The problems of the Convention were now exacerbated by the spread of the ferocious civil war in the Vendée where tens of thousands of peasants, having risen in arms against mobilization and the new revolutionary order, massacred republicans, scattered the forces of the National Guard and advanced on Rochefort with the declared intention of opening it to a British invasion fleet. Elsewhere in France, also, peasants were protesting violently against mobilization, refusing to comply with the Convention’s decrees, harbouring recalcitrant priests and attacking republican municipalities. Troops had to be dispatched to Brittany; while in Bordeaux and Nantes, Lyons and Marseilles there were furious quarrels and outbreaks of fighting between different groups of revolutionaries, which led many to wish that there had been no Revolution at all.
The Convention responded to the crises by issuing a series of emergency decrees designed to shore up the crumbling edifice of the executive government. Rebels captured bearing arms were to be executed; so were émigrés who returned to France. Foreigners were to be closely watched by new comités de surveillance; priests denounced by six citizens were to be deported. And in early March the establishment of a Revolutionary Tribunal was proposed to deal judicially with those whom the Enragés and the sans-culottes might otherwise have persecuted arbitrarily. This proposal aroused murmurs of protest from various moderates in the Convention, one of whom was brave enough to shout the word, ‘Septembre.’ At this Danton, already profoundly distressed by the recent death of his wife over whose grave he had bellowed in unbearable grief, turned upon the man who had spoken and in ‘thunderous tones’ rebuked him: ‘Since someone here has dared to recall those bloody days…I say that if a Revolutionary Tribunal had then existed, the people who have been so cruelly reproached for them would not have stained them with blood. Let us profit by the mistakes of our predecessors. Let us be terrible so that we can prevent the people from being terrible.’
So, despite the objections of Vergniaud, who said that they would be ‘laying the foundations of an Inquisition a thousand times more fearful than that of Spain’, the deputies agreed to the creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal, before which so many of them were later to appear. A month later, as the news from the front grew more alarming and the threat to France of being overrun by foreign troops was added to that of the spread of civil war, the Convention also set up a Committee of Public Safety which, with Danton, at first the most powerful of its nine members, was gradually to arrogate to itself the authority of a supremely omnipotent cabinet.
In Paris there were increasingly insistent demands from the Left to punish the Girondin leaders whose reputation had been tarnished by the treachery of their supporter, General Dumouriez, and by their campaign to gain control of provincial municipalities and to turn them against the political dominance of Paris. The Committee of Public Safety responded to these demands by ordering the seizure of the Rolands’ papers; and, when these were found to contain little of a compromising nature, Camille Desmoulins produced a pamphlet, L’histoire des Brissotins, which, having listed various concocted charges, called upon the Convention to ‘vomit the Girondins from its belly’. But the Girondins refused to be intimidated, seeming to Danton to be ‘bent on their own destruction’. Danton, the one man who could have saved them, went to see some of their leaders with an offer of compromise. ‘Let bygones be bygones,’ he said to them, only too well aware that his own friendly relations with Dumouriez laid himself open to just such attacks as were being made upon them and that he might need their support as much as they needed his.
‘Let it be war,’ retorted Guadet challengingly, brushing Danton’s overtures aside, ‘and let one side perish!’
‘You want war, then, Guadet, do you?’ Danton answered, provoked into fury. ‘Then you shall have death.’
Soon afterwards in the Convention both he and the Girondins came under open attack for their association with Dumouriez. ‘His lips were curled in that expression of contempt which was peculiar to him. He inspired a sort of terror. His glance expressed both disdain and rage.’ Suddenly he leaped to his feet to deflect attention from himself and Dumouriez by turning furiously on the Girondins.
‘Citizens of the Mountain,’ Danton exclaimed, waving a fist which the Abbé Kerenavent described as resembling ‘that of a street porter’, ‘I must begin by paying you homage. You are the true friends of the welfare of the people. Your judgement has been clearer than mine…I was wrong. I now abandon moderation because prudence has its limits…I am now convinced that no truce is possible between the Mountain, the patriots who wanted the King’s death, and these cowards who slandered us throughout France in the hope of saving him…No more terms with them! I have returned to the fortress of Reason. I will have it armed with the artillery of Truth in order to blow these enemies to dust!’
