The Days of the French Revolution (21 page)

She said goodbye to her husband, kissing him fondly, when he went to face his accusers in the Convention. He behaved there with dignity, answering the questions that were put to him with calm brevity. He was allowed counsel and chose the elderly Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, a blunt though kind and generous-hearted lawyer who had once been Master of the Household and now bravely answered his former master’s call by returning from his retirement in Switzerland to defend him. ‘I have,’ Malesherbes said, ‘been twice before called to be counsel for him who was my master, in times when that duty was coveted by everyone. I owe him the same service now that it is a duty which many people deem dangerous.’ The King also asked to be defended by Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target, but Target excused himself on the grounds that he had not practised law since 1785 and that he was, in any case, far too fat; so the King’s defence was entrusted instead to François Tronchet and Romain de Sèze.

Few members of the Convention were prepared to listen sympathetically to propositions of the King’s innocence. But while leading Montagnards emphatically demanded the death penalty once the King’s guilt was shown, there were several Girondins who, for reasons of expediency, argued that his life should be spared. ‘No republican will ever be brought to believe that, in order to set twenty-five million men free, one man must die,’ protested Brissot, ‘that, in order to destroy the office of King, the man who fills it must be killed.’ Supporting Brissot, Rabaut Saint-Étienne, one of the Secretaries of the Convention, suggested that ‘Louis dead [would be] more dangerous to the people’s freedom than Louis living in prison.’ Such arguments, however, not shared by all the Gironde – which was never a homogeneous party – were derided by the
sans-culottes
in the streets of Paris where thousands of armed men marched intimidatingly past the houses and lodgings of the deputies, and where cheers went up for men like Saint-Just who demanded the execution of the King and of all men like him. ‘What
charming freedom we now enjoy in Paris,’ commented Madame Roland caustically.

The verdict as to the King’s guilt was never in doubt; indeed, it was given unanimously. But the Girondins still hoped that they might save his life, first by proposing that the matter of his punishment should be referred for ratification to the people of France as a whole and, when this had been condemned by their opponents as a mere political manoeuvre, by recommending a stay of execution. All the devices of the Girondins were, however, in vain. They aroused suspicions that they were royalists at heart, and increased the dislike in which they were already held by the Parisian
sans-culottes
without saving the King. A majority of over fifty deputies voted for death, and a majority of more than seventy subsequently voted against a stay of execution. The sitting of the Convention, during which the first vote was taken, lasted seventy-two hours. The spectators, amongst whom could be seen various friends of the Duc d’Orléans, ‘ate ices and oranges and drank liqueurs’, so the deputy, Sébastien Mercier, recorded. ‘The uppermost galleries, kept open for the common people, were filled with foreigners and people from all walks of life. They drank wine and brandy as if they were in some low, smoke-filled tavern. At all the cafes in the neighbourhood bets were being laid on the outcome.’

Figures, rendered all the more sombre by the dim light, advanced one by one into the Tribune [Mercier continued his description of that nightlong session]. In slow and sepulchral tones voices recorded the verdict, ‘Death!’ Face after face passed by…Some men calculated whether they had time to have a meal before giving their vote. Others fell asleep and had to be woken up to give their opinion. Of all that I saw that night no idea can be given.

The King accepted the verdict calmly, and remained quite composed when he was aroused from his sleep before dawn on 20 January 1793 to be told that he was to be executed the next day. He said goodbye to his family that evening. They all cried so loudly that ‘their lamentations could be heard outside the tower’. He too wept, so his daughter recorded, ‘but not on account of his own death. He told my mother the story of his trial…Then he gave my brother
some good religious advice and told him in particular to forgive the people who had ordered his execution. He gave his blessing to my brother and me. My mother was very anxious for us to spend the night with my father, but he did not want us to as he needed to be quiet. My mother asked if she could come back to him the next morning. He agreed to this at first, but after he had gone he asked the guards to take care we did not come down again as it upset him too much.’

He ate his supper alone. Then Cléry helped him to undress and was about to brush his hair when he said, ‘No, it’s not worth while.’

