Volume 12 — History of the French Revolution

Carlyle's "History of the French Revolution" appeared in 1837, some three years after the author had established himself in London. Never has the individuality of a historian so completely permeated his work; it is inconceivable that any other man should have written a single paragraph, almost a single sentence, of the history. To Carlyle, the story presents itself as an upheaval of elemental forces, vast elemental personalities storming titanically in their midst, vividly picturesque as a primeval mountain landscape illumined by the blaze of lightning, in a night of storms, with momentary glimpses of moon and stars. Although it was impossible for Carlyle to assimilate all the wealth of material even then extant, the "History," considered as a prose epic, has a permanent and unique value. His convictions, whatever their worth, came, as he himself put it, "flamingly from the heart." (Carlyle, biography: see vol. ix.)

I.---The End of an Era

On May 10, 1774, "with a sound absolutely like thunder," has the horologe of time struck, and an old era passed away. Is it the healthy peace or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France for the next ten years? Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone for ever. There is a young, still docile, well-intentioned king; a young, beautiful and bountiful, well-intentioned queen; and with them all France, as it were, become young. For controller-general, a virtuous, philosophic Turgot. Philosophism sits joyful in her glittering salons; "the age of revolutions approaches" (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy, blessed ones.

But with the working people it is not so well, whom we lump together into a kind of dim, compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the canaille. Singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly. Visible in France is no such thing as a government. But beyond the Atlantic democracy is born; a sympathetic France rejoices over the rights of man. Rochambeaus, Lameths, Lafayettes have drawn their swords in this sacred quarrel; return, to be the missionaries of freedom. But, what to do with the finances, having no Fortunatus purse?

For there is the palpablest discrepancy between revenue and expenditure. Are we breaking down, then, into the horrors of national bankruptcy? Turgot, Necker, and others have failed. What apparition, then, could be welcomer than that of M. de Calonne? A man of indisputable genius, even fiscal genius, more or less; of intrinsically rich qualities! For all straits he has present remedy. Calonne also shall have trial! With a genius for persuading--before all things for borrowing; after three years of which, expedient heaped on expedient, the pile topples perilous.

Whereupon a new expedient once more astonishes the world, unheard of these hundred and sixty years--Convocation of the Notables. A round gross of notables, meeting in February, 1787; all privileged persons. A deficit so enormous! Mismanagement, profusion, is too clear; peculation itself is hinted at. Calonne flies, storm-driven, over the horizon. To whom succeeds Loménie-Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse--adopting Calonne's plans, as Calonne had proposed to adopt Turgot's; and the notables are, as it were, organed out in kind of choral anthem of thanks, praises, promises.

Loménie issues conciliatory edicts, fiscal edicts. But if the Parlement of Paris refuse to register them? As it does, entering complaints instead. Loménie launches his thunderbolt, six score lettres de cachet; the Parlement is trundled off to Troyes, in Champagne, for a month. Yet two months later, when a royal session is held, to have edicts registered, there is no registering. Orleans, "Equality" that is to be, has made the protest, and cut its moorings.

The provincial parlements, moreover, back up the Paris Parlement with its demand for a States-General. Loménie hatches a cockatrice egg; but it is broken in premature manner; the plot discovered and denounced. Nevertheless, the Parlement is dispersed by D'Agoust with Gardes Françaises and Gardes Suisses. Still, however, will none of the provincial parlements register.

Deputations coming from Brittany meet to take counsel, being refused audience; become the Breton Club, first germ of the Jacobins' Society. Loménie at last announces that the States-General shall meet in the May of next year (1789). For the holding of which, since there is no known plan, "thinkers are invited" to furnish one.

