfe par 
 d§s prfitres ; toutes leurs femmes leur servent d'espions ; ils se battent 
 pour des fiefs et des priferes. Les agriculteurs fanatiques combattent 
 avec fureur et ne pillent pas ; ils composent la moitid de la troupe. 
 
 Un quart est compose de gardes-cbasses, d'dcbappds des galeres et 
 de faux sauniers. lis pillent, devastent, dgorgent, et sont bien dignes 
 de leurs chefs. 
 
APPENDIX XI 425 
 
 L'autre quart est toTmi d'liommes pusillanimea ou indiff^rens, 
 qvie la violence force de marcher, mais qui, k la premifere d6faite des 
 brigands, se retireraient, et forment, pour ainsi dire, la propri^t^ du 
 premier occupant. C'est k la libertd de s'en emparer par des succfes. 
 
 II n'y a que les emigres, les ci-devant, et les pretres qui voudraient 
 mettre de I'ordre dans les rassemblemens, et de laj tactique dans cette 
 guerre. lis paient, les rebelles deux tiers en numeraire. 
 
 Les chefs connua sont les ci-devant de Leseur, Laroche-Jacquelin, 
 Beauchamp, Langrenifere, Delbecq, Baudrd-de-Brochin, Debouill6-Loret, 
 un abb^ appeU Larivifere. Domengd est colonel-g^ndral de la cavalerie ; 
 Demenens et Delbecq commandent I'armfie catholique-royale. 
 
 Le comity a pourvu journellement par des arrStis pressans, i, ce que 
 cette guerre intestine ffit efficacement comprini6e. . . . 
 
 Dej4. I'arm^e s'organise k Tours ; une . oiumission centrale eat 
 Stabile k Saumur ; d^k des troupes de ligne ont depass6 Paris pour s'y 
 rendre, et le renfort considerable que le comity avait requis, est en 
 route pour s'y rendre. Lea voitures des ricliea, lea Equipages du luxe, 
 auront du moina servi une fois k la defense de la patrie et de la liberty. 
 Une armee est dirig^e en poste sur lea rivea de la Loire. Ceat ainsi 
 qu'un des plus fameux guerrieurs du nord alia ^ci'aser en 1757 les 
 autricbiens k la bataille de Liffa ou Leuten, avec une arm^e arivde en 
 poste sur le champ de bataille. . . . 
 
 Le comite prepare un rapport sur les agens p&iodiquea de 1' opinion 
 publique, et sur les arrdtes violateurs de la liberty de la presse. 
 
 Tel est le tableau de I'intSrieur de la r^publique, d'aprfea lea 
 rapports et la correapondance dea commisaairea et des corps adminis- 
 tratifa. Nous devons le terminer par une reflexion sur les commis- 
 saires, dont on cherche trop k eflfrayer les citoyens, et mSme pluaieurs 
 membres de la convention. . . . 
 
 The influence of Cambon is apparent in what follows. 
 
 DES CONTRIBUTIONS PUBLIQUES. 
 
 Quant aux contributions, rien ne prouve mieux le d6air de voir 
 fonder la RopubUque, et de voir renaltre I'ordre social le paiement des 
 impoaitioi. , au milieu dea ruines et de debris de I'ancien gouvernement ; 
 s'il y a de I'arri^r^, ce n'est que par les fautes des administrations qui 
 n'ont pas encore termini la confection des r61es ; quelquea-unea ont 
 8rr8t6 tout envoi de finds. Maia un moyen de aalut public, apparfient 
 k cette partie de I'administration, c'eat de vous occuper sana relache, 
 dea lois concemant les contributions publiques, de Tacc^Uration de la 
 vente dea biena d' Emigres, et dea maisona ci-devant royalea, objets qui 
 semblent encore attendre leurs anciens et coupables posaesaeurs ; et 
 dea moyens de retirer de 1b circulation, une certaine masse d'asaignats. 
 
426 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Vous devez cette loi au peuple, qui a vu a'augmenter par une pro- 
 gression effrayante et ruineuse, le prix des subsistances ; vous le devez 
 i tou8 les cr&inciers de la E6publique et i tous ceux qu'elle salarie, 
 afin de r^tablir la balance rompu trop rapidement, par la masse dnorme 
 de cette monnaie. La portion du peuple qui mdrite avant toutes lea 
 autrea I'attention de ses repr6sentants, est celle qui souffre tous lea 
 jours au surbaussement du prix des denr6es. 
 
 Les contributions indirectea, perjuea au milieu des mouvemens de 
 la revolution, et des defiances sem^ea sur son succ&a, par des mecontens 
 et des ennemiB pnblics, alimentent abondamment le tr^aor national. 
 D^ji dans lea trois demiera mois de Janvier, F^vrier et Mars, la per- 
 ception des impSta indirects excMe de plusieurs millions Festimation 
 qui en a &Ui faite. Le total des trois mois, se porte a 52,182,468 livrea 
 en y comprenant 5,400,000 livres, de 1' adjudication des boia. Que 
 aerace dans un temps de paix et de prosp&itd ! Quelle confiance la 
 R^publique doit avoir de ses forces et de sea moyena ? 
 
 Noua avons vu avec regret, parmi les produits de I'imposition 
 Lndirecte, des droits qui devraient etre inconnus k des peuples libres, 
 des droits de bsltardise et de d^shdrence, et que les sauvages de 
 I'Am^rique repousseraient. 
 
 From henceforward Danton's hand is apparent through- 
 out the report. Some matters on the Constitution and on 
 Public Construction, which have little to do with the insur- 
 rection of June 2nd, have been omitted, but the Dantonian 
 policy of framing a constitution which should reconcile 
 enemies is printed in fuU. 
 
 DES COLONIES. 
 
 Nous ne disons encore rien des colonies, quoique noua ayons reju 
 dea m^moires et des vuea sur cet objet important et malbeureux, 
 d'oti depend la prospirit^ publique, et I'agrandissement de lamarine 
 fran9aise. Peut-Stre edt-il mieux valu de ne pas plus parler dans 
 dans les assemblees nationalea, des colonies que de la religion, jusqu'4 
 ce que la revolution du continent e<it itA ^ son terme. Perfectionner 
 dans ces contries lointaines le commissariat civil, adoucir les effeta 
 du regime militaire, d^truire insensiblement le pr^jug^ des couleurs, 
 am^liurer par des vues sages et des moyens progressifs le sort de 
 I'espece humaine dans ces climats avares, etait peut-etre la mesure 
 la plus convenable ; mais la revolution a fait des progrfes terribles sous 
 ce aoleil briilant. Saint-Domingue est aussi malbeureux que les Ilea 
 dea vents sont redevenues fid&lea, et ses malheurs ne paraissent pas 
 rfea de leur terme. 
 
APPENDIX XI 427 
 
 On ezaminera un jour s'il est des moyens de rattacher lea colonies 
 k la France, par leur propre int^rSt, c'est-i-dire, par la franchise 
 absolue de leur commerce avec nous, et une disposition g^ndrale des 
 droita per^us eur le commerce Stranger, dans ces mSmes colonies. De 
 pareilles lois qui nous d^fendraient mieux que des escadres, demandent 
 d'ltre m&iitte. 
 
 Cette partie de rint£r@t national, doit €tre trait^e sSpar^ment et 
 avec une forte sagesse ; le comitS est charge de preparer en attendant 
 ce rapport, des mesxires propre k diminuer les maux que cette belle 
 colonie sou&e encore. 
 
 DE LA FORCE PUBLIQUE DE L'NT^RIEUR. 
 
