Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/626

Rh 602 ROBESPIERRE prizes offered by various provincial academies. In 1784 he obtained a medal from the academy of Metz for his essay on the question whether the relatives of a condemned criminal should also be punished; but the prize was awarded to Lacretelle aine, an avocat and journalist at Paris, who triumphed again over his provincial antagonist in the Parisian press, and who in after days when Robes- pierre was all-powerful was surprised that he was not sent to the guillotine. An eloge on Gresset, the author of Vert- Vert and Le Mechant, written for the academy of Amiens in 1785, was not more successful; but Robespierre was compensated for these failures by his great popularity in the society of the Rosati at Arras, a little society whose members prided themselves on being men of fashion and wit, and spent one evening a week in conviviality and in read- ing poems, epigrams, and vers de societe. There the sympa- thetic quality of Robespierre's voice, which afterwards did him such good service in the Jacobin Club, always caused his indifferent verses to be loudly applauded by his friends. Such had been the life of the future republican leader up to 1788, when he took part in the discussion as to the way in which the states-general should be elected, showing clearly and forcibly in his Adresse d, la Nation Artesienne that, if the former mode of election by the members of the provincial estates was again adopted, the new states- general would not represent the people of France. Necker also perceived this, and therefore determined to make the old royal bailliages and sene-chaussees the units of election. Under this plan the city of Arras was to return twenty- four members to the assembly of the bailliage of Artois, which was to elect the deputies. The corporation claimed the right to a preponderating influence in these city elec- tions, and Robespierre headed the opposition, making him- self very conspicuous and drawing up the cahier or table of complaints and grievances, for the guild of the cobblers. Although the leading members of the corporation were elected, their chief opponent succeeded in getting elected with them. In the assembly of the bailliage rivalry ran still higher, but Robespierre had already made his mark in politics ; by the Avis aux Habitants de Campagne (Arras, 1789), which is almost certainly by him, he secured the support of the country electors, and, though but thirty years of age, poor, and without influence, he was elected fifth deputy of the tiers 6tat of Artois to the states-general. When the states-general met at Versailles on 5th May 1789, the young deputy of Artois already possessed the one faculty which was to lead him to supremacy : he was a fanatic. As Mirabeau said, " That young man believes what he says ; he will go far." Without the courage and wide tolerance which make a statesman, without the greatest qualities of an orator, without the belief in himself which marks a great man, nervous, timid, and suspicious, Robespierre yet believed in the doctrines of Rousseau with all his heart, and would have gone to death for them ; and in the belief that they would eventually succeed and regenerate France and mankind he was ready to work with unwearied patience. While the constituent assembly occupied itself in drawing up an unworkable constitu- tion as the grand panacea, Robespierre turned from the assembly of provincial avocats and wealthy bourgeois to the people of Paris. However, he spoke frequently in the constituent assembly, and often with great success, and was eventually recognized as second only to Potion de Villeneuve if second to him as a leader of the small body of the extreme left, the thirty voices, as Mirabeau con- temptuously called them. It is hardly necessary to exa- mine minutely Robespierre's speeches and behaviour before 1791, when the death of Mirabeau left the way clear for the influence of his party ; but what is noteworthy, as proving the religious cast of his mind and his belief in the necessity of a religion, is that he spoke several times in favour of the lower clergy and laboured to get their pensions increased. When he instinctively felt that his doctrines would have no success in the assembly, he turned to the Jacobin Club, which had consisted originally of the Breton deputies only, but which, after the assembly moved to Paris, began to admit among its members various leaders of the Parisian bourgeoisie. As time went on, many of the more intelligent artisans and petits commergants became members of the club, and among such men Robespierre found the hearers he sought. They did more than listen to him : they idolized him ; the fanatical leader had found fanatics to follow him, and their ultimate supremacy be- came merely a question of time. As the wealthier bour- geois of Paris and deputies of a more moderate type seceded to the club of '89 the influence of the old leaders of the Jacobins (Barnave, Duport, Charles de Lameth) diminished ; and, when they themselves, alarmed at the progress of the Revolution, founded the club of the Feuillants in 1791, the followers of Robespierre dominated the Jacobin Club. The death of Mirabeau strengthened Robespierre's influence in the assembly; but in May 1791 he proved his lack of statesmanlike insight and his jealous suspicion of his colleagues by proposing and carrying the motion that no deputies who sat in the constituent could sit in the succeeding assembly. The flight of the king on 21st June and his arrest at Varennes excited Robespierre's suspicions, and made him declare himself at the Jacobin Club to be "ni monarchiste ni republicain." But the vigorous conduct of Lafayette and the National Guard on the Champ de Mars on 17th July 1791 terrified him, for he believed that he was a predestined victim, until he was succoured by Duplay, a cabinetmaker in the Rue St Honore, and an ardent admirer of his, in whose house he lived (with but two short intervals) till his death. At last came his day of triumph, when on 30th September, on the dissolution of the constituent assembly, the people of Paris crowned Petion and himself as the two incorrupt- ible patriots. Qn the dissolution of the assembly he returned for a short visit to Arras, where he met with a triumphant re- ception. In November he returned to Paris, and on 18th December made a speech which marks a new epoch in his life. Brissot, the dme politique of the Girondin party which had been formed in the legislative assembly, urged vehemently that war should be declared against Austria, and the queen was equally urgent in the hope that a vic- torious army might restore the old absolutism of the Bour- bons. Two men opposed the projects of the queen and the Girondins, Marat and Robespierre: Marat opposed them for statesmanlike reasons (see MARAT), and Robes- pierre on humanitary grounds and because as a follower of Rousseau he disliked war. This opposition from those whom they had expected to aid them irritated the Giron- dins greatly, and from that moment began the struggle which ended in the coups d'etat of 31st May and 2d June 1793. Guadet accused Robespierre of superstition in be- lieving in a providence, and declared that, as the people's idol, he ought to ostracize himself for the good of his country. Robespierre persisted in his opposition to the war, and the Girondins, especially Brissot, attacked him so violently that in April 1792 he resigned the post of public prosecutor at the tribunal of Paris, which he had held since February, and started a journal, Le Defenseur de la Constitution, in his own defence. It is noteworthy that during the summer months of 1792, in which the fate f the Bourbon dynasty was being sealed, neither the Girondins in the legislative assembly nor Robespierre took any active part in overthrowing it. Stronger men with practical instincts of statesmanship, like Danton and