He continued for some time in the same vein, his great voice resounding round the walls, while the Montagnards cheered and Marat shouted his encouragement.
Yet the Girondins still refused to compromise and responded to the attacks made upon them by the Left by arraigning Marat, now President of the Jacobin Club, before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Ever since his election to the Convention as one of the deputies for Paris, Marat had been one of the Girondins’ most persistent critics. An English visitor to Paris, Dr John Moore, who listened to him speaking, described how the ‘little man’ appeared to be both detested and feared not only by them but also by most of the Montagnards:
He has a cadaverous complexion and a countenance exceedingly expressive of his disposition…The man’s audacity is equal to anything, but what I thought full as wonderful was the degree of patience, and even approbation, with which he was heard…So far from ever having the appearance of fear or of deference, he seems to me always to contemplate the Assembly from the tribune either with eyes of menace or contempt. He speaks in a hollow, croaking voice, with affected solemnity…Marat has carried his calumnies to such a length that even the party which he wishes to support seem to be ashamed of him, and he is shunned and apparently detested by everyone else. When he enters the hall of the Assembly he is avoided on all sides, and when he seats himself those near him generally rise and change their places. He stood a considerable time yesterday near the tribune, watching an opportunity to speak. I saw him at one time address himself to Louvet and in doing so he attempted to lay his hand on Louvet’s shoulder. Louvet instantly started back with looks of aversion, as one would do from the touch of a noxious reptile, exclaiming, ‘Ne me touchez pas.’
Yet, while shunned in the Convention, Marat was highly regarded by the extremists outside it; and, as the Girondins might have foreseen, he was immediately acquitted upon his appearance before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was carried back in triumph by a mob of cheering women and sans-culottes to the Convention whose meeting hall had by now been transferred from the Manège to the Court’s former theatre at the Tuileries. The doors burst open and Marat, smiling sardonically, a wreath of oak leaves round his forehead, was borne shoulder high before the deputies. ‘Citizen President,’ announced a man with an axe, ‘we bring you the worthy Marat. Marat has always been the friend of the people, and the people will always be the friends of Marat. If Marat’s head must fall, our heads will fall first.’ As the people in the public galleries roared their approval and several deputies left their seats in disgust, permission was sought for Marat’s escort to parade him about the theatre. ‘I will consult the Assembly,’ the President replied. But not waiting for him to do so, the mob rushed in shouting Marat’s name, milling about the floor and occupying the vacated seats. Marat was returned to his place with the Montagnards; then, mounting the rostrum, he made a speech, praising his own pure heart and vilifying his accusers, before being borne off again in triumph to the Jacobin Club.
The Girondins now compounded their mistake in having Marat summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal by dismissing the popular demands for the control of corn prices – thus allowing the Jacobins, who endo
rsed the demands, to gain further favour with the sans-culottes. They then attempted to overthrow the Commune by issuing orders for the arrests of Hébert – now its deputy procureur–of the Enragé, Varlet and of four others of the Girondins’ most vexatious opponents. ‘I declare to you, in the name of the whole of France,’ threatened Maximin Isnard when the Commune protested against this Girondin counter-attack, ‘that if these extremists are allowed to have their way and the principle of national representation suffers, Paris will be annihilated; and men will soon be searching the banks of the Seine to see if the city had ever existed.’
The Enragés and sans-culottes in the Paris sections, with the rather nervous complaisance of most of the Jacobins and with the active help of some of them, now decided to take action to destroy the Girondins once and for all. On 27 May a mob burst through the doors of the Convention, demanded and obtained the release of Hébert, Varlet and the other prisoners, as well as the abolition of a Girondin-dominated Commission of Twelve which had recently been established to investigate the behaviour of the Commune and the troublesome sections. The next day the Commission of Twelve was re-established by the Girondins, but the prisoners remained free and the sans-culottes prepared another journée.