 Elle se ressent partout de I'anarchie que rfegne. Lk, elle d^lib6re ; 
 ici, elle agit au gt& des passions. Diss^min^e dans toutes les sections 
 de I'empire, elle semble avoir une versatility de principes et d'actions, 
 qui peut effrayer la liberty. Dans une ville, les citoyens riches et les 
 ^goistea, se font remplacer ; d^fendre sea foyers, semble Stre encore 
 une com6e plutSt qu'un honneur, une charge plutdt qu'un droit. Dans 
 line autre cit^, le service public frappe des artisans pen ais6s ou des 
 ouvriers, qui ont besoin du repos de la nuit, pour le travaU. qui 
 alimente leur famille, il est plus que temps d'effacer ces lignes de 
 demarcation intolerable dans un regime libre. La nature seule a 
 d^crit des differences ; elle est dans les figes ; les jeunes citoyens 
 depuis seize ans jusqu^ 25, sont les premiers que la patrie appelle ; 
 moins occupes et plus disponibles, c'est h. eux de voler aux premiers 
 dangers. Cette premiere force est-elle insuffisante (car U ne faut pas 
 penser k la defection) I'autre ^e plus fort et plus sage, prSsente k la 
 societe ses moyens, c'est I'&ge de 25 & 35 ; la troisi^me classe sera de 
 35 4 45 ; la demifere requisition doit f rapper tout ce qui peut porter 
 les armes. Alors, la soci^tS appeUe k son secours, tons ceux qui parta- 
 gent la souverainetd ; une exception favorable se pr&ente pour les 
 pferes nourrissant leur famille du produit de leur travaiL Une 
 exception contraire doit frapper les ceiibataires et les hommes veufs 
 sans enf ans. 
 
 C'est k la legislation et il la morale k fletrir ceux qui ne paient cette 
 dette ni k la nature ni k la Republique. 
 
 C'est ainsi qu'il convient aux Franfais, d'organiser le droit de 
 requisition. Cet exemple est sorti des besoins de la liberte, dans les 
 terres americaines. La requisition est I'appel de la patrie aux 
 citoyens ; cet appel peut Stre fait par les generaui, quand la loi 
 le leur a confie momentanement, et dans les cas de guerre ; cet appel 
 peut 6tre fait par le pouvoir civil dans toutes les autorites constituees, 
 et encore plus par les assembiees nationales, qui sont k la fois pouvoir 
 c^vil, legislatif et nationaL 
 
428 THE LIFE OF DANTON 
 
 Le comiti a pens^ qu'il devait presenter un mode uniforme, d« 
 r^quferir la force public dans toutes lea partieB de la R^publique, et 
 de la part de toutes les autorites, afin que chaque fonctionnaire et 
 chaque citoyen, connaiase I'^tendue de son pouvoir ou de son obliga- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 D'ailleurs, on trouverait pluaieurs avantages k bomer ainsi la con- 
 stitution aux articles n^cesaairea. 
 
 (1°) Une plus grande eap6rance qu'elle sera accept^e par le peuple. 
 
 (2°) Une plus grande espdrance encore que les citoyens ne deman- 
 deront point si promptement, une rdforme de la constitution. 
 
 (3°) On ditruirait par cette seule resolution, mSme avant que la 
 constitution Mt faite, une partie des eapdrances de nos ennemis, parce 
 qu'alors, ils commenceraient k croire que la Convention donnera une 
 constitution k la France, ce que jusqu'i present ils ne croient paa. 
 
 En effet, il est difficile de ce tromper dans des articles gen^raui 
 importants, sur ce qui convient vdritablement k la nation fran^aise, et 
 I'on n'a paa k craindre ces difficultia, cette presqu' impossibilite d'eidcu- 
 tion qui, ai on ae livre aux d^taila, pourraient faire d^sirer la rSforme 
 d'une conatitution, d'ailleura bien combin^e. 
 
 On pourrait done proposer de bomer la conatitution k cea articles 
 easentiels, dans le nombre desquela on sent que doit §tre compris le 
 mode de reformer la conatitution, loraqu'elle cessera de paraitre, k la 
 majorite dea citoyens, auffiaante pour le maintien de leura droita ; et si 
 I'assembl^e adoptait cet avis, elle cbargerait quatre ou ciuq de sea 
 membres, adjoints au comity de salut public de lui presenter un plan 
 de constitution, borne k ces seuls articles, et combing de mani^re que 
 ces articles puiaaent etre soumia imm^diatement k la discuasion. 
 
 Le travail de ce comite ne prendrait qu'une aemaine, et I'aaaemblde 
 pourrait auivre ses discussions sur la conatitution, car rien ne serait 
 plus facile que de placer dans ce plan, les points d&jk arret^a par la 
 Convention. 
 
 Ce travail meme aerait utile, quand mime I'aaaemblee voudrait se 
 livrer enauite k plus de details : 
 
 (1°) Parcequ'il en r^sulterait un meilleur ordre de discuaaiona ; 
 
 (2°) Parce qu'on aurait toujours alors, un moyen d'accel^rer le 
 travail, selon que dea circonatancea imp6rieuaea I'exigeraient. Ceat 
 d'aprfea cette id^e simple que noua voua proposerona de d6creter que la 
 Convention charge une commiasion, compoa^e de cinq de aea membrea, 
 adjoints au comite de aalut public, de lui presenter dana le plus court 
 d^lai, un plan de conatitution, r^duit aux seula article qu'il importe de 
 rendre irrevocablea par les aaaemblfies Idgialativea, pour assurer k la 
 R6publique son unite, son indivisibility et sa liberty, et au peuple 
 I'exercice de tons ses droits. 
 
 Reprenons done avec Constance le travail de la constitution, et di*- 
 cutona-en le petit nombre d'articlea vraiment conatitutionnela, avec cetts 
 
APPENDIX XI 429 
 
 sagesse qui n'eiclut pas IMnergie, et avec ce talent qui ne fltoisse paa 
 les defiances. 
 
 Songez que le dernier article de la constitution sera le commence- 
 ment du trait6 de paiz avec lea puissances. leur tarde de savoir 
 avec qui eUea peuvent traiter, quelle que soit la forme de notre 
 gouvemement. . . . 
 
 There follows a strong attack upon the Federal idea, 
 showing the Committee to be definitely anti-Girondin in 
 its sociology. 
 
 Mais cette inscription sera-t-elle done toujours mensongdre ? verra- 
 t-on sans cesse, dans le palais de I'unit^, les fureurs de la discorde, et 
 44 mille petites r^publiques 7 agitant leurs dissentions par des repr^- 
 sentans? . . . 
 
 n faut qu'& votre voii, tons les Franjaia ae prononcent, que 
 Wgoiste et I'avare soient fldtris par I'opinion, et punis dans leurs 
 richesses. Ne vous y mdprenez pas, il n'y a plus de gloire et de 
 bonheur pour vous, que dans le succfes de la libertd, dans le rfitablisse- 
 ment de I'ordre, et dans I'affermisaement des proprifit^s. 
 
 V01I4 la base de toutes les soci^t^s politiques, et le l^gislateur 
 qui la mdconnaitra, sera en borreur k ses contemporains et a la 
 nost^ritS. 
 
 II sera aussi exicri le l^gialateur qui aura m^connu les droits du 
 peuple, et qui n'aura pas 6cout6 la plainte des malheureux. 
 
