548

MARAT ACCUSED IN THE ASSEMBLY.

Nobody must believe that the murderous advice given by Marat were mere words and wishes; they are too often realities,-immediate executions. Thus, in his number 313 (December 17th, 1790), a letter addressed to him, informs us that, of those whom he had denounced to death, four have just been assassinated.

His only sorrow is that the same method is not yet followed with respect to the National Assembly. On the 21st of October, 1790, he assures us that if a few heads were promenaded from time to time around the Assembly, the constitution would soon be made, and made perfect. It would be still better, in his opinion, if such heads were chosen among the members of the Assembly itself. On the 22nd of September, the 15th of November, and on other occasions, he earnestly entreats the people to fill their pockets with flint-stones, and to stone the faithless deputies to death in their hall.* On the 24th of November, he insists that his dear comrades should run to the Assembly every time Marat, their incorruptible friend, gave them notice.

In the month of August, 1790, when Marat and Camille Desmoulins were accused by Malouet in the National Assembly, Camille, soon safe out of the affair, went to find Marat, and recommended him to disavow a few horribly sanguinary words that did harm to the cause. On the morrow, Marat related the whole in his newspaper, deriding Desmoulins; and far from avowing that his extreme language was prompted by enthusiasm, he declares that they seem to him dictated by humanity; that it is humane to shed a little blood in order to avoid greater bloodshed at a later period, &c.

He reproaches Camille Desmoulins with fear; and yet the latter had given a proof of great audacity. Seated in a gallery, listening to his accuser, he replied aloud to Malouet's words, "Would he dare deny it?" by "I dare." The chances were not even between him, ever in broad daylight, and Marat ever hid. The latter only showed himself on uncommon occasions, when, the general grand meeting of the fanatics being convoked, he felt himself surrounded by an impenetrable wall, and safer than in his cellar. In January, 1791, Marat was preaching the massacre of the salaried National Guards, and recommending Lafayette himself to the women, saying: "Make an Abelard of him." One of Lafayette's party who composed the Journal des Halles, was so bold as to summon

Lavoisier, who was so little indebted to Priestly and Cavendish, and still less to others, who have been benevolently made partakers of this great Revolution, but who have been merely its continuators and nomenclators.

*In a witty letter, in which the author is evidently bantering Marat, praise is given to the simple and economical project that he proposes, to render useless the greater part of the expenses required for the national defence, and to improve the constitution, &c., "to let loose people with woollen caps and a few bits of rope," to strangle the ministers and faithless deputies. But, if by mistake these woollen-cap men should go and strangle their leader?-To which Marat replies seriously, without perceiving the joke, that their tact is far too sure for any mistake to be possible; besides which, it is not necessary that there should be any leader or any organisation, &c. (No. 261, October 25th, 1790.)

HIS TRIUMPH OVER THE TRIBUNALS.

549 him before the tribunals. He emerged from the regions of darkness, went to the tribunal (Palais), and appeared as defendant. This bat seemed to scare the light of day by his appearance. He had not much reason to fear; for he was surrounded by an army. The auditory was composed of his furious partisans; and all the avenues and passages were filled to overflowing with an extremely excited multitude. For justice to have its course, it would have been necessary to fight a regular battle, and there would have been a massacre. The authorities were even afraid they should not be able to protect the life of the plaintiff ; so they prevented him from appearing. Marat, thus triumphant, without a struggle, was found to have demonstrated the impotency of the tribunals, the police, the National Guard, and of Bailly and Lafayette.

From that day he was, without dispute, the king of publie information. His most frantic transports were held sacred; and his sanguinary prating, mingled too often with perfidious reports, which he copied without judgment, was accepted as an oracle. Now, he may hurry forward into every kind of absurdity; for the more he becomes mad, the more he is believed. He is the titled mad prophet of the people, who laugh at him, listen to him, adore him, and believe in him alone.

Now, he walks with a proud, disdainful, happy look-smiling in his greatest fury. What he has pursued throughout his life, he now possesses; everybody looks at him, speaks of him, and is afraid of him. The reality surpasses whatever he had been able to imagine or wish for in the dreams of his most delirious vanity. Yesterday, he was a great citizen; to-day, he is a seer, a prophet; let him only become a little more mad, and he will pass for God.

He goes on, and all the rival journals, hastening to tread in his footsteps, follow him blindly into the path of terror.

