Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (59 page)

A useful tool for undoing the values of 1789 was the discrediting of Mirabeau’s legacy. There had been greater geniuses and more perfect orators, remarked Garat, but no one put eloquence to work more powerfully to convert into political action and laws “les hautes pensées de la Philosophie,” and this, the best of all talents, Mirabeau employed “in the revolution of a country used to being the model for all Europe.”
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Brissot agreed, styling Mirabeau a great man and a lover of liberty.
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So did Desmoulins. But Marat and Robespierre saw only his secret dealings with Louis XVI over the winter of 1789–90, revealed by the soon-notorious
armoire de fer
, the casket of secret royal papers found hidden in the ransacked palace on 20 November. Populists pronounced Mirabeau’s conduct “treason” and his philosophy worthless. On 5 December 1792 at the Jacobins, Robespierre publicly denounced the dead philosophe, inciting those present to pull down Mirabeau’s bust together with that of Helvétius, busts that had hitherto presided over their meetings. He declared Helvétius a philosophe whose presence should not
be tolerated in their hall, since he was a complete unbeliever in religion and foe of Jean-Jacques. Both busts were smashed and trampled to dust underfoot.
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This was the signal for Jacobin clubs across France to topple Mirabeau and philosophy, and intensify their offensive against Brissotin intellectualism. Busts of Mirabeau were torn down in the “clubs populaires” of Dijon, Langres, Châtillon-en-Seine, and other places. Mirabeau “is not a great man any more” sneered Feller’s journal, “what true
philosophe
would not make salutary reflections on the course of fleeting reputations to which certain madmen sacrifice honor, virtue and religion!”
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Roland’s resignation from the Interior Ministry in February 1793, undermined by Danton (now at the peak of his influence), proved a turning point. The Convention’s large, wavering middle ground had since September 1792 mostly leaned toward Brissot’s side. After Roland’s withdrawal, the middle ground increasingly leaned the other way. As tension mounted, more and more warnings were heard—like Laya’s, Villette’s, Lalande’s, and Pétion’s—concerning Robespierre’s real character. On 6 November, Olympe de Gouges placarded central Paris with her
Pronostic sur Maximilien Robespierre
, mocking his claims to be a man of simplicity and virtue, incorruptible, a “modèle des philosophes.” “Toi philosophe? You, the friend of your co-citizens, of peace and order? I will cite this maxim for you: ‘quand un méchant fait le bien, il prepare de grands maux’ [when a wicked man acts as a good one, he is preparing great mischief].” All true philosophes were infinitely superior to Robespierre, whose understanding of virtue Olympe considered abysmal. She herself had a far more genuinely republican soul than the man from Arras. “Do you know the vastness of the distance between you and Cato? It is that separating Marat from Mirabeau, the
maringouin
[flying insect] from the eagle, and the eagle from the sun.”
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Pétion, who knew him better than most, described Robespierre at this time as extremely mistrustful, perceiving intrigues and plots everywhere, “imperious in his opinions, listening only to himself, intolerant of objections, never pardoning those who wounded his vanity, never admitting mistakes, denouncing irresponsibly while taking offence at the slightest criticism of himself, always glorifying his own achievements and speaking of himself unrestrainedly, and assuming everyone was chiefly preoccupied with and persecuting him.” No one courted and flattered the people more assiduously than this man, “always thirsting for applause.” One might consider this judgment harsh. But Pétion here actually misses several of his former ally’s principal traits, unlike
the German Jacobin Oelsner, who also knew Robespierre socially and stressed Robespierre’s “theological” dimension, his extreme dogmatism and tendency to believe he alone possessed “virtue” and true insight. Like Louvet, Condorcet, and Cloots, Oelsner emphasized Robespierre’s preaching, extreme intolerance, fixation with martyrdom, and quasi-religious zeal for virtue.
