Madame Roland (Blind 1886)/Chapter 16
FLING US INTO THE ABYSS.
On a freezing day of January took place the execution of Louis XVI. His death, as subsequent events amply proved, did not help to cement the future stability of the Republic. Better to have followed the opinion of Condorcet and many of the Girondins, and have sent him into banishment. You can decapitate a man, but not a principle, and the King dead there will still be the cry of "Long live the King!" The founders of liberty, instead of imitating the methods of despotism, should have left something, as Danton said at a later stage, to the guillotine of opinion. Force begets force, and violence violence: here lies the justification of Marat, Robespierre, Saint Just, Tallien, and the most furious of the Cordeliers. But were this the only law mankind would be revolving in a vicious circle of retribution. The apostles of humanitarian principles should have taken their stand on a higher platform, and have cast a veil over wrongs never to be righted by fresh wrongs in a new direction.
Vergniaud, in replying to Robespierre's denunciation of the Girondins, gave the loftiest interpretation to the principles which his party represented. "We are called Moderates," said he, "and for whose benefit? If for that of the emigrants, was it not we who voted the enactment of those rigorous measures which justice demanded? . . . Some men make patriotism consist in tormenting others, in causing the shedding of tears. I desired that men should be rendered happy by it. I did not think that, like those priests and inquisitors who only speak of their God of mercy at the stake, we should speak of liberty in the midst of dangers and executioners. . . . They believe in consolidating the Revolution by terror; I was fain to see her consolidated by love."
Madame Roland's letter to Servan shows how perilous their position was already by the end of 1792, the first year of the Republic. Champagneux describes the continual harassing anxieties of his friend during these last months of her husband's ministry. Every day brought fresh attacks, and every night warnings of intended assassinations. The leading Girondins constantly sought refuge in the house of friends; Madame Roland alone scorned all precautions. Braver than the bravest, if die she must she would die at her post. Once, at her friends' entreaties, she had almost consented to leave the exposed situation at her official dwelling; and, some disguise being required, she assumed the dress of a peasant woman; but the bystanders objecting to her head-gear as not clumsy enough, she snatched it from her head, flung it away, and declared she would not proceed with this unworthy masquerade. "I am ashamed," cried she, "at the part you wish me to play; I will neither disguise myself nor go hence. If they wish to assassinate me, let it be at my own home. I ought to set this example of firmness, and I will."
From this day till Roland tendered his resignation his wife never left the house. Prepared for the worst, she always slept with a loaded pistol within reach, not for purposes of attack or defence, but to guard herself from outrages worse than death.
Careless for herself, or, more properly speaking, feeling it her duty to remain, Madame Roland was very anxious to know her daughter in safety. Eudora, now between twelve and thirteen, was a gentle, blue-eyed girl, whose abundant hair fell in fair clusters about her shoulders. She lacked her mother's passionate mental energy, and appeared by contrast of a cold, unimpressionable temperament, which made the idea of having to entrust her to others less bitter than it would otherwise have been. The parents decided to send her to Roland's elder brother under the charge of a Mademoiselle Mignot, her instructress. But when it came to the point other counsels prevailed; it was judged even more hazardous to send Eudora to the country than to know her under her mother's protection. The time-serving woman in whom Madame Roland would have reposed so great a trust, and for whose old age she had tried to provide, left as soon as Roland retired from office, to reappear on the trial of his wife, when her deposition against her former mistress served to give a shadow of plausibility to some of the charges in the indictment. Roland resigned his post of Minister of the Interior on the 22nd of January, the dey following that of the execution of Louis XVI. No invitations poured in now pressing him to remain in office. Highly as the Gironde valued his services and integrity, its own grim struggle for existence engrossed it completely.
Roland, in fact, had become a source of weakness instead of strength to it. The partisans of the Commune had made him the special mark of their malignity. His persistency in exhorting the municipal officers to render their accounts, in charging them and Danton with peculations, in informing the Convention of the crimes and excesses daily committed by the pilfering of shops, the street-robberies, the expulsion of public functionaries, and the decrees of the Assembly set at naught by the Municipality, had made him at that time the most unpopular man in Paris.
His urgent entreaties that his own accounts should be passed remained unheeded. He himself was taxed with dishonesty in his administration. The most absurd rumours were greedily swallowed: as of his having deposited a large sum of money in a London bank. Much as he wished it, he could not retire to his vineyards, for that would have been regarded as tantamount to a confession of guilt on his part; and yet the examination of the Compte-Rendu Général, or general exposition of his administration, was purposely delayed to keep him a fixture in Paris with a Damocles sword suspended above his head. It was a heart-breaking situation.
