After Robespierre

J . After Robespierre THE THERMIDORIAN REACTION Mter Robespierre THE THERMIDORIAN REACTION By ALBERT MATHIEZ Translated from the French by Catherine Alison Phillips The Universal Library GROSSET & DUNLAP NEW YORK COPYRIGHT ©1931 BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS La Reaction Thermidorienne COPYRIGHT 1929 BY MAX LECLERC ET CIE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY EDITION, 1965 BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 65·14385 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE So far as order of time is concerned, M. M athie( s study of the Thermidorian Reaction, of which the present volume is a translation, is a continuation of his history of the French Revolution, of which the English version was published in 1928. In form and character, however, there is a notable difference. In the case of the earlier work the limitations imposed by the publishers excluded all references and foot-notes, and the author had to refer the reader to his other published works for the evidence on which his conclusions were based. In the case of the present book no such limitations have been set, and M. Mathiei: has thus been able not only to state his con clusions, but to give the chain of reasoning by which they have been reached. The Thermidorian Reaction is therefore something more than a sequel to The French Revolution, which M. Mathiei:, with perhaps undue modesty, has described as a precis having no independent authority; it is not only a work of art, but a weighty contribution to historical science. In the preface to his French Revolution M. Mathie{ drew a distinction between the science and the art of history or, as he put it, between "erudition and history." Erudition, he says. collects and collates the evidence in or der to arrive at the truth; history reconstructs and expounds. The former is analysis, the latter is synthesis. In both these functions of the historian M. Mathiei: has abundantly proved his excellence. There can be no doubt as to his merits as a scientific historian. His life has been devoted to the in tensive study of the French Revolution; with enormous patience and labour he has explored vast fields of material unexploited by earlier historians; and the results of these researches he gave to the world in a long series of erudite monographs before he began the work of reconstructing and expounding the Revolution as a whole. His French Revolution showed that he brought to this work of reconstruction the essential quality of the historian as artist the power of breathing life into the dry bones of the past. The picture which he draws of the Revolution is clear and living. It is olear because he has mastered his subject. It is living, partly because, though he disclaims any conscious partisan bias, for him the questions at issue during the Revolution are still alive, partly because his researches into the more hidden by-ways of history have enabled him to introduce into the drama, not only the familiar leading characters, but a host of those obscure figures which "moved in their penumbra" and, for all their obscurity, often played an important, if not a determining, part in the development of the plot. M. Mathiei: does not make the mistake which the great Renaissance scholar Giralomo Cardano blamed v PREFACE in historians.' namely, that they are too apt to overlook "the very small things out of which all very great things grow." To say this is not to give unqualified approval to all the conclusions which M. Mathie:( draws from the facts. We may or may not, for instance, be inclined to accept his estimate of Robespierre as "the one great statesman at the Revolution," or to see in him a figure wholly heroic, the embodiment of the ideal of republican virtue. But after reading M. Mathie\:'s arguments, and the evidence on which they are based, few will care to deny that the traditional view of Robespierre as a "sea-green" hypocrite and a blood thirsty monster, whose cruelties had no better motive than the pursuit of personal ambition, must be drastically revised. A t least it is possible to ad mit that M. Mathie\: displayed the true dramatic instinct in closing the great destructive and constructive period of the Revolution with his hero's fall. For with Robespierre and his friends Revolutionary idealism perished as an effective force in France, and the sequel to Thermidor is at the nature of an anticlimax. The men who overthrew Robespierre, and grasped the reins of power, were certainly not idealists. Some, like Fouche or I'allien, had been more ruthless terrorists than he, and with meaner motives; and if, step by step, they destroyed the system that had become identified with Robespierre's name, this was due not so much to their own initiative as to the pressure of public opinion. Certainly the history of the Thermidorian reaction is a sordid story-a story without a hero. In reading it one is not surp6sed that the French people, weary at the endless intrigues at politicians, weary of the ceaseless struggle for power by men who knew not how to use it, weary of the corruption in high places and of hopeless misgovernment, should in the end have had eyes only for the progress of the French arms abroad and been con tent to exchange the illusion 01 liberty lor the intoxication 01 glory. The ruthless inquest which M. Mathie:( makes into this depressing period 01 the internal history 01 France lully explains how it was that Napoleon "sprang armed Irom the Revolution, like Minerva tram the brow at Jove." It is a period, too, which has its lessons lor all time. It marks the break down 01 the first great European experiment in representative democracy, and makes the reasons lor this break-down clear. In his Party Politics Prolessor Michels has shown, with a wealth 01 examples, how democracy always tends to develop into oligarchy, more or less veiled, which is espe cially true 01 countries whose peoples have no long experience in the art 01 sell-government. The men in power wrest or violate the provisions 01 the constitution in order to retain power, and those in opposition, in delault of legal means of redress, stir up the discontented elements of the population to revolt. The appeal is then to arms, and the stronger will prevail. It was by vi PREFACE military intervention that the Convention was saved from the wrath of the Paris populace during the risings of the 12th Germinal and the 1st Prairial, 1795 .. it was by a military coup d'etat that the first Directory maintained itself in power on the 18th Fructidor, 1797, and this set the precedent for the coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire, 1799, which carried Bonaparte to supreme power. It is a precedent which is still being followed in other countries. The history of France between the fall of Robespierre and the rise of Napoleon is full of instruction for those who believe in representative democracy as a universal panacea for the political distempers of mankind. w. ALISON PHILLIPS vii CONTENTS I. The Dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety Comes to an End 3 II. The New Indulgents 22 III. The Trial of Carrier and the Closing of the Jacobins 46 IV. Babeuf, Tallien, Freron, and his "Jeunesse'; 68 V. The Reinstatement of the Girondins and the Removal of Marat from the Pantheon 92 VI. The Amnesty to the Vendeans and Chouans 117 VII. The Reopening of the Churches 137 VIII. The First Hunger Insurrection (lZth Germinal, Year III) 156 IX. The White Terrot 176 X. The Insurrection of Prairial, Year III 198 XI. Quiberon 217 XII. Vendemiaire 236 Index follows page 260 After Robespierre THE THERMIDORIAN REACTION .. OHAPTER I The Dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety Comes to an End PROPOSE to set forth in some detail the inner history of the last fifteen I months of the National Convention, from the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794), to the establishment of the Di rectory, on the 4th Brumaire, year IV (October 26, 1795). These fifteen months have justly been called the Th'ermidorian reaction (reaction in the sense of a return to a past state, a step backwards), and, as a matter of fact, what we are about to witness is the destruction, one after the other, of the institutions and usages of the preceding period, that of the Terror, simultaneously with the elimination and persecution of all the men who had exercised power or taken part in administration during that period. Before the 9th Thermidor, power had become more and more con centrated in a few hands under pressure of the political and economic exi gencies of the state of war, as a means of defeating the enemy at home and abroad, as well as feeding the cities and armies, which were threatened with a permanent state of famine. Little by little the Committee of Public Safety had absorbed all authority, reducing the Convention to the position of a mere body for recording its decisions. The dictatorship of the Com mittee was based upon the clubs, now purged of all elements of opposition, and performing both supervisory and administrative functions throughout the whole of France, since most of the government officials belonged to them and played an influential part in them. To induce the masses to put forth the efforts necessary for the, achievement of victory, the Committee of Public Safety, under pressure from the clubs, had f0110wed a vigorously democratic policy.

Load more