City of Darkness, City of Light

by Marge Piercy

  He tried to make a coalition with the Girondins, talking up a common revolutionary front that would exclude fanatics and extremists (leaving out Marat and Robespierre in other words but including strong representation from the Mountain). Let bygones be bygones, he said to Vergniaud.

  Vergniaud’s reply was to threaten him. “Let there be war. Let one side perish.”

  “You want war, do you, Vergniaud? You’ll get it! In your teeth, then.”

  In the Convention, Danton rose. “Citizens of the Mountain, I begin by paying you homage. You were right and I was wrong about Dumouriez and about the Girondin faction. You’re the only true friends of the people. No truce is possible between the Mountain, who voted the King’s death, and those who slandered you up and down the country trying to save his neck.” If they wanted war, they’d have war. Let’s see if they had more stomach for winning this one than the big one. The Girondins were threatening Paris with rousing the provinces to revolt, with moving the government away, anyplace but Paris.

  When he went to the Cordeliers, he found talk of insurrection against the Girondin government. Lacking a constitution, there was no legal way to remove a government that was not functioning except to overthrow it. All over Paris, preparations were under way to do just that. He had cast his lot with the Mountain just in the nick of time. His luck, the great Danton ability to land on his feet, was still fully in play.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Max

  (May 1793)

  MAX was delighted. Elisabeth Duplay and Philippe Lebas had fallen in love. They’d met at the Convention, where Charlotte and Elisabeth were sitting in the gallery. Charlotte was still living with Augustin, and Elisabeth was still her only friend. Charlotte was barely speaking to Max, sulking. She had tried to play Cupid. The romance proceeded into a tangle of wounded feelings and misunderstood gestures, until Max had stepped in and straightened everyone out. Now Elisabeth and Lebas were engaged. When Max had time off on Sunday, often the new couple and Eléanore and he went to the country together, or at least stole a couple of hours to sing and relax.

  Elisabeth was fairer than Eléanore, conventionally pretty and not as intense or as bright. She would make Lebas an excellent wife. Lebas was a reliable Jacobin, often sent on mission by the Convention because of his common sense, his ability to get along with a wide variety of people and his innate honesty. Max liked to attend the weddings of his friends. He was well settled himself, cared for in the Duplay household, with Eléanore, with his dog Blount. He had a strong and secure domestic scene as his grounding.

  Poor Danton had not recovered from the death of his wife. He was increasingly unkempt. Rumors went around about his wild life, but Max doubted that Danton had time for revelry, what with going back and forth to the army, trying to raise his two sons alone, and now serving on the great Committee of Public Safety. Danton was one of those men who required a wife to maintain him in order, to see to his upkeep. Max felt pity tinged gently with contempt for a man who simply could not manage alone.

  When young revolutionaries came to Paris, they tried to see Max. Always they seemed shocked that he was not on the Committee, that he had never had a government post. Because of the Jacobin clubs in every town, he was the best known of the men the Revolution had thrown into prominence. But the only power he wielded was that of an ordinary representative or the influence people accorded his words.

  All through April, while Lebas and Elisabeth were falling in love, the drama of Marat was going on. The Girondins, who would not relinquish governing, had failed to destroy Max and failed in their attempt to discredit Danton. Now they had turned on Marat, thinking him more vulnerable. The skirmish had got off to a roaring start when Marat called for the extermination of traitors: the Girondins. The next day, Pétion, one of them now, attacked Marat in the Convention as a scoundrel who was trying to overthrow the government and introduce despotism. The Girondins still had sufficient sway over the Convention, where Marat was disliked, to vote his arraignment.

  At first Marat simply did not appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal. After all, he had plenty of experience as a fugitive. Suddenly, a week later, he stormed into the Revolutionary Tribunal, demanding to be heard.

  Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, did not attempt to conceal that he was on Marat’s side. “This is no guilty criminal who stands before us,” he thundered, “but the apostle and the martyr of liberty!” Max nodded when he heard that. Marat was safe. There was no need for Max to take action. The Revolutionary Tribunal not only refused to convict Marat, they congratulated him for his uncompromising work on behalf of the poor people of France. Fouquier-Tinville was a cousin of Camille’s, who had politicked for him out of family feeling. Max did not like the prosecutor. He had a nasty streak entirely suitable to his job, but not endearing. Still, a useful man. Augustin called Fouquier “The Owl” because he had round eyes and a beaky pockmarked nose. He even looked like a prosecutor, viewing the world with mocking distaste, as if it were shoddy goods.

  The Girondins tried to destroy Max first, then Danton, now Marat, and had succeeded only in making them heroes and discrediting themselves. Max judged them fools to have tried to imprison or execute Marat. Marat was half man and half icon. There was no distraction in him, no being tempted from the path of duty. He went ahead like an engine. His sickness, his sense of having little time left, only honed his commitment. The pleasant and well-spoken gentlemen of the Gironde looked at Marat and saw a stinking man dressed like a rag picker with a foul mouth and a fouler newspaper. They did not see what Max saw: a man who had given everything to the Revolution, a man who could raise Paris, a man whom the common people trusted with their lives.

  Max frowned, making lists of Girondins. They were inept at governing, too little able to manipulate events or people and too given to believing that manipulating words was enough. All was in preparation to get them out of the way before they brought the Republic down with them. They were dangerous as long as they had power and would not use it justly, effectively. The women were organizing and marching. The sections were getting ready. He supposed that a quarter of the citizens of Paris were arming to get rid of the Girondins by the only method that had been proven to work.

  But the Girondins were not prepared to yield. They formed a Court of Twelve with extraordinary powers to protect the government. They were issuing threats hourly. “If Paris attempts to use force against the legal government, then Paris will be wiped from the face of the earth!” Hébert, the publisher of the popular, far-left and scurrilous paper Père Duchesne, had been arrested. Several popular agitators from the sections called by their enemies the Enragés, the mad dogs, had been picked up too. The Enragés: Varlet, the red priest Jacques Roux, a hotheaded youngster from the army Théophile Leclerc, and those women who had lately organized themselves into something part political club and part battalion led by the actress Lacombe, they were all potentially dangerous to public order but also extremely useful. They had enormous support among the sans-culottes. They could pull thousands of people from the sections into the streets. They had the courage and numbers to storm barricades and take over the city. Brissot and the Rolands were quite right to fear the people of Paris, because the people of Paris were going to bring them down. The situation was desperate. They were running out of time. The Revolution would be lost; the war would be lost. He reluctantly decided that violence was the only tool that could do the job.

  The Girondins were threatening everything from the destruction of Paris to raising armies of revolt in the countryside if they were ousted from power. Their Court of Twelve was arresting the left. It demanded a list of the membership of revolutionary organizations in Paris. The Girondins claimed they could start civil wars and rebellions all over the country.

  “The forces in the Vendée are winning their civil war,” Saint-Just announced. “The poorest peasants in France led by the most reactionary priests who promise them paradise if they fall in battle. This is a holy war against us.�
�� They were meeting at the Duplays. The section leaders were meeting at the same time in the Bishopric to plan the uprising.

  “Since the Girondins will not move, they must be gotten out of the road,” Max said calmly. “The people will remove them.”

  “This could be quite bloody,” Camille said. “Can we depend on the National Guard? Whose side will they be on?”

  “They will be on the people’s side,” Max said. “We’re getting Hanriot appointed as commander.”

  “Who the hell is Hanriot?” Camille asked.

  Danton answered him, “He’s a little guy, fiery. A battalion leader. The men like him. He’s always in the front. We can trust him.”

  Max nodded. “At midnight tonight, the tocsin will ring. The Insurrectionary Committee will meet at City Hall. We must be at the Convention before six A.M. The galleries will be jammed with our supporters. The streets around the Convention will fill. It’s time to act. The Court of Twelve has issued warrants for the arrest of every man in this room. I assure you, I have seen them. They mean to kill us, but they’re clumsy. We are not. Because our arm is the people in motion.”

