Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (49 page)

Even a suddenly alarmed Robespierre briefly felt obliged to close ranks with the Left democrats he so abhorred, to block Lafayette.
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Yet while acknowledging the danger of a “new Cromwell,” and likewise demanding his arrest, he persisted in rejecting Brissot’s republican principles. So great was his antipathy to Brissot, recorded Mme. Roland, that he automatically opposed him on every question, whether monarchy, religion, war, colonies, or representation, tirelessly reiterating Rousseau’s strictures against “gouvernement réprésentatif absolu.”
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Robespierre was assuredly no “moderate” like that “political sect conventionally termed ‘moderates’ ” upon which he too poured vituperation, but with his rather threadbare ideology neither was he a radical theorist or innovator. For the present, he adhered to the existing monarchical Constitution. Through June and early July, Robespierre issued his newly established (but little-read) paper,
Le Défenseur de la Constitution
, begun in April as a redoubt of authoritarian populist moderation and the existing Constitution, scorning Brissot and Cordorcet for their academic republicanism. Only from late July 1792—Roederer says August 1792—did he waver on this point and cease to be a “defender of royalty.”
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Incessantly complaining of being maligned by his democratic adversaries, and denouncing Brissotin talk of “republicanism” and disdain for the common people, he grew profoundly ambivalent on this question.

“Sovereignty of the people” was proclaimed by the Assembly but not promoted as Robespierre aspired to do.
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Designated in the republican
press a “tribun ambitieux et dangéreux,” aiming to fullfil Rousseau’s (and Marat’s) doctrine of “necessary dictatorship,” his speeches were pervaded by an almost Manichaean dualism, stressing the purity, disinterestedness, generosity, and moderation of ordinary folk and corrupt character of those seeking to raise themselves above them. Prominent among the latter, in his worldview, were the “writers” and intellectuals he saw as betraying the people: they too were “aristocrats” of a kind.
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The “people alone is good and just, and magnanimous,” ran Robespierre’s interminable refrain. If Brissot and Condorcet preferred philosophes, he aligned with “des hommes simples et purs,” ordinary folk.
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This cosmic drama was then crucially mirrored in the antagonism between the philosophes (whose heirs he identified with his own chief enemies, Condorcet and Brissot) and “the sublime Jean-Jacques,” fervently venerated by both Marat and Robespierre.
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If Robespierre later proved reluctant to install Rousseau’s remains in the Panthéon, this was because, to him, it was an edifice mired with the remains of Mirabeau and Voltaire, a monument “debased.” Mixing Rousseau with philosophes seemed to him sacrilege—“quel décadence de l’esprit public!”
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He disclaimed all responsibility for the vituperation heaped on Brissot by his allies Collot d’Herbois, Chabot, and others. It was Brissot, he maintained, who was the veritable aggressor, a wild republican answerable for the Champ de Mars massacre, since his rash petition demanding abolition of monarchy had overly excited the crowd, provoking the slaughter.
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How was the political crisis to be resolved? Most Assembly deputies spurned all thought of a fresh insurrection. Could a change of heart among the deputies themselves save the Revolution? A famous scene of reconciliation occurred on 7 July 1792 when Lamourette, constitutional bishop of Lyon, delivered a rousing speech in the legislature urging reconciliation. He knew an infallible means to end factional strife: no quarrel in the world is truly irreparable except that between the malicious and the well intentioned. The Assembly majority accused the Left of wanting a republic; Feuillant moderates were accused of designing mixed government, nobility, and a two-chamber legislature.
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“Messieurs,” he pleaded, “the rift can be healed!” The answer lay in heartfelt reciprocal oaths, simultaneously abjuring republicanism and “two chambers.” Superb! In a frenzy of collective transport, everyone rose, wildly applauding, tears streaming down faces, stepping forward mutually to embrace, avowing reconciliation. This unforgettable moment was dubbed the “kiss of Lamourette.”
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Yet, the clasping of hands lasted not even a single day. On 21 June, the king had accused Pétion of not doing all in his power, as mayor of Paris, to prevent the “scandale” of the 20 June rising.