II.---The States-General

Wherewith Loménie departs; flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief. The archbishop is thrown out, and M. Necker is recalled. States-General will meet, if not in January, at least in May. But how to form it? On the model of the last States-General in 1614, says the Parlement, which means that the Tiers Etat will be of no account, if the noblesse and the clergy agree. Wherewith terminates the popularity of the Parlement. As for the "thinkers," it is a sheer snowing of pamphlets. And Abbé Sieyès has come to Paris to ask three questions, and answer them: What is the Third Estate? All. What has it hitherto been in our form of government? Nothing. What does it want? To become something.

The grand questions are: Shall the States-General sit and vote in three separate bodies, or in one body, wherein the Tiers Etat shall have double representation? The notables are again summoned to decide, but vanish without decision. With those questions still unsettled, the election begins. And presently the national deputies are in Paris. Also there is a sputter; drudgery and rascality rising in Saint-Antoine, finally repressed by Gardes Suisses and grapeshot.

On Monday, May 4, is the baptism day of democracy, the extreme unction day of feudalism. Behold the procession of processions advancing towards Notre--our commons, noblesse, clergy, the king himself. Which of these six hundred individuals in plain white cravat might one guess would become their king? He with the thick black locks, shaggy beetle-brows and rough-hewn face? Gabriel Honoré Riqueti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller, the type Frenchman of this epoch, as Voltaire of the last. And if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these six hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; complexion of an atrabiliar shade of pale sea-green, whose name is Maximilien Robespierre?

Coming into their hall on the morrow, the commons deputies perceive that they have it to themselves. The noblesse and the clergy are sitting separately, which the noblesse maintain to be right; no agreement is possible. After six weeks of inertia the commons deputies, on their own strength, are getting under way; declare themselves not Third Estate, but National Assembly. On June 20, shut out of their hall "for repairs," the deputies find refuge in the tennis court! take solemn oath that they will continue to meet till they have made the constitution. And to these are joined 149 of the clergy. A royal session is held; the king propounds thirty-five articles, which if the estates do not confirm he will himself enforce. The commons remain immovable, joined now by the rest of the clergy and forty-eight noblesse. So triumphs the Third Estate.

War-god Broglie is at work, but grapeshot is good on one condition! The Gardes Françaises, it seems, will not fire; nor they only. Other troops, then? Rumour declares, and is verified, that Necker, people's minister, is dismissed. "To arms!" cries Camille Desmoulins, and innumerable voices yell responsive. Chaos comes. The Electoral Club, however, declares itself a provisional municipality, sends out parties to keep order in the streets that night, enroll a militia, with arms collected where one may. Better to name it National Guard! And while the crisis is going on, Mirabeau is away, sad at heart for the dying, crabbed old father whom he loved.

Muskets are to be got from the Invalides; 28,000 National Guards are provided with matchlocks. And now to the Bastile! But to describe this siege perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. After four hours of world-bedlam, it surrenders. The Bastile is down. "Why," said poor Louis, "that is a revolt." "Sire," answered Liancourt, "it is not a revolt; it is a revolution."

On the morrow, Louis paternally announces to the National Assembly reconciliation. Amid enthusiasm, President Bailly is proclaimed Maire of Paris, Lafayette general of the National Guard. And the first emigration of aristocrat irreconcilables takes place. The revolution is sanctioned.

Nevertheless, see Saint-Antoine, not to be curbed, dragging old Foulon and Berthier to the lantern, after which the cloud disappears, as thunder-clouds do.

III.---Menads and Feast of Pikes

French Revolution means here the open, violent rebellion and victory of disemprisoned anarchy against corrupt, worn-out authority; till the frenzy working itself out, the uncontrollable be got harnessed. A transcendental phenomenon, overstepping all rules and experience, the crowning phenomenon of our modern time.

The National Assembly takes the name Constituent; with endless debating, gets the rights of man written down and promulgated. A memorable night is August 4, when they abolish privilege, immunity, feudalism, root and branch, perfecting their theory of irregular verbs. Meanwhile, seventy-two châteaus have flamed aloft in the Maçonnais and Beaujolais alone. Ill stands it now with some of the seigneurs. And, glorious as the meridian, M. Necker is returning from Bâle.

