Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (52 page)

Chénier’s list was debated in the Assembly and expanded, with some names deleted in favor of others. Reflecting Brissot’s own background, those afterward receiving honorary citizenship were in fact mostly British and American—Paine, Priestley, Bentham, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David Williams, Hamilton, Washington, and Madison. But Continental Europeans figured prominently too, namely, Gorani, Cloots, Pestalozzi, Schiller, Klopstock, and another Polish liberator,
Tadeusz Kościuszko, friend of Jefferson, devotee of the
Histoire philosophique,
and advocate of black emancipation, replacing Malakowski. Receiving his letter of invitation to become an honorary French citizen, signed by Roland, Klopstock promptly accepted with pleasure, albeit admonishing Roland that the Revolution must punish those guilty of atrocities (like the September killings in Paris) perpetrated in its name.
⁷⁰
Though curiously bereft of Belgian Vonckists and leading Dutch Patriots like Pieter Vreede or Gerrit Paape, who had collaborated with Mirabeau in 1787, as well as German democrats like Forster, Dorsch, and Knigge, an impressive enlightened global coterie was in this way officially mobilized behind the Revolution (although several of these, like Washington and Pestalozzi, were not in fact enthusiasts for democracy or the Revolution). The resulting decree of 26 August 1792, moved by Marguerite-Élie Guadet (1758–94), yet another powerful orator and one of Robespierre’s most vehement Brissotin foes, marked the high tide of the Revolution’s internationalism.

Unrelenting antagonism between the competing Jacobin blocs vying for control of the Revolution—Left democrat and authoritarian populist—was highly obtrusive from the outset, even before the elections for the National Convention. Where Montagnards wanted as much direct popular influence in the forthcoming elections as possible, to maximize the Paris Commune’s role and that of the inner sections, Brissotins sought to prevent primary assemblies being captured by cabals of populist “electors.” With their stress on talent and experience, Brissotins wanted members of the previous legislative assemblies to be eligible for the new legislature, whereas Robespierre opposed this, aiming to reduce the Brissotin clique as much as possible. Where one side wanted to minimize the role of the Paris municipality in the country’s transformation from constitutional monarchy to republic, the other sought to maximize it. When, on 15 August, a delegation from the Commune, headed by Robespierre, demanded all those taken prisoner by the demonstrators on 10 August, together with a list of other “conspirators,” should be tried by judges elected by the Parisian sections, this was immediately opposed by the Assembly. The prisoners of 10 August, explained Condorcet in the
Chronique de Paris
, belonged to the whole nation and should be judged constitutionally in its name. Robespierre’s demand was fundamentally undemocratic and wrong. The Commune nevertheless arrogated to itself sweeping judicial powers over “suspects.”
⁷¹

From 10 August 1792 onward, Montagnard populism was openly at war with Brissotin representative democracy. This marked a most troubling start to the world’s first modern democracy. The elections themselves, held in late August and early September, were a long, drawn-out, complex process. Across France, the turnout, as has often been noted, was low. But this was due less to indifference than the arduousness of the procedure. If illiteracy and remoteness hindered many, village and small-town citizens eager to vote had to travel at their own expense to each canton’s main place to register with the local primary assembly, establish their credentials often over legal objections used to block votes, and then wait while electoral officials were sworn in and other complex procedures followed. The worst obstacle, though, was the marked tendency, especially in Paris, for primary assemblies to be dominated by cabals of local activists that frequently deterred and disgusted the well intentioned. Although turnout in the departments was commonly under 10 percent and sometimes under six, in some departments it was considerably higher. The vote reached 23 percent in the Pas de Calais, where broad and militant Catholic sentiment was balanced by substantial republican support.
⁷²