 Si voua perdez cette occasion d'6tablir la r6publique, vous fites tons 
 figalement fl6tris, et pas un de vous n'6chappera aux tyrana victorieui, 
 quelle que soit la nuance de votre opinion ou le principe de vos actions. 
 Le glaive exterminateur frappera les appelans au peuple, et les votana 
 pour la mort du tyran ; et c'est la seule egalit6 que vous aurez fondle. 
 Vos noms ne passeront k la post^rit6 que comme ceui des rebelles et 
 des coupablea : vous aurez reculd le perfectionnement des soci^tes 
 humaines ; vous aurez perdu les droits des peuples, vous aurez fait 
 p^rir 300 mUle hommea, et dilapid6 des tr&ors que la liberte avait 
 d^pos^ dans vos mains pour son aflfermissement ; vous aurez rdtro- 
 grader la raison publique ; vous serez complice de la tyrannie des rois 
 et de la barbarie de I'Europe, et Ton dira de vous ; la convention de 
 France pouvait donner la liberte k I'Europe, mais par ses dissentions, 
 elle riva les feio du peuple, et servit le despotisme par ses haines. . . . 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agriculture, depression of, be- 
 fore Revolution, i6. 
 Amelinau case, Danton's opinion in, 
 
 S'- 
 
 Antoinette, Marie, see "Marie 
 Antoinette." 
 
 Arcis-sur-Aube, Danton born at, 
 lin 1759, 40; position of, 40; 
 effect on Danton's politics, 42 ; 
 visited by Danton in 1791, 148; 
 again in August 1792, 166; last 
 retirement of Danton to, 237. 
 
 Army, condition of, at Valmy, 192 ; 
 Danton's first mission to, 199; 
 second mission, 204; third, 209; 
 position of on Sambre in June 
 1 793, 297 ; of " Sambre et Mouse," 
 298 ; attitude towards Robes- 
 pierre, 299, 300. 
 
 Arnault, witness of Danton's death, 
 278. 
 
 Arrest of D'Eglantine, 246 ; of 
 Hubert, 247 ; of Desmoulins and 
 Danton, 248, 249. 
 
 Artisans, loss of influence of Church 
 on, 21 ; their disfranchisement, 
 22 ; causes of their discontent, the 
 guUd, the octroi, 20; character 
 of before Revolution, numbers, 
 influence of, 19. 
 
 Assembly, National, «e« "States 
 General." 
 
 Bailly, of the professional class, 
 24; opposition of Cordeliers to, 
 82 ; elected mayor of Paris, 112 ; 
 resignation of, 152. 
 
 Barbarian invasions of ninth cen- 
 tury, 13. 
 
 Barentin, de, intimacy with Dan- 
 ton, 51, 60. 
 
 Barrfere, a Bourgeois, 23 ; his action 
 on first committee with Danton, 
 220 ; Report against Robespierre, 
 30s. 306- 
 
 Bastille, fall of, 73-74; effect of 
 this, 78-80. 
 
 Battles, of "Valmy, 192, 193; of 
 Jemappes, 196 ; Neerwinden, 208 ; 
 Turcoign, 293; Fleurus, 298. 
 
 Belgium, Danton proposes annexa- 
 tion of, 204. 
 
 Bourgeoisie or middle class, effect 
 of Revolution on, definition of, 
 22, 23 ; produces most of the 
 revolutionaries, 23. 
 
 Brienne, de, client of Danton's, 51. 
 
 Brissot, draws up petition of Jaco- 
 bins, 146 ; attacKed by Desmou- 
 lins, 226. 
 
 Brunswick, Duke of, his manifesto, 
 161-166; his hesitation, 177. 
 
 Burning at stake in United States, 
 5 ; by Parliament of Strasbourg 
 m 1789, s. 
 
 Cahiers, their nature, 62, 63 ; that 
 of Cordeliers destroyed, 63. 
 
 Camot, a Bourgeois, 23 ; in first 
 Committee of Public Safety, 210 ; 
 Robespierre's attack on, 304. 
 
 Centralisation, of pre-revolntionary 
 France, 10; quality of, 10; be- 
 fore Revolution, examples of, 
 16; pre-revolutionary fails to 
 raise revenue, 26 ; used as a 
 practical engine of reform, rapid 
 raising of armies, 28. 
 
 Charlemame, marks the end of 
 settled Roman order, 12 ; Im- 
 perial tradition of in France, 15. 
 
 Charleroy, stronghold of Cobnrg, 
 297 ; captured, 298. 
 
 Charpentier, his Caf^ des Ecoles; 
 52 ; his daughter marries Dan- 
 ton, Mile., see " Wife." 
 
 Chatelet, impossibility of reform- 
 ing it, 7 ; nature of, 98 ; issue 
 warrant against Marat, 99 ; 
 against Danton, 107. 
 
INDEX 
 
 431 
 
 Church, its loss of power in villages 
 during eighteenth century, 17 ; 
 loss of influence over citizens, 
 21 ; not main cause of egalitar- 
 ian feeling in Fiance, 32 ; inten- 
 tion of making Danton a priest 
 in, 44. 
 
 Cic^, de, Danton as orator of muni- 
 cipal deputation demands resig- 
 nation of, 129, 131. 
 
 Civil constitution of clergy, see 
 "Clergy." 
 
 Class system, vigour of, hefore 
 Kevolution, 16. 
 
 Classes, social, five principal, hefore 
 Revolution, 16. 
 
 Clergy, Danton's defence of, 198; 
 civU constitution of, 118 ; its vast 
 importance, 119, 120; its details, 
 121 ; passes the Assembly, 122 ; 
 Louis ratifies, 123. 
 
 Coburg, his position on Samhre, 
 297 ; is defeated at Fleurus, 298. 
 
 Collot d'Herhois, attacked by Dan- 
 ton in Jacobins, 136; beaten by 
 Danton in election for Substitute 
 Procureur, 152. 
 
 Committee of Public Safety, first, 
 proposed by Isnard, IJantou 
 elected, 210 ; determines over- 
 thiow of Girondins, 223 ; Danton 
 resigns from, 234; Kobespierre 
 elected on, 234; powerful force 
 in winter of 1793, 240 ; deter- 
 mination to continue Terror in 
 spite of Danton, 240 ; abandons 
 Robespierre, 301. 
 
 Commune (before August 1792, see 
 "Municipality"), insurrection- 
 ary of, August 1792, 161 ; in- 
 creases in power, 172 ; Marat 
 joins its "Comit6 de Surveill- 
 ance," 183 ; its quarrel with 
 Gironde, 216-228 ; opposes com- 
 mittee in winter of 1793, 240 ; 
 attacked by Danton, 243; cap- 
 tured by Robespierre, 293 ; at- 
 tempts to save him and faiLs, 
 310-314. 
 Condorcet, of the professional class, 
 24 ; example of balance of two 
 French tendencies, 27 ; demands 
 Republic, 141, 142. 
 Conseils du Rioi, Old Court of 
 Appeals, nature of, 48 ; Danton 
 enters at Bar of, 49. 
 
 Contrat social, written just after 
 Danton's birth, 41. 
 
 Convention, elections of Paris to, 
 Danton elected to, 188 ; its 
 parties, 189 ; its appearance on 
 first meeting, 190 ; declares 
 Republic, 191 ; debate on king's 
 death in, 201, 202 ; votes arrest 
 of Girondins, 202; Legendre 
 defends Danton in, 253 ; St. Just 
 attacks Danton in, 254, 255 ; 
 subservience to Robespierre, 296 ; 
 outlaws him, 307-310. 
 
 Cordeliers, district of, social char- 
 acter, 64 ; position of Convent 
 Hall in, 65 ; meets after elections, 
 importance of this, 69 ; petitions 
 against Danton's arrest, 108 ; 
 merged in section of Th^fttre 
 Fran9ai3, 112. 
 
 Cordeliers, club of, contrasted with 
 Jacobins, 80 ; their numbers and 
 character, 81 ; opposition to new 
 municipality, 82 ; determine on 
 independent use of their guard, 
 83 ; attack municipality again, 
 88, 89 ; create Mandat Imperatif, 
 89 ; manifesto to march on 
 Versailles, 91 ; oppose Lafayette's 
 discipline in National Guard, 93 ; 
 oath of their deputies, 94 ; victory 
 of club over municipality, 96; 
 campaign against restriction of 
 suffrage, 110-113 ; Danton leaves 
 them for Jacobins, 135 ; Republi- 
 can declaration of, onlcing's night, 
 142 ; petition of, on king^s flight, 
 not signed by Danton, 146. 
 
