Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (70 page)

Robespierre and Saint-Just were also assured of the support of all disliking the democrats’ emphasis on philosophy. Among the relatively few Montagnard submissions were
Quelques idées préliminaires soumises à l’examen de ses collègues
by Jean-Pierre Audouin (1760–1840), deputy from Seine-et-Oise and editor of the
Journal universel
. Typically, his contribution was far less radical than Condorcet’s, scarcely attempting to link democracy with universal rights and maximize “freedom” in Condorcet’s democratic sense. With aristocracy on the march and “despotisme” (the European monarchs) battering on the Republic’s doors, France required a constitution “vraiment républicaine,” urged Audouin, but by this, it turned out, he meant “vraiment populaire,” that is, with
the people exercising direct sovereignty over the legislature through the executive.
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Condorcet’s approach alienated all foes of radical ideas, just as Rousseauism attracted them. Seconding Mably’s warning against the dangers of excessive, direct democracy, and employing his expertise in ancient history, the educationalist Antoine-Hubert Wandelaincourt (1731–1819), for example, constitutional bishop and a deputy of the Haute-Marne, published an interesting set of
Observations sur le plan de Constitution
in May 1793. The people of ancient Athens, he warned, “obeyed all the caprice and passions of the intriguers who knew the art of gaining their confidence.” But when it came to choosing, Wandelaincourt was less concerned to block the intriguers than ensure the emerging constitution accorded with divine intentions. He agreed with Rousseau that “every legislator should by means of the laws summon the citizen to virtue.” For Wandelaincourt, like Fauchet, Rousseau’s thought connected the new revolutionary creed with religion. Every society, Rousseau’s
Social Contract
proved, deems it necessary for public tranquillity that the divine will lend the sovereign authority a sacred and inviolable character. The
philosophes modernes
excluded religion and religious authority from the Republic’s political life. In his eyes, that made them worse than the Montagne. He dismissed them as
philosophes d’un jour
, ignorant of politics’ true principles. What could be more absurd than a philosophisme claiming the people make foolish choices through ignorance and fanaticism, that religious prejudice governs the world, and then refusing to incorporate religion into the Constitution! Only a Constitution proclaiming religion can defeat superstition by eliminating intolerance, “monarchical morality,” and unconcern for men’s worldly condition. Without religion, “our Constitution” will be “as feeble as mud.”
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The new committee appointed in April to redo Condorcet’s work was a mixed Commission of Six, not elected but co-opted by the Convention’s newly established Comité de Salut Public. Its members were Mercier, Valazé, Barère, Lanjuinais, Romme, and the staunch republican Jean Debry. Four were Brissotins with Barère again the lone supporter of Robespierre, though the sixth member, Romme, high-minded mathematician, partisan of women’s rights, and admirer of Condorcet though he was, also dissented from the rest of the committee.
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Robespierristes had no more footing in the new committee than in Condorcet’s. Debry, another advocate of the right to petition and need to
balance direct and representative democracy, presented his own draft constitution on 26 April.
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From mid-April to the end of May, three days per week were allocated for debating the articles and rival formulations. On 29 April, Lanjuinais presented an interim report on behalf of the Comité de Six. History proved that in all known societies, tyrannical aristocracies of one kind or another had constructed edifices of oppression. Every past legislator had been complicit in slavery in one form or another. Shameful caste distinctions degraded the entire East. The English excluded everyone who was not a substantial property-owner and taxpayer from the political process. The United States proclaimed liberty, yet, there, too, equality and political rights remained highly defective. The status of citizen attaches to the person not the property. Servants should receive political rights precisely as Condorcet argued. Condorcet’s direct election of the executive’s ministers via the primary assemblies should be retained.
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Most proposals submitted to the Convention in April and May 1793 emanated from the “Girondin” side and frequently reflected this bloc’s anger against what Alain Bohan (1750–1814), a deputy for Finisterre and judge by profession whose
Observations sur la Constitution du peuple français
appeared shortly after Robespierre’s coup of 2 June 1793, called the “anarchistes,” the “false friends of the people who ceaselessly mislead, agitate and drive the people to its perdition.”