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Suppressing liberty of thought, expression, and the press had become a Montagnard priority, as was further demonstrated in early January by a clash over the imprisonment of two royalist editors, Gautier and Lafarge, by the Comité de Sûreté Générale. This was a key committee of the Convention, created on 2 October 1792 and, since January, under Jacobin control. On 10 August rioters had smashed the royalist presses, but no journalists were arrested for their writings, and during the autumn Gautier, editor of the
Journal de la cour
, and his deputy Lafarge resumed their efforts to “corrupt opinion” and denigrate the Revolution. Two articles particularly provoked Montagnard ire, one denying the Convention had the right to judge Louis XVI, urging the people to rise up, the other pointing out that, after more than three months, the Convention had still not revealed the names of perpetrators of the September atrocities, proving murder was now a tool of the Revolution. The imprisonment of Gautier and Lafarge at the Abbey, under an arrest order signed by Chabot, Tallien, and three others, and the arrest of another journalist who had published an attack on the Comité in the
Tableau politique de Paris
, initiated a fresh stage in the quarrel about press liberty. Royalists accused Tallien, Chabot, and Bazire of complicity in the September massacres, and now Chabot and Tallien were signing their critics’ arrest warrant!
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In late January 1793 Buzot concerted an organized campaign against the Comité for flagrant misconduct in this case. The Comité, Buzot pointed out, was controlled by Chabot, Bazire, and other “men of blood, disposing imperiously of the lives, honour and fortunes of citizens like the Council of Ten at Venice.” They have only to say “stab that one” and a citizen is stabbed. The Comité was an obvious instrument of tyranny. He demanded its abolition. The Montagne, swaying the uncommitted center, successfully warded off Buzot’s motion and kept the royalist dissident journalists in prison.
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Most crucial of all, by January 1793, was the wrangling over the
appel au public
or popular referendum, to decide the king’s fate. The continuing battle between the rival republican wings occurred against a background of vigorous royalist agitation. Moyse Bayle, leading the Marseille populists, warned of a disturbing upsurge of “aristocratic
insolence” there, which he blamed on the Brissotins. A Rouen delegation on 13 January claimed Brissotin advocacy of the appel au peuple, with Normandy teeming with refractory priests and aristocrats seeking to “poison” the people with royalist propaganda, was a recipe for civil war. Disturbances had erupted in Rouen three days before, following an open-air meeting of some two thousand royalists addressed by a former magistrate of the Rouen parlement, Georges Dumont, and the posting up of his harangue all over Rouen by enthusiastic groups yelling, “Vive le roi et au diable la République!” The crowds had even hurled down the liberty tree before being chased away by rival crowds of “bons citoyens.”
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The “appeal to the people” to decide whether Louis should be executed became central to the culminating political struggle of the Revolution. The Convention had voted for a formal trial, rendering the process a constitutional procedure rather than a crude act of vengeance. Nation and Convention should join in whatever judgment was reached. But if found guilty, should he be executed? Besides principle, many worried lest executing the king make him a martyr for the pious. Consequently, many deputies, including Danton and most Brissotins, wavered, many preferring either perpetual imprisonment or permanent banishment. Even before 10 August 1792, Montagnards argued that the appel au public was merely a ploy to forestall just retribution, there being enough modérés and royalistes for such a referendum to trigger civil strife, and perhaps save the king’s life. Louis had sufficiently incriminated himself, contended Robespierre, to deserve death without trial. The appel au peuple was denounced in August 1792 by section bosses like Léonard Bourdon (1754–1807), the notoriously unscrupulous president of the Gravilliers section, as a “fatal abuse” and clear “evidence” of modérantisme.
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But what greater hypocrisy is there, objected Pétion, than claiming to venerate the people’s voice and then insisting, like Bourdon, that the nation’s preference should not be consulted, as it might differ from that of the Montagne! If the people willed the king should not be executed, what right had the Montagne to negate the people’s will? In theory, Robespierristes proclaimed direct democracy and popular sovereignty. But while eager to use the rhetoric of direct democracy to combat the democrats, what they meant by “the people’s will” was simply their leadership’s undisputed right to define that will. Only Brissotins took the doctrine of volonté générale seriously, albeit mostly refusing to define it as Rousseau had. “It is not for any individual, or minority to diverge from the
volonté générale
,” affirmed Pétion, “or there is no more society.”
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Antoine-Louis de Saint-Just (1768–94), soon to emerge as the Montagne’s chief theorist and Robespierre’s right-hand man, in his maiden speech in the Convention, on 13 November, maintained (discarding his earlier royalism) that kingship, like all tyranny, contradicts nature: the Convention would be justified in executing Louis not as a citizen but as an “enemy” to be liquidated without appeal.
