The sentence passed by the
Convention
was remitted; and he was
allowed to reside at Paris.
allowed to reside at Paris.
Macaulay
" On the eighth
of Thermidor, it became clear that a decisive struggle was at hand.
Robespierre struck the first blow. He mounted the tribune, and uttered a
long invective on his opponents. It was moved that his discourse
should be printed; and Barere spoke for the printing. The sense of the
Convention soon appeared to be the other way; and Barere apologised for
his former speech, and implored his colleagues to abstain from disputes
which could be agreeable only to Pitt and York. On the next day, the
ever-memorable ninth of Thermidor, came the real tug of war. Tallien,
bravely taking his life in his hand, led the onset. Billaud followed;
and then all that infinite hatred which had long been kept down by
terror burst forth, and swept every barrier before it. When at length
the voice of Robespierre, drowned by the President's bell, and by shouts
of "Down with the tyrant! " had died away in hoarse gasping, Barere rose.
He began with timid and doubtful phrases, watched the effect of
every word he uttered, and, when the feeling of the Assembly had been
unequivocally manifested, declared against Robespierre. But it was not
till the people out of doors, and especially the gunners of Paris, had
espoused the cause of the Convention, that Barere felt quite at
ease. Then he sprang to the tribune, poured forth a Carmagnole about
Pisistratus and Catiline, and concluded by moving that the heads of
Robespierre and Robespierre's accomplices should be cut off without a
trial. The motion was carried. On the following morning the vanquished
members of the Committee of Public Safety and their principal adherents
suffered death. It was exactly one year since Barere had commenced his
career of slaughter by moving the proscription of his old allies the
Girondists. We greatly doubt whether any human being has ever succeeded
in packing more wickedness into the space of three hundred and
sixty-five days.
The ninth of Thermidor is one of the great epochs in the history of
Europe. It is true that the three members of the Committee of Public
Safety who triumphed were by no means better men than the three who
fell. Indeed, we are inclined to think that of these six statesmen the
least bad were Robespierre and Saint Just, whose cruelty was the effect
of sincere fanaticism operating on narrow understandings and acrimonious
tempers. The worst of the six was, beyond all doubt, Barere, who had
no faith in any part of the system which he upheld by persecution; who,
while he sent his fellow-creatures to death for being the third cousins
of royalists, had not in the least made up his mind that a republic
was better than a monarchy; who, while he slew his old friends for
federalism, was himself far more a federalist than any of them; who
had become a murderer merely for his safety, and who continued to be a
murderer merely for his pleasure.
The tendency of the vulgar is to embody everything. Some individual is
selected, and often selected very injudicially, as the representative
of every great movement of the public mind, of every great revolution in
human affairs; and on this individual are concentrated all the love and
all the hatred, all the admiration and all the contempt, which he ought
rightfully to share with a whole party, a whole sect, a whole nation, a
whole generation. Perhaps no human being has suffered so much from this
propensity of the multitude as Robespierre. He is regarded, not merely
as what he was, an envious, malevolent zealot, but as the incarnation of
Terror, as Jacobinism personified. The truth is, that it was not by
him that the system of terror was carried to the last extreme. The most
horrible days in the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris were
those which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Robespierre had
then ceased to attend the meetings of the sovereign Committee; and the
direction of affairs was really in the hands of Billaud, of Collot, and
of Barere.
It had never occurred to those three tyrants that, in overthrowing
Robespierre, they were overthrowing that system of terror to which they
were more attached than he had ever been. Their object was to go on
slaying even more mercilessly than before. But they had misunderstood
the nature of the great crisis which had at last arrived. The yoke
of the Committee was broken for ever. The Convention had regained
its liberty, had tried its strength, had vanquished and punished
its enemies. A great reaction had commenced. Twenty-four hours after
Robespierre had ceased to live, it was moved and carried, amidst loud
bursts of applause, that the sittings of the Revolutionary Tribunal
should be suspended. Billaud was not at that moment present. He entered
the hall soon after, learned with indignation what had passed, and moved
that the vote should be rescinded. But loud cries of "No, no! " rose
from those benches which had lately paid mute obedience to his commands.
Barere came forward on the same day, and abjured the Convention not to
relax the system of terror. "Beware, above all things," he cried,
"of that fatal moderation which talks of peace and of clemency. Let
aristocracy know that here she will find only enemies sternly bent on
vengeance, and judges who have no pity. " But the day of the Carmagnoles
was over: the restraint of fear had been relaxed; and the hatred
with which the nation regarded the Jacobin dominion broke forth with
ungovernable violence. Not more strongly did the tide of public opinion
run against the old monarchy and aristocracy, at the time of the taking
of the Bastile, than it now ran against the tyranny of the Mountain.
From every dungeon the prisoners came forth as they had gone in, by
hundreds. The decree which forbade the soldiers of the republic to give
quarter to the English was repealed by an unanimous vote, amidst loud
acclamations; nor, passed as it was, disobeyed as it was, and rescinded
as it was, can it be with justice considered as a blemish on the fame
of the French nation. The Jacobin Club was refractory. It was suppressed
without resistance. The surviving Girondist deputies, who had concealed
themselves from the vengeance of their enemies in caverns and garrets,
were readmitted to their seats in the Convention. No day passed without
some signal reparation of injustice; no street in Paris was without some
trace of the recent change. In the theatre, the bust of Marat was pulled
down from its pedestal and broken in pieces, amidst the applause of
the audience. His carcass was ejected from the Pantheon. The celebrated
picture of his death, which had hung in the hall of the Convention, was
removed. The savage inscriptions with which the walls of the city had
been covered disappeared; and, in place of death and terror, humanity,
the watchword of the new rulers, was everywhere to be seen. In the
meantime, the gay spirit of France, recently subdued by oppression, and
now elated by the joy of a great deliverance, wantoned in a thousand
forms. Art, taste, luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its
empire--an empire strengthened by the remembrance of all the tender
and all the sublime virtues which women, delicately bred and reputed
frivolous, had displayed during the evil days. Refined manners,
chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train of love. The dawn of the
Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing
of the waters, the awakening of animal and vegetable life, the sudden
softening of the air, the sudden blooming of the flowers, the sudden
bursting of old forests into verdure, is but a feeble type of that
happiest and most genial of revolutions, the revolution of the ninth of
Thermidor.
