The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918. Charles Downer Hazen
Читать онлайн книгу.
arrested large numbers of suspected persons.
This Revolutionary Commune or City Council of Paris was henceforth one of the powerful factors in the government of France. It, and not the Legislative Assembly, was the real ruler of the country between the suspension of the King on August 10 and the meeting of the Convention, September 20. It continued to be a factor, sometimes predominant, even under the Convention. For nearly two years, from August 1792, until the overthrow of Robespierre on July 27, 1794, the Commune was one of the principal forces in politics. It signalized its advent by suppressing the freedom of the press, one of the precious conquests of the reform movement, by defying the committees of the Assembly when it chose, and by carrying through the infamous September Massacres, which left a monstrous and indelible stain upon the Revolution. The Commune was the representative of the lower classes and of the Jacobins. Its leaders were all extremely radical, and some were desperate characters who would stop at nothing to gain their ends.
The September Massacres grew out of the feeling of panic which seized the population of Paris as it heard of the steady approach of the Prussians and Austrians under the Duke of Brunswick. Hundreds of persons, suspected or charged with being real accomplices of the invaders, were thrown into prison. Finally the news reached Paris that Verdun was besieged, the last fortress on the road to the capital. If that should fall, then the enemy would have but a few days' march to accomplish and Paris would be theirs. The Commune and the Assembly made heroic exertions to raise and forward troops to the exposed position. The Commune sounded the tocsin or general alarm from the bell towers, and unfurled a gigantic black flag from the City Hall bearing the inscription, 'The Country is in Danger.' The more violent members began to say that before the troops were sent to the front the traitors within the city ought to be put out of the way. " Shall we go to the front, leaving 3,000 prisoners behind us, who may escape and murder our wives and children?" they asked. The hideous spokesman and inciter of the foul and cowardly slaughter was Marat, one of the most bloodthirsty characters of the time. The result was that day after day from September 2 to September 6 the cold-blooded murder of non-juring priests, of persons suspected or accused of 'aristocracy,' went on, without trial, the innocent and the guilty, men and women. The butchery was systematically done by men hired and paid by certain members of the Commune. The Legislative Assembly was too terrified itself to attempt to stop the infamous business nor could it have done so, had it tried. Nearly 1,200 persons were thus savagely hacked to pieces by the colossal barbarism of those days.
One consequence of these massacres was to discredit the cause of the Revolution. Another was to precipitate a sanguinary struggle between the Girondists who wished to punish the "Septembrists" and particularly their instigator, Marat, and the Jacobins, who either defended them or assumed an attitude of indifference, urging that France had more important work to do than to spend her time trying to avenge men who were after all 'aristocrats.' The struggles between these factions were to fill the early months of the Convention which met on September 20, 1792, the elections having taken place under the gloomy and terrifying impressions produced by the September Massacres. On the same day, September 20, the Prussians were stopped in their onward march at Valmy. They were to get no farther. The immediate danger was over. The tension was relieved.
Chapter VI
The Convention
The third Revolutionary assembly was the National Convention, which was in existence for three years, from September 20, 1792, to October 26, 1795. Called to draft a new constitution, necessitated by the suspension of Louis XVI, its first act was the abolition of monarchy as an institution. Before its final adjournment three years later it had drafted two different constitutions, one of which was never put in force, it had established a republic, it had organized a provisional government with which to face the appalling problems that confronted the country, it had maintained the integrity and independence of the country, threatened by complete dissolution, and had decisively defeated a vast hostile coalition of European powers. In accomplishing this gigantic task it had, however, made a record for cruelty and tyranny that left the republic in deep discredit and made the Revolution odious to multitudes of men.
On September 21, 1792, the Convention voted unanimously that "royalty is abolished in France." The following day it voted that all public documents should henceforth be dated from 'the first year of the French Republic.' Thus unostentatiously did the Republic make its appearance upon the scene, "furtively interjecting itself between the factions," as Robespierre expressed it. There was no solemn proclamation of the Republic, merely the indirect statement. As Aulard observes, the Convention had the air of saying to the nation, "There is no possibility of doing otherwise." Later the Republic had its heroes, its victims, its martyrs, but it was created in the first instance simply because there was nothing else to do. France had no choice in the matter. It merely accepted an imperative situation. A committee was immediately appointed to draw up a new constitution. Its work, however, was long postponed, for the Convention was distracted by a frenzied quarrel that broke out immediately between two parties, the Girondists and Jacobins. The latter party was often called the Mountain, because of the raised seats its members occupied. It is not easy to define the differences between these factions, which were involved in what was fundamentally a struggle for power. Both were entirely devoted to the Republic. Between the two factions there was a large group of members, who swung now this way and now that, carrying victory or defeat as they shifted their votes. They were the center, the Plain or the Marsh, as they were called because of the location of their seats in the convention hall.
On one point, the part that the city of Paris should be permitted to play in the government, the difference of opinion was sharp. The Girondists represented the departments and insisted that Paris, which constituted only one of the eighty-three departments into which France was divided, should have only one eighty-third of influence. They would tolerate no dictatorship of the capital. On the other hand the Jacobins drew their strength from Paris. They considered Paris the brain and the heart of the country, a center of light to the more backward provinces; they believed that it was the proper and predestined leader of the nation, that it was in a better position than was the country at large to appreciate the significance of measures and events, that it was, as Danton said, "the chief sentinel of the nation." The Girondists were anxious to observe legal forms and processes; they disliked and distrusted the frequent appeals to brute force. The Jacobins, on the other hand, were not so scrupulous. They were rude, active, forceful, indifferent to law, if law stood in the way. They were realists and believed in the application of force wherever and whenever necessary. Indeed their great emphasis was always put upon the necessity of the state. That justified everything. In other words anything was legitimate that might contribute to the safety or greatness of the Republic, whether legal or not.
But the merely personal element was even more important in dividing and envenoming these groups. The Girondists hated the three leaders of the Jacobins, Robespierre, Marat, and Danton. Marat and Robespierre returned the hatred, which was thus easily fanned to fever heat. Danton, a man of coarse fiber but large mould, above the pettiness of jealousy and pique, thought chiefly and instinctively only of the cause, the interest of the country at the given moment. He had no scruples but he had a keen sense for the practical and the useful. He was anxious to work with the Girondists, anxious to smooth over situations, to avoid extremes, to subordinate persons to measures, to ignore the spirit of faction and intrigue, to keep all republicans working together in the same harness for the welfare of France. His was the spirit of easy-going compromise. But he met in the Girondists a stern, unyielding opposition. They would have nothing to do with him, they would not cooperate with him, and they finally ranged him among their enemies, to their own irreparable harm and to his.
The contest between these two parties grew shriller and more vehement every day, ending in a life and death struggle. It began directly after the meeting of the Convention, in the discussion as to what should be done with Louis XVI, now that monarchy was abolished and the monarch a prisoner of state.
The King had unquestionably been disloyal to the Revolution. He had given encouragement to the emigres and had entered into the hostile plans of the enemies of France. After the meeting of the Convention a secret