  Saint-Just rose to his full height, towering over them. “Don’t be afraid of a little blood,” he addressed Camille. “Our blood will be required by the people sooner or later, but now the people want to see the color of the blood of traitors—the secret royalists who led us into a war they have proceeded to lose, squandering the lives of common soldiers. Who permit the priests and the aristocrats to raise an army in the Vendée and prepare to march on Paris. Who are promoting revolts in every corner of the country. So long as they live, the Revolution is in danger of dying.”

  “As of course are we,” Camille said softly but audibly. He and Saint-Just glared at each other.

  Saint-Just began, “It is demanded of us that we rise above ourselves—”

  “While we’re assuming heroic attitudes, let’s never forget that it’s the people who are carrying the pikes—men of the sections and their formidable wives. They do the fighting for us and for themselves,” Danton said with a smile, trying to defuse the tension between Camille and Saint-Just.

  Max did not like Camille and Saint-Just to quarrel. They were both dear to him. Camille he was fond of; Saint-Just was fierce strength personified. He stood like a marble statue of Brutus poised to cry Death to the Tyrants! He looked, Max often thought, exactly as a leader should, with his perfect firm chin and his piercing huge eyes and his noble head and carriage. How well Saint-Just was named, the spirit of revolutionary justice incarnate. Max felt like a father whose sons were quarreling. He felt fatherly toward Camille, even though Camille was only two years younger; at school that had seemed a great gap in age and experience, and it still did, for Camille was a schoolboy at heart, thumbing his nose, writing witty aphorisms about the teachers or the Girondins. Abroad among the émigrés and royalists, he was reviled as the attorney of the lamppost: poor Camille, who along with Lucile, often seemed scarcely more mature than their little boy. Camille was forever speaking without thinking, unlike Saint-Just who rarely spoke an unconsidered word. Sometimes they fought for his attention like jealous siblings. They were temperamentally at odds, Camille the joker and Saint-Just the judge.

  He realized that everyone in the room was waiting for him. He was their leader, all of them, even Danton who would never acknowledge the leader-ship of another man. “We must be each at our posts today and we must keep communications open with the Insurrectionary Committee. We have planned, we have spoken, we have plotted. Now the issue is in the hands of the people and of the Supreme Being. The people’s way to justice is a blunt one, but finally the only road. The people have suffered. We’ll give them price controls so they no longer fear starving. We’ll give them justice. It’s time!” He made a chopping motion with his hand and stood. “It’s dawn, friends. Let us go offer our lives to the Revolution.”

  “Of course he only offers his life in a committee room,” Danton said softly to Camille, but Max heard. He gave no sign but felt the gibe in his stomach. He would record it in the notebook he kept on Danton, with all the other careless comments that fell from his big mouth. Max had a duty to understand the man, as he must study all his colleagues on this long and dangerous and bloody road. History would judge them, but in the meantime, he had to measure and remeasure each man himself.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Pauline

  (May-June 2, 1793)

  PAULINE was always busy, since she and Claire had organized their new club, the Revolutionary Republican Women. They decided on casual uniforms, the red cap and the tricolor. Most of the women wore pants and jackets, so they could fight better. They had been having lessons and they were beginning to get a reputation as street fighters.

  “Of course, it’s just for show,” Claire said as they were sitting with Victoire and Babette drinking in the Dancing Badger. “The men are terrified because they think we’re unnatural. They see us as fearsome Amazons.”

  “But we are serious,” Pauline said. “We’re deadly serious.”

  Claire took her hand. “My dear friend, do you really think if a platoon of the regular army attacked, we’d last five minutes?”

  “If we had muskets. If your friend will go on training us.”

  “We’re good street fighters. But we’re no Amazon army,” Claire said.