But, in the midst of the revival of all kind and generous sentiments,
there was one portion of the community against which mercy itself seemed
to cry out for vengeance. The chiefs of the late government and their
tools were now never named but as the men of blood, the drinkers of
blood, the cannibals. In some parts of France, where the creatures of
the Mountain had acted with peculiar barbarity, the populace took the
law into its own hands and meted out justice to the Jacobins with the
true Jacobin measure, but at Paris the punishments were inflicted with
order and decency, and were few when compared with the number, and
lenient when compared with the enormity, of the crimes. Soon after the
ninth of Thermidor, two of the vilest of mankind, Fouquier Tinville,
whom Barere had placed at the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Lebon, whom
Barere had defended in the Convention, were placed under arrest. A third
miscreant soon shared their fate, Carrier, the tyrant of Nantes. The
trials of these men brought to light horrors surpassing anything that
Suetonius and Lampridius have related of the worst Caesars. But it was
impossible to punish subordinate agents, who, bad as they were, had only
acted in accordance with the spirit of the government which they served,
and, at the same time, to grant impunity to the heads of the wicked
administration. A cry was raised, both within and without the Convention
for justice on Collot, Billaud, and Barere.
Collot and Billaud, with all their vices, appear to have been men of
resolute natures. They made no submission; but opposed to the hatred
of mankind, at first a fierce resistance, and afterwards a dogged and
sullen endurance. Barere, on the other hand, as soon as he began to
understand the real nature of the revolution of Thermidor, attempted to
abandon the Mountain, and to obtain admission among his old friends of
the moderate party. He declared everywhere that he had never been in
favour of severe measures; that he was a Girondist; that he had always
condemned and lamented the manner in which the Brissotine deputies had
been treated. He now preached mercy from that tribune from which he had
recently preached extermination. "The time," he said, "has come at which
our clemency may be indulged without danger. We may now safely
consider temporary imprisonment as an adequate punishment for political
misdemeanours. " It was only a fortnight since, from the same place,
he had declaimed against the moderation which dared even to talk of
clemency; it was only a fortnight since he had ceased to send men and
women to the guillotine of Paris, at the rate of three hundred a week.
He now wished to make his peace with the moderate party at the expense
of the Terrorists, as he had, a year before, made his peace with
the Terrorists at the expense of the moderate party. But he was
disappointed. He had left himself no retreat. His face, his voice, his
rants, his jokes, had become hateful to the Convention. When he spoke
he was interrupted by murmurs. Bitter reflections were daily cast on his
cowardice and perfidy. On one occasion Carnot rose to give an account
of a victory, and so far forgot the gravity of his own character as
to indulge in the sort of oratory which Barere had affected on similar
occasions. He was interrupted by cries of "No more Carmagnoles! " "No
more of Barere's puns! "
At length, five months after the revolution of Thermidor, the Convention
resolved that a committee of twenty-one members should be appointed to
examine into the conduct of Billaud, Collot, and Barere. In some weeks
the report was made. From that report we learn that a paper had been
discovered, signed by Barere, and containing a proposition for adding
the last improvement to the system of terror. France was to be divided
into circuits; itinerant revolutionary tribunals, composed of trusty
Jacobins, were to move from department to department; and the guillotine
was to travel in their train.
Barere, in his defence, insisted that no speech or motion which he had
made in the Convention could, without a violation of the freedom of
debate, be treated as a crime. He was asked how he could resort to such
a mode of defence, after putting to death so many deputies on account of
opinions expressed in the Convention. He had nothing to say, but that
it was much to be regretted that the sound principle had ever been
violated.
He arrogated to himself a large share of the merit of the revolution in
Thermidor. The men who had risked their lives to effect that revolution,
and who knew that, if they had failed, Barere would, in all probability,
have moved the decree for beheading them without a trial, and have drawn
up a proclamation announcing their guilt and their punishment to all
France, were by no means disposed to acquiesce in his claims. He was
reminded that, only forty-eight hours before the decisive conflict,
he had, in the tribune, been profuse of adulation to Robespierre. His
answer to this reproach is worthy of himself. "It was necessary," he
said, "to dissemble. It was necessary to flatter Robespierre's vanity,
and, by panegyric, to impel him to the attack. This was the motive which
induced me to load him with those praises of which you complain. Who
ever blamed Brutus for dissembling with Tarquin? "
The accused triumvirs had only one chance of escaping punishment. There
was severe distress at that moment among the working people of the
capital. This distress the Jacobins attributed to the reaction of
Thermidor, to the lenity with which the aristocrats were now treated,
and to the measures which had been adopted against the chiefs of the
late administration. Nothing is too absurd to be believed by a populace
which has not breakfasted, and which does not know how it is to dine.
The rabble of the Faubourg St Antoine rose, menaced the deputies, and
demanded with loud cries the liberation of the persecuted patriots. But
the Convention was no longer such as it had been, when similar means
were employed too successfully against the Girondists. Its spirit
was roused. Its strength had been proved. Military means were at its
command. The tumult was suppressed: and it was decreed that same evening
that Collot, Billaud, and Barere should instantly be removed to a
distant place of confinement.
The next day the order of the Convention was executed. The account which
Barere has given of his journey is the most interesting and the most
trustworthy part of these Memoirs. There is no witness so infamous that
a court of justice will not take his word against himself; and even
Barere may be believed when he tells us how much he was hated and
despised.
The carriage in which he was to travel passed, surrounded by armed
men, along the street of St Honore. A crowd soon gathered round it and
increased every moment. On the long flight of steps before the church of
St Roch stood rows of eager spectators. It was with difficulty that
the coach could make its way through those who hung upon it, hooting,
cursing, and striving to burst the doors. Barere thought his life in
danger, and was conducted at his own request to a public office, where
he hoped that he might find shelter till the crowd should disperse.
In the meantime, another discussion on his fate took place in the
Convention. It was proposed to deal with him as he had dealt with better
men, to put him out of the pale of the law, and to deliver him at once
without any trial to the headsman. But the humanity which, since
the ninth of Thermidor, had generally directed the public councils
restrained the deputies from taking this course.
It was now night; and the streets gradually became quiet. The clock
struck twelve; and Barere, under a strong guard, again set forth on his
journey. He was conducted over the river to the place where the Orleans
road branches off from the southern boulevard. Two travelling carriages
stood there. In one of them was Billaud, attended by two officers; in
the other two more officers were waiting to receive Barere. Collot was
already on the road.
At Orleans, a city which had suffered cruelly from the Jacobin tyranny,
the three deputies were surrounded by a mob bent on tearing them to
pieces. All the national guards of the neighbourhood were assembled;
and this force was not greater than the emergency required; for the
multitude pursued the carriages far on the road to Blois.
