Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (84 page)

In Paris, tension rose, as food shortages and stepped-up recruiting for the Vendée and Belgium frayed tempers further. Marat poured invective on the Brissotin leaders as Robespierre sporadically joined in the rhetorical assault on the rich, assuring listeners “the people” needed to fight the criminal intentions of the bankers, financiers, and wealthy bourgeois—a rhetoric he adhered to, though only briefly and opportunistically, during these weeks, while his main point remained the need, as he saw it, to crush every variety of contre-révolutionnaire. The (Brissotin) “conspirators,” who invaded the sections and covered their evil intentions with the mask of patriotisme, had to be unmasked and eradicated without delay.
⁷⁰
Clashes between pro-Montagne sansculottes and often better-dressed “Muscadins,” emanating from the more affluent quarters of town—street rowdies and activists encouraged by Pétion and other Brissotin leaders to form gangs and chase off the Montagnards—lent a distinct hint of class warfare to the stuggle, as did talk of forced loans from the rich. Pétion strove to mobilize the “honnêtes gens” against those willing to believe Montagnard propaganda. Like Lafayette, a vile “jean-foutre,” according to
Le Père Duchesne
, Pétion was more “dangerous” than anyone: the Feuillants loathed him when he defended the
sansculottes, but allegedly now sang his praises, realizing Pétion was really a tartuffe defending “royalty.” A new Saint Bartholomew Day massacre loomed, and it was liberty’s “best friends,” Robespierre and Marat, who would be martyred if these “traitors” triumphed. If the plotters succeeded in engineering a contre-révolution, they would surely render the sansculottes more wretched than the lowest beasts of burden.
Le Père Duchesne
would fight to the last, undaunted by the prospect of death at the hands of such scum as Pétion.

What chiefly dismayed Hébert (and there is no reason to doubt Hébert’s sincerity here) was the “indifference of most
sansculottes
” who in their majority unaccountably failed to discern the “betrayal” all around. To defeat la contre-révolution, the sansculottes must rush to arms and annihilate all the
fripons
and traitors, but they were not doing so.
⁷¹
According to Pétion, only around five or six hundred hard-core militants staffed Robespierre’s well-honed intrigue, propaganda, and vote-rigging machine, a mechanism that had conquered Paris superficially but did not represent local opinion. Chabot actually admitted that most young men in Paris were what he called Brissotin
contre-révolutionnaires
.”
⁷²
The secret of the Montagne’s success, held Pétion, was the gullibility and simplicity of a few honest citizens, aided by the deplorable lethargy of the great majority. The essence of the new populist tyranny was its use of professional hacks to dragoon the least aware, and then claim the section assemblies and officials were implementing what the people wanted. The people mostly failed to understand what the section bosses’ real intentions were.
⁷³
But they were still not easily dragooned in large numbers.

How vastly, complained Pétion, the Paris Jacobin Club had degenerated from its original character! No longer deeply divided, they had drastically narrowed and ceased being an arena for debate and free expression. Formerly, the Jacobins had been an association of enlightened men actively shaping the “public spirit” of the nation, burning with love of liberty, propagating only enlightenment and “les bons principes.”
⁷⁴
Captured by a despotic leadership, they had become something never known previously—“a school of lies and calumny.” Open daily, regularly attended by some two thousand listeners, the Paris Jacobins had refined the art of mass deception, developing a method of deluding ordinary folk that even the most corrupt royal courts had never dreamed of. Untruth and misinformation endlessly repeated, they had discovered, is what most effectively mobilizes an ignorant public. False and improbable “facts” were broadcast with the utmost audacity. Paradoxically, the
“ignorance and credulity of the people” was equally the explanation offered by Chabot’s
Journal populaire
for how Pétion could have been so applauded in Paris earlier, and remained popular now despite his “vile” fédéralisme and continually betraying “the people.”
⁷⁵

