the Club. It would be ridiculous to believe that Danton was overthrown by Robespierre, or that Robespierre had worked intentionally for the destruction of Danton. The Dantonistes had long lost their power when they were finally overthrown; they had long been excluded from the Club of the Jacobins; only at the very end, when history had already done its work, did Robespierre decide to let Danton fall.
The Club of the Jacobins had its regular cleaning day, i.e., every member had to answer certain questions: what were you before the Revolution? what did you do during the Revolution? what was the
size of your fortune before 1789? how much have you now?[1] These were the most formidable and generally feared occasions. When Danton and Camille Desmoulins appeared before the cleaning-up committee, several members took the floor to demand their exclusion. Fabre d'Eglantine even has a voice shout: "To the guillotine with him!" Robespierre then rose to demand that the name of the man who had suggested the guillotine for Danton be stricken from the list of the Jacobins, and defended Danton in the most eloquent words. He said: "No one has the right to speak against Danton without proofs; any one that speaks against Danton must first show us that he has placed as much
- ↑ Louis Ernest Hamel: Histoire de Robespierre (Paris, 1865–67).