At Amboise the prisoners learned that Tours was ready to receive them.
The stately bridge was occupied by a throng of people, who swore that
the men under whose rule the Loire had been choked with corpses should
have full personal experience of the nature of a noyade. In consequence
of this news, the officers who had charge of the criminals made such
arrangements that the carriages reached Tours at two in the morning, and
drove straight to the post-house. Fresh horses were instantly ordered;
and the travellers started again at full gallop. They had, in truth,
not a moment to lose; for the alarm had been given; lights were seen in
motion; and the yells of a great multitude, disappointed of its revenge,
mingled with the sound of the departing wheels.
At Poitiers there was another narrow escape. As the prisoners quitted
the post-house, they saw the whole population pouring in fury down the
steep declivity on which the city is built. They passed near Niort,
but could not venture to enter it. The inhabitants came forth with
threatening aspect, and vehemently cried to the postillions to stop; but
the postillions urged the horses to full speed, and soon left the town
behind. Through such dangers the men of blood were brought in safety to
Rochelle.
Oleron was the place of their destination, a dreary island beaten by the
raging waves of the Bay of Biscay. The prisoners were confined in the
castle; each had a single chamber, at the door of which a guard was
placed; and each was allowed the ration of a single soldier. They
were not allowed to communicate either with the garrison or with the
population of the island; and soon after their arrival they were denied
the indulgence of walking on the ramparts. The only place where they
were suffered to take exercise was the esplanade where the troops were
drilled.
They had not been long in this situation when news came that the
Jacobins of Paris had made a last attempt to regain ascendency in the
state, that the hall of the Convention had been forced by a furious
crowd, that one of the deputies had been murdered and his head fixed on
a pike, that the life of the President had been for a time in imminent
danger, and that some members of the legislature had not been ashamed to
join the rioters. But troops had arrived in time to prevent a
massacre. The insurgents had been put to flight; the inhabitants of
the disaffected quarters of the capital had been disarmed; the guilty
deputies had suffered the just punishment of their treason; and the
power of the Mountain was broken for ever. These events strengthened the
aversion with which the system of terror and the authors of that system
were regarded. One member of the Convention had moved that the three
prisoners of Oleron should be put to death; another, that they should be
brought back to Paris, and tried by a council of war. These propositions
were rejected. But something was conceded to the party which called for
severity. A vessel which had been fitted out with great expedition at
Rochefort touched at Oleron; and it was announced to Collot and Billaud
that they must instantly go on board. They were forthwith conveyed to
Guiana, where Collot soon drank himself to death with brandy. Billaud
lived many years, shunning his fellow-creatures and shunned by them; and
diverted his lonely hours by teaching parrots to talk. Why a distinction
was made between Barere and his companions in guilt, neither he nor any
other writer, as far as we know, has explained. It does not appear that
the distinction was meant to be at all in his favour; for orders soon
arrived from Paris, that he should be brought to trial for his crimes
before the criminal court of the department of the Upper Charente. He
was accordingly brought back to the continent, and confined during some
months at Saintes, in an old convent which had lately been turned into a
jail.
While he lingered here, the reaction which had followed the great crisis
of Thermidor met with a temporary check. The friends of the House of
Bourbon, presuming on the indulgence with which they had been treated
after the fall of Robespierre, not only ventured to avow their opinions
with little disguise, but at length took arms against the Convention,
and were not put down till much blood had been shed in the streets
of Paris. The vigilance of the public authorities was therefore now
directed chiefly against the Royalists; and the rigour with which the
Jacobins had lately been treated was somewhat relaxed. The Convention,
indeed, again resolved that Barere should be sent to Guiana. But this
decree was not carried into effect. The prisoner, probably with the
connivance of some powerful persons, made his escape from Saintes and
fled to Bordeaux, where he remained in concealment during some years.
There seems to have been a kind of understanding between him and the
government, that, as long as he hid himself, he should not be found,
but that, if he obtruded himself on the public eye, he must take the
consequences of his rashness.
While the constitution of 1795, with its Executive Directory, its
Council of Elders, and its Council of Five Hundred, was in operation,
he continued to live under the ban of the law. It was in vain that he
solicited, even at moments when the politics of the Mountain seemed to
be again in the ascendant, a remission of the sentence pronounced by the
Convention. Even his fellow-regicides, even the authors of the slaughter
of Vendemiaire and of the arrests of Fructidor, were ashamed of him.
About eighteen months after his escape from prison, his name was again
brought before the world. In his own province he still retained some of
his early popularity. He had, indeed, never been in that province since
the downfall of the monarchy. The mountaineers of Gascony were far
removed from the seat of government, and were but imperfectly informed
of what passed there. They knew that their countryman had played an
important part, and that he had on some occasions promoted their local
interests; and they stood by him in his adversity and in his disgrace
with a constancy which presents a singular contrast to his own abject
fickleness. All France was amazed to learn that the department of the
Upper Pyrenees had chosen the proscribed tyrant a member of the Council
of Five Hundred. The council which, like our House of Commons, was the
judge of the election of its own members, refused to admit him. When his
name was read from the roll, a cry of indignation rose from the benches.
"Which of you," exclaimed one of the members, "would sit by the side of
such a monster? " "Not I, not I! " answered a crowd of voices. One deputy
declared that he would vacate his seat if the hall were polluted by the
presence of such a wretch. The election was declared null on the ground
that the person elected was a criminal skulking from justice; and many
severe reflections were thrown on the lenity which suffered him to be
still at large.
He tried to make his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky
libel on England, entitled, the Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have
confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He
printed three thousand copies, and in order to defray the expense of
publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs.
The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barere is
to be believed, of the villainy of Mr Pitt, who bribed the Directory
to order the Reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the
maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.
Barere had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received
intelligence that the mob of the town designed him the honour of a visit
on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what
he had, in his defence of his friend Lebon, described as substantial
justice under forms a little harsh. It was necessary for him to disguise
himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In
this garb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his
escape into the vineyards which surrounded the city, lurked during some
days in a peasant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniversary was over,
stole back into the city. A few months later he was again in danger. He
now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the neighbourhood
of Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through those towns
where four years before his life had been in extreme danger, passed
through the capital in the morning twilight, when none were in the
streets except shop-boys taking down the shutters, and arrived safe
at the pleasant village of St Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in
seclusion during some months. In the meantime Bonaparte returned from
Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of discontented parties,
covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the Five
Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became
absolute monarch of France under the name of First Consul.