Pamphleteering, moreover, opens its abysmal throat wider and wider, never to close more. A Fourth Estate of able editors springs up, increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable.

No, this revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Lafayette maintains order by his patrols; we hear of white cockades, and, worse still, black cockades; and grain grows still more scarce. One Monday morning, maternity awakes to hear children weeping for bread, must forth into the streets. Allons! Let us assemble! To the Hôtel de Ville, to Versailles, to the lantern! All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs, force out all women; there is a universal "press of women." Who will storm the Hôtel de Ville, but for shifty usher Maillard, who snatches a drum, beats his Rogues' March to Versailles! And after them the National Guard, resolute in spite of Mon Général, who, indeed, must go with them--Saint-Antoine having already gone. Maillard and his menads demand at Versailles bread; speech with the king for a deputation. The king speaks words of comfort. Words? But they want "bread, not so much discoursing!"

Towards midnight comes Lafayette; seems to have saved the situation; gets to bed about five in the morning. But rascaldom, gathering about the château, breaks in. One of the royal bodyguard fires, whereupon the deluge pours in, would deal utter destruction but for the coming of the National Guard. The bodyguard mount the tri-colour. There is no choice now. The king must from Versailles to Paris, in strange procession; finally reaches the long-deserted Palace of the Tuileries. It is Tuesday, October 6, 1789.

And so again, on clear arena under new conditions, with something even of a new stateliness, we begin a new course of action. Peace of a father restored to his children? Not only shall Paris be fed, but the king's hand be seen in that work--King Louis, restorer of French liberty!

Alone of men, Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly whither all this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal seems to be getting cool. A man stout of heart, enigmatic, difficult to unmask! Meanwhile, finances give trouble enough. To appease the deficit we venture on a hazardous step, sale of the clergy's lands; a paper-money of assignats, bonds secured on that property is decreed; and young Sansculottism thrives bravely, growing by hunger. Great and greater waxes President Danton in his Cordeliers section. This man also, like Mirabeau, has a natural eye.

And with the whole world forming itself into clubs, there is one club growing ever stronger, till it becomes immeasurably strong; which, having leased for itself the hall of the Jacobins' Convent, shall, under the title of the Jacobins' Club, become memorable to all times and lands; has become the mother society, with 300 shrill-tongued daughters in direct correspondence with her, has also already thrown off the mother club of the Cordeliers and the monarchist Feuillans.

In the midst of which a hopeful France on a sudden renews with enthusiasm the national oath; of loyalty to the king, the law, the constitution which the National Assembly shall make; in Paris, repeated in every town and district of France! Freedom by social contract; such was verily the gospel of that era.

From which springs a new idea: "Why all France has not one federation and universal oath of brotherhood once for all?" other places than Paris having first set example or federation. The place for it, Paris; the scene to be worthy of it. Fifteen thousand men are at work on the Champs de Mars, hollowing it out into a national amphitheatre. One may hope it will be annual and perennial; a feast of pikes, notable among the high tides of the year!

Workmen being lazy, all Paris turns out to complete the preparations, her daughters with the rest. From all points of the compass federates are arriving. On July 13, 1790, 200,000 patriotic men and 100,000 patriotic women sit waiting in the Champs de Mars. The generalissimo swears in the name of armed France; the National Assembly swears; the king swears; be the welkin split with vivats! And the feast of pikes dances itself off and becomes defunct.

IV.--The End of Mirabeau

Of journals there are now some 133; among which, Marat, the People's Friend, unseen, croaks harsh thunder. Clubbism thrives and spreads, the Mother of Patriotism, sitting in the Jacobins, shining supreme over all. The pure patriots now, sitting on the extreme tip of the left, count only some thirty, Mirabeau not among the chosen; a virtuous Pétion; an incorruptible Robespierre; conspicuous, if seldom audible, Philippe d'Orleans; and Barnave triumvirate.