The Paris sections were split with six or seven adamantly resisting Montagnard bullying, creating a rift so bitter many momentarily forgot the emergencies in the northeast, the Vendée, and on the Rhine.
⁷⁶
When Buzot rebuked the Commune for treating protesters from section Champs-Élysées, like Lafayette had treated the Champs de Mars petitioners, a furious chorus erupted from the Convention galleries of “à l’Abbaye” (to prison with him). “Yes,” retorted Buzot ominously, “we must crush ‘the new tyranny’ or die: oppressed citizens of Paris, unite behind the Convention in resisting the yoke of these
despotes
calling themselves patriotes and republicans!”
⁷⁷
In sections Champs-Élysées, Mail, De la Butte des Moulins, Lombards, and De la Fraternité, anti-Montagne public petitions were drawn up, swearing to maintain liberty and defend the Convention from the looming threat of Montagnard insurrection and warning of the perfidy of those who turned Liberty into “a goddess fed on blood.” The section assemblies, complained the Commune, were being invaded by Brissotin aristocrats and
modérés
. More vigorous purges and arrests were needed to stop the counteroffensive. Surveillance of citizens and seizure of suspects were stepped up, but so were the protests. On 10 May, a Lombards section deputation asked the Convention to order the release of a “republican citizen” and “excellent patriot” imprisoned at the Conciergerie merely for complaining at a section meeting about the arbitrary arrests.
⁷⁸
Testimonies were presented vouching for this citizen’s civisme, causing an irate Robespierre to berate the delegation as a “batch of merchants” allied to nobles and privilégiés bent on contre-révolution. The petitioners should be behind bars beside the culprit. It astonished him that they had “protectors” in the Convention.

Almost every day during the nine months the Brissotins dominated the Convention (August 1792–May 1793), Levasseur recalled later, they accused Robespierre’s and Danton’s supporters of betraying the Revolution and obstructing finalization of the Constitution.
⁷⁹
Condorcet and his colleagues, deeply dispirited by May, tried one last time to secure acceptance of their so laboriously wrought constitution. He resubmitted his draft constitution on 13 May in one of his last appearances at the Convention rostrum, trying, together with five other members of the Comité de Constitution, to counter the obstructionism of
the Montagne. Again his constitution was dismissed, rightly Levasseur thought, as too “academic” and suffused with “questions métaphysiques.” If the deputies had still failed to adopt a constitution by November 1793, Condorcet urged the Convention to agree, they should at least authorize new elections so that a fresh Convention could be chosen.
⁸⁰

Economic distress fed the impulse to insurrection during late spring 1793. But how long would the added boost continue? Conscious of their reverses in Marseille, Nîmes, Aix, and Lyon, and their difficulties in rallying genuinely broad mass support against the Convention, Montagnard bosses from twenty-six Paris sections could not afford to play for time. They had to concert their efforts swiftly and vigorously. Section delegates had in fact been convening secretly, from late March, at the Evêché, a hall adjoining Notre Dame cathedral, where they planned the use of especially vigorous crowd mobilization and propaganda techniques to escalate street support sufficiently to “save the country and liberty.”
⁸¹
Facing an obvious emergency, the Convention considered proposals to temporarily move the Assembly from Paris to Bourges or some other town. On 18 May, over fierce Montagnard objections, with Danton also disapproving, a Convention majority adopted Guadet’s motion to establish a Commission of Twelve (Commission de Douze), consisting of a mix of neutrals and Brissotins—but no Montagnards—to investigate insurrectionary conspiracy in Paris and examine the Paris Commune’s records. The commission was to recommend countermeasures against the rampant misconduct, vote-rigging, and manipulation. The denouement could not be far off.
⁸²
Machinateurs
manipulating opinion in the inner sections, according to rumors, were scheming to engineer a massive insurrection far bigger than the February and March demonstrations. If most Parisians impassively scorned the “brigands,” commented Fauchet, the most ignorant had been sufficiently “fanaticized” to make such plans for action practicable. Women, he predicted, would start the disturbances by clamoring for bread, and prearranged gangs of men would then rush to their aid.
⁸³

