by Marge Piercy
He let Saint-Just bully him into going back to the Committee next day. Barère was all smiles, trying to tell everybody they adored each other. A puddle of lukewarm hypocrisy. Underneath, he could feel silent fury, ambitions writhing. He caught Collot looking at him with slitted menace.
Saint-Just was right. There was a plot against them. He could smell it. Saint-Just, Couthon and Philippe met with him that evening to work out a plan of attack. His brother Augustin would be back in a day. They had to purge the Great Committee. They would eliminate the Committee of Security and establish one Committee instead of two, to stop the intriguing.
On eight Thermidor, a sultry day under a copper sky, he went to the Convention. When he took the rostrum, he did not speak as a member of the Committee, but as himself. He was open about the divisions in the Committee. He spoke of the plotting of his enemies who were the enemies of the Revolution. It was a long speech, aimed at preparing for the overthrow of the plotters. Saint-Just would follow up the next day, detailing the measures to be taken to bring both Committees into line. He named no names, for that might be premature. He wanted to give the plotters a chance to show their hands. Then he would pounce.
They breakfasted together at the Duplays’: Couthon, Augustin, who was tanned from being on mission, Saint-Just, who remained pale no matter how much time he spent with the armies, Philippe and himself. They drew up a comprehensive enemies list, everyone they needed to take out in the first line of attack. Then they were ready. They would turn the Convention against the Committee today and overthrow it. Saint-Just would speak first.
Collot was president, which wasn’t great luck but soon would not matter. Max took his seat and waited for Saint-Just to go to work. In early afternoon, Saint-Just mounted the platform. He had not said four sentences when Tallien interrupted with a false point of order about whether Saint-Just was speaking as a member of the Committee or personally. Max expected him to be silenced at once, but pandemonium broke out. Delegates were shouting that Max was a tyrant, that he was planning to seize absolute power. “It’s a conspiracy,” Augustin muttered. “They’ve rehearsed this. We have to get out of here.”
Barère proposed their arrest. Collot ordered, “Seize the tyrant. Take Caesar into custody and save us all!”
Max could not make himself heard. They feared his voice so much that when he tried to speak, they howled, they screamed, they drowned him out, they pounded on the floor. That had happened before, yes, but then Danton had roared out and quieted them. Then a phalanx of guards marched in and grabbed him. He was arrested with Saint-Just, Augustin, Philippe and Couthon. There was chaos, jostling. A fistfight broke out between their supporters and the plotters. “Don’t offer resistance,” Max said firmly.
A delegate of the Plain shrieked at him, “You planned to murder us all, but now we’ve got you! We know you were going to slaughter us!”
They were shut up in rooms of the Committee of Security, in another wing of the palace. A line of guards stood outside the doors, under the windows. As they were eating supper, they heard a commotion in the hall. The guard serving them said Hanriot, head of the National Guard, had tried to free them and was arrested. As they ate, they made a collective list of those who had conspired against them, obviously in a carefully orchestrated plot. Most of the Committee of Public Safety; the Committee of Security; large numbers of the Plain in the Convention. Max would not forget a name. He memorized them. Then he destroyed the list.
Around seven, guards marched into the room. They were taken out one by one, each to a different prison. He was delivered to Luxembourg.
The warden called his own guards. “We’ve had word from the Commune that dirty business is going on. How can anyone arrest the Incorruptible?” He dressed down the escort, humiliating them. Then he had his men accompany Max as bodyguards to City Hall, where the Commune was in session. Much relieved, Max went off with them. Now he would sit down and figure out how to retaliate. The next move.
EIGHTY-TWO
Max
(July 27–28, 1794)
MAX was tortured by indecision. He did not know what had happened to his brother, Saint-Just, Philippe and Couthon. Guards were dispatched from City Hall to the various prisons to find them. The Commune of Paris went into emergency session. They were backing him.
