by Ruth Scurr
Despite his long day traveling, Robespierre visited the Jacobin Club before dining with Pétion. Here he was greeted with rapturous applause. No sooner had he entered the old convent than the Jacobins made him their president: he had truly come home. The following evening one of the club members raised the matter of confession—surely this Catholic sacrament was dangerous and should be discouraged. Robespierre, fresh from Arras, disagreed—it was pointless attacking religious customs beloved by the people, he warned his fellow Jacobins.7 Better to hope that over time the people would mature and abandon such prejudices. In the meantime, the club should stick to discussing issues raised by the Legislative Assembly, just as it had followed the National Assembly in the past; in this way it was sure to focus on urgently relevant business. And nothing, Robespierre insisted, was more relevant than the threat of war. He was far from alone in worrying about the émigrés at the frontier. Rumors of war, of a royal plot to restore despotism, were circulating wildly. Louis XVI appeared before the assembly on 14 December and promised to send 150,000 French troops to protect the frontier within a month. In fact, he had already written to the major European powers requesting their armed intervention to save his throne. Robespierre did not know this for certain, but he suspected as much and ended the year 1791 as the de facto leader of an antiwar campaign.
Brissot, who, unlike Robespierre and Pétion, had been eligible for election to the new legislative body (never having been an official member of its predecessor), was the leader of the pro-war party. He had not attended a Jacobin meeting for several months when he suddenly decided to confront Robespierre on his own territory. On the night of 16 December, having set the case for war before the assembly earlier in the day, Brissot told the Jacobins that only war could save the Revolution and stop France from becoming a plaything for Europe’s tyrants. War, as he saw it, would consolidate the Revolution in France by carrying it into foreign countries in the wake of an invading army. Robespierre intervened to prevent Brissot’s speech being printed and circulated to the affiliated clubs until he had had a chance to reply.8 Two days later he harangued the Jacobins with his twenty-page response:
Is this the war of a nation against other nations or a king against other kings? No. It is a war of the enemies of the French Revolution against the French Revolution. Are the most numerous and dangerous of these enemies at Coblentz [the headquarters of émigré forces]? No, they are among us…. War is always the first desire of a powerful government that wants to become more powerful…. Let us calmly assess our situation: the nation is divided into three parts; aristocrats, patriots, and the hypocritical in-between party known as ministers.9
On and on he went, insisting that France was teetering on the brink of a foreign, civil, and religious war, all equally menacing to the Revolution. The king and his ministers must not be trusted. But always it was the hidden enemy—the enemy within—that preoccupied Robespierre. Turning on Brissot, he asked what security the journalist could offer against such alarming dangers. None. “Mistrust is a shameful state,” Brissot had argued. Now Robespierre riposted that mistrust was a good deal less shameful than “the stupid confidence” (a phrase borrowed from Danton) that might lead the nation over the edge of a precipice. “Patriot legislators, do not slander mistrust,” he warned Brissot and the rest of the assembly. Finally, mindful of what he had seen in and around Arras, he pointed out that in any event France could not go to war until it was ready: weapons would need to be manufactured, the National Guard would have to be properly armed, the people themselves would need to be armed too, albeit only with pikes. All of this was a direct development of Robespierre’s earlier speech on the National Guard. Now as then, he drew on the idea of a democratic war, waged exclusively in the general interest by the whole people in arms. The war that, for different reasons, Brissot, the king, and his ministers were all proposing could not have been more different.