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On 7 July, egged on by the court, the Feuillant departmental directoire announced Pétion’s dismissal and that of Manuel from their posts at the Paris Commune for failing to take proper steps against the 20 June insurrection. This immediately provoked fresh demonstrations. The Assembly was bombarded with addresses from around the country, rebuking the court and demanding reinstatement of the
procureur-syndic
and extremely popular mayor.
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In the Paris sections, so reviled were the Feuillant departmental authorities that of three hundred Paris
afficheurs
employed to post up official notices in the streets and public places, not one, reportedly, could be found willing to post up the regime’s explanation of Pétion’s and Manuel’s removal. In any case, the move proved overly confident. Within a week, an Assembly majority rescinded their dismissal, causing the jubilant Paris crowds to “deliver themselves over,” as one foe of the Brissotin democrats, the Cordeliers firebrand Chaumette, sourly expressed it, “to the excesses of idolatry.” Detesting “Brissot et toute sa académie,” Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette (1763–94), a failed medical student among the most ardent republicans, atheists, and demagogues of the Cordeliers, closely analyzed the Brissotins’ sway in the streets. For now, the people “adored” Pétion as earlier they had Necker, Mirabeau, Barnave, and Lafayette. But the people lurched continually, first one way, then another. Soon enough they would again repent their “blind and stupid mania” and abandon their new champions. He and his friends groaned at hearing cries of “Vive Pétion! Pétion ou la mort!” yelled on every side and seeing this absurd slogan crayoned on hats. He accused Pétion of posturing initially as the friend of the poor against the rich, but later of tiring of “this class” aspiring to climb from its wretchedness.
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Unlike Robespierre but like Cloots, Chaumette represented a dogmatic strand of philosophique republicanism opportunistically aligned with the populists, partly driven by personal enmity. He vigorously championed “the people” in the abstract while actually disdaining them.

The invasion of France, meanwhile, gathered momentum with many armed émigrés advancing with the Prussians. The Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm, had perhaps miscalculated in supposing the revolutionaries would collapse quickly, as earlier in Holland in 1787, but there seemed every prospect that reaction and the European powers would shortly overwhelm the revolutionary challenge. On 11 July, the Jacobins
won an emergency vote in the wavering Assembly, declaring the nation in danger and drafting all Parisians with pikes or pistols into the National Guard. With this they democratized that key entity, ending its previous bias in favor of royalism and modérantisme. This confirmed once again that Brissot was right in claiming that the European war would shatter the monarchy and open the way for the republicans. Just weeks after reigniting the struggle, the Feuillants had signally failed to establish either a solid ascendancy or to curb the ferment in the streets. War forced the Revolution to depend on the people, and, as Brissot had predicted, this rapidly undermined both court and Feuillants. During the 14 July 1792 festivities marking the third anniversary of the Bastille, the last occasion when the royal family participated in public ceremonies as France’s royalty, hostility to monarch and court was palpable. Order was kept on the Champ de Mars by a guard of six thousand men. But this could not hide the tension, even if the “celebration” passed off without serious incident. Some shouted, “Vive le roi”! but “Vive la nation!” preponderated. “Quatorze juillet,” enthused the ecstatic long-standing republican Mandar, “je te salue! sois à jamais l’époque de la liberté de ma patrie!” How fascinating for the philosophique observer, remarked Chaumette, to see how disciplined yet unmistakably sullen the crowds were.