Armed men began to assemble outside. It had not occurred to Max that the sections might rise, but now he began to think that the only answer. He had been outraged by his arrest, but he did not take it as a mortal wound. He had followers. Now it seemed he might have to encourage an uprising against the Convention. He had always supported the uprisings, when he thought they had a chance of succeeding, but he had never been the man to call the people out. That was more Danton’s line of work, Desmoulins’, Marat’s. The Enragés and Hébertists had roused the people to pour into the streets with their pikes and pistols, their makeshift weapons, and to put themselves in danger to push the government in a particular direction, or if necessary, to topple it. Of course, those leaders were gone. Max disliked the random clashing of blind forces determining the future. But it might come to that tonight.
It had begun to rain on the troops gathering outside. He could see by the light of the campfires before the rain put them out several artillery pieces, stacks of weapons, pikes glinting. He could not issue a call in his own person. The Commune was urging him to action, but he could not do it.
Augustin and Philippe marched in. Max embraced them and started to question Augustin what had happened, where he had been taken. Augustin brushed that off. “We have only a few hours to act. We must call out the sections! The Guards assembled below are asking what to do.”
“How can we call out the sections? In the name of the Convention? The Convention voted our arrest.” Max shook his head.
“In the name of the Revolution. The Convention has sat too long. The war goes well. Enemy troops are off French soil. The Constitution is overwhelmingly popular, so we’ll use it to found a new government. We’ll call for elections.” Augustin sat down to draft an appeal to the sections.
Elisabeth came in as they were working on the appeal, but Philippe sent her home, to safety. She left weeping. Philippe turned to Augustin and Max. “It’s all well and good to call up the sections, but we essentially disbanded them, when the Hébertists were trying to rouse the people. We broke up the women’s groups. The apparatus for fast response isn’t there—but it’s worth trying.”
Messengers ran off through the rain to deliver their call. The Commune wanted to attack the Convention, but Max hesitated. How many times could Paris rise and destroy its government, before a people became essentially ungovernable? “What will the army do?” he asked.
Saint-Just had finally been located and released. It was almost midnight. At last two officers carried in Couthon in his wheelchair. Saint-Just answered for the army. “How they act depends on whose interpretation reaches them first. We must send word at once.”
“In the name of whom? We cannot sign for the Convention,” Philippe said patiently. “They just issued warrants for our arrest. We can’t attack the Convention and pretend to be the Convention at once.”
“We will sign in the name of the French people,” Max said. He had no problem with that. He was the voice of the people.
“We need more troops,” Saint-Just said. “It’s pouring. What good are a handful of men? There are cannons with no one to man them.”
“A handful of men?” Augustin looked out onto the dark square. Most of the troops had left. “I’d better talk to the ones who are left.”
Max nodded. “Yes. Hurry. Make them understand what’s happening!”
Couthon wrote the appeal to the armies and they dispatched it to the various fronts. Saint-Just peered out, his hands clasped behind him. Without turning, he said, “If the army doesn’t stand with us, we have no chance. Those pitiful few cannon can’t match one real company of artillery.”
“We can’t risk civil war again,” Max said.
“If the sections don’t rise quickly, we die.” Saint-Just turned to face him, stoic as ever. “I’m prepared.”
Philippe cursed. “You two are half in love with death. We should have acted at once and arrested Barère and Amar and Vadier and the two damned Committees. Then it would be their heads.”
“Enough heads,” Max said. “Enough of everything.”
Augustin came slowly in, wet and disheveled. “I can’t hold the troops. Without Hanriot, there’s no one strong in charge. It’s raining hard and I can’t give them orders. They’re leaving.”
“What’s happening with the sections?” Max rubbed his hands together. Exhaustion was a drug buzzing in his veins. “Why are they taking so long to respond?”
No one answered. Saint-Just was staring out. Augustin was trying to dry himself at the fireplace. Philippe was sitting at the table with his head in his hands muttering. Couthon was dozing in his wheelchair, exhausted. His mouth had fallen open. The day had been hard on his frail health.
“Wait, more Guards are coming,” Saint-Just said from the window. “In strength.”
“The sections at last!” Max sank into a chair in relief. They were rising. It was the people’s choice, not his.