The press then possessed men of sound mind, who were bold, but of a superior stamp, humane, and truly patriotic. Why did they follow Marat? In the extremely critical position in which France then was, being neither at peace nor at war, and having in her heart that hostile royalty, that immense conspiracy of priests and nobles, and the public authority being precisely in the hands of those against whom it was to be directed, what power remained for France? No other, it would seem, at the first glance, than popular intimidation. But this intimidation had a dreadful result by paralysing the hostile power, and removing the present momentary obstacle, it would go on always creating an obstacle which would increase and necessitate the employment of a new degree of Terror.

The obstacle that it created, and which, oppressing us on all sides, almost annihilated us, is that sentiment which, from being at first petty, feeble, and plaintive, increases and grows stronger, till it becomes immense, gigantic,-a sanguinary phantom, terrible against terror . . . the phantom of Pity!

It would have required a general combination of all the energies of the time, such as could hardly be expected from a generation so ill-prepared, to organise a truly active national power, a formidable but upright system of justice, to be strong without the aid of terror, and to prevent consequently the reaction of pity, which has destroyed the Revolution.

550

THE PRESS FOLLOW MARAT, WHY?

The predominant men of the period differed at the outset, far less than is generally believed; but the progress of the struggle widened the breach between them, and increased the opposition. In the beginning, each of them would have had but few ideas to sacrifice in order to be of the same mind as the others. What they had especially to sacrifice, without ever being able to do so, was the sad passions which the old system had deeply implanted in their hearts: in these, the love of pleasure and money; in those bitterness and hatred.

We repeat, that the greatest obstacle was much rather passion than the opposition of ideas. And what was wanting in these men, so eminent in other respects, was sacrifice,-the sacrifice of passion.

Affection, if I may so express myself, though conspicuous in many among them,-affection and love for the people were not yet sufficiently great.

This is what, by keeping them isolated, disunited, and weak, obliged them all, in danger, to seek a factitious power in exaggeration and violence; this is what placed all the club orators and newspaper editors in the train of one who, being more disordered in mind, was able to be sanguinary without hesitation or remorse; this is what brought the whole of the press under the yoke of Marat.

Personal causes, often very petty and miserably human, contributed to render all those men violent. Let us now blush to mention them.

The extreme uncertainty in which the most powerful and perhaps the most penetrating genius of the whole Revolution (I mean Danton) was then plunged, and his fluctuating conduct between the two parties which, as it was said, caused him to receive bribes from several quarters, could be disguised only by violent language.

His brilliant friend, Camille Desmoulins, the greatest writer of the time, more pure from bribery, but of a weaker character, is like a capricious artist. Marat's rivalry and permanent fury, which nobody can equal, occasionally provokes Camille into violent expressions and an emulation of anger very foreign to his nature.

How would Prud'homme, the printer, after losing Loustalot, be able to support his paper, Les Révolutions de Paris? Only by becoming more violent.

And how can Fréron, the orator of the people, the intimate friend of Camille Desmoulins and Lucile, who lives in the same house with them, who loves Lucile and envies Camille,-how can he hope to outshine the eloquent and amusing Desmoulins? By talent? No, but by audacity, perhaps. Therefore, he will become more violent.

But there is one now beginning who will soon surpass them all. Hebert, a ranting actor, has the happy idea to collect into one newspaper all the vile expressions, foul language, and oaths scattered throughout the other journals. The task is easy. The carriers shout: "The furious indignation of Père Duchêne! Our Père Duchene is furiously angry this morning!" The secret of all this eloquence was the addition of a coarse phrase at every third word.

Poor Marat, what will you do against this formidable rival? Truly, your fury is now insipid; it is not, like Hebert's, seasoned with vile expressions: you look rather aristocratical. You must now try to swear

REVOLUTIONARY AND ROYALIST NEWSPAPERS.

551

also (January 16th, 1791); for it is not without extraordinary and incessant efforts of fury and outrage that you can hold your high position.

This mutual impulse towards violence is a feature of the time which deserves observation. We shall understand this the better, by following attentively the dates; it is the only way to observe the movement that urges them forward, as if a prize had been proposed for the most violent, -to follow this deadly race from club to club, and from journal to journal. Therein, every outcry finds an echo; and fury impels fury. One article produces another ever more violent. Woe to the hindermost! Marat has almost always the start of the others; sometimes, however, Fréron, his imitator, will surpass him; and Prud'homme, though more moderate, has nevertheless some furious articles. Then Marat rushes after them. Thus, in December, 1790, when Prud'homme proposed to organise a battalion of Scævolas against the Tarquins,—a troop of king slayers, Marat becomes enraged and vents a thousand sanguinary expressions.