The plan of royalty, if it have any, is that of flying over the frontiers; does not abandon the plan, yet never executes it. Nevertheless, Mirabeau and the Queen of France have met, have parted with mutual trust. It is strange, secret as the mysterious, but indisputable. "Madame," he has said, "the monarchy is saved." Possible--if Fate intervene not. Patriotism suspects the design of flight; barking this time not at nothing. Suspects also the repairing of the castle of Vincennes; General Lafayette has to wrestle persuasively with Saint-Antoine.

On one royal person only can Mirabeau place dependence--the queen. Had Mirabeau lived one other year! But man's years are numbered, and the tale of Mirabeau's is complete. The giant oaken strength of him is wasted; excess of effort, of excitement of all kinds; labour incessant, almost beyond credibility. "When I am gone," he has said, "the miseries I have held back will burst from all sides upon France." On April 2 he feels that the last of the days has risen for him. His death is Titanic, as his life has been. On the third evening is solemn public funeral. The chosen man of France is gone.

The French monarchy now is, in all human probability, lost. Many things invite to flight; but if the king fly, will there not be aristocrat Austrian invasion, butchery, replacement of feudalism, wars more than civil? The king desires to go to St. Cloud, but shall not; patriots will not let the horses go. But Count Fersen, an alert young Swedish soldier, has business on hand; has a new coach built, of the kind called Berline; has made other purchases. On the night of Monday, June 20, certain royal individuals are in a glass coach; Fersen is the coachman; out by the Barrier de Clichy, till we find the waiting Berline; then to Bondy, where is a chaise ready; and deft Fersen bids adieu.

With morning, and discovery, National Assembly adopts an attitude of sublime calm; Paris also; yet messages are flying. Moreover, at Sainte Menehould, on the route of the Berline, suspicious patriots are wondering what certain lounging dragoons mean; while the Berline arrives not. At last it comes; but Drouet, village postmaster, seeks a likeness; takes horse in swift pursuit. So rolls on the Berline, and the chase after it; till it comes to a dead stop in Varennes, where Drouet finds it--in time to stop departure. Louis, the poor, phlegmatic man, steps out; all step out. The flight is ended, though not the spurring and riding of that night of spurs.

V.---Constitution Will Not March

In the last nights of September, Paris is dancing and flinging fireworks; the edifice of the constitution is completed, solemnly proffered to his majesty, solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon salvoes. There is to be a new Legislative Assembly, biennial; no members of the Constituent Assembly to sit therein, or for four years to be a minister, or hold a court appointment. So they vanish.

Among this new legislative see Condorcet, Brissot; most notable, Carnot. An effervescent, well intentioned set of senators; too combustible where continual sparks are flying, ordered to make the constitution march for which marching three things bode ill--the French people, the French king, the French noblesse and the European world.

For there are troubles in cities of the south. Avignon, where Jourdan coupe-tête makes lurid appearance; Perpignan, northern Caen also. With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they call déchiré, torn asunder, this poor country. And away over seas the Plain of Cap Français one huge whirl of smoke and flame; one cause of the dearth of sugar. What King Louis is and cannot help being, we already know.

And, thirdly, there is the European world. All kings and kinglets are astir, their brows clouded with menace. Swedish Gustav will lead coalised armies, Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz, lean Pitt looks out suspicious. Europe is in travail, the birth will be WAR. Worst feature of all, the emigrants at Coblentz, an extra-national Versailles. We shall have war, then!

Our revenue is assignats, our army wrecked disobedient, disorganised; what, then, shall we do? Dumouriez is summoned to Paris, quick, shifty, insuppressible; while royalist seigneurs cajole, and, as you turn your legislative thumbscrew, king's veto steps in with magical paralysis. Yet let not patriotism despair. Have we not a virtuous Pétion, Mayor of Paris, a wholly patriotic municipality? Patriotism, moreover, has her constitution that can march, the mother-society of the Jacobins; where may be heard Brissot, Danton, Robespierre, the long-winded, incorruptible man.