The next morning he was woken at five o’clock, and after attending Mass and receiving Communion, he heard the clatter of drums. The Irish-born priest, Henry Essex Edgeworth, Elisabeth’s former confessor whom he had asked to be with him at the end, said that his own blood froze in his veins at the sound of the hollow rhythmic tapping. But Louis retained his composure, remarking in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I expect it’s the National Guard beginning to assemble.’ Soon afterwards a company of National Guardsmen arrived at the Temple, accompanied by Santerre, by commissioners from the Commune and by Jacques Roux, a man who had once been a priest and was now one of the leaders of the
Enragés
, the extremist faction which, well to the left of the Montagnards, demanded among other comprehensive reforms the common ownership of goods and the strictest economic controls.

The King, who had been sitting by the porcelain stove in his room to keep warm, opened the door to them, so Edgeworth wrote, ‘and they said that it was time to go. “I am occupied for a moment,” he said to them in an authoritative tone, “wait for me here; I shall be with you in a minute.” He shut the door, and coming to me knelt in front of me. “It is finished,” he said. “Give me your last blessing, and pray God that He will uphold me to the end.” In a moment or two he rose, and leaving the cabinet walked towards the group of men who were in the bedroom. Their faces showed the most complete assurance, and they all remained covered. Seeing this, the King asked for his hat. Cléry, with tears running down his face, hurried to look for it.’

Louis turned to Roux with a parcel containing a few personal belongings and his will which he asked him to give ‘to the Queen’. ‘To my wife,’ he added, hastily amending the words.

‘I have not come here to do your errands,’ Roux roughly replied. ‘I am here to take you to the scaffold.’

‘That is so,’ said Louis, offering the parcel to another man who accepted it.

Outside a light rain had begun to fall from a grey sky. There was a large green carriage waiting, and beyond it stretched line upon line of National Guardsmen and citizens with muskets and pikes on their shoulders. The King walked towards the carriage, ‘turning once or twice towards the tower, as if to say a last goodbye,’ so Edgeworth thought, ‘to all that he held dear in this world. His every movement showed that he was calling up all his reserves of strength and courage.’ The journey to the scaffold, which had been erected in the Place de Louis XV, renamed the Place de la Révolution and, since then, the Place de la Concorde, was a slow one. Edgeworth, the ‘Citizen Minister of Religion’, as the authorities referred to him, sat next to the King; two gendarmes sat opposite. Edgeworth offered Louis his breviary and at the King’s request pointed out to him the most suitable psalms which they recited alternately. In front of the carriage marched a number of drummers, in order, so Edgeworth supposed, to ‘prevent any shouts being heard that might be raised in the King’s favour’.

At about half-past nine the carriage arrived at the Place de la Révolution where Louis saw the platform which had been set up between the promenade of the Champs Élysées and the pedestal from which the statue of his grandfather, who had laid out the square, had been removed. On the platform stood Charles Sanson, the city’s executioner, whose father had preceded him in the office and whose son was to follow him. Above Sanson loomed the instrument of execution, the guillotine.

The guillotine took its name from Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin, who was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1789. A kindly man, he had suggested that all those convicted of a capital offence should have the right to be decapitated, a privilege hitherto reserved for nobles, and that the method of decapitation should be a
machine which would render the process as quick and painless as possible. Such a machine had been known in Germany and Italy, as well as in Yorkshire in England where it was known as the Halifax gibbet, and in Scotland where it was called ‘the Maiden’. In France it was adopted as the official method of execution by the penal code which became law in October 1791. Several machines were thereafter made for the various departments of France by a German contractor who produced them under the direction of the Secretary to the Academy of Surgeons. Those supplied to the department of Paris were tested on dead bodies from the hospital of Bicêtre. One of them was erected in the Place de Grève for the execution of the highwayman, Pelletier, and proved so efficacious that the people were ‘disappointed’, in the words of the
Chronique de Paris
. They had seen nothing. The whole thing was over too quickly. They went away complaining. The same machine was now to be used on the dethroned King.

Louis climbed down from the carriage. Three guards approached him and began to remove his clothes. He shook them off, undoing the buttons of his brown greatcoat himself, taking off his hat and removing his shirt and collar. The guards then pinioned his arms, and again Louis protested. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, quickly drawing his hands back. ‘Binding your hands,’ one of them answered. ‘Binding me!’ exclaimed the King indignantly, looking appealingly at Edgeworth. ‘Sire,’ Edgeworth said, ‘I see in this last outrage only one more resemblance between Your Majesty and the God who is about to be your recompense.’ So Louis submitted while the guards tied his arms behind his back and cut his hair, leaving the neck bare above his white waistcoat.