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Hardly any deputies agreed with the unfamiliar and strange doctrine expounded by Saint-Just, entirely outside the main line of revolutionary thought, that “the sovereignty of nature is above the sovereignty of the people,” the people having no right either to dispense with or mitigate the sentence passed on the king. Saint-Just’s doctrine that “la souveraineté de la nature est au-dessus de la souveraineté du peuple,” that peoples have no right to pardon tyrants,
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conformed to the ideas of a few others, like Jean-Baptiste Milhaud (1766–1833), a military man and harsh disciplinarian, later esteemed by Bonaparte, who also held that “the sovereignty of nature is above the sovereignty of the people,” as he expressed it during the appel debate.
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But this so flagrantly contradicted the fact that their own influence derived from the section assemblies that it was hardly a useful or appropriate concept for the Montagne to propagate.

The Montagne accused the Brissotins of menacing France with civil war. But it was the Montagnards, replied their opponents, “who pervert all ideas of morality,” and with “specious discourse, hypocritical, base and self-interested flattery” drive the people to deplorable excesses, and foment civil war. Jacobin leaders vaunt their virtue. One calls himself the
Ami du peuple
, the other the
Incorruptible
. Yet, Marat and Robespierre accuse their opponents of “betrayal,” knowing perfectly well there is no truth in such accusations. So instinctive are deceit and murder to these men, they daily violate every basic human right and revolutionary principle, popular sovereignty most of all, flattering the people’s prejudices and pampering their credulity, simply to deceive them. There were also, admittedly, Montagnards of good faith. These must now awake, admonished Gensonné, and rescue popular sovereignty before it was too late, otherwise they will just be the base instruments of impostors and deceivers. “It is time to tear aside the veil,” declared Gensonné on 2 January, “and show all Europe we will not be the passive instrument of a faction usurping the people’s rights, but rather wish to remain the faithful organ of the national will. Just as there are ‘charlatans’ in medicine, so liberty too produces vile hypocrites, bogus cults,
cafards,
and false
devôts
. ‘On les reconnait à leur haine pour la philosophie et les lumières [They are recognized by their hatred for philosophy and Enlightenment].’ ”
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By maintaining that Louis’s fate should not be submitted to the people, held Vergniaud, Montagnards implied that France consisted mostly of “intriguers, aristocrats, Feuillants,
modérés
and
contre-révolutionnaires
.” They consider virtue the distinguishing mark of that minority, convinced that the “majority must be coerced through
La Terreur
,” a perverse lie, an atrocity. Outside Paris, respect for the rule of law and obedience to the volonté génerale prevailed; the people understood that both individual and public liberty require such submission. Once the primary assemblies and departments pronounce their view, few try to undermine the result. That the Constitution must be submitted to the will of the nation, everyone, section leaders included, agrees, so why not Louis’s fate? Yet, those recommending a referendum and respect for popular sovereignty, the Montagne “label royalists, conspirators against liberty,” allies of Lameth, Lafayette, and the Feuillants, despite knowing perfectly well they are nothing of the kind.
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The debate over the appel au peuple dragged on for weeks, enabling many deputies to expand on why they supported or rejected a referendum. Brissot, Pétion, Vergniaud, Barbaroux, Fauchet, Louvet, Buzot, Garran-Coulon, and Gorsas declared unequivocally in favor of the referendum. Kingship could not be said to have been finally eradicated constitutionally, argued Gorsas, until the people pronounced its end. It was an insult to the nation to suggest the appel meant civil war.
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But when the decisive vote came in the Convention, the Montagnards won easily. The appeal to the people was rejected, not because the Montagne commanded a majority in the Convention (which they did not) but because the center and some Brissotins feared nobility and priesthood were indeed sufficiently strong to exploit the opportunity. Around one-quarter of the Convention’s 170 or so Brissotin deputies voted against the referendum.
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The Dantoniste Philippeaux, having himself earlier proposed the referendum to the Comité de Legislation, now changed his mind, saying he had been persuaded the referendum would destroy, not consolidate, popular sovereignty.
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Desmoulins and Fabre d’Églantine, by contrast, rejected the appel out of hand, urging the king’s immediate execution, the latter repeatedly citing Rousseau to prove volonté générale is never adequately manifested in primary assemblies.
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