Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 6.djvu/17

A.D.1792.] Every day now more and more federates arrived in Paris from the country. Subscriptions were raised and money was sent them to enable them to march. The assembly voted them thirty sous per day each man. These rude and sanguinary men, educated by the provincial jacobin clubs in a readiness for any crime or horror, though ostensibly collected to augment the armies of the frontiers, and defend the kingdom against the invaders, swore they would not move from Paris till they had destroyed the interior enemies of the people. They daily took up their position in the galleries of the assembly, to the exclusion of all else, thus overawing the deliberations. The country was, in truth, now delivered up to these jacobin hordes of ruffians. Under the influence of the jacobins thus made paramount, the assembly proceeded to reorganise the army, collected the scattered members of the terrible ex-gardes Françaises into a body of gensdarmes, and ordered the Swiss guards to march to the frontiers. The design was palpably to leave the king wholly in the hands of the jacobiuised troops, and open any day to assassination. But the Swiss refused to quit the service for which they had been engaged—the defence of the person of the king. M. d'Affry, the commander, produced the capitulations under which the Swiss served, and positively refused to quit Paris. It was necessary to proceed to the terrible extremities contemplated, in spite of this obstacle.

The jacobins and their myrmidons, the federates, took into their hands the whole executive of the country. They abandoned all disguise as to their objects. A committee of federates, calling itself "The Central Committee of Insurrection," sate daily in one of the rooms at the jacobin club. The members of this committee were at first only five, in order to secure some necessary secrecy to their measures. As for their end, it was simply to rouse a republican revolution in every corner of France, and then to march to the palace, and seize and depose, or murder, the king. The five original members were Vaugeois, grand vicar—in fact, an apostate priest; Debessé, of La Drôme; Guillaume, a professor, from Caen; Simon, newspaper editor, of Strasburg; and Galissot, of Langres. But to these were soon added Carra, Gorsas, Fournier; the Alsacien, Westermann; Kienliu, of Strasburg; Santerre, Alexandre, commander of the faubourg St. Marceau; a Pole named Lazouski, captain of the gunners in the artillery of St. Marceau; Antoine, of Metz, an ex-constituent; and Laugrey and Garin, two electors. They were soon joined by Camille Desmoulins, Manuel, and Danton, who became their very soul, and directed all their movements. They entered into communication with Barbaroux, who engaged to bring up a picked body of Marseillais, six hundred in number, who were sworn to die or carry out every desperate enterprise of the jacobin faction.

According to the jacobin and Girondist system, there required now only some startling fact to rouse the fury of the whole tribe of sans culottes, and such facts even the Girondist leaders thought excusable, however unprincipled. If the court could have murdered some patriotic member of the assembly, this would have thrown the whole nation into a flame; but, as it did not murder any such member, it was proposed by Chabot that the imputation of such a murder should be thrown upon it. Grangeneuve, a man of limited understanding, offered himself as a victim, if some of the jacobins would assassinate him at night when returning from the assembly, and charge it on the court. Chabot, professing to be lost in admiration at this proof of patriotism, proposed to join him in death. They agreed to meet at a certain spot, where they were to be fallen upon and slain. Grangeneuve desired that they would kill him outright, and not leave him in misery. At the appointed time, Grangeneuve declared that he was on the spot, but that Chabot did not come; and no obliging assassins appearing either, he went home and went to bed. Chabot, on the contrary, protested that he could not find Grangeneuve, and the probability is, that both were more ready to make a boast of dying than to suffer death, and that neither even went to the place. Madame Roland, in relating this farce, seems to betray no sense of the infamy of the scheme, had it really been carried into effect. She seems to think, however, that the failure was owing to the cowardice of Chabot. Some other means were to be sought, and all seemed sensible that to conduct so decisive an enterprise, they must select some chief who should unite the efforts of the party, and lead them to its grand coup-d'état. Who was this man? The different merits of Desmoulins, Marat, Barbaroux, Robespierre, and Danton, were weighed, and in all something was found wanting. Desmoulins was audacious and impassioned, but destitute of the lungs necessary for the orator of the mob, and of the necessary activity; Marat was ready to murder any amount of aristocrats, but had excited too much horror even for the leader of such a faction; Barbaroux was not bloody enough; and Robespierre was deemed, though cunning as the old serpent, much too cowardly. Barbaroux had interviews with both Marat and Robespierre on this subject. Marat proposed that all aristocrats should be compelled to wear a white ribbon on the arm, so that the people might know them, and kill them; but then he included royalists, Feuillants, and Girondists, all under the class to be exterminated; and he desired nothing so much as to be put at the head of two hundred Neapolitans, armed with daggers, and with a muff on the left arm as a shield, with whom he could traverse France and make a revolution! Barbaroux left him in horror. As for Robespierre, Barbaroux left him, convinced that he designed to make himself a permanent dictator. Danton, bold, and capable of commanding the people by his daring impetuosity, appeared the most likely man; but Danton was still in the pay of the court, and his avarice made him shrink from this post, which required the sacrifice of his base pay, for which he did nothing!

No leadership could, therefore, be established. So far from this, the insurrection committee was divided in its counsels. The court were informed of this by its spies, and took measures not to attack the republicans, but to strengthen themselves so as to be able to wait the arrival of the allies. A club, called the French club, was formed, consisting of artisans and soldiers of the national guard, who had weapons concealed in the building where they met, not far from the palace, so that they could be ready to hasten there on an emergency. This club cost the court ten thousand francs a-day. A Marseillais, of the name of