Barere assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he
could not bear to see France again subject to a master; and that if the
representatives had been worthy of that honourable name, they would
have arrested the ambitious general who insulted them. These feelings,
however, did not prevent him from soliciting the protection of the new
government, and from sending to the First Consul a handsome copy of the
essay on the Liberty of the Seas.
The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all the past with a general
oblivion. He belonged half to the Revolution and half to the reaction.
He was an upstart and a sovereign; and had therefore something in
common with the Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist.
All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed to support his
government, were readily received--all, whether Jacobins or Royalists,
who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Men
who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men
who had fought in the army of Conde, were to be found close together,
both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouche and
Maury with the same cross. He sent Arena and Georges Cadoudal to the
same scaffold. From a government acting on such principles Barere easily
obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to
grant.
The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted; and he was
allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in
the most honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the
special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his
court at the Luxembourg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was
honoured with a few dry and careless words by the master of France.
Here begins a new chapter of Barere's history. What passed between him
and the Consular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to
us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention. It is,
however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions
scattered over these lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion
of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barere: Barere wanted to
sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there
was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.
Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance
on his own genius were not only great but extravagant, looked with
scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite
capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or
of revenge: but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving
for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To
proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with his
policy; but, of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system
included, he liked them the least; and Barere was the worst of them.
This wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and
then by the Council of Five Hundred. The inhabitants of four or five
great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his
vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It
would be unwise to place in any honourable or important post a man so
wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political
duties. At the same time there was a way in which it seemed likely that
he might be of use to the government. The First Consul, as he afterwards
acknowledged, greatly overrated Barere's powers as a writer. The effect
which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the
camp fires of the Republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself,
when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions,
which had much in common with the rhapsodies of his favourite poet,
Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman
was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his
proclamations, are sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind;
but we too often detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and
of the Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have
been desirous to secure the aid of Barere's pen. Nor was this the only
kind of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public
Safety might render to the Consular government. He was likely to find
admission into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy
was to be overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no
expiation, hid themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was
too bold or too atrocious for minds crazed by fanatacism, and familiar
with misery and death. The government was anxious to have information of
what passed in their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to
furnish such information than Barere.
For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barere as a
writer and as a spy. But Barere--was it possible that he would submit
to such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had
belonged to that class of criminals who filled the world with the renown
of their crimes; he had been one of a cabinet which had ruled France
with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signal success.
Nay, he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the single
exception of Robespierre, the most conspicuous member of that cabinet.
His name had been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at
Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The blood of the Queen of France, the blood of
the greatest orators and philosophers of France, was on his hands. He
had spoken; and it had been decreed that the plough should pass over the
great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed that
the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is
placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe.
His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino
and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and police runners.
"Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of vice be lost? "
So sang Pope; and so felt Barere. When it was proposed to him to publish
a journal in defence of the Consular government, rage and shame inspired
him for the first and last time with something like courage. He had
filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr Pitt or General
Washington; and he was coolly invited to descend at once to the level
of Mr Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that a wide
distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of the
Revolution who were summoned to the aid of the government. Those
statesmen were required, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle;
but they were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the
vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were made tribunes and
legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators,
and consuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising
fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were destined
to wear the badge of his Legion of Honour and of his order of the Iron
Crown; to be arch-chancellors and arch-treasurers, counts, dukes, and
princes. Barere, only six years before, had been far more powerful, far
more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought
worthy to represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they
received crowds of suitors in gilded antechambers, he was to pass his
life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It
was too much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion
themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. "I could
not"--these are his own words--"abase myself to such a point as to serve
the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many
insignificant, low, and servile people, such as the Treilhards, the
Roederers, the Lebruns, the Marets, and others whom it is superfluous to
name, held the first place in this government of upstarts. "
This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. Napoleon was inexorable.
It is said indeed that he was, for a moment, half inclined to admit
Barere into the Council of State; but the members of that body
remonstrated in the strongest terms, and declared that such a nomination
would be a disgrace to them all. This plan was therefore relinquished.
Thenceforth Barere's only chance of obtaining the patronage of the
government was to subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a
time when, with three words, he might have had the heads of the three
consuls, and to betake himself, humbly and industriously, to the task of
composing lampoons on England and panegyrics on Bonaparte.
It has been often asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barere was
employed by the government not only as a writer, but as a censor of
the writings of other men. This imputation he vehemently denies in his
Memoirs; but our readers will probably agree with us in thinking that
his denial leaves the question exactly where it was.
Thus much is certain, that he was not restrained from exercising the
office of censor by any scruple of conscience or honour; for he did
accept an office, compared with which that of censor, odious as it is,
may be called an august and beneficent magistracy. He began to have what
are delicately called relations with the police. We are not sure that
we have formed, or that we can convey, an exact notion of the nature
of Barere's new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has
indeed often happened in England that a plot has been revealed to the
government by one of the conspirators. The informer has sometimes been
directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the
evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is done, he
is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure
village or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent,
is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy by
profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from
wolves. In France the race is well-known, and was never more numerous,
more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, than under the government of
Bonaparte.
Our idea of a gentleman in relations with the Consular and Imperial
police may perhaps be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try to convey it
to our readers. We image to ourselves a well-dressed person, with a
soft voice and affable manners. His opinions are those of the society
in which he finds himself, but a little stronger. He often complains,
in the language of honest indignation, that what passes in private
conversation finds its way strangely to the government, and cautions his
associates to take care what they say when they are not sure of their
company. As for himself, he owns that he is indiscreet. He can never
refrain from speaking his mind; and that is the reason that he is not
prefect of a department.
In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking
earnestly about the King and the Count of Artois. He follows them into
a coffee-house, sits at the table next to them, calls for his half-dish
and his small glass of cognac, takes up a journal, and seems occupied
with the news. His neighbours go on talking without restraint, and in
the style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart;
and he follows them half round the boulevards till he fairly tracks them
to their apartments, and learns their names from the porters. From
that day every letter addressed to either of them is sent from the
post-office to the police, and opened. Their correspondents become
known to the government, and are carefully watched. Six or eight honest
families, in different parts of France, find themselves at once under
the frown of power without being able to guess what offence they have
given. One person is dismissed from a public office; another learns with
dismay that his promising son has been turned out of the Polytechnic
school.
Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old
republican, who has not changed with the times, who regrets the red cap
and the tree of liberty, who has not unlearned the Thee and Thou, and
who still subscribes his letters with "Health and Fraternity. " Into the
ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth a long series
of complaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the
Mountain governed France! What is the First Consul but a king under a
new name? What is this Legion of Honour but a new aristocracy? The old
superstition is reviving with the old tyranny. There is a treaty with
the Pope, and a provision for the clergy. Emigrant nobles are returning
in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than the men of the
10th of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What
terrors has death to the true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire,
bestows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints that there will soon
be great news, and that the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not quite
extinct. The next day he is close prisoner, and all his papers are in
the hands of the government.
To this vocation, a vocation compared with which the life of a beggar,
of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is honourable, did Barere now descend. It
was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new
party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first
a Royalist; and he made atonement by watering the tree of liberty with
the blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he made atonement by
murdering Vergniaud and Gensonne. He fawned on Robespierre up to the
eighth of Thermidor; and he made atonement by moving, on the ninth, that
Robespierre should be beheaded without a trial. He was now enlisted
in the service of the new monarchy; and he proceeded to atone for his
republican heresies by sending republican throats to the guillotine.
Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who
had been employed in an office of high trust under the Committee of
Public Safety. This man was fanatically attached to the Jacobin system
of politics, and, in conjunction with other enthusiasts of the same
class, formed a design against the First Consul. A hint of this design
escaped him in conversation with Barere. Barere carried the intelligence
to Lannes, who commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville was arrested,
tried, and beheaded; and among the witnesses who appeared against him
was his friend Barere.
The account which Barere has given of these transactions is studiously
confused and grossly dishonest. We think, however, that we can discern,
through much falsehood and much artful obscurity, some truths which he
labours to conceal. It is clear to us that the government suspected him
of what the Italians call a double treason. It was natural that such
a suspicion should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote,
zealously preached the Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyrant
deserves higher praise than he who saves a citizen. Was it possible
that the member of the Committee of Public Safety, the king-killer, the
queen-killer, could in earnest mean to deliver his old confederates, his
bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they had planned an
act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in the
highest degree virtuous and glorious? Was it not more probable that he
was really concerned in the plot, and that the information which he gave
was merely intended to lull or to mislead the police? Accordingly,
spies were set on the spy. He was ordered to quit Paris, and not to come
within twenty leagues till he received further orders. Nay, he ran no
small risk of being sent, with some of his old friends, to Madagascar.
He made his peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not
only permitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed
in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while
he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter
which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, who is well known to
have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence and favour.
"The First Consul, having been informed that Citizen Barere is about to
set out for the country, desires that he will stay at Paris.
"Citizen Barere will every week draw up a report on the state of
public opinion on the proceedings of the government, and generally on
everything which, in his judgment, it will be interesting to the First
Consul to learn.
"He may write with perfect freedom.
"He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc's own hand,
and General Duroc will deliver them to the First Consul. But it is
absolutely necessary that nobody should suspect that this species of
communication takes place; and, should any such suspicion get abroad,
the First Consul will cease to receive the reports of Citizen Barere.
"It will also be proper that Citizen Barere should frequently insert in
the journals articles tending to animate the public mind, particularly
against the English. "
During some years Barere continued to discharge the functions
assigned to him by his master. Secret reports, filled with the talk
of coffee-houses, were carried by him every week to the Tuileries. His
friends assure us that he took especial pains to do all the harm in his
power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if Napoleon was
not apprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquesses who
had lost their estates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices,
uttered against the imperial system. M. Hippolyte Carnot, we grieve to
say, is so much blinded by party spirit that he seems to reckon this
dirty wickedness among his hero's titles to public esteem.
Barere was, at the same time, an indefatigable journalist and
pamphleteer. He set up a paper directed against England, and called the
"Memorial Antibritannique". He planned a work entitled, "France made
great and illustrious by Napoleon. " When the Imperial government was
established, the old regicide made himself conspicuous even among the
crowd of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation.
He translated into French a contemptible volume of Italian verses,
entitled, "The Poetic Crown, composed on the glorious accession of
Napoleon the First, by the Shepherds of Arcadia. " He commenced a new
series of Carmagnoles very different from those which had charmed
the Mountain. The title of Emperor of the French, he said, was mean;
Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an
appellation; Napoleon's style ought to be King of Kings.
But Barere laboured to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as
a writer nor as a spy was he of much use. He complains bitterly that
his paper did not sell. While the "Journal des Debats", then flourishing
under the able management of Geoffroy, had a circulation of at least
twenty thousand copies, the "Memorial Antibritannique" never, in its
most prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and
these subscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far
from Paris, probably Gascons, among whom the name of Barere had not yet
lost its influence.
A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect
to any cause rather than to the true one; and Barere was no exception to
the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury.
That city, he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to
subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real wants and interests of
the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The
higher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England.
A corporal from London is better received among them than a French
general. A journal, therefore, which attacks England has no chance of
their support.
A much better explanation of the failure of the "Memorial" was given
by Bonaparte at St Helena. "Barere," said he to Barry O'Meara, "had
the reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so.
I employed him to write; but he did not display ability. He used many
flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but coglionerie
wrapped up in high-sounding language. "
The truth is that, though Barere was a man of quick parts, and could do
with ease what he could do at all, he had never been a good writer. In
the day of his power he had been in the habit of haranguing an excitable
audience on exciting topics. The faults of his style passed uncensured;
for it was a time of literary as well as of civil lawlessness, and a
patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition as
well as the ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But
there had now been a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was
again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy,
so was there a revival of classical taste. Honour was again paid to
the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and
La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the
Convention was not only as much out of date as the language of
Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind
with images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the
guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy, his
conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had
become as odious as the cant of the Puritans was in England after the
Restoration.
Bonaparte, who had never loved the men of the Reign of Terror, had now
ceased to fear them. He was all-powerful and at the height of glory;
they were weak and universally abhorred. He was a sovereign; and it
is probable that he already meditated a matrimonial alliance with
sovereigns. He was naturally unwilling, in his new position, to hold
any intercourse with the worst class of Jacobins. Had Barere's literary
assistance been important to the government, personal aversion might
have yielded to considerations of policy; but there was no motive for
keeping terms with a worthless man who had also proved a worthless
writer. Bonaparte, therefore, gave loose to his feelings. Barere was not
gently dropped, not sent into an honourable retirement, but spurned
and scourged away like a troublesome dog. He had been in the habit of
sending six copies of his journal on fine paper daily to the Tuileries.
Instead of receiving the thanks and praises which he expected, he was
drily told that the great man had ordered five copies to be sent back.