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Bohan shared one preoccupation with Robespierre and Saint-Just, though, from which nearly all other participants were free—a militant if simplistic notion of “natural right.” “Natural right” chiefly impressed ardent deists venerating Rousseau like Bohan, Robespierre, and Saint-Just. To some philosophes and legislators, it was madness to believe in God’s existence or that divine Providence governs the universe, and that we have an immortal soul. But unless one truly believes these things, insisted Bohan, natural right, and hence, natural law, has no sanction, no authority: it amounts to nothing since, according to them, there exists no “législateur suprême qui commande à tous les hommes, à tous les peuples.” For the monist philosophes, “the state of nature is no longer that primitive society, established by God himself, where all men are subject to a common law demonstrating their rights and duties always to be in perfect union.” Bohan considered God, immortality of the soul, and natural law the indispensable triad for differentiating between vice and virtue, and justice and injustice. Only under “the Supreme Being’s auspices,” legislators must assure their co-citizens, “can we proclaim men’s rights and ground our Constitution.”
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The text of Marc-François Bonguyod (1751–1805), a deputy for the Jura, entitled
Réflexions sur l’organisation des assemblées primaires
, passionately anti-Robespierriste, focused on cleansing the electoral process at the local level and eradicating the vote-rigging and prior exclusion of candidates in which the Paris section bosses specialized.
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Among the bitterest adversaries of Robespierre (and Pache) in the Convention was Jean-François Baraillon (1743–1816), a physician from the department of Creuse who submitted a full-length draft constitution in sixty-four articles. Like other drafts, his demanded France’s fundamental laws must be republican, based on equality of rights and eligibility, and “purement démocratique.” Persuaded that democracy was also the path to “perpetual peace,” he wanted the Constitution to make a strong stand against militarism and expansionism, urging inclusion of clauses stipulating that the Republic would never invade or annex the territory of others. His article fifty read: “the Republic will have no diplomacy except to sign treaties of peace, alliance or commerce, the basis of which will be ‘la plus exacte reciprocité.’ ”
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So vital was universal education, the Constitution itself should lay down that there must be public schools providing education to all free of charge in every rural locality and city section. The entire body of scientific and scholarly expertise should be sponsored, regulated, and supported by the public and the legislature. Baraillon’s article forty-two read: “all the men famous for their knowledge and their talents will be reunited in one society which, under the name of Société encyclopédique de France, will strive to advance the sciences, fine arts, and work ceaselessly to expand the mass of human knowledge and perfect it.” As for public celebrations, he suggested, these should celebrate only peacemaking and the triumph of justice, liberty, and
saine raison
elsewhere in the world.

A key figure in the April debates who, after the Terror, was destined to play a leading role in reviving the Revolution’s core values, and discredit Montagnard ideology, was Pierre-Claude-François Daunou (1761–1840), from Boulogne, a former philosophy professor and constitutional priest strongly committed to public education and advancing the sciences. Daunou, observed Lanjuinais, was among the ablest participants in the constitutional debate. He agreed with Condorcet that among the more comprehensive rights secured by the new Declaration of Rights should be the right to petition and to hold meetings peaceably. Like Condorcet, Lanjuinais, and Brissot, Daunou sought a carefully calculated balance between representative and direct democracy, and judicious balance also between guaranteeing property rights
and countering wealth inequality.
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Like Brissot and Condorcet, Daunou aspired effectively to remedy the “enorme et monstrueuse” disproportion of fortunes in France by dividing large holdings, expanding the number of property owners, and ensuring low incomes suffice at least for subsistence.
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A central Montagnard aspiration never achieved was to tie the sansculottes solidly to their faction. Chabot’s
Projet d’acte constitutive
, for example, prioritized food price subsidies and the idea that the bread price and other basic foodstuffs—the sole goods of necessity for everyone—should be tightly regulated and equal for all. Levies on the rich were needed to ensure food price stability at moderate levels.
