第68章

``This cry of outlawry,'' writes Williams, ``at this period produced the same effect on a Frenchman as the cry of pestilence;the outlaw became civilly excommunicated, and it was as though men believed that they would be contaminated passing through the air which he had breathed.Such was the effect it produced upon the gunners who had trained their cannon against the Convention.

Without receiving further orders, merely on hearing that the Commune was `outside the law,' they immediately turned their batteries about.''

Robespierre and all his band--Saint-Just, the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the mayor of the Commune, &c.,--were guillotined on the 10th of Thermidor to the number of twenty-one.

Their execution was followed on the morrow by a fresh batch of seventy Jacobins, and on the next day by thirteen.The Terror, which had lasted ten months, was at an end.

The downfall of the Jacobin edifice in Thermidor is one of the most curious psychological events of the revolutionary period.

None of the Montagnards who had worked for the downfall of Robespierre had for a moment dreamed that it would mark the end of the Terror.

Tallien, Barras, Fouche, &c., overthrew Robespierre as he had overthrown Hebert, Danton, the Girondists, and many others.

But when the acclamations of the crowd told them that the death of Robespierre was regarded as having put an end to the Terror they acted as though such had been their intention.They were the more obliged to do so in that the Plain--that is, the great majority of the Assembly--which had allowed itself to be decimated by Robespierre, now rebelled furiously against the system it had so long acclaimed even while it abhorred it.

Nothing is more terrible than a body of men who have been afraid and are afraid no longer.The Plain revenged itself for being terrorised by the Mountain, and terrorised that body in turn.

The servility of the colleagues of Robespierre in the Convention was by no means based upon any feeling of sympathy for him.The dictator filled them with an unspeakable alarm, but beneath the marks of admiration and enthusiasm which they lavished on him out of fear was concealed an intense hatred.We can gather as much by reading the reports of various deputies inserted in the Moniteur of August 11, 15, and 29, 1794, and notably that on ``the conspiracy of the triumvirs, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just.'' Never did slaves heap such invectives on a fallen master.

We learn that ``these monsters had for some time been renewing the most horrible prescriptions of Marius and Sulla.''

Robespierre is represented as a most frightful scoundrel; we are assured that ``like Caligula, he would soon have asked the French people to worship his horse...He sought security in the execution of all who aroused his slightest suspicion.''

These reports forget to add that the power of Robespierre obtained no support, as did that of the Marius and Sulla to whom they allude, from a powerful army, but merely from the repeated adhesion of the members of the Convention.Without their extreme timidity the power of the dictator could not have lasted a single day.

Robespierre was one of the most odious tyrants of history, but he is distinguished from all others in that he made himself a tyrant without soldiers.

We may sum up his doctrines by saying that he was the most perfect incarnation, save perhaps Saint-Just, of the Jacobin faith, in all its narrow logic, its intense mysticism, and its inflexible rigidity.He has admirers even to-day.M.Hamel describes him as ``the martyr of Thermidor.'' There has been some talk of erecting a monument to him.I would willingly subscribe to such a purpose, feeling that it is useful to preserve proofs of the blindness of the crowd, and of the extraordinary docility of which an assembly is capable when the leader knows how to handle it.His statue would recall the passionate cries of admiration and enthusiasm with which the Convention acclaimed the most threatening measures of the dictator, on the very eve of the day when it was about to cast him down.

4.Fouquier-Tinville, Marat, Billaud-Varenne, &c.

I shall devote a paragraph to certain revolutionists who were famous for the development of their most sanguinary instincts.

Their ferocity was complicated by other sentiments, by fear and hatred, which could but fortify it.

Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was one of those who have left the most sinister memories.This magistrate, formerly reputed for his kindness, and who became the bloodthirsty creature whose memory evokes such repulsion, has already served me as an example in other works, when I have wished to show the transformation of certain natures in time of revolution.

Needy in the extreme at the moment of the fall of the monarchy, he had everything to hope from a social upheaval and nothing to lose.He was one of those men whom a period of disorder will always find ready to sustain it.

The Convention abandoned its powers to him.He had to pronounce upon the fate of nearly two thousand accused, among whom were Marie-Antoinette, the Girondists, Danton, Hebert, &c.He had all the suspects brought before him executed, and did not scruple to betray his former protectors.As soon as one of them fell into his power--Camille Desmoulins, Danton, or another--he would plead against him.

Fouquier-Tinville had a very inferior mind, which the Revolution brought to the top.Under normal conditions, hedged about by professional rules, his destiny would have been that of a peaceable and obscure magistrate.This was precisely the lot of his deputy, or substitute, at the Tribunal, Gilbert-Liendon.

``He should,'' writes M.Durel, ``have inspired the same horror as his colleague, yet he completed his career in the upper ranks of the Imperial magistracy.''