 Cordelier, Vieux, published by 
 Desmoulins to protest against 
 Terror, 244. 
 
 Court, relations of nobles to, 24 ; 
 form party to influence king at 
 Versailles, 85, 86 ; last stand in 
 the TuiUeries, 167, 168. 
 
 Courts of Law, before Revolution, 
 48. 
 
 Couthon, a Bourgeois, 23 ; proposes 
 law on worship of God, 290; 
 supports Robespierre in com- 
 mittee, 303. 
 
 Dannon, his name mistaken for 
 Danton's, Le GaUois's misprint, 
 Michelet's error based on this, 
 200, 201. 
 
432 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Danton, a Bourgeois, 23; very 
 typical of nation, his attitude 
 towards Paris, 36 ; his rise during 
 the war, 37 ; preliminary sum- 
 niavy of Ms career, 35-39 ; fore- 
 runner of Napoleon, 38 ; retire- 
 ment and death, 39 ; horn at 
 Arcis-sur-Aube, 1759, age com- 
 pared with contemporaries, 40 ; 
 effect of birthplace on his 
 politics, 42 ; his father Pro- 
 cureur at Ajcis, 42-43 ; family 
 of, house of, social position of 
 father, death of father, fortune 
 of, his mother and aunts, 43 ; to 
 be made a priest, 44 ; educated 
 by Oratorians, their influence, 
 destined for Bar, 45 ; character 
 as boy, 46 ; coronation of Louis 
 XVI. seen by, 46-47 ; his step- 
 father Recordain, apprenticed to 
 Vinot, solicitor in Paris, called 
 to Bar at Piheims, 47 ; practice 
 in lower courts, 48 ; at bar of 
 Couseils du Roi, 49 ; his Latin 
 oration, 50 ; his opinion in Mont- 
 barey case, Du Barrentin his 
 client, and De Brienne, his 
 income at Bar, 51 ; frequents 
 Charpeiitier's Caf^ des Ecoles, 
 marriage, dowry of wife, 52 ; 
 physical appearance, 53 ; energy, 
 style of oratory, knowled^'a of 
 English and Italian, 54 ; reading, 
 pre -revolutionary politics, 55; 
 private life, 56 ; goes to live in 
 CourduCommeroe, 59 ; Barentin's 
 offer of post to, 60 ; his relation 
 to masonic lodges, 65 ; summary 
 of his condition on outbreak of 
 Revolution, 56-67 ; Primary of 
 his District convened, 68 ; not 
 president of District during 
 elections, 69 ; at Palais Royal, 
 71 ; possibly present at fall of 
 Bastille, 74 ; action night after, 
 clashes with Lafayette, 75 ; in 
 Club of Cordeliers, 8i ; as Presi- 
 dent of Cordeliers attacks Muni- 
 cipality, 88 ; creates Mandat 
 Imperatif, 89 ; placards mani- 
 festo for march on Versailles, 
 $1 ; nature of action supporting 
 Mandat Imperatif, 95 ; his 
 (uccess, 96 ; elected to muni- 
 cipality, 97 J defends Marat, loi- 
 
 107 ; discovers error in warrant 
 against Marat, 102 ; appeals to 
 assembly, 103 ; false effect of 
 his attitude, 104-105 ; sworn in 
 to municipality, 105 ; with 
 Legendre, 106 ; goes in deputa- 
 tion to Louis XVI. , 106 ; warrant 
 for arrest of, issued by Chatelet, 
 107 ; district in his favour, 108 ; 
 his proposition for grand jury, 
 appeal to Assembly, decision in 
 his favour, 109; his policy at 
 close of 1790, 123-125 ; rejected 
 at municipal elections of 1790, 
 125 ; moderation during affair of 
 Nancy, 126 ; rejected as candi- 
 date for Notables, 127 ; orator of 
 city deputation (November 1790), 
 1 28-131 ; elected head of his 
 battalion, 131 ; elected to ad- 
 ministration of city (1791), 132; 
 letter to De la Rochefoucauld, 
 134; appears in Jacobins, 135; 
 attacks Collet d'Halois in 
 Jacobins, 136; speech on death 
 of Mirabeau, 137 ; action on 
 April 18, 1791, Desmoulins' 
 testimony untrustworthy, 138 ; 
 attitude during Louis XVI. 's 
 flight, 140-141 ; attacks Lafayette 
 at Jacobins on king's flight, 
 143-145 ; reads Jacobin petition 
 on Champ de Mars, absence 
 from Cordeliers' manifestation 
 there, 147 ; Lafayette orders 
 arrest of (August 4, 1791), 148; 
 his flight to England, 148-149 ; 
 his return, sent by his section to 
 electoral college, 149 ; attempted 
 arrest of, 150; elected substitute 
 to Procureur of Paris (November 
 1 79 1), 152; his chances of a 
 prosperous municipal career, 
 '55; opposes war policy, 156; 
 speech at Jacobins describing 
 himself, 157; justice of his 
 opposition to war, 158 ; retained 
 on committee of insurrection 
 (July-August, 1792), 161; goes 
 to Arcis to see his mother, :66 ; 
 leads insurrection of August 10, 
 167 ; his position after loth of 
 August, Minister of Justice, 172; 
 his determination to form a 
 strong government after fall of 
 monarchy, only practical man in 
 
INDEX 
 
 433 
 
 executive in August, 1792, 173 ; 
 addresses Assembly as Minister 
 of Justice, his circular to tribu- 
 nals, 17s; defence of himself in 
 the circular, his power over 
 cabinet, 176 ; he and Dumouriez 
 see chance of repelling invasion, 
 177 ; his interview with Roland 
 and ministers on news of invasion 
 reported by Fabre d'Eglautine, 
 180-181 ; his political attitude 
 just before massacres, 182 ; he 
 orders domiciliary visits and 
 collection of arms, 183 ; his 
 speech, the volunteers, its suc- 
 cess, 184 ; why he did not interfere 
 duriug massacres, 185 ; anecdote 
 of him during massacres, his 
 future comment on, 186 ; elected 
 to Convention by Paris, 188 ; 
 his false position in the Moun- 
 tain, accused of planning 
 massacres, 189; his appearance 
 on first meeting of Convention, 
 190 ; resigns Ministry of Justice, 
 191 ; repudiates Marat, 192 ; his 
 diplomacy secures Prussian re- 
 treat after Valmy, 194 ; his atti- 
 tude towards Dumouriez, partial 
 reconciliation with Gironde, 195 ; 
 anecdote of theatre and Madame 
 Roland, of meeting with Marat, 
 196; his reticence after Jemappes, 
 197 ; speech on Catholicism op- 
 posing Cambon, 198 ; attempt to 
 reconcile Girondins in meeting 
 at Sceaux, Guadet's opposition, 
 198-199 ; starts on his first mis- 
 sion to army, 199 ; debates on 
 Louis XVI. 's death, misprint of 
 Danton for Dannon, 200 ; what 
 he reaUy did in the debate, 201 ; 
 unusual violence, 202 ; caused 
 by his wife's illness, 203; inti- 
 macy with Priestley, Talleyrand, 
 his diplomacy spoiled by ms own 
 violence on king's death, de- 
 mands annexation of Belgium, 
 204; second mission to army in 
 Belgium, change of his politics 
 on nis return, despairs of re- 
 conciling Girondins and Paris, 
 205; accounted for by death of 
 his wife, 206 ; his military policy 
 and appeal to Paris, 207 ; creates 
 £«velutionary f^bunal, 208 ; 
 