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Ironically (considering what was to come), Chabot also urged abolition of the death penalty as “contrary to the principles of nature and society.”
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If he scorned the intellectualism of the philosophes,
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still more uncompromisingly “populaire” was the rural
dirigisme
of the priest Jacques-Marie Coupé (1737–1809), representing the department of the Oise. Jacobin curé, fervent egalitarian, and disciple of Mably (even more than Rousseau), Coupé wanted to see the legislature closely bound by the electorate and under vigorous popular surveillance.
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The best constitution derives from the pure elements of natural principles. Political life should be grounded on the sentiments of the common man and ordinary common sense and nothing else. Ordinary people reject “cet art philosophique de gouverner” of Condorcet and the Brissotins. Officeholders should be
hommes ordinaires
, des sansculottes. The need to prevent the ordinary man from being duped by Condorcet’s
charlatanisme académique
was, to him, the first rule of politics. The February draft constitution stemmed from philosophisme and was an outrage, a scandal. Where was the “natural right”? Where the empire of the ordinary? Coupé wanted it inscribed in the Constitution: “the law of equality rejects eminent personalities and wants only ordinary men.”
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Another Montagnard assault on la philosophie and the
beaux esprits
“duping” ordinary folk was mounted by Didier Thirion (1763–1816), disciple of Marat and rhetoric teacher expert at swaying crowds. Deputies elected to the new legislature should be elected by the people and as close to ordinary people in thinking and attitudes as possible. Every influence alien to the people, foreign or intellectual, should be disowned. The Convention must reject “beaux génies, les illustres orateurs, les talents académiques.” He attributed the divisions wrecking the Convention to an election process thus far insufficiently
populaire
. Condorcet’s
constitution was defective also in according too much electoral influence to primary assemblies and the departments. Aggressively populist, Thirion, like Chabot, Coupé, and Robespierre, was also antifeminist and, at bottom, antidemocrat, exalting only a collectivity defined by virtue capable of overriding all dissent and subsuming all localities in one united entity, legitimized at every turn by the “ordinaire.”
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“The people is good but its delegates are corruptible,” intoned Robespierre in person on 10 May, reiterating that much was wrong, and that it is virtue and popular sovereignty that must be “safeguarded against vice and the despotism of the government.” Governmental corruption originates in excessive power over, and excessive independence from, the true sovereign, “the people.” Public opinion alone should judge those who govern; it is not for governments to domineer over opinion. Above all, the Constitution must subject officeholders to a real and effective dependence on the sovereign. “The public crimes of magistrates” should be no less rigorously punished than private crimes.
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He fully shared Rousseau’s doubts and reservations about representation. Where for Condorcet republican politics means maximizing “social freedom,” a fusing of individual freedom and political freedom fixed by the Constitution, for Robespierre it meant imposing the popular will forcefully on all government, executive, judiciary, legislature, departmental councils, and primary assemblies alike.
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Among the more substantial Montagnard contributions was Billaud-Varenne’s
Élements du républicanisme.
This text fiercely derides Voltaire’s defense of social hierarchy and his claim that artisan and laborer are born to be poor. Why had all the world’s peoples prior to 1789 been “martyred” and exploited by the very laws and regimes under which they dwelt? “Everywhere the multitude is sacrificed to a few privileged individuals. Advantages, benefits and comfortable living were reserved for a proud handful. Education, refinement and expertise were the preserve of the rich; ignorance and misery the eternal lot of the majority.” Billaud-Varenne’s fervent Rousseauism inspired a Manichaean split between true “citizens” infused with social duties, who saw everything in terms of the public interest and investing “their own happiness and glory in securing the happiness of their country” and the depraved selfishness of those refusing to do so. Good men predominate only where popular sovereignty triumphs and virtue is venerated. “Individuals isolated within themselves, working solely for their own interest,” seek to break “l’équilibre de l’égalité” and build their own personal well-being by usurping that of others.
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