On the evening of that day, 28 May, a new Insurrectionary Committee was formed with Varlet one of its members. A militia of 30,000 sans-culottes was raised; a petition was prepared demanding the permanent abolition of the Commission of Twelve and the arrest of the Girondin leaders. Command of the National Guard was entrusted to François Hanriot, a former clerk, beadle, footman and brandy seller, one of the sans-culottes who took part in the assault on the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, ‘a coarse and irascible man who never opened his lips without bawling,’ according to a police report, ‘and remarkable for a harsh and grimacing countenance.’
Danton and the Committee of Public Safety did not intervene, but the Convention as a whole, even a majority of its Jacobin members, were reluctant to accede to the Insurrectionary Committee’s demands for the arrest of the Girondins, fearing that this might result in the collapse of the entire Convention. When, therefore, the petition was presented on 31 May, the demonstrators were told that the Commission of Twelve would be abolished, as they had demanded, but that the proposed arrest of the Girondins would be referred to the Committee of Public Safety.
The crowd went home dissatisfied and determined to make further protests. That day was a Friday and many of those who would have otherwise joined in the march on the Convention were unwilling to lose a day’s wages in order to do so. So the Insurrectionary Committee decided to march again on Sunday when all the workers would be free to come with them.
On that Sunday, 2 June, to the sound of drum beats, the roar of the alarm-gun, and the peal of the tocsin, which Marat had rung with his own hand in the tower of the Hotel de Ville the day before, the Convention was once again surrounded by shouting demonstrators, by tens of thousands of armed men from the sections and by the battalions of Hanriot’s National Guard supported by sixty cannon. A delegation of their leaders entered the theatre to ‘demand for the last time justice against the guilty’.
At these words Jean-Denis Lanjuinais, one of the Montagnards’ bravest and most outspoken opponents, a former professor of ecclesiastical law at Rennes, rose to protest against ‘this disgraceful intimidation of the country’s elected representatives’. To threats and catcalls from the galleries, to shouts of ‘Down! Down! He wants to start a civil war!’ from a group of Montagnards, Lanjuinais stood his ground, insisting, ‘So long as one is allowed to speak freely here, I will not let the character of representative of the people be degraded in my person! So far you have done nothing; you have permitted everything; you have given way to all that was required of you. An insurrectional committee meets. It prepares a revolt. It appoints commanders to lead it. And you do nothing to prevent it.’
Failing in their attempts to shout him down, several Montagnards rushed up to the rostrum and tried to drag Lanjuinais off it. But he clung on tenaciously until, some semblance of order having at last been restored by the President, Lanjuinais brought his protests to an end by proposing that the revolutionary authorities which had illegally established themselves in Paris should be dissolved. While a deputy of the Left was asking just how he suggested that this should be done, the members of the Insurrectionary Committee again stormed into the theatre, repeating their demands more forcefully than ever.
One deputy now suggested, as a compromise, that the Girondins, whose arrest the armed crowds outside were demanding, should all voluntarily resign their functions. Some agreed to do so, but others, including Lanjuinais, refused. ‘If the Convention compels me to resign, I will submit,’ said Charles Barbaroux, a deputy from Marseilles, supporting Lanjuinais. ‘But how can I resign my powers when a great number of people write to me and assure me that I have used them well and press me to continue to use them? I have sworn to die at my post, and I will keep my oath.’
During the course of the debate a number of deputies had tried to leave the theatre, but had been prevented. Some had been roughly man-handled, and one of them had returned to display in indignation his torn clothes. It was then suggested that, to prove that they were still free, the entire Convention should leave the theatre in a body. The deputies of the Right and the Plain all stood up and began to file out of the doors led by their handsome, debonair President, Hérault de Séchelles, an elegant and independently minded man who derided the fashion for dressing carelessly and who, questioned about his political affiliations, replied that he belonged ‘to the party that snapped its fingers at the others’.
The Montagnards remained at first in their places but, reproached for not daring to share the common danger, they, too, rose to their feet and followed the others outside on to the Carrousel.