Mutual friends at the Jacobin Club effected a personal reconciliation between Robespierre and Brissot early in the New Year, but no one could reconcile their positions on war. “I shall continue to oppose Brissot’s views whenever they seem contrary to my principles,” Robespierre announced. “Let our union rest upon the holy basis of patriotism and virtue; and let us fight as free men, with frankness and, if necessary, determination, but also with respect for friendship and each other.”10 And this is exactly what he did when, against all his warnings, the assembly approved the first ultimatum to Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. The ultimatum demanded that Leopold II disassociate himself from the counterrevolutionary émigrés and all European powers hostile to the Revolution. If, by 1 March, he had still not publicly declared his support for France, war would ensue.11 Snapping straight into his Nostradamus mode, Robespierre prophesied to the Jacobins:
Ah! I can see a great crowd of people dancing in an open plain covered with grass and flowers, making play with their weapons, and filling the air with shouts of joy and songs of war. Suddenly the ground sinks beneath their feet, the flowers, the men, the weapons disappear; and I can see nothing but a gaping chasm filled with victims. Ah! Fly! Fly, while there is still time, before the ground on which you stand opens beneath its covering of flowers.12
Marat himself could have no found more powerful images for an audience still reeling from the shock of the massacre on the Champ de Mars.
THE BUILDUP TO war accentuated the division at the Jacobin Club between Robespierre and Brissot, and Robespierre had to struggle hard to secure his ascendancy over what was now his only power base.13 He tried to close the club’s doors, arguing against the admission of new members or even the readmission of old members who had left but wanted to come back. He proposed posting a list of members up on the club wall, along with their addresses, current occupations, and status prior to the Revolution, both to discourage people from claiming to be Jacobins when they were not (or were no longer) and to help keep track of the membership.14 But he failed to gain control of the club’s Correspondence Committee, which, as he astutely recognized, was the link between the Parisian Jacobins and their thousands of associated clubs throughout the country.15 In February it came to light that the Correspondence Committee, dominated by Brissot’s faction, was on the point of sending a pro-war circular to affiliated clubs without consulting the Parisian club in its entirety. Then, on 10 February, Robespierre set out before the club his own vision of a war of defense, still hoping to sway the Parisian Jacobins against the war of conquest advocated by Brissot. Robespierre began characteristically. “I am going to propose a means of saving the fatherland, that is to say, stifling the civil war and the foreign war by confounding the schemes of our internal enemies.”16
What followed was an outpouring of his obsessions at this crucial juncture in the Revolution—many of which he would return to, with far more power at his disposal, two years later. They fell into two categories: internal treason and obstacles to the free expression of public spirit. Again he raised the question of arming the National Guard and the people themselves. The king’s war minister had suggested recruiting men from the ranks of the National Guard into the professional army. Treason, warned Robespierre, nothing less than a proposal to annihilate the National Guard, the very opposite of arming it properly in the defense of the people. He reminded the Jacobins of how, over a year ago, he had cautioned the National Assembly against letting the king retain the right to declare war. The deputies had only half listened to him, and now the new Legislative Assembly was paying the price of not being free to make decisions independently of the king and his untrustworthy ministry. To remedy the situation, he called for weapons inspections in all the municipalities, in the presence of the people, so everyone would know exactly what there was to defend the nation with. These weapons should then be distributed to National Guards throughout France, beginning with the battalions at the frontier with the Austrian Netherlands, some of which, as he had seen for himself in Arras, were still unarmed.
The next
step, as he saw it, was to arm the people:
I demand the manufacture of pikes, and that the [Legislative] Assembly commend this almost sacred weapon to the people and exhort them to never forget the important role it has played in our revolution; and I propose that it [the assembly] summon all citizens to the defense of the state and liberty and efface all the injurious and impolitic distinctions that divide them.17
Beyond this, he called for the electoral colleges of the forty-eight Paris sections to go into permanent, that is, daily, session. Perpetual vigilance was required to save the state, he insisted, and only the sections could provide it. Here again, Robespierre echoed a speech he had given in 1790 in support of Danton; now as then he wanted to see “a tight and holy” alliance between the people and their representatives. But more was needed. “Do you want to invigorate and regenerate the whole state in an instant?” he asked his amazed audience. This, he thought, could be achieved by organizing a new Festival of Federation, on the model of the original festival, which had commemorated the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Let National Guards all over France freely elect delegations and send them to Paris for the first of March. There, in a patriotic and fraternal festival, they could renew their commitment to the admirable principle “Liberty or death!” They could offer a symbolic sacrifice on the altar of liberty and appease the spirits of the virtuous citizens.