The ex-Minister's health, never good, was giving way under these trials. The misdeeds he could not prevent, and seemed to sanction as being Minister, had given him a kind of jaundice; he could retain nothing on his stomach: so that to all Madame Roland's other cares anxiety about him was added. Matters were not mended by their retirement into privacy. The modest retirement of the Rue de la Harpe was stigmatised by Marat as the boudoir of la Femme Roland, where, under the spells of its Circe, the Gironde was forging the plots that were to destroy the Republic. The Clubs, more tumultuous than ever, rang again with invectives against the Brissotins, those traitors who bad voted for ratification by the nation of the sentence on the King. Roland was only spoken of as King Roland. Camille, the too brilliant Camille, pierced them to the quick in his Histoire des Brissotins; but the barbed arrow of his wit rebounded, alas, to cleave his own heart when repentance came too late.
Meanwhile the sittings in the Convention grew daily more riotous. Delegates of the nation were seen rushing madly to the tribune, shaking fists in each other's faces, and even drawing their swords! The two chief revolutionary parties hated each other more fiercely even than Court, Nobles, Priests, Royalists, Moderates! But it is always thus in the history of ideas. The more men's ideas approximate, the more galling their divergencies. Yet these struggles of Jacobin and Girondin were mild compared with the war of extermination which many of the conflicting sects waged with each other some centuries after the Christian era.
While this unhappy conflict raged in the Convention, the fortunes of France were reaching their lowest ebb. The news of the reverses of Dumouriez, of the insurrection of La Vendée, of the disturbances in Calvados, broke like so many heavy seas over the decks of the Republic. The Girondins, who still manned all the chief posts, were held responsible for every disaster. Yet they did not admit the greatness of the peril, being either too culpably engrossed by the strife of factions at Paris, or fearful of another panic, or, what seems likeliest, too convinced of the popularity of the Revolution to make them doubt its stability. From the first Brissot had relied for success on the sympathy of neighbouring populations; and he must also have been aware that, as a large portion of the lands of the Church and of the emigrant nobles had passed into the hands of small peasant-proprietors, their interests were enlisted in the cause of the Revolution.
Be this as it may, the ferment in the Clubs and sections of Paris exploded on the 10th of March in the abortive insurrection aimed at the Gironde. But it would appear that neither Robespierre, Danton, nor Marat himself had had any share in this anarchical attempt to coerce the national representation. Danton, on the contrary, had sent warnings time after time to the unpopular deputies, although after a last fruitless effort at conciliation he had definitely thrown in his lot with the Jacobins. On the day of this insurrection he had made one of his grand speeches, exhorting the parties to union in face of their common danger. Under the spell of his appeal the shrieking discords resolved themselves for a moment into harmony.
Alas! this harmony, which would have saved the Republic, was of brief duration. The formation of the Revolutionary Tribunal became the subject of fresh controversies. From the vision of this terrible instrument, to be entrusted with unlimited powers to judge and slay, Buzot drew back with a shudder. "They were going to institute a despotism more frightful than anarchy itself," he said; and, although interrupted by violent uproar, he nevertheless continued to render thanks to those who had hitherto deigned to spare his life. . . . "Let them only leave me time enough to clear my memory from dishonour by voting against this tyranny of the Convention! . . . What does it signify whether the tyrant be single or plural? When the public entrusted you with unrestricted powers, it was not that you might usurp its liberty." Vergniaud branded this prospective of trial without jury with the exclamation: "The Inquisition of State come again, and worse than at Venice." Their remonstrances produced some effect. The tribunal, which was elected by the Convention, came ultimately to consist of a jury, as well as judges and a public accuser. But as the jury had to proclaim their vote openly, exposed to the threats of the galleries and the anger of the mob, they were practically acting under coercion.
With the institution of this tribunal the Revolution enters upon a further stage. Auspicious and beneficent was the beginning of its career; great the blessing it had already bestowed on the nation; but distracted by treachery, driven wild by defeat, its promise turned to a menace, the hope which it had brought the world was veiled in terror. Yes, the Terror came in with the Revolutionary Tribunal, planting the guillotine en permanence on the Place de la Revolution, stalking spectre-like through the realm where it made converts by fear instead of argument; cramming the prisons with promiscuous crowds consisting of persons of every shade of opinion; setting aside individual liberty by breaking into houses at all hours of the night, and bringing death to the Suspects. But likewise filling the foreign invader with dread; concentrating and intensifying the action of the people; giving a new impulse to the energies of France, organizing armies, and stimulating the people to melt down the bells and the bronze saints of their churches to forge arms for the volunteers.