Saint-Just turned. “It’s not the sections. It’s the Convention forces, and our own troops have gone home. We’ve had it.”
Philippe rushed out to the hall. Downstairs the first troops were bursting in. A bailiff from the Convention saw him. “Stop! You’re under arrest.” A shot was fired from below but missed. He ran back into the room and slammed the door. “They’re in the building!”
Augustin stood at the window. “There’s no way out.”
They could hear fighting below, but only seventy-five defenders remained in City Hall. Philippe took two pistols from his coat. Calmly he loaded each of them. “I do not care to be displayed. It’s more dignified this way.” He handed one pistol to Max and put the other to his head. The shot rang out. Gore and matter stained the wall. Philippe fell dead beside the table.
“I’ll talk to them,” Couthon said. “They know us. It isn’t as if we’re aristocrats.” He wheeled his chair to the hall. They heard him scream. There was fighting outside, men cursing, bodies falling, an occasional shot. Saint-Just stood at the table with his arms folded, looking slightly bored. Augustin wrestled the window open. “Maybe I can make it. If I fall well.” He climbed onto the sill and stepped out. Max rushed to the window. Augustin lay below writhing on the pavement. A man turned him over and then let him drop. Max called to him but he did not answer.
Soldiers forced their way in. Max had no time to consider his action. He lifted the pistol that Philippe had given him, loaded and cocked. He fired at the same time that a soldier fired at him. He fell, a terrible pain in his face. He did not know if he had shot himself or if the soldier had shot him. His jaw was broken and he could not speak. Blood ran down over his waistcoat and shirt. Blood ran down into his ear and caked in his hair.
They carried him out. The guards marched rapidly to the Tuileries. Max was thrown on a rough wagon along with Couthon, whose crippled legs had been smashed, and Augustin, who had passed out. Max was groaning but could not speak as he was jolted over the pavement. Finally he recognized the courtyard of the Tuileries. He was roughly handled up the Queen’s Stairway, dropped on the green baize table where the Committee had worked so many days and nights. Couthon was brought in half-dead. Saint-Just said, “The kind gentlemen pulled him out of his wheelchair and threw him down the stairs.”
Max tried to ask how Augustin was, but he could not form words. His jaw was smashed. He tried to assess the damage, but when he touched his face, he almost fainted with pain. With his hand he kept tracing an A in the air until Saint-Just understood. “Augustin’s still alive. His hip is broken. He’s partly paralyzed.” Saint-Just was the only one unwounded. He seemed detached, icy. They lay on tables or desks in the Committee room while messengers passed by and people made jokes and insulted them. Someone spat at him, the gob landing on his hand. He could not turn his head to see who the coward was. Someone else came, quietly cleaned him up and put a pile of papers under his head so that he would be in less pain. It was one of their secretaries, a very young man from Marseille. “They have conspired against you,” he whispered. “But the people will never forget you.”
He could hear the surviving members of the Great Committee drawing up lists of Robespierrists and Jacobins to execute. Sanson would be busy. Security was issuing hundreds of arrest warrants. The Jacobin government was over.
Toward dawn a physician came and treated their wounds as best he could. He argued that they should be taken to a hospital, but he was ignored. At dawn they were hauled to the Conciergerie. Thanks to the law of twenty-two Prairial, they need only be identified and a trial could be dispensed with. They were prepared immediately for execution. Sanson complained bitterly of the extra work, since only Saint-Just was able to sit on the stool. The others had to have their shirts torn, their hair cut and their hands bound behind them where they lay on the muddy stone floor, where boots had tramped in the night’s heavy rain. Augustin groaned and Couthon lay in silent agony. Max spent his remaining strength trying not to moan or cry out.
In the tumbrel, Saint-Just stood erect, immaculate. He exuded a stoic calm. He was quite beautiful standing straight in the cart, not even swaying with the rough jouncing. Couthon lay in a heap of mangled limbs. Max sat up but could not stand. The pain roared in his mind. The route lay down the Rue Saint Honoré past the Committee, past the Jacobins, past the Duplays. The house was shuttered. Someone had thrown red paint or blood on the closed gates to the courtyard. Upstairs, he saw the shutters open a chink. Eléanore looked at him. He could hear Blount barking furiously. He could not turn his head to keep her in sight. The tumbrel moved on through a crowd shouting for his death as they had cheered him so often.