Hope bursts forth with appointment of a patriot ministry, this also his majesty will try. Roland, perchance Wife Roland, Dumouriez, and others. Liberty is never named with another word, Equality. In April poor Louis, "with tears in his eyes," proposes that the assembly do now decree war. Let our three generals on the frontier look to it therefore, since Duke Brunswick has his drill-sergeants busy. We decree a camp of twenty thousand National Volunteers; the hereditary representative answers veto! Strict Roland, the whole Patriot ministry, finds itself turned out.

Barbaroux writes to Marseilles for six hundred men who know how to die. On June 20 a tree of Liberty appears in Saint-Antoine--a procession with for standard a pair of black breeches---pours down surging upon the Tuileries, breaks in. The king, the little prince royal, have to don the cap of liberty. Thus has the age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. On the surface only is some slight reaction of sympathy, mistrust is too strong.

Now from Marseilles are marching the six hundred men who know how to die, marching to the hymn of the Marseillaise. The country is in danger! Volunteer fighters gather. Duke Brunswick shakes himself, and issues his manifesto; and in Paris preternatural suspicion and disquietude. Demand is for forfeiture, abdication in favour of prince royal, which Legislature cannot pronounce. Therefore on the night of August 9 the tocsin sounds; of Insurrection.

On August 18 the grim host is marching, immeasurable, born of the night. Of the squadrons of order, not one stirs. At the Tuileries the red Swiss look to their priming. Amid a double rank of National Guards the royal family "marches" to the assembly. The Swiss stand to their post, peaceable yet immovable. Three Marseillaise cannon are fired; then the Swiss also fire. One strangest patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat; the name of him, Napoleon Bonaparte. Having none----Honour to you, brave men, not martyrs, and yet almost more. Your work was to die, and ye did it.

Our old patriot ministry is recalled; Roland; Danton Minister of Justice! Also, in the new municipality, Robespierre is sitting. Louis and his household are lodged in the Temple. The constitution is over! Lafayette, whom his soldiers will not follow, rides over the border to an Austrian prison. Dumouriez is commander-in-chief.

VI.--Regicide

In this month of September 1792 whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of twenty-five million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous death-defiance of twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast; all of black on one side, all of bright on the other. France crowding to the frontiers to defend itself from foreign despots, to town halls to defend itself from aristocrats, an insurrectionary improvised Commune of Paris actual sovereign of France.

There is a new Tribunal of Justice dealing with aristocrats; but the Prussians have taken Longwi, and La Vendée is in revolt against the Revolution. Danton gets a decree to search for arms and to imprison suspects, some four hundred being seized. Prussians have Verdun also, but Dumouriez, the many-counseled, has found a possible Thermopylæ--if we can secure Argonne; for which one had need to be a lion-fox and have luck on one's side.

But Paris knows not Argonne, and terror is in her streets, with defiance and frenzy. From a Sunday night to Thursday are a hundred hours, to be reckoned with the Bartholomew butchery; prisoners dragged out by sudden courts of wild justice to be massacred. These are the September massacres, the victims one thousand and eighty-nine; in the historical fantasy "between two and three thousand"--nay, six, even twelve. They have been put to death because "we go to fight the enemy; but we will not leave robbers behind us to butcher our wives and children." Horrible! But Brunswick is within a day's journey of us. "We must put our enemies in fear." Which has plainly been brought about.

Our new National Convention is getting chosen; already we date First Year of the Republic. And Dumouriez has snatched the Argonne passes; Brunswick must laboriously skirt around; Dumouriez with recruits who, once drilled and inured, will one day become a phalanxed mass of fighters, wheels, always fronting him. On September 20, Brunswick attacks Valmy, all day cannonading Alsatian Kellerman with French Sansculottes, who do not fly like poultry; finally retires; a day precious to France!