  Claire had a new boyfriend, Théo Leclerc. He was younger than Claire, just Pauline’s age, and adorable. Pauline was so used to Claire being on her own or picking up men for a night, she was shocked to walk into Claire’s and find this guy sitting on her old double bed with his boots halfway under and his army coat hanging on the door. Clearly he was moved in. She did not know if she was jealous because she was used to Claire always being available, or because Théo was so attractive. She wanted to plunge her hands through his curly hair.

  Théo had been in the army and he was willing to train the women. Oh, he was for real, not one of those blowhards who drank in the taverns and claimed to have taken the Bastille single-handedly. In Martinique he fought supporting the Blacks who were revolting against their colonial masters. He had been in prison three times for revolutionary activities. Without patronizing the women, he taught them marksmanship out in the Faubourgs on Sunday afternoons. They shot wine bottles and straw men.

  He had them practice with the pike too. Théo was a real find. It wasn’t that she had any objection to his being around. He was crazy about Claire. Claire was so beautiful, all men wanted her. Obviously Théo was the one madly in love, but Claire liked him better than any lover since Pauline had met her. The one who did not like him was Victoire.

  Pauline had little time to brood over Théo. The RRW core group thought they could pull out a couple of thousand women for the great day coming, when they were going to surround the Convention, put fear of the people into the lazy deputies and make them act. No more long speeches full of long words and no action. The men were being led into death by generals who couldn’t wait to desert to the Austrians, because the Revolution had not really come to the army yet and those generals were aristocrats.

  “Every man who voted for sending the King’s trial to the little assemblies, every man who voted to save dirty Louis’ fat neck, he should go through the little window now!” Babette’s mother said, pouring them more beer and giving them each a dose of watery brown soup. “They need a public haircut.”

  Parisian slang was full of a hundred pet names for the guillotine. The people felt it was their tool, their arm coming down. It showed their power. Get out of our way, or zip! There you go.

  People differed mainly on how many members of the Convention should get shortened. Some wanted all the Girondins to stick their necks out, some wanted only the top guys, some had particular enemies or scapegoats. Pauline just wanted to be rid of the Girondins. She didn’t even know what that name meant. It was some river. That’s what they were, wet and flowing and mud on the bottom, running toward some other country soon enough.


  The Mountain was counting on them, the Commune was counting on them. Brissot’s Court of Twelve had declared the Commune abolished and started arresting sans-culotte leaders. The sections all knew what they had to do and so did the women. The Guard would march with them. Paris would rise and march on the Convention to say, Let’s have a real constitution and power to knock down hoarders, the rich guys who are still screwing us to the wall. The damned remaining aristocrats, bob their shoulders. Give them a fast trim. Teach them the second dance you do lying down. The mood of the sections was grim but strangely jolly. They were about to do their own dance in the streets round and round the Convention until the walls fell down.

  It had been a bad winter. Pauline led two bread riots. They had made a revolution; why didn’t they have enough to eat? Why were they always hungry? Someone must pay for the hunger and the cold. Pay for going to bed hungry and getting up hungrier still and dragging through the day dreaming of food, dreaming of bread, dreaming of soup and meat, for once enough!

  On Sunday, June second, Pauline woke at the first light of dawn, after three hours’ sleep. Her belly was empty. Her trick of kneading her belly or remembering old meals did not work. She found a crust of stale bread and heated water to make gruel. She heard mice in the walls. What could they be living on? If there was anything a mouse could eat, she would eat it first.

  At seven, Claire arrived with Théo. Théo was on the Insurrectionary Committee. He was a good speaker, although he had a tendency to get shrill. He was so passionate about his politics, he lost control of his voice. This uprising was carefully orchestrated, involving the Jacobin Club, the Cordeliers, the sections, the National Guard, the Revolutionary Republican Women. This time the Insurrectionary Committee had given orders directly to the women: Take over the Convention building, fill the gallery, block the corridors, stop the Girondins from leaving, pack the streets around the Convention, terrorize the delegates. “Go to it, girls,” Danton shouted as he passed Claire and Pauline on the street. His massive hand fell heavily on Claire’s shoulder. “We’re counting on you to scare the hell out of those traitors.”