This crescendo in violence is not a phenomenon peculiar to the newspapers, which, in general, do but express and reproduce the violence of the clubs. What was ranted forth in the evening, was hastily printed at night, and sold in the morning. The journalists of the royal party vent in like manner the bitter insulting and ironical expressions which they collect in the aristocratical saloons in the evening; the assemblies in the Pavillon de Flore, in the. saloons of Madame de Lamballe, and those which are held in the houses of the great lords on the point of emigrating, furnish the press with weapons quite as plentifully as the clubs.

The emulation between the two hostile presses is terrible. It confounds one to behold those millions of newspapers flying about in a whirlwind of fury, opposing, and thwarting one another. The revolutionary press, furious in itself, is moreover provoked by the bitter irony of the royalist papers and pamphlets. The latter are multiplied ad infinitum, dipping at pleasure into the twenty-five annual millions of the civil list. Montmorin confessed to Alexandre de Lameth that he had, in a short space of time, employed seven millions in buying up some of the Jacobins, and in bribing the writers and orators. But the sums that were spent on the royalist newspapers, the Ami du Roi, the Actes des Apôtres, and others, will never be known any more than what sum the Duke of Orleans may have spent in fomenting riots.

A disgusting savage struggle,-maintained by flint-stones and fivefranc pieces! One party stoned to death, and the other branded with corruption! Souls bartered on one side, and terror on the other!

CHAPTER X.

THE FIRST STEP OF TERROR.—MIRABEAU'S OPPOSITION. To understand how the most civilised nation in the world, on the morrow of the Confederation, when all hearts seemed naturally to be full of brotherly emotion, could enter so suddenly into the path of violence, it

552

THE JACOBINS PERSECUTE THE OTHER CLUBS.

would be necessary to fathom an unknown ocean,-that of the sufferings of the people.

We have noted the exterior,-the newspapers, and lower than the newspapers, the clubs. But beneath this noisy surface is the unfathomable, mute abyss, an infinitude of suffering, an increasing suffering, aggravated morally by the bitterness of so much hope deceived, and materially by the sudden disappearance of every kind of resource.

The first result of the acts of violence was to cause the departure not only of the nobles, but of many rich people and others in easy circumstances, by no means hostile to the Revolution, but scared away by fear. Such as remained durst neither stir, speculate, sell, buy, fabricate, nor spend. People, being alarmed, kept their money in their purse; and every kind of speculation and work suddenly stopped.

It was most strange to behold the Revolution opening a career for the peasants and closing it against the workmen. The former listened with delight to the decrees that put up the ecclesiastical estates for sale. The latter, silent and melancholy, and out of work, lounged about with folded arms all day long, listening to the conversations of animated groups of people, and thronging the clubs, the galleries and passages of the Assembly. Every riot, whether paid or not, found in the street an army of workmen infuriated by misery, labourers worn out by despair and inactivity, too happy to find any occupation, for at least one day.

In such a position of things, the responsibility of the great political society, the Jacobins, was truly immense. What part was it to play? Only one; to remain firm even against its own passions, to enlighten public opinion, to avoid the brutal system of terror which was about to raise up innumerable enemies against the Revolution, but, at the same time, to watch the counter-revolutionists so closely, that on the very first really just opportunity, it might be able to chastise them.

But, so far from doing so, it powerfully assisted them by its own awkwardness. It caused their party to multiply, and strengthened them by persecution and by advancing their interests. It was the means of propagating their cause in the most active and energetic manner. By annihilating them in Paris, it extended them in France and throughout Europe; it destroyed a few hundreds, but it gave birth to millions of others.

The Jacobins seem to conduct themselves as the immediate heirs of the priests: they imitate the vexatious intolerance by which the clergy has occasioned so many heresies; and they boldly follow the old dogma: "Out of our community, no salvation." Excepting the Cordeliers, whom they treat gently, speaking of them as little as possible; they persecute the clubs, even those of a revolutionary character. The club called the Cercle Social, for instance, a free-masonic meeting,-which could hardly be reproached with anything but ridicule,-politically timid, but socially much more enlightened than the Jacobins, is severely attacked by them. Laclos, the agent of the Orleans party, who, as we have seen, published the correspondence of the Jacobins, denounced the Cercle Social, both in his journal and at the club. Chabroud, the Jacobin, who had been appointed president of the Cercle the very preceding evening durst not defend it. Camille Desmoulins ventured to do so, but was stopped short,