On the morrow of our new National Convention first sits; old legislative ending. Dumouriez, after brief appearance in Paris, returns to attack Netherlands, winter though it be.

France, then, has hurled back the invaders, and shattered her own constitution; a tremendous change. The nation has stripped itself of the old vestures; patriots of the type soon to be called Girondins have the problem of governing this naked nation. Constitution-making sets to work again; more practical matters offer many difficulties; for one thing, lack of grain; for another, what to do with a discrowned Louis Capet--all things, but most of all fear, pointing one way. Is there not on record a trial of Charles I.?

Twice our Girondin friends have attacked September massacres, Robespierre dictatorship; not with success. The question of Louis receives further stimulus from the discovery of hidden papers. On December 11, the king's trial has emerged, before the Convention; fifty-seven questions are put to him. Thereafter he withdraws, having answered--for the most part on the simple basis of No. On December 26, his advocate, Deséze, speaks for him. But there is to be debate. Dumouriez is back in Paris, consorting with Girondins; suspicious to patriots. The outcome, on January 15--Guilty. The sentence, by majority of fifty-three, among them Egalité, once Orleans--Death. Lastly, no delay.

On the morrow, in the Place de la Revolution, he is brought to the guillotine; beside him, brave Abbé Edgeworth says, "Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven"; the axe clanks down; a king's life is shorn away. At home, this killing of a king has divided all friends; abroad it has united all enemies. England declares war; Spain declares war; they all declare war. "The coalised kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the head of a king."

VII.--Reign of Terror

Five weeks later, indignant French patriots rush to the grocers' shops; distribute sugar, weighing it out at a just rate of eleven-pence; other things also; the grocer silently wringing his hands. What does this mean? Pitt has a hand in it, the gold of Pitt, all men think; whether it is Marat he has bought, as the Girondins say; or the Girondins, as the Jacobins say. This battle of Girondins and Mountain let no man ask history to explicate.

Moreover, Dumouriez is checked; Custine also in the Rhine country is checked; England and Spain are also taking the field; La Vendée has flamed out again with its war cry of God and the King. Fatherland is in danger! From our own traitors? "Set up a tribunal for traitors and a Maximum for grain," says patriot Volunteers. Arrest twenty-two Girondins!--though not yet. In every township of France sit revolutionary committees for arrestment of suspects; notable also is the Tribunal Révolutionnaire, and our Supreme Committee of Public Safety, of nine members. Finally, recalcitrant Dumouriez finds safety in flight to the Austrian quarters, and thence to England.

Before which flight, the Girondins have broken with Danton, ranged him against them, and are now at open war with the Mountain. Marat is attacked, acquitted with triumph. On Friday, May 31, we find a new insurrectionary general of the National Guard enveloping the Convention, which in three days, being thus surrounded by friends, ejects under arrestment thirty-two Girondins. Surely the true reign of Fraternity is now not far?

The Girondins are struck down, but in the country follows a ferment of Girondist risings. And on July 9, a fair Charlotte Corday is starting for Paris from Caen, with letters of introduction from Barbaroux to Dupernet, whom she sees, concerning family papers. On July 13, she drives to the residence of Marat, who is sick--a citoyenne who would do France a service; is admitted, plunges a knife into Marat's heart. So ends Peoples'-Friend Marat. She submits, stately, to inevitable doom. In this manner have the beautifulest and the squalidest come into collision, and extinguished one another.

At Paris is to be a new feast of pikes, over yet a new constitution; statue of Nature, statue of Liberty, unveiled! Republic one and indivisible--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death! A new calendar also, with months new-named. But Toulon has thrown itself into the hands of the English, who will make a new Gibraltar of it! We beleaguer Toulon; having in our army there remarkable Artillery-Major Napoleon Bonaparte. Lyons also we beleaguer.

