nominal value. What were known as revolutionary taxes were
imposed at discretion by the representatives on mission and the
local authorities. A forced loan of 1000 millions was exacted from
those citizens who were reputed to be prosperous. Immense
supplies of all kinds were requisitioned for the armies, and were
sometimes allowed to rot unused. Anarchy and state interference
having combined to check the trade in necessaries, the government
undertook to feed the people, and spent huge sums,
especially on bread for the starving inhabitants of Paris. As
no regular budget was attempted, as accounts were not kept,
and as audit was unknown, the opportunities for fraud and
embezzlement were endless. Even when due allowance has been
made for the financial disorder which the Convention inherited
from previous assemblies, and for the war which it had to wage
against a formidable alliance, it cannot be acquitted of reckless
and wasteful maladministration.
Notwithstanding the disorder of the time, the mass of new laws produced by the Convention was extraordinary. A new system of weights and measures, a new currency, a new chronological era (that of the Republic), and a new calendar were introduced (see the section Republican Revolutionary legislation. The new calendar. Calendar below). A new and elaborate system of education was decreed. Two drafts of a complete civil code were made and, although neither was enacted, particular changes of great moment were decreed. Many of the new laws were stamped with the passions of the time. Such were the laws which suppressed all the remaining bodies corporate, even the academies, and which extinguished all manorial rights without any indemnity to the owners. Such too were the laws which took away the power of testation, placed natural children upon an absolute equality with legitimate, and gave a boundless freedom of divorce. It would be absurd, however, to dismiss all the legislative work of the Convention as merely partisan or eccentric. Much of it was enlightened and skilful, the product of the best minds in the assembly. To compete for power or even to express an opinion on public affairs was dangerous, and wholly to refrain from attendance might be construed as disaffection. Able men who wished to be useful without hazarding their lives took refuge in the committees where new laws were drafted and discussed. The result of their labours was often decreed as a matter of course. Whether the decree would be carried into effect was always uncertain.
The ruling faction was still divided against itself. The
Commune of Paris, which had overthrown the Girondins, was
jealous of the Committee of Public Safety, which meant to be
supreme. Robespierre, the leading member of the committee,
abhorred the chiefs of the Commune, not merely because they
conflicted with his ambition but from difference of character.
He was orderly and temperate, they were gross and debauched;
he was a deist, they were atheists. In November the Commune
fitted up Notre Dame as a temple of Reason, selected an opera
girl to impersonate the goddess, and with profane ceremony
installed her in the choir. All the churches in Paris were closed.
Danton, when he felt power slipping from his hands, had retired
from public business to his native town of Arcis-sur-Aube. When
he became aware of the feud between Robespierre and the
Commune, he conceived the hope of limiting the Terror and
guiding the Revolution into a sane course. He returned to
Paris and joined with Robespierre in carrying the law of 14
Frimaire (December 4), which gave the Committee of Public
Safety absolute control over all municipal authorities. He became
the advocate of mercy, and his friend Camille Desmoulins
pleaded for the same cause in the Vieux Cordelier. Then the
Overthrow
of the Paris Commune. Fall of the Dantonists.
oppressed nation took courage and began to demand
pardon for the innocent and even justice upon
murderers. A sharp contest ensued between the
Dantonists and the Commune, Robespierre inclining
now to this side, now to that, for he was really a friend
to neither. His friend St Just, a younger and fiercer
man, resolved to destroy both. Hébert and his
followers in despair planned a new insurrection, but they were
deserted by Hanriot, their military chief. Their doom was thus
fixed. Twenty leaders of the Commune were arrested on the
17th of March 1794 and guillotined a week later. It was then
Danton’s turn. He had several warnings, but either through
over-confidence or weariness of life he scorned to fly. On the
30th he was arrested along with his friends Desmoulins, Delacroix,
Philippeaux and Westermann. St Just read to the
Convention a report on their case pre-eminent even in that day
for its shameless disregard of truth, nay, of plausibility. Before
the Revolutionary Tribunal Danton defended himself with such
energy that St Just took means to have him silenced. Danton
and his friends were executed on the 5th of April.
For a moment the conflict of parties seemed at an end. None could presume to challenge the authority of the Committee of Public Safety, and in the committee none disputed the leadership of Robespierre. Robespierre was at last free to establish the republic of virtue. On the 7th Supremacy of Robespierre. of May he persuaded the Convention to decree that the French people acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. On the 4th of June he was elected president of the Convention, and from that time forward he appeared to be dictator of France. On the 8th the festival of the Supreme Being was solemnized, Robespierre acting as pontiff amid the outward deference and secret jeers of his colleagues. But Robespierre knew what a gulf parted him from almost all his countrymen. He knew that he could be safe only by keeping power and powerful only by making the Terror more stringent. Two days after the festival his friend Couthon presented the crowning law of the Terror, known as the Law of 22 Prairial. As the Revolutionary Tribunal was said to be paralysed by forms and delays, this law abolished the defence of prisoners by counsel and the examination of witnesses. Thenceforward the impressions of judges and jurors were to decide the fate of the accused. For all offences the penalty was to be death. The leave of the Convention was no longer required for the arrest of a member. In spite of some murmurs even this law was adopted. Its effect was fearful. The Revolutionary Tribunal had hitherto pronounced 1200 death sentences. In the next six weeks it pronounced 1400. With Robespierre’s approval St Just sketched at this time the plan of an ideal society in which every man should have just enough land to maintain him; in which domestic life should be regulated by law and all children over seven years should be educated by the state. Pending this regeneration of society St Just advised the rule of a dictator.
The growing ferocity of the Terror appeared more hideous as the dangers threatening the government receded. The surrender of Toulon in December 1793 closed the south of France to foreign enemies. The war in La Vendée turned against the insurgents from the time when the veteran garrison The Revolutionary War. Republican successes. of Mainz came to reinforce the Republican army. After a severe defeat at Cholet on the 16th of October the Royalists determined to cross the Loire and raise Brittany and Anjou, where the Chouans, or Royalist partisans, were already stirring. They failed in an attempt on the little seaport of Granville and in another upon Angers. In December they were defeated with immense loss at Le Mans and at Savenay. The rebellion would probably have died out but for the measures of the new Republican general Turreau, who wasted La Vendée so horribly with his “infernal columns” that he drove the peasants to take up arms once more. Yet Turreau’s crimes were almost surpassed by Carrier, the representative on mission at Nantes, who, finding the guillotine too slow in the destruction of his prisoners, adopted the plan of drowning them wholesale. In the autumn of 1793 the war against the coalition took a turn favourable to France. The energy of Danton, the organizing skill of Carnot, and the high spirit of the French nation, resolute at all costs to avoid dismemberment, had well employed the respite given by the sluggishness of the Allies. In Flanders the English were defeated at Hondschoote (September 8) and the Austrians at Wattignies (October 15). In the east Hoche routed the Austrians at Weissenburg and forced them to recross the Rhine before the end of 1793. The summer of 1794 saw France victorious on all her frontiers. Jourdan won the battle of Fleurus