Still he toiled on; still he cherished a hope that at last Napoleon
would relent, and that at last some share in the honours of the state
would reward so much assiduity and so much obsequiousness. He was
bitterly undeceived. Under the Imperial constitution the electoral
colleges of the departments did not possess the right of choosing
senators or deputies, but merely that of presenting candidates. From
among these candidates the emperor named members of the senate, and the
senate named members of the legislative body. The inhabitants of the
Upper Pyrenees were still strangely partial to Barere. In the year 1805,
they were disposed to present him as a candidate for the senate. On this
Napoleon expressed the highest displeasure; and the president of the
electoral college was directed to tell the voters, in plain terms, that
such a choice would be disgraceful to the department. All thought of
naming Barere a candidate for the senate was consequently dropped.
But the people of Argeles ventured to name him a candidate for the
legislative body. That body was altogether destitute of weight and
dignity; it was not permitted to debate; its only function was to vote
in silence for whatever the government proposed. It is not easy to
understand how any man who had sat in free and powerful deliberative
assemblies could condescend to bear a part in such a mummery. Barere,
however, was desirous of a place even in this mock legislature; and a
place even in this mock legislature was refused to him. In the whole
senate he had not a single vote.
Such treatment was sufficient, it might have been thought, to move the
most abject of mankind to resentment. Still, however, Barere cringed and
fawned on. His letters came weekly to the Tuileries till the year
1807. At length, while he was actually writing the two hundred and
twenty-third of the series, a note was put into his hands. It was from
Duroc, and was much more perspicuous than polite. Barere was requested
to send no more of his Reports to the palace, as the Emperor was too
busy to read them.
Contempt, says the Indian proverb, pierces even the shell of the
tortoise; and the contempt of the Court was felt to the quick even by
the callous heart of Barere. He had humbled himself to the dust; and he
had humbled himself in vain. Having been eminent among the rulers of
a great and victorious state, he had stooped to serve a master in the
vilest capacities; and he had been told that, even in those capacities,
he was not worthy of the pittance which had been disdainfully flung to
him. He was now degraded below the level even of the hirelings whom the
government employed in the most infamous offices. He stood idle in
the market-place, not because he thought any office too infamous, but
because none would hire him.
Yet he had reason to think himself fortunate; for, had all that
is avowed in these Memoirs been known, he would have received very
different tokens of the Imperial displeasure. We learn from himself
that, while publishing daily columns of flattery on Bonaparte, and while
carrying weekly budgets of calumny to the Tuileries, he was in close
connection with the agents whom the Emperor Alexander, then by no means
favourably disposed towards France, employed to watch all that passed at
Paris; was permitted to read their secret despatches; was consulted by
them as to the temper of the public mind and the character of Napoleon;
and did his best to persuade them that the government was in a tottering
condition, and that the new sovereign was not, as the world supposed,
a great statesman and soldier. Next, Barere, still the flatterer and
talebearer of the Imperial Court, connected himself in the same manner
with the Spanish envoy. He owns that with that envoy he had relations
which he took the greatest pains to conceal from his own government;
that they met twice a day; and that their conversation chiefly turned
on the vices of Napoleon; on his designs against Spain, and on the best
mode of rendering those designs abortive. In truth, Barere's baseness
was unfathomable. In the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower deeps.
of Thermidor, it became clear that a decisive struggle was at hand.
Robespierre struck the first blow. He mounted the tribune, and uttered a
long invective on his opponents. It was moved that his discourse
should be printed; and Barere spoke for the printing. The sense of the
Convention soon appeared to be the other way; and Barere apologised for
his former speech, and implored his colleagues to abstain from disputes
which could be agreeable only to Pitt and York. On the next day, the
ever-memorable ninth of Thermidor, came the real tug of war. Tallien,
bravely taking his life in his hand, led the onset. Billaud followed;
and then all that infinite hatred which had long been kept down by
terror burst forth, and swept every barrier before it. When at length
the voice of Robespierre, drowned by the President's bell, and by shouts
of "Down with the tyrant! " had died away in hoarse gasping, Barere rose.
He began with timid and doubtful phrases, watched the effect of
every word he uttered, and, when the feeling of the Assembly had been
unequivocally manifested, declared against Robespierre. But it was not
till the people out of doors, and especially the gunners of Paris, had
espoused the cause of the Convention, that Barere felt quite at
ease. Then he sprang to the tribune, poured forth a Carmagnole about
Pisistratus and Catiline, and concluded by moving that the heads of
Robespierre and Robespierre's accomplices should be cut off without a
trial. The motion was carried. On the following morning the vanquished
members of the Committee of Public Safety and their principal adherents
suffered death. It was exactly one year since Barere had commenced his
career of slaughter by moving the proscription of his old allies the
Girondists. We greatly doubt whether any human being has ever succeeded
in packing more wickedness into the space of three hundred and
sixty-five days.
The ninth of Thermidor is one of the great epochs in the history of
Europe. It is true that the three members of the Committee of Public
Safety who triumphed were by no means better men than the three who
fell. Indeed, we are inclined to think that of these six statesmen the
least bad were Robespierre and Saint Just, whose cruelty was the effect
of sincere fanaticism operating on narrow understandings and acrimonious
tempers. The worst of the six was, beyond all doubt, Barere, who had
no faith in any part of the system which he upheld by persecution; who,
while he sent his fellow-creatures to death for being the third cousins
of royalists, had not in the least made up his mind that a republic
was better than a monarchy; who, while he slew his old friends for
federalism, was himself far more a federalist than any of them; who
had become a murderer merely for his safety, and who continued to be a
murderer merely for his pleasure.
The tendency of the vulgar is to embody everything. Some individual is
selected, and often selected very injudicially, as the representative
of every great movement of the public mind, of every great revolution in
human affairs; and on this individual are concentrated all the love and
all the hatred, all the admiration and all the contempt, which he ought
rightfully to share with a whole party, a whole sect, a whole nation, a
whole generation. Perhaps no human being has suffered so much from this
propensity of the multitude as Robespierre. He is regarded, not merely
as what he was, an envious, malevolent zealot, but as the incarnation of
Terror, as Jacobinism personified. The truth is, that it was not by
him that the system of terror was carried to the last extreme. The most
horrible days in the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris were
those which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Robespierre had
then ceased to attend the meetings of the sovereign Committee; and the
direction of affairs was really in the hands of Billaud, of Collot, and
of Barere.