 violently attacked for his inti- 
 macy with Dumouriez, 209 j 
 supports Isnard's proposal of 
 Great Committee, is named on it, 
 210 ; compared with Mirabeau. 
 213 ; summary of Danton's posi' 
 tion in Committee, as it changes, 
 215 ; his practical policy impos 
 sible with Girondins, 217 ; diffi 
 culty of following his action 
 in April and May, 1793, speech 
 on acquittal of Marat, 218, 219 ; 
 curious action half in favour of 
 Girondins, proposes committee 
 of twelve through Barr^re, 220; 
 but prevents formation of special 
 guard, 221 ; Danton, through 
 the Committee, overthrows the 
 Gironde, 226; his phrase with 
 regard to Girondins, 227 ; his 
 difficulty in controlling forces 
 after June 2, 1793, 228 ; begins 
 to lose his power, 229 ; still 
 retains enough power at end of 
 June to produce Constitution, 
 230 ; and to persuade Convention 
 to his policy, his second marriage, 
 231 ; reasons for it, he loses 
 power still more iu July, 232 ; 
 puts his name reluctantly to 
 St. Just's report attacking 
 fallen Girondins, he resigns his 
 place on Committee, 234 ; his 
 brilliancy whilst standing alone, 
 great speeches in August, on 
 army, on strengthening govern- 
 ment, 23s ; his despair and ill- 
 ness, Garat's interview with him, 
 Desmoulins, 236 ; retires to his 
 home at Arcis, 237 ; his rest at 
 Arcis, its effects, 237-240 ; regret 
 for execution of Girondins, re- 
 turns to the Convention, 239 ; 
 his new politics against the 
 Terror, 241, 242 ; his defence of 
 religious liberty and attack on 
 Commune, 243 ; Robespierre de- 
 fends him in Jacobins, Desmou- 
 lins helps him, publication of 
 "Vieux Cordelier," 244-245 ; his 
 first check, D'Eglantine arrested, 
 he knows his attempt has failed, 
 
 246 ; still speaks in Convention, 
 last interview with Robespierre, 
 
 247 ; Panis comes to warn him, 
 lie is arrested, 248 ; his trial 
 
 2 £ 
 
434 
 
 INDEX 
 
 and death, 249-281 ; taken to the 
 Luxembourg with DesmonlinB, 
 meets Paine, 249; policy of his 
 defence, of Committee, 251, 252 ; 
 Legendre defends Danton in 
 Convention, 243; St. Just's re- 
 port and vote against Danton, 
 254-255 ; his remarks in the 
 prison, 250, 257, 258 ; trial be- 
 gins, 259; fear of an armed 
 attempt to save him, his reply 
 to the judges, 261 ; charges 
 against Danton, 262 ; Wester- 
 mann's replies, 263 ; Danton's 
 speech in his own defence, 264, 
 265, 266 ; collusion of judge and 
 prosecutor, 267 ; H^rault's de- 
 fence, 268 ; judge and prose- 
 cutor appeal to Convention, 269 ; 
 St. Just's second speech to 
 Convention against Danton, 270 ; 
 Billand - Varennis, 271 ; taken 
 back to Conciergerie, condemned, 
 his action in prison, 272 ; passage 
 to guillotine, 273-279 ; passes 
 David, 275 ; passes house of 
 Duplay and Robespierre's win- 
 dow, 276 ; he rallies Fabre 
 d'Eglantine, 277 ; rhymes sold 
 in Paris same night, 278 ; his 
 execution, 279-281 ; effects of his 
 death, 282, 283, 284 ; contrasted 
 with Robespierre, 285. 
 Danton, Madame, see " Wife." 
 David, artist, portrait of Danton 
 (frontispiece), animosity against 
 Danton, 271 ; sketches the con- 
 demned, 275 ; false promise to 
 Robespierre, 307. 
 De Barentin, see " Barentin." 
 De Brienne, see " Brienne." 
 De Cic6, see "Cic^." 
 D'Eglantine, see " Fabre." 
 De S^chelles, see "Hdrault." 
 Decree of Dec. 1788, elections, 61. 
 Desmonlins, Camille, house in Cour 
 du Commerce, 59: brings news 
 of Necker's dismissal, 73 ; mem- 
 ber of Cordeliers, 81 ; testimony 
 as to Danton's action on April 
 18, 1791, 138 ; Danton sleeps in 
 his flat before insurrection of 
 Aug. 10, 1792, 167 ; his "Histoire 
 des Brissottins," allied to Robea- 
 pierre, 226; publishes " Vienx 
 Cordelier," 244 ; arrested, 249 ; 
 
 his answer to his judges, 261 ; 
 his examination in court, 268; 
 tears up his written defence, 271 ; 
 his frenzy going to guillotine, 
 275, 276 ; his death, 279. 
 
 Districts, Paris divided into sixty, 
 64. 
 
 District of Cordeliers, see " Corde- 
 liers." 
 
 Duke of Brunswick, see "Bruns- 
 wick." 
 
 Dumouriez, outflanked before 
 Vahny, 192 ; fears to attack, 
 193 ; his political motives, his 
 work with Danton after Valmy, 
 194, 195 ; incident in theatre with 
 Danton, 195, 196 ; treason of, 
 209 ; Danton attacked for friend- 
 ship with, 209, 210. 
 
 Education, French, effect of, due 
 to Jesuits, 45 ; effect of on Robes- 
 pierre and Desmoulins, 46 ; of 
 Danton, 44-47. 
 
 EgaUtd elected for Paris, 188. 
 
 Eglantine, d', see " Fabre." 
 
 Elections to, States General decreed, 
 61 ; to first municipality, elected 
 by Cordeliers, 88 ; of priests and 
 bishops, 121 ; to Legislative, 150; 
 of Paris to Convention, 188; of 
 Danton, Bailly, &c., see under 
 their names. 
 
 England, Danton's flight to, 148, 
 
 English constitution, flexibility of, 
 6 ; its vices described by Marat, 
 104. 
 
 English language, Danton's ac- 
 quaintance with, 54, 249. 
 
 English society, homogeneity of in 
 eighteenth century contrasted 
 with the Continent, 73. 
 
 Fabre D'EGLANTiNE,poet, member 
 of Cordeliers, 81 ; escorts officers 
 of Chatelet through mob, 103 ; 
 reports Danton's interview with 
 otherministers, 180, 181 ; arrested, 
 246 ; trial of with Danton, 249- 
 272; his luxury in piison, 272; 
 his illness and despair on way to 
 guillotine, 274, 275 ; his "Maltese 
 orange," 276 ; rhymes on him and 
 Danton, 278. 
 
 Fear, see " Great" 
 
INDEX 
 
 435 
 
 Feudalism, founded in troubles of 
 ninth century, 13 ; fall of, in 
 July, August, 1789, 83-85. 
 
 Feuillants, club of, represents 
 Lafayette's supporters in Legis- 
 lative, 151. 
 
 Flanders, regiment of, arrives to 
 strengthen court in 1789, 90. 
 
 Fleurus, battle of, 298. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville, public prose- 
 cutor, his action in Danton's 
 trial, 267-271. 
 
 France, centralisation of, before 
 Revolution, 10; egaUtarianismin, 
 is not due to Roman law or 
 Church, 32 ; material state of, 
 prior to Revolution, 10 ; before 
 Revolution, character of centrali- 
 sation in, 1 1 ; imperial tradition 
 in, 16 ; origins of social constitu- 
 tion in, 12 ; speciaUy suited to 
 growth of Roman law, 15 ; Paris 
 the bond of, 31 ; re-made by the 
 Revolution, 35 ; effect of Rousseau 
 upon, 28, 29; united by mon- 
 archy, led by Paris as the king's 
 town, 33. 
 