In the middle of this speech—playing dangerously on religious imagery and the memory of earlier revolutionary scenes on the Champ de Mars—Robespierre called upon his friend Pétion to officiate at this new festival:
O Pétion! You are worthy of this honor, worthy of deploying as much energy as wisdom in the dangers that menace the fatherland that we have defended together. Come, on the tombs of our brothers let us mingle our tears and weapons, remind ourselves of the pleasures of celestial virtue, and die tomorrow, if need be, from the blows of our common enemies.18
He called, too, on the members of the Legislative Assembly to join in this festival that he imagined so vividly. Let them come to the Champ de Mars, not as their predecessors had done, overshadowed by the corrupt pomp of an arrogant court (Robespierre remembered how he had sat in the pavilion behind the king on 14 July 1790), but proudly inspired by “all the majesty of the people and the simplicity of civic virtue.”19 This indeed would be proof that the France of 14 July still lived.
After this rhetorical climax, Robespierre returned to the causes of the current crisis in foreign policy. He pointed out that the National Assembly (against his advice) had misjudged the political situation and given too much credence to the king and his ministers. It had, for example, approved of General Bouillé’s brutal repression of the rebellious soldiers in Nancy. On this, as on so many other occasions, it had been led disastrously astray. The new Legislative Assembly must do better, must remember that it was in the middle of a revolution, surrounded by traitors wearing masks of patriotism, and must remain ever vigilant and critical of the advice it received. To this end, he proposed that a new hall to house the assembly be built on the site of the razed Bastille. Things would never have gone so catastrophically wrong if in Paris, as in Versailles, the assembly had met in a hall big enough to admit large numbers of the general public. The meager spectator space at the Manège had led to treasonous decisions—like the declaration of martial law that led to the massacre on the Champ de Mars—that would never have been made in the presence of the people. The hall Robespierre envisaged would hold at least ten thousand spectators, and he thought it could be built quickly if as much energy and determination went into the project as had gone into the building of opera houses under the old regime. (In this way, he anticipated by two hundred years the televising of parliaments in the democratic world.)
Finally, he came to the subject of education, obviously extremely important, given the prominent role he envisaged for the people. He favored a centralized national system of pedagogy, which a number of other revolutionaries had already advocated. But for his purposes in this speech he outlined only a handful of simple ideas for rapidly propagating the principles of the revolution. Unsurprisingly, after what he had already said, national festivals topped his list of suggestions. He also wanted to see the theaters used in the service of the Revolution: plays like Brutus, William Tell, and Gracchus, which depicted the charms of virtue and wonders of liberty, would be edifying entertainments for the people.20 Nurtured in this way, Robespierre was convinced—or said he was convinced—that public spirit would soon converge with the true principles of the Revolution and resolve the problems menacing France. When it came to patriotism, the Paris sections made better judges than the academics in the Académie française, better judges, too, than the administrators in the Department of Paris. In making this unabashed populist argument, Robespierre, as so often, was following Rousseau, who had claimed in the Social Contract that all men and groups in positions of power had an interest apart from that of the people. With Rousseau in mind, he argued that the people alone are good: “the spirit of the people is good, and it alone renders justice to its friends and its enemies.”21
As Robespierre stepped down from the tribune after this remarkable speech, he was applauded as rapturously as on his return from Arras. He had found his public persona and hit his political stride. This was obvious even to a foreign visitor in Paris. The political writer and composer of comic operas William Augustus Miles wrote to the British poet laureate, Henry James Pye, of Robespierre:
He is a stern man, rigid in his principles, plain, unaffected in his manners, no foppery in his dress, certainly above corruption, despising wealth, and with nothing of the volatility of a Frenchman in his character…. I watch him very closely [at the Jacobins] every night. I read his countenance with eyes steadily fixed on him. He is really a character to be contemplated; he is growing every hour into consequence.22