Committee of Public Safety promulgates levy en masse; heroically daring against foreign foes. Against domestic foes it issues the law of the suspects--none frightfuller ever ruled in a nation of men. The guillotine gets always quicker motion. Bailly, Brissot, are in prison. Trial of the "Widow Capet"; whence Marie Antoinette withdraws to die--not wanting to herself, the imperial woman! After her, the scaffold claims the twenty-two Girondins.

Terror is become the order of the day. Arrestment on arrestment follows quick, continual; "The guillotine goes not ill."

VIII.--Climax and Reaction

The suspect may well tremble; how much more the open rebels--the Girondin cities of the south! The guillotine goes always, yet not fast enough; you must try fusillading, and perhaps methods still frightfuller. Marseilles is taken, and under martial law. At Toulon, veteran Dugommier suffers a young artillery officer whom we know to try his plan--and Toulon is once more the Republic's. Cannonading gives place to guillotining and fusillading. At Nantes, the unspeakable horror of the noyades.

Beside which, behold destruction of the Catholic religion; indeed, for the time being, of religion itself; a new religion promulgated of the Goddess of Reason, with the first of the Feasts of Reason, ushered in with carmagnole dance.

Committee of Public Salvation ride this whirlwind; stranger set of cloud-compellors Earth never saw. Convention commissioners fly to all points of the territory, powerfuller than king or kaiser; frenzy of patriotism drives our armies victorious, one nation against the whole world; crowned by the Vengeur, triumphant in death; plunging down carrying vive la République along with her into eternity, in Howe's victory of the First of June. Alas, alas! a myth, founded, like the world itself, on Nothing!

Of massacring, altar-robbing, Hébertism, is there beginning to be a sickening? Danton, Camille Desmoulins are weary of it; the Hébertists themselves are smitten; nineteen of them travel their last road in the tumbrils. "We should not strike save where it is useful to the Republic," says Danton; quarrels with Robespierre; Danton, Camille, others of the friends of mercy are arrested. At the trial, he shivers the witnesses to ruin thunderously; nevertheless, sentence is passed. On the scaffold he says, "Danton, no weakness! Thou wilt show my head to the people--it is worth showing." So passes this Danton; a very man; fiery-real, from the great fire-bosom of nature herself.

Foul Hébert and the Hébertists, great Danton and the Dantonists, are gone, swift, ever swifter, goes the axe of Samson; Death pauses not. But on Prairial 20, the world is in holiday clothes in the Jardin National. Incorruptible Robespierre, President of the Convention, has decreed the existence of the Supreme Being; will himself be priest and prophet; in sky-blue coat and black breeches! Nowise, however, checking the guillotine, going ever faster.

On July 26, when the Incorruptible addresses the Convention, there is dissonance. Such mutiny is like fire sputtering in the ship's powder-room. The Convention then must be purged, with aid of Henriot. But next day, amid cries of Tyranny! Dictatorship! the Convention decrees that Robespierre "is accused"; with Couthon and St. Just; decreed "out of law"; Paris, after brief tumult, sides with the Convention. So on July 28, 1794, the tumbrils go with this motley batch of outlaws. This is the end of the Reign of Terror. The nation resolves itself into a committee of mercy.

Thenceforth, writ of accusation and legal proof being decreed necessary, Fouquier's trade is gone; the prisons deliver up suspects. For here was the end of the revolution system. The keystone being struck out, the whole arch-work of Sansculottism began to crack, till the abyss had swallowed it all.

And still there is no bread, and no constitution; Paris rises once again, flowing towards the Tuileries; checked in one day with two blank cannon-shots, by Pichegru, conqueror of Holland. Abbé Sieyès provides yet another constitution; unpleasing to sundry who will not be dispersed. To suppress whom, a young artillery officer is named commandant; who with whiff of grapeshot does very promptly suppress them; and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is blown into space.