Here Hanriot, wearing a hat bedecked with plumes, was sitting in the saddle at the head of his National Guard. ‘What do the people want?’ Hérault de Séchelles asked him. ‘The Convention is concerned only with their welfare.’
‘Hérault,’ Hanriot replied brusquely, ‘the people have not come here to listen to idle talk.’ They had come, he said, to demand that the guilty Girondins should be arrested.
‘Seize this rebel,’ Hérault de Séchelles commanded the National Guard, who merely looked at him as Hanriot backed his horse and bellowed at his artillerymen, ‘Gunners, to your cannon!’ The deputies quickly turned away. They tried to find some other avenue of escape, but the National Guard stood firm, some of them shouting, ‘Down with the Right! Long live the Montagnards! To the guillotine with the Girondins! Long live Marat!’
Marat himself, surrounded by a group of admiring boys, shouted to Hérault de Séchelles, ‘I can call on you and your followers to return to the posts which you have abandoned like cowards.’ Reluctant as he was to take Marat’s advice, the President realized that he really had no alternative but to retreat. So, while the crowds jeered and insulted them, he led the deputies back into the building where they continued to discuss the fate of the proscribed deputies. The Right refused to vote on the issue, protesting that they were no longer free agents, but the Montagnards ignored their protests. A decree was passed ordering the arrest of twenty-two leading Girondins. Their names, among them many of those who had dominated the earlier days of the Revolution, were read out by Marat, slowly and with evident relish.
By taking the initiative and running all the risks, the Enragés and sans-culottes had given the Jacobins the opportunity to assume control of Paris and vigorously to prosecute the war which the Girondins had provoked. But few of the demands of these forceful demonstrators from the Paris sections had yet been met, and the Jacobins on the Committee of Public Safety were now faced with the problem of restraining them as well as of suppressing the Insurrectionary Committee without arousing their enmity. The Committee of Public Safety had also now to find some way of preventing a reaction in favour of the Girondins – over seventy of whom had signed a protest against t
he Jacobin coup d’état–and of putting a stop to their campaign in the provinces where they were inciting people to protest against this fresh proof of Parisian terrorism and urging them to rise up against the Jacobin dictators in the capital and to impose fédéralisme on France.
During the next few weeks the federalist revolt in the provinces continued to spread until no less than sixty départements were infected and the rebels were in possession of several towns in the Loire valley. General Paoli established control of Corsica; parts of Normandy were in uproar; and civil war, such as that fought in the Vendée, raged round Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon. Some of the movement’s leaders hoped to see France divided into a number of more or less independent republics bound together by not too restrictive federal ties. Others were merely anxious to regain for their communities the independence and privileges of which the Revolution had deprived them. But all were strong in their condemnation of the Parisians’ intimidation of an elected national assembly.
The Committee of Public Safety attempted to quieten the protests and subdue the uprisings by making various economic concessions to the peasants and by drawing up a new constitution which – though it never came into operation and was perhaps not intended to – would demonstrate the good intentions of the central government by establishing the principle of universal suffrage and proclaiming the duty of society to provide work for those who could work, help for those who could not, and education for all. The federalist revolt failed, however, not because of these palliatives but because it lacked both unity of direction and the fervour of its opponents, and because, so long as there was still a real threat of foreign invasion, fédéralisme seemed an issue that must give way to national salvation.
The war was, indeed, the issue upon which all others turned. The Austrians had followed up their victory over Dumouriez by advancing towards the frontier fortresses of Condé and Valenciennes, both of which fell that summer. Custine was retreating before the Prussians; Spanish armies were threatening to cross the western frontier both north and south of the Pyrenees; the Sardinians were poised to retake Savoy. British troops began to lay siege to Dunkirk. At Lyons, the second most important city in France, royalists had assumed control and were busy executing the republicans whom they had displaced, and at Toulon counter-revolutionaries were soon to hand over arsenal, town and fleet to the British admiral, Lord Hood who, without the discharge of a single broadside, took under his command twenty-six of France’s sixty-one frigates.
The Days of the French Revolution Page 20