The Jacobins acclaimed Robespierre the hero of the Revolution, and, as was now customary in their club, they proposed printing and circulating his speech to their affiliated clubs and to the Paris sections (which would, obviously, be very gratified by it). As so often before, however, this seminal speech that contained in embryo Robespierre’s core themes—his suspicion of internal enemies, his trust in the people—had little impact at the time. In January the Jacobin Club had sent a circular to all its affiliates claiming that war was inevitable. Even Danton, who like Robespierre was opposed, said, “If anyone were to ask me, ‘Are we to have war?’ I would reply (not in argument but as a matter of fact), ‘We shall hear the bugles.’”23 After Robespierre’s speech in February there was another club circular announcing that the majority of the Parisian Jacobins strongly favored war. And in March the king gave in to the attacks on his ministers (who were suspected of trying to turn the imminent war to the advantage of the counterrevolution), dismissed them, and appointed instead friends and associates of Brissot’s, among them Mme Roland’s husband, who became minister of the interior, Etienne Clavière, a Genevan financier and journalist, now minister of finance, and Joseph Servan, minister of war. Brissot was suddenly at the center of a sphere of political influence undreamed of by anyone since Mirabeau, ranging across the Jacobins, the Legislative Assembly, and the executive power. His war-mongering had proved popular with those who resented the émigrés, feared foreign invasion, and suspected the king’s commitment to the Revolution. Brissot was emerging the leading advocate of a republic in France. All eyes were upon him—none more warily than Robespierre’s.
EVER SINCE THE Revolution began, Robespierre had been suspicious of the king’s ministers, whoever they happened to be, because they were entrusted with executive power and thus vulnerable to corruption. Even Necker, whom Robespierre eulogized before 1789, became a target for his attacks afterward. Now that Brissot’s friends—Roland, Clavière, Servan—were ministers, executive power was, for the first time, in the hands of people Robespierre knew personally. This only aggravated his hostility. Sneeringly, he criticized Brissot, who had us
ed his influence in the assembly to help his friends to power:
You have got rid of certain old ministers, but you have filled their places with your own friends. It must be confessed that your patriotism is not without its little consolations. All the world sees the publicity—the ridiculous ostentation—with which you dispose of all the office and employments in the country among your own creatures.24
The Incorruptible could not tolerate nepotism. Now, on top of his ideological differences with Brissot over the putative war, there was open personal contempt. In the circumstances, his relationship with Mme Roland also deteriorated sharply. After he returned from Arras she was as effusive and solicitous toward him as ever, but very soon even she could not ignore the distance that had developed between Robespierre and the circle of radicals she presided over so proudly. As the wife of the minister of the interior, she was prouder still: “When my husband was at the ministry I made it a rule not to make or to receive social calls and not to invite any women to meals…. Twice a week I invited to dinner ministers, deputies, and others with whom my husband needed to be on good terms. They always talked business in front of me because I did not interrupt and was not surrounded by indiscreet friends…. Thus, without any need for intrigue or unseemly curiosity, I found myself at the center of affairs.”25 Mme Roland wrote to Robespierre almost ordering him to come see her so she could pick his brains and decide how to use her supposedly discreet influence, “You are at the head of my list. So please come at once. I am eager to see you and to tell you again of my regard for you—a regard that nothing can alter.”26 If he went, he went only warily, and the decline in their friendship continued. Pétion tried to act as a peacemaker. But it would not be long before Robespierre, who had only recently imagined standing by Pétion’s side, pledging liberty or death on the Champ de Mars, fell out with him too. Here began a period of political isolation that Robespierre, determined as always never to compromise his principles, relished. He had no formal power of any kind, except his legal office as public prosecutor, which he resigned on 10 April, giving up its steady income of eight thousand livres a year, to leave himself more time for politics.