 Franjais, Theatre, see " Section." 
 
 Franchise, loss of, by artisans, 21, 
 22. 
 
 French, character of, in pursuing 
 political theories, 26, 27, 28, 29 ; 
 courts of law, nature in Ancienne 
 Regime, 48 ; education, effect of 
 Jesuit influence on, 45 ; educa- 
 tion, effect of on Robespierre and 
 Desmoulins, Danton's speech on, 
 46 ; peasantry, owners of land 
 before Revolution, 18 ; peasantry, 
 effect of Revolution on, 18; 
 peasantry, condition before Re- 
 volution, 17 ; village community, 
 decay of, in eighteenth century, 
 18; loss of Church in, 17; nobility, 
 origin of, as a definite class in 
 ninth century, 13. 
 
 French Revolution, see "Revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 Garat, his interview with Danton, 
 236, 237. 
 
 Garran Coulon, Danton's return 
 from England on election of, 149. 
 
 Girondins, represent the profes- 
 sional class, 24; declare war, 
 15-18; opposition to Danton 
 
 from the beginning of the Con- 
 vention, 192 ; momentary recon- 
 ciliation with, 195, 196; failure 
 of, meeting at Sceaux, Guadet 
 rejects him, 199; outbreak of 
 quarrel with Paris, 208 ; expul- 
 sion of, 216-228; description of 
 their character, excess of ideal- 
 ism, unworkable with Danton's 
 practical policy, 817 ; their mis- 
 government, opposition of Paris, 
 218 ; bad news from Vendee 
 weakens them in May 1793, 219 ; 
 Isnard's menace to Paris, 212 ; 
 firmness during attack, Lan- 
 juinais' proposal to "break the 
 Commune," 221 ; vote of the 
 twenty-nine arrests, 222 ; con- 
 fusion of their fall to be explained 
 by great Committee, 223 ; Dan- 
 ton's phrase concerning, 227 ; 
 Vergniaud and Guadet attacked 
 in St. Just's report, 234 ; Danton's 
 pity for, 236, 239. 
 
 Gobel, schismatic Bishop of Paris, 
 trial under Robespierre, 291. 
 
 Great fear, peasants' rising destroys 
 feudality, 83, 84. 
 
 Guadet, Girondin, rejects Danton 
 at Sceaux, 199 ; St. Just's report 
 on, 234. 
 
 Guard, National, see "National 
 Guard." 
 
 Guard, Swiss, their defence of the 
 Tuilieries, 166-169 ; demand for 
 vengeance against, by Parisians, 
 179 ; special, proposed for the 
 Convention, 191 ; weak demand 
 for, by Girondins, 220. 
 
 HUBERT, member of the CordeUeis, 
 81 ; his character, 220; with 
 Commune against Committee in 
 winter, 1793, 240; Danton's op- 
 position to his religious perse- 
 cution, 243 ; his arrest and 
 execution, 247. 
 
 Henriot, illegally given command 
 of the city forces by the Com- 
 mune, 219 ; at head of attack of 
 Convention, 221, 222; note sent 
 to, by Committee on Danton's 
 trial, to prevent a rescue, 261 ; 
 attempt to save Robespierre, 311. 
 
 H^rault de S^chelles, present at 
 taking of Bastille, 74 ; added to 
 
436 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Committee, 229 ; expelled from 
 
 Committee, 247 ; trial of, 268, 269; 
 
 his death, 279. 
 Herbois, d', CoUot, see " CoUot." 
 Herman, judge at Danton's trial, 
 
 260-271. 
 
 Income, of Danton at Bar, esti- 
 mated, 51. 
 
 Institution, the, importance of, to 
 France, 211, 213; provided by 
 the Committee, 214. 
 
 Insurrection, of July 14,1789,72,74; 
 of August 10, 1792, 166, 170; of 
 June 2, 1793, 221, 222 ; attempted 
 to save Robespierre, 311, 313. 
 
 Invasions, siege of Verdun by 
 Brunswick, 177 ; Beaurepaire's 
 suicide, capitulation of Verdun, 
 ferment in Paris, 178 ; causes 
 massacre of September, 180; 
 Vahny, 192, 193 ; Jemappes, 
 196 ; defeat of Neerwinden, 
 1793, allies cross the Rhine, 
 Alps, and Pyrenees, take Valen- 
 ciennes, 233 ; Turcoign, 293 ; 
 battle of Fleurus, 298. 
 
 Isnard, Girondin, proposes Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety, 210 ; his 
 threat to destroy Paris, 221. 
 
 Jacobins, character of, 135 ; Dan- 
 ton's speech in, on death of 
 Mirabeau, 137 ; Danton attacks 
 Lafayette in, 143, 145 ; moderate 
 petition of, to Assembly on 
 king's flight, 146 ; read by Dan- 
 ton in Champs de Mars, 147 ; 
 joined by radicals in Legislative, 
 151 ; debate on war, 155, 156; 
 Robespierre reads his last speech 
 in, 307 ; Legendre closes, 312. 
 
 Jema]ipes, battle of, 196. 
 
 Judge, in Danton's trial, see " Her- 
 man." 
 
 Just, St., see " St. Just." 
 
 Justice, Ministry of, Danton put 
 into, 172; his circular from, 175, 
 176. 
 
 Kersaint, associated with Danton 
 at period of the flight of the 
 king, present at interview of 
 Danton with other ministers in 
 August, 1793, he believes that 
 Brunswick will reach Paris, 181. 
 
 King, see " Louis." 
 
 Lafayette, a seceding noble, 25 ; 
 first clash with Danton, 75 ; op- 
 position of Cordeliers to, 82 ; 
 follows the mob to Versailles, 
 91 ; his discipline of National 
 Guard opposed by Cordeliers, 93 ; 
 sends National Guard to arrest 
 Marat, loi ; attacked by Danton 
 on flight of the king, 143, 145 ; 
 his accusation of Danton's ven- 
 ality, 145 ; his massacre of the 
 Champs de Mars, 147 ; again 
 attacked by Danton, 159 ; 
 threatens civil war, 160. 
 
 Law, Roman, twelfth century, re- 
 naissance of, study of, rise of the 
 universities, 14. 
 
 Courts in France, Conaeils du 
 
 Roi, 48. 
 
 Lawyers, action of, in preventing 
 reform, 4 ; become conservative 
 as a body, 18. 
 
 Legendre, a Bourgeois, 25 ; a 
 member of the Cordeliers, 8i ; 
 defends Danton before the Con- 
 vention, 243 ; shuts the Jacobins, 
 312. 
 
 Legislative, elections to, 150; re- 
 conciliation with monarchy, 150, 
 151 ; parties in, 151 ; Lafayette's 
 letter to, 159; receives the Royal 
 Family, 168 ; quarrels with Com- 
 mune just before massacres, 183; 
 Danton's great speech in, 184; 
 close of, 188. 
 
 Louis XVI., age of, compared with 
 Danton, 40 ; his coronation seen 
 by Danton, 46 ; his attitude to 
 Assembly, 85 ; his character, 86 ; 
 brought Dack to Paris from Ver- 
 sailles by mob, 91 ; his attitude 
 after this, 92 ; thanks presented 
 to, by Danton, 106 ; accepts Civil 
 Constitution of clergy, 123 ; lost 
 by death of Mirabeau, 137 ; his 
 attempt to go to St. Cloud, 137 ; 
 effect of his flight, 139, 140; de- 
 pends on success of August 10 to 
 receive allies, 168 ; takes refuge 
 in Parliament, 168 ; his secret 
 payments, 1 79 ; execution of, 
 202 ; effect of, on America, 203. 
 
 Mandat Imperatif, 89, 95. 
 
 head of National Guard, big 
 
 death, 167. 
 