“It is important to die well,” Saint-Just said quietly. “We are exiting and entering history at once. This is the last act over which we have any control.”
At least the pain would stop. He had often thought of what he might say as he faced death. Now he could say nothing.
He was the last. Couthon took the longest. Max wished he could have pleaded with them to handle him less roughly. It took them a full quarter hour to force him onto the plank. Again and again Max tried to make himself heard, to beg them to be gentler. The drums rolled. People shrieked. There were twenty-one of them, a common number in a batch: Hanriot, the officers of the Paris Commune. Now the others went faster. Saint-Just was called just before him, walking with dignity onto the scaffold and bowing his head briefly to the crowd as if in recognition of applause. Then they led Max up. It was exactly a year ago he had agreed to serve on the Committee of Public Safety.
Sanson yanked the rag bandage violently from him so he could not help crying out, a short scream. He could not close his jaw now and it hung open, blood streaming down. He was impatient for it to end. He lay down on his stomach and waited. They had bungled. They had failed. He knew the Revolution would not survive them. But there would be other revolutionaries and other revolutions. There would be others. He only wished he had time to figure out exactly what he had done wrong. He felt as calm as Saint-Just had seemed. There was nothing he could do now; he was free of the doing. He heard the blade released and the people cheer. In a moment Sanson would grin, holding up his head with the shattered jaw. He was thirty-six years and two and a half months of age.
EIGHTY-THREE
Pauline
(August 1794)
PAULINE wrote to the Tribunal reviewing their case, “It is my sole desire to devote myself to domestic duties, to the happiness of my husband and the education of the children we wish to have, in the service of our great country.” She had heard that garbage from the delegates who had banned the RRW and from the Jacobin Club, when the men turned against them. She could write it by the yard. Working against Théo and her was that they had been far
left, and these days the open road was to the right. Working for them was that Robespierre had put them inside, and any enemy of Robespierre’s might have friends in power.
Claire said, “I just can’t say those lies. Besides, we may be safer inside. The people are being disarmed.”
“Claire, the Terror is over. They repealed the law of twenty-two Prairial. No more assumption of guilt. Every day more people are freed.”
“I’ve noticed more keep arriving.”
“You’re afraid to hope. That’s defeating yourself. I’m full of hope.” Pauline also suspected she was filling up with something else, but she would not say a word to anyone, least of all Théo, till she knew for sure.
Claire had been transferred to the Luxembourg. She had already set up a business, along with Momoro’s widow. Almost every day Victoire came to Claire, but Babette had not been to see them in weeks. Claire could get things for people. Prisoners put in requests for food—a chicken, salad greens, good red wine—and gave them a deposit. Victoire could get deals in used clothing. They had contacts among former RRW members, Enragés and Hébertists. Some Hébertists were still in power, although the Commune had been purged and more than a hundred Robespierrists had gone to the guillotine. She and Théo had friends in the government, agitating to get them out. Théo’s army officers and buddies were demanding his release, saying that his regiment needed him.
That day, the midwife came in to examine Pauline. Then Pauline added a note to her appeal. “I am with child, and I think I would be a better mother if I could raise this child among good citizens. I intend to breastfeed my son and raise him to be a soldier.”
“But you’re not pregnant. You don’t think you’ve laid it on a little thick?” Théo asked. His own plea was full of martial ardor and fervent promises to be a good officer and stay out of politics.
“I don’t think it’s possible to lay it on too thick for them. Whoever them is this week.” Everything was unstable since the fall of Robespierre. Different factions were vying, but basically a coalition of Dantonists and those further right were in power. Former terrorists—agents on mission whom Robespierre had recalled and condemned for excesses of brutality or corruption—had moved to the right and were busy persecuting their old allies.