Lectures on the French Revolution

XXII. AFTER THE TERROR

LectFrRevol_251-300.indd 286 4/27/12 10:23 AM XXII AFTER THE TERROR It remains for us to pursue the course of French politics from the fall of the Terrorists to the Constitution of the year III., and the close of the Convention in October 1795. The State drifted after the storm, and was long without a regular government or a guiding body of opinion. The first feeling was relief at an immense deliverance . Prisons were opened and thousands of private citizens were released. The new sensation displayed itself extravagantly, in the search for pleasures unknown during the stern and sombre reign. Madame Tallien set the fashion as queen of Paris society. Men rejected the modern garment which characterised the hateful years, and put on tights. They buried the chin in folded neckcloths, and wore tall hats in protest against the exposed neck and the red nightcap of the enemy. Powder was resumed; but the pigtail was cut off straight, in commemoration of friends lost by the fall of the axe. Young men, representing the new spirit, wore a kind of uniform, with the badge of mourning on the arm, and a knobstick in their hands adapted to theJacobin skull. They became known afterwards as the ]eunesse Doree. The press made much of them, and they served as a body to the leaders of the reaction, hustling opponents, and denoting the infinite change in the conditions of public life. These were externals. What went on underneath was the gradual recovery ofthe respectable elements ofsociety, and the passage of power from the unworthy hands of the men who destroyed Robespierre. These, the Thermidorians, were faithful to the contract with the Plain, by which they obtained their victory. Some 286 LectFrRevol_251-300.indd 287 4/27/12 10:23 AM AFTER THE TERROR had been friends of Danton, who, at one moment of the previous winter, had approved a policy ofmoderation in the use ofthe guillotine . Tallien had domestic as well as public reasons for clemency. But the bulk ofthe genuine Montagnards were unaltered. They had deserted Robespierre when it became unsafe to defend him; but they had not renounced his system, and held that it was needful as their security against the furious enmity they had incurred when they were the ruling faction. The majority in the Convention, where all powers were now concentrated, were unable to govern. The irresistible resources of the Reign of Terror were gone, and nothing occupied their place. There was no working Constitution, no settled authority, no party enjoying ascendancy and respect, no public men free from the guilt ofblood. Many months were to pass before the ruins of the fallen parties gathered together and constituted an effective government with a real policy and the means of pursuing it. The chiefs of the Commune and of the revolutionary tribunal, near one hundred in number, had followed Robespierre to the scaffold. The Committees of government had lost their most energetic members, and were disabled by the new plan of rapid renewal. Power fluctuated between varying combinations of deputies, all of them transient and quickly discredited. The main division was between vengeance and amnesty. And the character ofthe following months was a gradual drift in the direction ofvengeance, as the imprisoned or proscribed minority returned to their seats. But the Mountain included the men, who by organising, and equipping, and controlling the armies had made France the first of European Powers, and they could not at once be displaced. Barere proposed that existing institutions should be preserved, and that Fauquier should continue his office. On August 19, Louchet, the man who led the assault against Robespierre, insisted that it was needful to keep up the Terror with all the rigour that had been prescribed by the sagacious and profound Marat. A month later, September 21, the Convention solemnised the apotheosis ofMarat, whose remains were deposited in the Pantheon, while those ofMirabeau were cast out. Three weeks later, the master of Robespierre, Rousseau, was brought, with equal ceremony, to be laid by his side. The worst of the remaining offenders, Barere, Collot d'Herbois, and Billaud- LectFrRevol_251-300.indd 288 4/27/12 10:23 AM TH E FRENCH R E VOLUTION Varennes, were deprived oftheir seats on the Committee ofPublic Safety. But in spite ofthe denunciations ofLecointre and ofLegendre , the Convention refused to proceed against them. All through September and a great part of October...