INDEX 
 
 437 
 
 Manifesto of Brunswick, see "Bruns- 
 wick." 
 
 Manor or village community alone 
 survives ninth century, 13 ; its 
 survival and power, 14. 
 
 Manorial relations, their decay, 5. 
 
 Manuel, Danton's chief in munici- 
 pality of 1791, 153. 
 
 Marat, a Bourgeois, 23 ; incident 
 of, 97-104 ; nis character, 98 ; 
 warrant for arrest of, 99 ; Na- 
 tional Guard sent to arrest, 100 ; 
 importance of issues involved, 
 Lafayette's action, lor ; defended 
 by Danton at Bar of Assembly, 
 103 ; his escape, 104 ; elected to 
 " Comity de Surveillance " before 
 massacres, 183 ; puts Roland on 
 his list of proscribed, 187 ; his 
 appearance in the Convention, 
 192 ; accused by Girondins, ac- 
 quitted, 218; stabbed by Char- 
 lotte Corday, growth of TeiTor, 
 233. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, age of compared 
 with Danton, 40 ; forms a court 
 party against the Parliament, 
 85 ; power over Louis after Mira- 
 beau's death, 137 ; her deter- 
 mination to hold the Tuilleries, 
 167 ; she alone realises the 
 fall of the monarchy, 169 ; 
 effect of her death on Dan- 
 ton, 241 ; her shocking trial and 
 its influence on Danton, 242. 
 
 Marseillais, their march on Paris, 
 160. 
 
 Marseillaise, 160. 
 
 Massacres of September, 178, 187 ; 
 precipitated by Montmorin's ac- 
 quittal, 179 ; refusal of National 
 Guard to interfere, 180; Danton 
 keeps Ministers at their posts 
 just before, 181 ; the Comity de 
 Surveillance joined by Marat, 
 183; begin at the Carmes, 184; 
 causes of Danton's neutrality 
 during, 185-187 ; close of the 
 massacres, 188 ; effect of on 
 politics, 189. 
 
 Medieval Reform, continuity of, 
 3 ; failure of after fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 4. 
 
 Middle class, see "Bourgeoisie." 
 
 Mirabeau, age of compared with 
 Danton, 40; calls August 4 
 
 "an orgy," 84; his reasons for 
 supporting the "Civil Constitu- 
 tion of the clergy," 121 ; death 
 of, 136 ; Danton's sympathy 
 with, and speech on death of, 
 137; compared with Danton, 213, 
 
 Monarchy, French, causes Paris to 
 become head of towns, realises 
 national unity, 33 ; character of 
 just before Revolution, 11 ; 
 clogged by local survivals, 12 ; 
 election of Hugh Capet, 14 ; 
 examples of pre-revolutionary 
 centralisation in, 16 ; gradually 
 ceases to be national, 15 ; origins 
 of its action, 12 ; reaches power 
 through local institutions, 15 ; 
 why it could not reform, 12 ; 
 Danton's attitude towards in 
 crisis of the king's flight, 140- 
 145; the fall of, 169, 170; im- 
 portance of, evident after fall, 
 171. 
 
 Montmorin, evidence of Danton's 
 venality quoted by Lafayette in 
 Memoirs, really a receipt for 
 Danton's reimbursement, 145. 
 
 Lucien de, acquittal of, hurries 
 
 on massacres of September, 179, 
 180. 
 
 Mountain, party of Paris in the 
 Convention, Danton's false posi- 
 tion in, 1 89 ; appearance of 
 members of, 190; attacked by 
 Robespierre, 300. 
 
 Municipal, system of France, 32, 
 33 ; Revolution, 79. 
 
 Municipality, of Paris, first insur- 
 rectionary, 76 ; its weakness, 77 ; 
 reconstitution of, 87, 88 ; quarrel 
 with Cordeliers, 93-97, 110-113; 
 Danton elected to, 105-106 ; 
 Baill^ elected mayor of, 124; 
 petitions against ministers, 129- 
 131 ; insurrectionary Commime 
 plot against, 161 ; dissolved by 
 insurrectionary Commune, i66 ; 
 (after Aug. 10, 1792, see "Com- 
 mune "). 
 
 Nancy, affair of, Danton's mode- 
 rate action, 126. 
 
 Nationality, differentiation of, in 
 niuth century, 13. 
 
 National Guard, formed, 77 ; La- 
 fayette's plan of, 83 ; Danton 
 
438 
 
 INDEX 
 
 elected head of his battalion, 131 ; 
 clash with people, 126; divided 
 on April 18, 137 ; fire on 
 
 Seople in Champ de Mars, 147 ; 
 ivided on Aug. 10, 160 ; Santerre 
 put at head of by Danton, 167 ; 
 refuse to interfere with mas- 
 sacrea, 187 ; Henriot succeeds 
 Boulanger at head of, 219 ; 
 attack Convention, 221, 222; do 
 not rise for Robespierre, 213. 
 
 Necker, position of, in 1789, his 
 dismissal, 73. 
 
 Nobles, origin of, as a definite 
 class in France in ninth century, 
 13 ; great numbers of, definition, 
 relation to court, place in Re- 
 volution, 24 ; poverty of, did not 
 at first oppose reform, 25 ; why 
 they could not rule France, 32. 
 
 Notables, Danton rejected as 
 candidate for, 127. 
 
 Octroi, effect on artisans, 20. 
 Oratorians, educated principal 
 
 revolutionaries, 45. 
 Osselin, his courage after Mont- 
 
 morin's acquittal, 180. 
 
 Paine, named in Committee with 
 Danton, 197 ; meets Danton in 
 prison, 249. 
 
 Panis, warns Danton before hia 
 arrest, 248. 
 
 Paris, the bond of France, 31 ; 
 cause of headship, eflect of Re- 
 volution on, 30, 31 ; head of 
 urban system because seat of 
 monarchy, 33 ; makes Danton's 
 career, 58 ; first elections in, 69 ; 
 solidarity of, in early Revolution, 
 70 ; provisional government dur- 
 ing attack on Bastille, 76 ; 
 organises National Guard, 77 ; 
 model of municipal movement 
 in France, 79 ; restriction of 
 suffrage in, no; restrained by 
 Assembly, in; Bailly elected 
 mayor of, 112; effect of muni- 
 cipal system on, 1 14 ; petitions 
 for dismissal of ministers, 129 ; 
 effect of king's flight on, 141 ; 
 Potion, elected mayor of, 152; 
 anger at first disasters of war, 
 158; effect of Brunswick's mani- 
 festo on, 161 ; ferment on news 
 
 of invasion, 178 ; clamours 
 against arrested monarchists, 
 179; Danton will not oppose, 
 182 ; anarchy in, during mas- 
 sacres, 187 ; elections to the Con- 
 vention in, 188; eulogy of by 
 Danton, 191 ; anger against 
 Girondins, 208 ; conflict of, with 
 Girondins, 217; Isnard's threats 
 against, 221 ; used by Committee 
 to expel the Gironde, 223 ; re- 
 fuses to rise for Robespierre, 313. 
 
 Parliament of Paris, nature of, 48. 
 
 Parliaments (representative), see 
 "States GeneraX" "Legislative," 
 " Convention." 
 
 Peasantry, French, condition of, 
 before Revolution, 17 ; owner- 
 ship of land by, before the Re- 
 volution, 18 ; effect of Revolu- 
 tion on, 18. 
 
 Potion, elected mayor of Paris, 
 152 ; unable to interfere with 
 the massacres, 187 ; gets some 
 hold on the city at their close, 
 188 ; attempt of Danton to get 
 him elected for Paris, 189 ; 
 named on Committee with Dan- 
 ton, 197. 
 
 Petition, of municipality against 
 ministers, 109 ; or Jacobins on 
 king's flight, 146 ; of Cordeliers, 
 147 ; Pitt, his reforms, 6. 
 