On 25 July, the Brissotins in the legislature presented the king with a fresh ultimatum, repeating Roland’s original demand that he must now choose between the people and counterrevolution. Undoubtedly, Brissot would have preferred to intimidate king and Feuillants in the Assembly’s name. But the Left’s demands, drafted by Condorcet as president of the Assembly’s emergency Committee of Twenty-One, were in the end rejected by the Assembly majority. Equally, the republicans’ efforts to impeach Lafayette in the Assembly (here with Robespierre’s support) provoked only protracted, furious wrangling that dragged on until 8 August, when a bare majority finally dismissed the charges against the general. Thus, the Legislative Assembly by hairbreadth refused to repudiate the Feuillants or Lafayette, and “the party of liberty,” as Condorcet expressed it, “acted from day to day, forced to follow the impulse of its enlightenment, acquiescing in developments the rest of the Assembly’s dithering left it no means of preventing.” Failure to rally enough of the Assembly against the court and Feuillants had grave consequences. The republicans had now exhausted every legal channel. It was difficult to condone insurrection when the people had representatives elected to act in a considered and lawful fashion, and with foreign
armies invading the country. On behalf of the Committee of Twenty-One, which afterward authorized its printing, Condorcet composed an address to the French people explaining popular sovereignty, its exercise under representative government, and the need for orderly acceptance of its procedures. The tragedy was that the threat of armed insurrection the Left had counted on to intimidate the king, had, owing to Feuillant tenacity and deadlock in the Assembly, now instead to be directed against the Assembly itself.
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For both democrats and populists, renewed popular insurrection offered the sole feasible solution. Deposing the king and ending the monarchy, Brissot, Condorcet, and their colleagues became convinced, was the only way for the Revolution to survive and the revolutionary war against Europe’s kings to be prosecuted more vigorously. On 17 July a deputation of fédérés entered the Assembly, reiterating the call for impeachment of treasonable ministers and Louis’s suspension. The arrival of more fedérés on 30 July, the force from Marseille chanting the recently composed but already famous marching anthem, the “Marseillaise,” inexorably raised the pressure. The balance of forces had visibly shifted against modérantisme and royalism. On arriving, the Marseille volunteers, led by Barbaroux, effaced the name “Lafayette” from the street carrying that name and thronged around the Palais-Royal, continuously singing their new war song, yelling “Aux armes citoyens!” and waving their hats and sabres in the air “even during performances.”
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On 3 August Mayor Pétion delivered an impassioned speech in the Assembly on behalf of “the true sovereign”—the people. Since the Revolution’s outset, the king had shown only aversion to the nation and their interests, and a stubborn predilection for nobles and priests. Frenchmen had every reason to dethrone their disloyal monarch. The people made the Revolution and the Constitution, and their rights were now directly threatened by the monarch, court, priests, and “the intriguers.” Yet, who had the nation placed over their armies and security? The king and nobles! This had created a dire predicament requiring immediate resolution by breaking the court’s independent power and dislodging the residual court elite. Manifestly, either this corrupt tyranny or the Revolution must triumph.
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Amid the unprecedented clamor and excitement, Paris seethed with rumor: the king—a thousand times a traitor and perjurer in Carra’s words—was again conspiring to flee with the royal family.
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Preparations began in the Paris sections for a new—and this time decisive—confrontation plotted by Brissot’s adherents, Dantonists, the
Cordeliers, and Barbaroux’s fédérés. On 30 July a declaration drawn up in the Cordeliers district, repudiating all distinction between “active” and “passive” citizens, pronouncing the patrie in danger, and summoning “all citizens” to arms, had been posted up across the Théâtre-Français section, signed by Danton as section president, Chaumette as vice president, and Momoro as secretary. The balance of forces had shifted. But was this the will of the people? Parisians, bourgeoisie, and artisans were bitterly rebuked by the royalist
Gazette de Paris
for their inertia and for permitting themselves to be manipulated by a small, “vile populace” drawn from all classes who were agitating for the king’s removal, orchestrated by Brissot, Condorcet, and Pétion. Allegedly, a mere 4,000 “muddled simpletons,” recruited into the capital’s forty-eight section assemblies, were being ruthlessly orchestrated to manipulate 700,000 spineless Parisians.
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By early August, so demoralized were some Assembly deputies of the center and Right that they began boycotting meetings and likewise to contemplate fleeing the capital. With republican journalists and orators—but not Robespierre—openly demanding Louis’s dethronement, royalist journalists urged Prussia and Austria to hasten their advance and rescue France’s monarchy and nobility before all was lost.
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Trying to halt the drift to a republican outcome, nobles and army officers congregated in the capital and were increasingly in evidence, venturing out from the Tuileries and other locations. Over several days and nights clashes in the streets turned central Paris into a no-man’s-land, disputed by rival armed camps, royalist and democrat.