Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/640

 604 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1792. tion, and was already planning how he might rise by it to Robes- the top of his ambition. Danton with all his roughnes&es pierre. vas a man ; Robespierre was a vain fop, Dantou had com paratively little personal ambition ; Robespierre always thought first of himself, and intended to become the dictator Marat, of a new commonwealth. Marat, who must be named here, was the leading spirit of the committee of surveillance, the leader and instigator of all the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror. He wished, too, to be dictator, that he might purify society, that he might have in his power the sole and unquestioned right to slay. The in- Lafayette, in spite of the invasion, would have marched vasion. on Paris to save society. He found himself abandoned, and took to flight ; the Germans, to whom he went, imprisoned him and treated him ill. Meanwhile, the allies took Longwy and Verdun, while they besieged Thionville ; the road to Paris seemed quite free to them. The effect on Paris was terrible ; no one knew who was in communication with the foreigners ; fear and anger made men brutal ; the massacres in the prisons went on incessantly. Danton, &quot; fiercely as he might bellow, was ashamed, for he had a human heart ; and he delivered from the fury as many of the victims as he could.&quot; Meanwhile, the Prussians had forced their way into France through the Argonne, in spite of Dumouriez ; and the duke of Brunswick, who hoped to cut him off, and had abandoned the direct road for Paris through Chalons, was met by Kellermanu who lay in his path at Valmy. The spirit which Kellermann infused into his raw troops staggered the assailants, who hesitated and drew back. The cannonade of Valmy, for it was little more, was more to France than many a great victory ; the Germans had to fall back discomfited ; the siege of Thion ville was raised. By the 1st of October not one of them remained iu France. Unfortunately, no steps were taken to harass them in the retreat ; their state was so bad that a little vigour might have entirely ruined them. Shortly afterwards came news to Paris that the army of Alsace under Custine had taken Worms, Spires, and Mainz, where lay the chief magazines of the allies ; in the north an attack on Lille was repulsed. Savoy was occupied by French troops, who also seized on the coast line, and occupied Nice and Villafranca, with its great munitions of war. Abroad the Revolution showed itself proud and defiant ; at home the National Convention replaced the Legislative Assembly. V. THE REPUBLIC. The Na- The new governmen of France reflected the changes tional which had taken place. Paris sent the chief Jacobins to ouven- - t. t ^ Girondists sa t on the r ight an( j had a large parties majority ; the Jacobins on the left, high up, with the in it. soubriquet of the Mountain ; below sat the &quot; Plain &quot; and the &quot; Marsh,&quot; the timid moderates, who leant towards the Girondists. Paris was behind all, fierce and bloodstained, supporting the Jacobins. At once the Convention decreed Aboli- (21st September 1792) the abolition of royalty in France, tion of and proclaimed the Republic. The 22d of September 1792 royalty. is the Firsfc day of year L of the Re p ub } ic Roland, the most influential of the Girondists, retained office as minister of the interior ; and his party, encouraged by the protests of the permanent department of Paris, which felt itself set aside, attacked the anarchy of the capital and the Jacobins. Robespierre was denounced, and great debates ensued ; the Girondists, however, in spite of their majority in the Con vention, had no force, and little political sagacity. Paris was in no mood for submission to the more moderate and consti tutional friends of the republic ; before the end of 1792 the commune, and the Mountain with it, had defeated the Gironde, the executive power, and Roland himself. For a time, however, the trial of the king absorbed all attention. It had begun in November 1792 ; in December Louis had 1792-s been questioned by the Convention ; all Franco discussed The tr with vehemence the different views as to the method of the an d ex trial. Who should judge him 1 ? The parties here split the Gironde, anxious to gain time, and to save the king from death, and the country from a great blunder, called for an appeal to the sovereign people ; they still clung to constitu tional forms. The Mountain held that the Convention was competent to undertake the task of an immediate trial. The opinion of the country re-echoed the cries of Paris ; and the Convention, on the 15th, 16th, and 17th January 1793, took on itself to decide the question ; by a majority of a few votes (387 against 334) it decreed that the king s punishment should be death. Philip Egalite, his nearest kinsman, was one of those who voted with the majority, to the disgrace of his name ; even those who wished for the king s death despised and condemned him for an act dic tated by weak ambition and cowardice. On the 21st of January 1793 Louis XVI. was executed on the Square of the Revolution. By this act, as the Montagnards themselves said, &quot; the Revolution threw down the glove to all ancient Europe.&quot; They had accused their rivals the Girondists of intriguing to save the monarchy, of coquetting with the emigrants and the foreign sovereigns. The Girondists, in their turn, accused them of being &quot;anarchists sold to the foreigner,&quot; men who were treacherously pushing on the Revolution to excess in order to discredit it, and to bring in the foreign help which the court desired ; men who were in the pay of Pitt, the supposed Macchiavelli of the time, whose hand was believed to be in everything which could turn to the harm of France. If Henry IV. was the hero of the Revolution, Pitt was its bugbear; Frenchmen were scared iu those days by his name, just as twenty years later Englishmen were scared by the name of Napoleon. The truth is that the Girondists represented the burgher classes, and were honestly eager to establish the new constitution in all its parts ; they were on the defensive, while the Mountain, the party of offence, represented the suffering populace eager, defiant, weary of negotiation, suspicious of treason at every point, and zealously determined to push the principles of the Revolution to their limits. In this they were utterly careless of political considerations, eager for war, come what might, quite honest and narrow, a very dangerous and powerful party. . Their victory in the trial and execution of &quot; Louis Capet&quot; was complete ; it brought with it inevitably the fall of Roland. When Robespierre and Danton attacked him in the Convention, finding that the Girondists no longer had a majority, he laid with dignity his resignation before the Convention, and was re placed for the time by the indolent and philosophic Garat, the minister of justice. The ascendency of Robespierre was Rob assured the man to whom the Revolution, as his enemies P ier said, &quot;was the religion of which he was the priest.&quot; nse- &quot;Robespierre preaches, Robespierre censures, thunders against the rich and great, lives simply, has no physical passions, has created for himself a reputation for austerity the austerity of a saint. He speaks of God and Provi dence, calls himself the friend of the poor and feeble, is followed by the women and the weak, whose adoration and homage he solemnly accepts.&quot; This is the dangerous man in whose hands lay the fortunes of France throughout the dark days of the Terror. He was the prophet who should realize on earth the beautiful and popular dreams of the Contrat Social. After the withdrawal of the Germans from France at the Cor ^ end of the previous September, Dumouriez had easily per- ^ m suaded the Executive Council at Paris that, by seizing the moment of amazement and disquiet, the French armies might secure for France her &quot; natural frontiers,&quot; that is.