later as the Jacobin Club, which had consisted originally of the Breton deputies only, but which, after the Assembly moved to Paris, began to admit among its members various leaders of the Parisian bourgeoisie. As time went on, many of the more intelligent artisans and small shopkeepers became members of the club, and among such men Robespierre found the hearers he sought. They did more than listen to him: they idolized him; the fanatical leader had found followers. As the wealthier bourgeois of Paris and deputies of a more moderate type seceded to the club of '89, the influence of the old leaders of the Jacobins (Barnave, Duport, Alexandre de Lameth) diminished; and when they themselves, alarmed at the progress of the Revolution, founded the club of the Feuillants in 1791, the followers of Robespierre dominated the Jacobin Club. The death of Mirabeau strengthened Robespierre's influence in the Assembly; but on the 15th of May 1791 he proved his lack of statesmanlike insight and his jealous suspicion of his colleagues by proposing and carrying the motion that no deputies who sat in the Constituent could sit in the succeeding Assembly. The flight of the king on the 20th of June and his arrest at Varennes made Robespierre declare himself at the Jacobin Club to be ni monarchiste ni républicain. After the “massacre” of the Champ de Mars (on the 17th of July 1791) he established himself, in order to be nearer to the Assembly and the Jacobins, in the house of Duplay, a cabinetmaker in the Rue St Honoré, and an ardent admirer of his, where he lived (with but two short intervals) till his death. At last came his day of triumph, when on the 30th of September, on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the people of Paris crowned Pétion and himself as the two incorruptible patriots.
On the dissolution of the Assembly he returned for a short visit to Arras, where he met with a triumphant reception. In November he returned to Paris, and on the 18th of December made a speech which marks a new epoch in his life. Brissot de Warville, the âme politique of the Girondin party which had been formed in the Legislative Assembly, urged vehemently that war should be declared against Austria, and the queen was equally urgent, in the hope that a victorious army might restore the old absolutism of the Bourbons. Two men opposed the projects of the queen and the Girondins — Marat and Robespierre. Robespierre feared a development of militarism, which might be turned to the advantage of the reaction. This opposition from those whom they had expected to aid them irritated the Girondins greatly, and from that moment began the struggle which ended in the coups d'état of the 31st of May and the 2nd of June 1793. Robespierre persisted in his opposition to the war; the Girondins, especially Brissot, attacked him violently; and in April 1792, he resigned the post of public prosecutor at the tribunal of Paris, which he had held since February, and started a journal, Le Défenseur de la Constitution, in his own defence. It is noteworthy that during the summer months of 1792 in which the fate of the Bourbon dynasty was being sealed, neither the Girondins in the Legislative Assembly nor Robespierre took any active part in overthrowing it. Stronger men with practical instincts of statesmanship, tike Danton and Billaud-Varenne, who dared to look facts in the face and take the responsibility of doing while others were talking, were the men who made the 10th of August and took the Tuileries. The Girondins, however, were quite ready to take advantage of the accomplished fact; and Robespierre, likewise, though shocked at the shedding of blood, was willing to take his seat on the Commune of Paris, which had overthrown Louis XVI., and might check the Girondins. The strong men of the Commune were glad to have Robespierre's assistance, not because they cared for him or believed in him, but because of the help got from his popularity, his reputation for virtue, which had won for him the surname of “The Incorruptible,” and his influence over the Jacobin Club and its branches, which spread all over France. He it was who presented the petition of the Commune of Paris on 16th August to the Legislative Assembly, demanding the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal and the summoning of a Convention. The massacres of September in the prisons, which Robespierre in vain attempted to stop, showed that the Commune had more confidence in Billaud than in him. Yet, as a proof of his personal popularity, he was a few days later elected first deputy for Paris to the National Convention.
On the meeting of the Convention the Girondins immediately attacked Robespierre; they were jealous of his influence in Paris, and knew that his single-hearted fanaticism would never forgive their intrigues with the king at the end of July. As early as the 26th of September the Girondin M. D. A. Lasource accused him of aiming at the dictatorship; afterwards he was informed that Marat, Danton and himself were plotting to become triumvirs; and eventually on the 29th of October Louvet de Couvrai attacked him in a studied and declamatory harangue, abounding in ridiculous falsehoods and obviously concocted in Madame Roland's boudoir. But Robespierre had no difficulty in rebutting this attack (5th of November), while he denounced the federalist plans of the Girondins. All personal disputes, however, gave way by the month of December 1792 before the great question of the king's trial, and here Robespierre took up a position which is at least easily understood. These are his words spoken on the 3rd of December: “This is no trial; Louis is not a prisoner at the bar; you are not judges; you are — you cannot but be — statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have not to pass sentence for or against a single man, but you have to take a resolution on a question of the public safety, and to decide a question of national foresight. It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die, that the country may live.” This great question settled by the king's execution, the struggle between Robespierre and the Girondins entered upon a more acute stage, and the want of statesmanship among the latter threw upon the side of the fanatical Robespierre Danton and all those strong practical men who cared little for personal questions, and whose only desire was the victory of France in her great struggle with Europe. Had it been at all possible to act with that group of men of genius whom history calls the Girondins, Danton, Lazare Carnot, Robert Lindet, and even Billaud-Varenne, would have sooner thrown in their lot with them than with Robespierre, whom they thoroughly understood; but the Girondins, spurred on by Madame Roland, refused to have anything to do with Danton. Government became impossible; the federalist idea, which would have broken France to pieces in the very face of the enemy, grew and flourished, and the men of action had to take a decided part. In the month of May 1793 Camille Desmoulins, acting under the inspiration of Robespierre and Danton, published his Histoire des Brissotins and Brissot démasqué; Maximin Isnard declared that Paris must be destroyed if it pronounced itself against the provincial deputies; Robespierre preached insurrection at the Jacobin Club; and on the 31st of May and the 2nd of June the Commune of Paris destroyed the Girondin party. For a moment it seemed as if France would avenge them; but patriotism was stronger than federalism. The defence of Lyons exasperated the men who were working for France, and the armies who were fighting for her, and on the 27th of July 1793, when the struggle was practically decided, the Convention elected Robespierre to the new Committee of Public Safety. He had not solicited, so it seems, nor even desired this election, yet it marks an important epoch, not only in the life of Robespierre, but in the history of the Revolution. Danton and the men of action had throughout the last two years of the crisis, as Mirabeau had in the first two years, seen that the one great need of France, if she was to see the end of her troubles without the interference of foreign armies, was the existence of a strong executive government. The means for establishing the much-needed strong executive were found in the Committee of Public Safety. The success of this Committee in suppressing the Norman insurrection had confirmed the majority of the Convention in the expediency of strengthening its powers, and the Committee of General