It had never occurred to those three tyrants that, in overthrowing
Robespierre, they were overthrowing that system of terror to which they
were more attached than he had ever been. Their object was to go on
slaying even more mercilessly than before. But they had misunderstood
the nature of the great crisis which had at last arrived. The yoke
of the Committee was broken for ever. The Convention had regained
its liberty, had tried its strength, had vanquished and punished
its enemies. A great reaction had commenced. Twenty-four hours after
Robespierre had ceased to live, it was moved and carried, amidst loud
bursts of applause, that the sittings of the Revolutionary Tribunal
should be suspended. Billaud was not at that moment present. He entered
the hall soon after, learned with indignation what had passed, and moved
that the vote should be rescinded. But loud cries of "No, no! " rose
from those benches which had lately paid mute obedience to his commands.
Barere came forward on the same day, and abjured the Convention not to
relax the system of terror. "Beware, above all things," he cried,
"of that fatal moderation which talks of peace and of clemency. Let
aristocracy know that here she will find only enemies sternly bent on
vengeance, and judges who have no pity. " But the day of the Carmagnoles
was over: the restraint of fear had been relaxed; and the hatred
with which the nation regarded the Jacobin dominion broke forth with
ungovernable violence. Not more strongly did the tide of public opinion
run against the old monarchy and aristocracy, at the time of the taking
of the Bastile, than it now ran against the tyranny of the Mountain.
From every dungeon the prisoners came forth as they had gone in, by
hundreds. The decree which forbade the soldiers of the republic to give
quarter to the English was repealed by an unanimous vote, amidst loud
acclamations; nor, passed as it was, disobeyed as it was, and rescinded
as it was, can it be with justice considered as a blemish on the fame
of the French nation. The Jacobin Club was refractory. It was suppressed
without resistance. The surviving Girondist deputies, who had concealed
themselves from the vengeance of their enemies in caverns and garrets,
were readmitted to their seats in the Convention. No day passed without
some signal reparation of injustice; no street in Paris was without some
trace of the recent change. In the theatre, the bust of Marat was pulled
down from its pedestal and broken in pieces, amidst the applause of
the audience. His carcass was ejected from the Pantheon. The celebrated
picture of his death, which had hung in the hall of the Convention, was
removed. The savage inscriptions with which the walls of the city had
been covered disappeared; and, in place of death and terror, humanity,
the watchword of the new rulers, was everywhere to be seen. In the
meantime, the gay spirit of France, recently subdued by oppression, and
now elated by the joy of a great deliverance, wantoned in a thousand
forms. Art, taste, luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its
empire--an empire strengthened by the remembrance of all the tender
and all the sublime virtues which women, delicately bred and reputed
frivolous, had displayed during the evil days. Refined manners,
chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train of love. The dawn of the
Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing
of the waters, the awakening of animal and vegetable life, the sudden
softening of the air, the sudden blooming of the flowers, the sudden
bursting of old forests into verdure, is but a feeble type of that
happiest and most genial of revolutions, the revolution of the ninth of
Thermidor.
But, in the midst of the revival of all kind and generous sentiments,
there was one portion of the community against which mercy itself seemed
to cry out for vengeance. The chiefs of the late government and their
tools were now never named but as the men of blood, the drinkers of
blood, the cannibals. In some parts of France, where the creatures of
the Mountain had acted with peculiar barbarity, the populace took the
law into its own hands and meted out justice to the Jacobins with the
true Jacobin measure, but at Paris the punishments were inflicted with
order and decency, and were few when compared with the number, and
lenient when compared with the enormity, of the crimes. Soon after the
ninth of Thermidor, two of the vilest of mankind, Fouquier Tinville,
whom Barere had placed at the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Lebon, whom
Barere had defended in the Convention, were placed under arrest. A third
miscreant soon shared their fate, Carrier, the tyrant of Nantes. The
trials of these men brought to light horrors surpassing anything that
Suetonius and Lampridius have related of the worst Caesars. But it was
impossible to punish subordinate agents, who, bad as they were, had only
acted in accordance with the spirit of the government which they served,
and, at the same time, to grant impunity to the heads of the wicked
administration. A cry was raised, both within and without the Convention
for justice on Collot, Billaud, and Barere.
Collot and Billaud, with all their vices, appear to have been men of
resolute natures. They made no submission; but opposed to the hatred
of mankind, at first a fierce resistance, and afterwards a dogged and
sullen endurance. Barere, on the other hand, as soon as he began to
understand the real nature of the revolution of Thermidor, attempted to
abandon the Mountain, and to obtain admission among his old friends of
the moderate party. He declared everywhere that he had never been in
favour of severe measures; that he was a Girondist; that he had always
condemned and lamented the manner in which the Brissotine deputies had
been treated. He now preached mercy from that tribune from which he had
recently preached extermination. "The time," he said, "has come at which
our clemency may be indulged without danger. We may now safely
consider temporary imprisonment as an adequate punishment for political
misdemeanours. " It was only a fortnight since, from the same place,
he had declaimed against the moderation which dared even to talk of
clemency; it was only a fortnight since he had ceased to send men and
women to the guillotine of Paris, at the rate of three hundred a week.
He now wished to make his peace with the moderate party at the expense
of the Terrorists, as he had, a year before, made his peace with
the Terrorists at the expense of the moderate party. But he was
disappointed. He had left himself no retreat. His face, his voice, his
rants, his jokes, had become hateful to the Convention. When he spoke
he was interrupted by murmurs. Bitter reflections were daily cast on his
cowardice and perfidy. On one occasion Carnot rose to give an account
of a victory, and so far forgot the gravity of his own character as
to indulge in the sort of oratory which Barere had affected on similar
occasions. He was interrupted by cries of "No more Carmagnoles! " "No
more of Barere's puns! "
At length, five months after the revolution of Thermidor, the Convention
resolved that a committee of twenty-one members should be appointed to
examine into the conduct of Billaud, Collot, and Barere. In some weeks
the report was made. From that report we learn that a paper had been
discovered, signed by Barere, and containing a proposition for adding
the last improvement to the system of terror. France was to be divided
into circuits; itinerant revolutionary tribunals, composed of trusty
Jacobins, were to move from department to department; and the guillotine
was to travel in their train.
Barere, in his defence, insisted that no speech or motion which he had
made in the Convention could, without a violation of the freedom of
debate, be treated as a crime. He was asked how he could resort to such
a mode of defence, after putting to death so many deputies on account of
opinions expressed in the Convention. He had nothing to say, but that
it was much to be regretted that the sound principle had ever been
violated.