Having arrived at the top of the scaffold Louis walked across it with a firm step, making a sign to the drummers who for a moment stopped tapping while he addressed the crowd in a loud voice. ‘I forgive those who are guilty of my death, and I pray God that the blood which you are about to shed may never be required of France. I only sanctioned upon compulsion the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.’ But his next words were lost as an officer on horseback shouted a command to the fifteen drummers who immediately resumed the beating of their drums. Sanson and his assistants then
guided Louis to the plank of the guillotine where he lay face downwards. Sanson pulled the rope. The blade rushed down between the upright posts. Cléry heard his master scream for ‘his head did not fall at the first stroke, his neck being so fat’.

When it had finally been severed, Edgeworth saw the youngest of the guards, who looked about eighteen, pick up the head by the roughly cut hair and walk about the scaffold showing it to the people, accompanying ‘this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures’. Edgeworth, who was on his knees on the platform, was spattered with blood before rising and hurrying off towards the crowd into which, since he was wearing the lay dress that all priests were by now required to adopt, he soon disappeared.

The people were silent for a moment, as though stunned by the shock of the spectacle. Then they began to cry, ‘
Vive la Nation!’ ‘Vive la République!
’ The voices multiplied, and soon ‘every hat was in the air’. The guard of cavalry waved their helmets on the points of their sabres and, so a doctor who was present said, crowds of people rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs or pieces of paper in the blood spilled on the scaffold ‘to have a reminder of this memorable event’. One of them put a drop of it to his lips, remarking to a companion that it tasted ‘shockingly bitter’.

28 May–2 June and 4–5 September 1793

The courts of Europe reacted to Louis XVI’s execution with protestations of outrage. Already perturbed by the Convention’s announcement that military occupation would be followed by the sequestration of noble and ecclesiastical property, the abolition of feudalism and the introduction of French paper currency, they were now still more alarmed by Danton’s declaration of France’s right to expand to her ‘natural frontiers’–the sea, the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees. And, provoked by the ‘heinous crime’ of regicide, monarchial Europe coalesced to crush the Revolution. But, as diplomatic relations were severed, the French revolutionaries met protests with defiance. ‘The kings in alliance try to intimidate us,’ cried Danton challengingly. ‘We hurl at their feet, as a gage of battle, the French King’s head.’ Accepting the inevitability of conflict with the country’s traditional rival, the Convention declared war on England at the beginning of February; it also declared war on Holland, then on Spain, so that within a few weeks almost every major power in Europe was ranged against ‘the assassins of Paris’.

The Convention’s faith in the irresistibility of the Revolution’s forces did not at first seem misplaced. After that decisive day at Valmy, the French armies – living off the land and therefore moving fast – had occupied Savoy and Nice, possessions of the King of Sardinia. General Custine had penetrated into Germany as far as Mainz and advanced towards Frankfurt. Dumouriez had entered Belgium, defeated the Austrians at Jemappes and advanced to Brussels, Liège and Antwerp. Encouraged by the disorganization of their enemies and by Russia’s preoccupation with the dismemberment of Poland, the Convention, decreeing ‘war on castles, peace for cottages’, had offered ‘
fraternité et secours à tous les peuples qui voudront recouvrer leur liberté’
.

Yet now that the enemies of France had increased, now that new frontiers and coasts had to be watched, and more money found, the deputies were faced with problems that dissipated their earlier confidence. And as their armies faltered, the sharply rising cost of living, the fall in the value of
assignats
and the shortages of food all caused unrest and disturbances at home. For a time the Montagnards and the more moderate Girondins came together to form a united front, not only against counter-revolutionaries but also against the violent
sans-culottes
and those extremists known as
Enragés
who were intent upon exploiting the discontent in order to impose upon the Convention a more radical programme, including the fixing of prices and the requisition of food supplies. Jacques Roux, the fiery ex-priest, played a leading part in these insurrectionary activities of the
Enragés
. So did Jean Varlet, a postal worker. And both of them planned a series of
journées
as the military situation worsened, as Custine fell back from the Rhineland and Dumouriez, abandoning plans for an invasion of Holland and retreating through the Austrian Netherlands, was defeated first at Neerwinden, then at Louvain. Having failed in an attempt to persuade his men to march on Paris to restore order and the monarchy, Dumouriez finally deserted to the Austrians, like Lafayette, taking with him the Duc d’Orléans’s son, the Duc de Chartres, and several officers of his staff.

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 mur
murs 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 endorsed 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.