The commission set to work gathering incriminating evidence and, on 24 May, ordered the arrest of Hébert, Varlet, Claude-Emmanuel Dobsen (1743–1811), president of the section La Cité, and other known “conspirators,” or as the Montagnard press preferred to call them, “brave heroes” of 14 July 1789 and 10 August 1792.
⁸⁴
Sixteen Paris sections reacted indignantly, petitioning for the prisoners’ release and immediate suppression of the “duodecimvirate.” This became the populists’ new
war cry.
⁸⁵
On 26 May, seeing there was now no turning back, Robespierre delivered one of the most decisive speeches of his career at the Jacobins, openly calling on the Paris populace to rise up against the “corrupt deputies” in the Convention and stop the Commission de Douze. For the first time in the Revolution, Robespierre directly instigated armed insurrection. Some sections supported him with alacrity, their revolutionary committees immediately setting to work to arrest individuals known for making critical remarks about Robespierre, Marat, and the revolutionary committees, but others, including Arsenal, where bitter internecine strife erupted, did not.
⁸⁶
Hoping to bring out the citizenry in impressive force, Pache and the Commune leadership ordered the sounding of the tocsin and tambour that same day, and crowds, especially of women, gathered, clamoring for Hébert’s release.
⁸⁷

Yet the size of the crowds on 26 May was not very impressive. Robespierre, Marat, Pache, and their supporters faced a serious dilemma. On 27 May, a day supposedly entirely devoted to discussing the Constitution in the Assembly, the Montagne tried to do better and did mobilize a significant ferment around the Convention. As spokesmen, a deputation from section De la Cité, carrying a banner inscribed “The Rights of Man and the Citizen Violated,” surmounted by a red liberty bonnet, demanded release of their “president.” The presiding deputy, Maximin Isnard (1755–1825), a Provençal known for advocating harsh action against émigrés and refractory clergy, was outraged. One of the few Brissotins who had voted against the appel au public, Isnard berated the rioters to their faces, telling them that “tyranny,” whether dressed up with golden frills or sansculotte rags, is still tyranny. He was pushed aside, though, and a motion to suppress the Commission of Twelve was successfully carried at a moment of low attendance in the Assembly. Hébert, Varlet, and the others were released, to the great jubilation of the crowds, and escorted through the streets. But the Montagnard leadership was unable to build on their initial success because the crowds dispersed too quickly, and deputy attendance at the Convention increased later in the day. The Brissotins then secured a Convention majority vote (279 to 239 votes), reversing the earlier resolution and reinstating the Commission of Twelve.
⁸⁸

Robespierre, Marat, and their supporters could not overthrow their opponents without bringing out larger sansculotte crowds, applying heavier pressure, and intimidating the Convention more vigorously. This, they realized, could be done only by deploying carefully planned, organized force. On 28 May, a circular reached the section secretaries,
summoning the pro-Montagne sections each to send two representatives with unlimited powers to an emergency meeting at the Evêché to concert measures massively to boost street support. On 29 May, sixty-six delegates, mostly professionals and merchants but with a sprinkling of artisans, including the Enragé leaders Varlet and Leclerc,
⁸⁹
duly agreed the details entrusting direction of the rising to their Comité Central Révolutionnaire, twenty-five insurrectionary managers including Dobsen, Varlet, and the lawyer Jean-Baptiste Loys, the last termed by his fellow Marseillais, Barberoux, a “madman” thirsting for dictatorship.
⁹⁰

The supposedly sansculotte rising proper commenced at three in the morning on 31 May, with Varlet ordering the ringing of the bells of Notre Dame, followed by general bell-ringing and thunderous drum-beating, the veteran crowd managers pulling out all the stops, the whole operation directed, observed Fréron (no friend of the Brissotins), by just these few dozen section bosses, among them Andrés Maria Guzmán, a Frenchman of Andalusian extraction nicknamed Don Tocsinos after the alarm bell he constantly plied, and François Hanriot (1761–94), a former minor official born of a Nanterre peasant family, now appointed commander of the Paris National Guard by Dobsen, who acted with other Robespierre agents in the name of the Commune. As before, once gathered in the streets, the multitude, though larger this time, had not the slightest idea, Fréron and Mercier both emphasized, why their section leaders had summoned them, what they were meant to do, or where to go. Every step was orchestrated by the crowd managers, with nothing spontaneous or genuinely transacted by the people. Thus, the subsequently much-vaunted “popular insurrection” of 31 May, like that of 2 June, was really a preposterous charade. A crucial ploy was the cry—a flagrant fiction—that a “royalist insurrection” had broken out under the white cockade and royalist flags in the Butte des Moulins and fifteen other sections defying the Montagne.
⁹¹