 Priestley, Danton's relations with, 
 149, 204. 
 
 Procureur, definition of the office 
 in the old regime, 42, 43 ; of 
 Paris, during Revolution, 153 ; 
 Danton elected substitute to, 
 
 Professional class, its character, 
 numbers, constitution, 24. 
 
 Recokdain, stepfather of Danton, 
 
 47- 
 
 Reform, mediaeval, continuity of, 
 3 ; action of lawyers in prevent- 
 ing failure of, after fifteenth 
 century, 4 ; Pitt's attempt at, 6 ; 
 impossibility on Continent, 7 ; 
 impossible to French monarchy, 
 12 ; its rapidity helped by cen- 
 tralisation, 28. 
 
 Religious liberty, Danton's speech 
 in favour of, 243. 
 
 Republic, not originated by Dan- 
 
INDEX 
 
 439 
 
 ton, 140; demanded by Oondorcet, 
 141, 142 ; declared by Convention, 
 181. 
 
 Revolution, French, nature of, i, 
 2 ; necessity for, on Continent, 
 7 ; its violence, 8 ; questions 
 raised by, 9 ; material causes of, 
 10 ; main causes not economic, 
 II ; classes it dealt with, 16 ; it 
 revives religion in villages, 17 ; 
 effect on peasantry, 18; on arti- 
 sans, 19, 20, 21 ; on Bourgeois, 
 22 ; on professionals and nobles, 
 24 ; theory of, 26 ; effect of 
 Kousseau on, 28, 29 ; place of 
 Paris in, 30 ; summary of politics 
 at outset of, 34 ; its task, the 
 re-creation of France, 35 ; two 
 periods of, 117, 118 ; transforma- 
 tion of, in 1790, 114, 123; sum- 
 mary of its results, 314-318. 
 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, created by 
 Danton, 208 ; Marat acquitted 
 by, 218 ; Hubert tried by, 245 ; 
 Danton tried by, 249-272 ; en- 
 slaved by Robespierre, 295. 
 
 Robespierre, a Bourgeois, 23 ; age 
 of, 40 ; effect of education on, 46 ; 
 joins Committee of Public Safety, 
 234 ; his position in winter of 
 1793, clash with Danton, 241 ; 
 last interview with Danton, 247 ; 
 speaks against Danton in Con- 
 vention, 253 ; demonstration of 
 condemned before his house, 276 ; 
 his character, 285 ; hia aims, 286 ; 
 his misreading of Rousseau, 287 ; 
 causes of his ascendency, 288- 
 290 ; abandons Danton's diplo- 
 macy, 292; heads feast of Supreme 
 Being, 294 ; proposes virtual abo- 
 lition of trials, 295 ; destroys in- 
 dependence of Convention, 296 ; 
 attacks Mountain, 300 ; aban- 
 doned by Committee, 301 ; causes 
 of his fall, 302-304 ; his last 
 ^eech, 306-307 ; outlawed by 
 (>)nvention, 309-310; his last 
 rally and execution, 310-314. 
 
 Roland, a professional, 24 ; Dan- 
 ton's power over, in August 1792, 
 interview with, in garden of 
 ministry, 180-18 1 ; calls on San- 
 terre to stop the massacres, 187 ; 
 prosecuted, 222, 
 
 Madame, her hatred for Dan- 
 
 ton, 176 ; she rejects his over- 
 tures to Girondins, 196. 
 
 Roman Law, its fundamental ideas 
 of ownership and sovereignty, 
 14 ; suited to France, 15 ; not 
 main cause of egalitarian feeling 
 in France, 32. 
 
 Rome, transformation of her sys- 
 tem in ninth century, 12 ; the 
 origin of French urban system, 
 
 32- 
 
 Rousseau, his effect on France, 28, 
 29 ; his genius and deficiencies, 
 29 ; his faith the source of his 
 power, essentially a reactionary, 
 29, 30 ; Robespierre's view of ms 
 system, 286, 287. 
 
 Rousselin, our authority for Dan- 
 ton's boyhood, 46. 
 
 Saint Just, age of, compared with 
 Danton, 40 ; joins great Com- 
 mittee, 229 ; report on Girondins, 
 234 ; speech against Danton, 
 254-255 ; second speech against 
 Danton, 270 ; proposal for bring- 
 ing prisoners to Paris, 292 ; with 
 army on Sambre, 297 ; fails to 
 warn Robespierre, 299 ; outlawed 
 with Robespierre, 310 ; joins 
 Robespierre at Hotel de Ville, 
 3"- 
 
 St. Priest, his dismissal demanded 
 by Paris, 128-131. 
 
 Santerre, a Bourgeois, 23 ; in the 
 attack on TuiUeries, 161, 167 ; 
 fails to call out Kational Guard 
 during massacres, 187. 
 
 Sections, replace districts of Paris, 
 forty-eight in number, 112; Dan- 
 ton demands force to be raised 
 from, 207 ; convened by Robes- 
 pierrians in Thermidor, 311. 
 
 Section du Th^tre Fran§ais, re- 
 places Cordeliers, 112; battalion 
 of, Danton elected commander, 
 131 ; of Mauconseil begins agi- 
 tation against ministry, 129; 
 begin insurrection of August 
 1792, 161. 
 
 September, see " Massacres ol" 
 
 Social divisions, five principal, 
 before Revolution, 10. 
 
 Stake, burning at, in United States, 
 by ParUament of Strasbourg in 
 1789. S- 
 
44 o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 States General (or National 
 Assembly), term Assembly first 
 used, 26 ; elections to, in Paris, 
 68 ; reaction against, in early 
 1789, 72 ; success of, after fall of 
 Bastille, 78 ; night of August 4 
 in, 85 ; queen forms party 
 against, political attitude of Louis 
 towards, 85 ; plotted against, by 
 court, 90 ; come to Paris, 91 ; 
 appealed to, in Marat incident, 
 103 ; action to restrain Paiis, 
 III; establish Civil Constitution 
 of clergy, 120-123 ; debate on 
 petition of Paris, 130-132 ; in- 
 decision of, on king's flight, 146. 
 
 Suffrage, see " Franchise." 
 
 Talleykand, Danton meets, at 
 municipality, ^vrites letter to 
 Louis, 138 ; connected with 
 Dan ton's diplomacy, opposes 
 Cbauvelin in Loudon, 204. 
 
 Taxes, failure of, before Revolution, 
 26. 
 
 Thermidor, attempted insurrection 
 to save Robespierre in, 310- 
 314- 
 
 Tour du Pin, La, dismissal de- 
 manded, 128-131. 
 
 Towns, nuclei of France, 36 j con- 
 dition of small, 46. 
 Turcoign, battle of, 283. 
 
 VekgniAud, orator of Girondins, 
 understands Danton, 192 ; present 
 at incident in theatre, 196 ; his 
 simile in king's trial, 202 ; ex- 
 planation of his vote, 203 ; bis 
 oratory, 217 ; prosecuted by Con- 
 vention, 222 ; St. Just's report 
 against, 234 ; Danton's regret for, 
 242. 
 
 Versailles, Cordeliers' manifesto for 
 march on, 91 ; king brought back 
 to Paris from, 91. 
 
 Village community, French, decay 
 of, loss of religion in, 17. 
 
 Vinot, solicitor in Paris, Danton 
 apprenticed to, 47. 
 
 Wife, of Denton, first ( Charpentier) 
 married, his devotion to her, 52 ; 
 her illness and its effect on 
 Danton, 201, 203 ; her death, its 
 effect on Danton, he exhumes 
 her body, 206; second (Gfly) 
 married, 232. 
 
 Young, Arthur, his comments on 
 pre-revolutionary France, la 
 
 THE EKO