The treason of Dumouriez, who went over to the enemy, after an unsuccessful attempt to march upon Paris, inflicted a dreadful blow on the Girondins. Nothing better occurred to the Montagnards than to make the former responsible for the defection of this general and to accuse Brissot of complicity, although they themselves, with the exception of Marat, had been loud in their praises of the hero of Jemmapes. The Gironde retaliated furiously by incriminating Danton. A foolhardy proceeding on their part; for the Hercules of the Tribune, putting aside all further thoughts of union and pacification, made a speech of two hours' duration in which he came down upon them with his sledgehammer eloquence. The irreparable breach was now made, and animosities had reached such a pitch that the members of the Convention, with the shortsightedness of fury, annulled their own inviolability. Marat had given the signal by his cry: "Let us strike traitors wherever we may find them."
For the moment the Girondins achieved a ruinous triumph by the impeachment of Marat, who had issued a proclamation to the Departments declaring the Convention to be the seat of a "Cabal sold to the English Court," whereupon the Right and Centre, unanimous in their indignation, voted that he should be brought to trial. But while "the Friend of the People" was placed under merely nominal arrest, having every attention lavished upon him by the municipal officers, twenty-five out of the forty-eight sections of Paris had given in their adhesion to a petition demanding the expulsion from the Chamber of the twenty-two chief Girondins. On the 14th of April a deputation from the Commune, headed by Mayor Pache, came to have the petition read at the Convention. Great care had been taken that, with the exception of the offending members, the purity of the majority should be proclaimed. This was but a sinister mask of moderation fain to hide the imminent peril of such a measure. The generous-hearted Fonfrède, the youngest of the Girondins, broke the spell of helpless bewilderment that seemed to have fallen on the Assembly. "If modesty were not a duty," he cried, "I should feel hurt at the omission of my name from this list!"
Three-fourths of the Assembly echoing his sentiment, claimed to be included too. The majesty of the common will, as expressed in the representation of the nation, asserted itself on that day for the last time in the Convention.
The petitioners had notified that their demand of proscription of the twenty-two should be sent for ratification to the Departments. Whereupon Fonfrède pointed out that the sovereignty of the people only made itself manifest through the primary Assemblies. This would have been a signal for a dissolution of the Assembly, and the plunging the country into the turmoil of elections at a moment when its very existence and that of the Republic depended upon the most absolute concentration of all its forces.
The moment was one of infinite risk. The Girondins, hated by Paris, which they had attacked with inconsiderate violence, still possessed the majority in the provinces. Their influence, their safety, nay their very existence, lay in having recourse once more to a General Election. But Marseilles and Lyons had become centres of reaction in the south-east, La Vendée had burst into fierce rebellion for Church and King, and in the north and east foreign armies held the fortresses on the frontiers.
The great soul of Vergniaud grasped the situation: saw the strife of parties hurrying France to its ruin: felt that, as they never could unite again, one of them must perish. On this 20th of April the Girondins were still free to choose. Vergniaud chose for them. "Citizens," he said, "a conflagration will be kindled . . . to burst forth on the convocation of the primary Assemblies. . . . It is a disastrous measure and may end the Convention, the Republic, and liberty. If you have no choice between voting this convocation and yielding us up to our enemies . . . citizens, do not hesitate between a few men and the commonwealth. . . . Fling us into the abyss, and let the country be saved!"
"This was more than a noble impulse, it was a great action," says Louis Blanc. The Girondins remained silent. Not one of them protested against the stern verdict of their orator, but accepted their doom at his hands. These were the men accused of conspiring with the enemy, of sowing sedition, of federalist proclivities tending to destroy the unity of the Republic: these men who subscribed as one man to Vergniaud's patriotic cry, "Fling us into the abyss, and let the country be saved!"
The Convention, stirred to its depths, condemned the petition against the Gironde. But it had practically lost its authority. The Commune acted as a rival power which often set its decrees at defiance, and the government practically passed into the hands of the members of Public Safety, that famous Committee of Nine, established on the 6th of April 1793, whose sittings were held in secret, and who for a time became the ruling power in France.
Marat, brought to trial, had been absolved by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Smothered in garlands of fresh flowers, crowned with laurel, he was carried in triumph through the streets, followed by a Sanscullote multitude. Loud resounding shouts and vivas warned the Assembly of his approach. "The Friend of the People," attended by his formidable escort, once more took his seat at the summit of the Mountain. When he appeared on the tribune his voice was drowned by the plaudits of the galleries. He uttered a few words of thanks; but what endeared his success to him was the prospect of crushing his enemies as he was then crushing a wreath in his hand. Looking towards the Right, he muttered: "I have them now. They too, shall have a triumphant progress, but it shall be to the guillotine."