Meanwhile, somber fear and suspicion gripped the capital. The continuing Prussian advance, fall of Longwy, and siege of Verdun, and Lafayette’s defection to the Austrians on 17 August 1792—taking many officers with him—spread panic throughout the northeast. The Paris Commune proclaimed a state of emergency, including a general curfew from 29 to 31 August. Between 10 August and the end of the month, an additional 520 individuals, around half of them refractory priests, were arrested on accusations of counterrevolutionary activity.
⁷³
Among those arrested was the royalist journalist Durozoy, seized on 13 August. Robespierre and Marat were later accused by Pétion and others of deliberately fanning this hysteria by inflating talk of betrayal and the number of arrests to unsettle the populace and extend their sway. By 27 and 28 August, wild rumors of plots, spiriting away the king, and releasing all the political prisoners filled the streets and, in turn, provoked talk of breaking into the prisons and slaughtering the interned “counterrevolutionaries” before they could escape. All this, coinciding with the open breach between Assembly and Commune, proved decisive for the Revolution’s subsequent history. The Commune decided to arrest Brissot’s coeditor at the
Patriote français
, Girey-Dupré, for denouncing the despotic, heavy-handed manner in which the populist section committees
carried out searches of homes and individuals. Girey went into hiding. Robespierre addressed the Commune general council defending the house searches, including Girey’s arrest, and furiously berated Brissot, Condorcet, and Roland.
⁷⁴
The Assembly replied on 30 August by quashing the Commune’s arrest order as contrary to liberty of the press. A decree formulated by Guadet was issued, dissolving the “provisional general council” of the Commune and instructing each Paris section to appoint two citizens within twenty-four hours to form a new provisional general council until fresh municipal elections could be held.
⁷⁵
This, of course, was ignored by the Commune and most sections.

Commune and Assembly were now at swords drawn, with Robespierre and his following resolved to work no longer with the democratic republicans. The principal power struggle of the French Revolution had begun. Already earlier, Robespierre’s journal had proclaimed that it was not the philosophes, “Condorcet’s teachers,” the persecutors of Jean-Jacques, who had discovered the true revolutionary path, but plain, ordinary men inspired by “la nature.”
⁷⁶
The balance palpably changed in the wake of the 10 August insurrection. The Montagnards had now captured control over many inner Paris electoral assemblies, though they also still faced stiff opposition in others, notably Lombards, Pont-Neuf, Croix-Rouge, Champs-Élysées, and Louvre. Known for its vigor in opposing aristocracy, the Lombards section, under its president Louvet, fiercely resisted Robespierre’s “tyrannie démagogique,” declaring the Commune’s general council “the usurper” of the sections’ rights. Withdrawing their representatives from the council, the Lombards urged other anti-Robespierre sections to follow its lead. The Montagnard section bosses retaliated by pouring vituperation on Louvet and organizing a noisy march on the Lombards section to demonstrate “the people’s anger” against this impudent critic of “the Incorruptible.” Local feuding in the capital between Robespierre activists and Left republican intellectuals, with the Marseille volunteers often siding with the latter, continued unabated for months and from Paris spread throughout France.
⁷⁷
Because they had challenged him in his and Marat’s Parisian fiefdom, Robespierre bore a special grudge henceforth against Louvet, Girey, Pétion, and Guadet, as well as Brissot and Condorcet, both of whom he ceaselessly vilified.

Robespierre’s bid to exclude members of the previous Assembly having failed, Jacobins associated with the former Cercle Social recommended numerous distinguished candidates of all stripes to Paris’s voters, including various outgoing deputies. Working through the press,
especially Louvet’s paper posted up as an affiche in the streets, they urged the election of Pétion, Sieyès, Robespierre, Rabaut, Garat, Buzot, and Grégoire, besides journalists, authors, and local section politicians like Bonneville, Chamfort, Cloots, Carra, Chénier, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varenne, Gorsas, Danton, Chaumette, Fabre, Lanthenas, Manuel, Poullenot, commandant of the Guard in the Lombards, Tallien, and Robert.
⁷⁸
Robespierre, though, had entirely different ideas. These were all prominent names but by no means all acceptable to him and his populist section bosses. At the Jacobins, it was disputed whether Sieyès and Rabaut should be on the list at all. Considered by some a proponent of “two chambers,” a damning charge, Sieyès was defended by others. Rabaut was a Feuillant, objected some, others denied it.
⁷⁹
Although they disagreed with Sieyès in principle, Brissotins defended his right to stand. In inner Paris, the electoral process was especially closely scrutinized by Jacobin and Cordeliers committees controlled by subordinates of Robespierre, Danton, and Hébert. This involved systematic exclusion of numerous prominent names, especially anybody unsympathetic to Marat and Robespierre. Among those firmly blacklisted were Carra, Gorsas, Louvet, Condorcet, Pétion, and Brissot.
⁸⁰

The election process in Paris was interrupted (and influenced) from 2 September by extremely ugly and sinister developments linked to the escalating struggle between the Revolution’s two rival factions, occurrences that were to stain the Revolution’s reputation permanently. The Paris Commune held an all-night meeting on 30 August at which Robespierre for the first time publicly denounced Brissot, Condorcet, Roland, Guadet, Louvet, and Girey-Dupré as “enemies of the people.” The Commune led the revolution of 10 August and was authorized by “the people” to exact vengeance in the people’s name on all the Brissotin miscreants defying “the people’s voice.” Exploiting the momentum flowing from the panic and confusion generated by the developing Prussian invasion, on 2 September Robespierre publicly accused Brissot before the Paris Commune of betraying France to the Prussian commander, “Brunswick.”
⁸¹
That night, the Commune’s Comité de Surveillance ordered a search of Brissot’s house and papers. Three commissaires ransacked Brissot’s effects but without finding anything incriminating.
⁸²
The Commune’s vigilance committee, at Marat’s prompting (having himself joined it earlier that day), on 2 and 3 September nevertheless launched an unsuccessful attempt to apprehend the “traitor” Brissot and remove Roland from his ministry. Orders were issued for the arrest of Brissot, Roland, and other deputies accused of “treason.” Danton and
Pétion came personally to the town hall, confronted Robespierre, and had the arrest orders rescinded.
⁸³

The thwarted coup d’état went no further in the end than searches of the houses of the Brissotins,
⁸⁴
though efforts to tar Brissot and Roland as traitors, planning to flee to England, resumed on 4 September, albeit again countermanded by Danton.
⁸⁵
By this time, though, the coup had triggered the supposedly spontaneous “popular” disturbances, commencing on the evening of 2 September, that resulted in gruesome organized assaults on the many hundreds of prisoners the Commune and sections had herded into the prisons since 10 August. These numerous political prisoners had deliberately been turned into the object of hysteria and the focus of mounting recrimination between legislature and Commune. Prefaced by talk of finishing with the traitors, the operation was initially encouraged by Carra and Gorsas, as well as Marat and others.
⁸⁶
Months of exhorting the people to liquidate counterrevolutionaries, aristocrats, rebel priests, and traitors had their fatal effect. The horror began with twenty-four refractory priests being conveyed on four carriages to the Abbey of Saint Germain-des-Près prison, where they were set upon and butchered in the streets. That night, groups of sansculottes, yelling for the blood of counterrevolutionaries, broke into the prisons, dragging out and executing the political captives crowded within, a horrific nighttime reckoning that converted into reality Marat’s and Hébert’s ceaseless verbal violence. The scenes were witnessed by small, sullen crowds more inclined to applaud occasional acquittals pronounced by the makeshift juries and benches of judges than the summary executions.

Although afterward Marat, Robespierre, and Danton always insisted on the massacre’s spontaneous, “popular” character, its being the work of “the people,” Pétion, a helpless eyewitness, Girey, Roland, and other Brissotins, and also the German Jacobins Oelsner and Lux, more accurately labeled the 2–5 September atrocities a systematic, planned conspiracy, methodically perpetrated by just a few dozen people.
⁸⁷
Prison guards were pushed aside, as was a commission of twelve sent by the Assembly, in an effort to stop the disorder. The perpetrators, recorded Mercier, possibly numbering as few as 300 at each prison, meted out summary “justice” on the spot, both in central Paris and the outlying prisons in Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Peremptory interrogations by makeshift sansculotte committees, backed by armed bands (some reportedly paid by the Commune),
⁸⁸
prefaced the systematic massacre of the political internees, those “sentenced” to death identified simply as “nobles,” “refractory priests,” “Swiss Guards,” or “murderers.” Altogether, those slaughtered totaled between 1,090 and 1,400, of whom around 223, or about 16 percent, were clergy and another 6 percent Swiss or other royal guards.
⁸⁹
At the Carmelite Convent, 115 priests were hacked to death, including the ex-archbishop of Arles and bishops of Beauvais and Saintes. More than half the male captives in the Paris prisons were massacred by these gangs and around 8 percent of the women, including thirty-five prostitutes wholly unconnected to the Revolution.
⁹⁰