He arrogated to himself a large share of the merit of the revolution in
Thermidor. The men who had risked their lives to effect that revolution,
and who knew that, if they had failed, Barere would, in all probability,
have moved the decree for beheading them without a trial, and have drawn
up a proclamation announcing their guilt and their punishment to all
France, were by no means disposed to acquiesce in his claims. He was
reminded that, only forty-eight hours before the decisive conflict,
he had, in the tribune, been profuse of adulation to Robespierre. His
answer to this reproach is worthy of himself. "It was necessary," he
said, "to dissemble. It was necessary to flatter Robespierre's vanity,
and, by panegyric, to impel him to the attack. This was the motive which
induced me to load him with those praises of which you complain. Who
ever blamed Brutus for dissembling with Tarquin? "
The accused triumvirs had only one chance of escaping punishment. There
was severe distress at that moment among the working people of the
capital. This distress the Jacobins attributed to the reaction of
Thermidor, to the lenity with which the aristocrats were now treated,
and to the measures which had been adopted against the chiefs of the
late administration. Nothing is too absurd to be believed by a populace
which has not breakfasted, and which does not know how it is to dine.
The rabble of the Faubourg St Antoine rose, menaced the deputies, and
demanded with loud cries the liberation of the persecuted patriots. But
the Convention was no longer such as it had been, when similar means
were employed too successfully against the Girondists. Its spirit
was roused. Its strength had been proved. Military means were at its
command. The tumult was suppressed: and it was decreed that same evening
that Collot, Billaud, and Barere should instantly be removed to a
distant place of confinement.
The next day the order of the Convention was executed. The account which
Barere has given of his journey is the most interesting and the most
trustworthy part of these Memoirs. There is no witness so infamous that
a court of justice will not take his word against himself; and even
Barere may be believed when he tells us how much he was hated and
despised.
The carriage in which he was to travel passed, surrounded by armed
men, along the street of St Honore. A crowd soon gathered round it and
increased every moment. On the long flight of steps before the church of
St Roch stood rows of eager spectators. It was with difficulty that
the coach could make its way through those who hung upon it, hooting,
cursing, and striving to burst the doors. Barere thought his life in
danger, and was conducted at his own request to a public office, where
he hoped that he might find shelter till the crowd should disperse.
In the meantime, another discussion on his fate took place in the
Convention. It was proposed to deal with him as he had dealt with better
men, to put him out of the pale of the law, and to deliver him at once
without any trial to the headsman. But the humanity which, since
the ninth of Thermidor, had generally directed the public councils
restrained the deputies from taking this course.
It was now night; and the streets gradually became quiet. The clock
struck twelve; and Barere, under a strong guard, again set forth on his
journey. He was conducted over the river to the place where the Orleans
road branches off from the southern boulevard. Two travelling carriages
stood there. In one of them was Billaud, attended by two officers; in
the other two more officers were waiting to receive Barere. Collot was
already on the road.
At Orleans, a city which had suffered cruelly from the Jacobin tyranny,
the three deputies were surrounded by a mob bent on tearing them to
pieces. All the national guards of the neighbourhood were assembled;
and this force was not greater than the emergency required; for the
multitude pursued the carriages far on the road to Blois.
At Amboise the prisoners learned that Tours was ready to receive them.
The stately bridge was occupied by a throng of people, who swore that
the men under whose rule the Loire had been choked with corpses should
have full personal experience of the nature of a noyade. In consequence
of this news, the officers who had charge of the criminals made such
arrangements that the carriages reached Tours at two in the morning, and
drove straight to the post-house. Fresh horses were instantly ordered;
and the travellers started again at full gallop. They had, in truth,
not a moment to lose; for the alarm had been given; lights were seen in
motion; and the yells of a great multitude, disappointed of its revenge,
mingled with the sound of the departing wheels.
At Poitiers there was another narrow escape. As the prisoners quitted
the post-house, they saw the whole population pouring in fury down the
steep declivity on which the city is built. They passed near Niort,
but could not venture to enter it. The inhabitants came forth with
threatening aspect, and vehemently cried to the postillions to stop; but
the postillions urged the horses to full speed, and soon left the town
behind. Through such dangers the men of blood were brought in safety to
Rochelle.
Oleron was the place of their destination, a dreary island beaten by the
raging waves of the Bay of Biscay. The prisoners were confined in the
castle; each had a single chamber, at the door of which a guard was
placed; and each was allowed the ration of a single soldier. They
were not allowed to communicate either with the garrison or with the
population of the island; and soon after their arrival they were denied
the indulgence of walking on the ramparts. The only place where they
were suffered to take exercise was the esplanade where the troops were
drilled.
They had not been long in this situation when news came that the
Jacobins of Paris had made a last attempt to regain ascendency in the
state, that the hall of the Convention had been forced by a furious
crowd, that one of the deputies had been murdered and his head fixed on
a pike, that the life of the President had been for a time in imminent
danger, and that some members of the legislature had not been ashamed to
join the rioters. But troops had arrived in time to prevent a
massacre. The insurgents had been put to flight; the inhabitants of
the disaffected quarters of the capital had been disarmed; the guilty
deputies had suffered the just punishment of their treason; and the
power of the Mountain was broken for ever. These events strengthened the
aversion with which the system of terror and the authors of that system
were regarded. One member of the Convention had moved that the three
prisoners of Oleron should be put to death; another, that they should be
brought back to Paris, and tried by a council of war. These propositions
were rejected. But something was conceded to the party which called for
severity. A vessel which had been fitted out with great expedition at
Rochefort touched at Oleron; and it was announced to Collot and Billaud
that they must instantly go on board. They were forthwith conveyed to
Guiana, where Collot soon drank himself to death with brandy. Billaud
lived many years, shunning his fellow-creatures and shunned by them; and
diverted his lonely hours by teaching parrots to talk. Why a distinction
was made between Barere and his companions in guilt, neither he nor any
other writer, as far as we know, has explained. It does not appear that
the distinction was meant to be at all in his favour; for orders soon
arrived from Paris, that he should be brought to trial for his crimes
before the criminal court of the department of the Upper Charente. He
was accordingly brought back to the continent, and confined during some
months at Saintes, in an old convent which had lately been turned into a
jail.
While he lingered here, the reaction which had followed the great crisis
of Thermidor met with a temporary check. The friends of the House of
Bourbon, presuming on the indulgence with which they had been treated
after the fall of Robespierre, not only ventured to avow their opinions
with little disguise, but at length took arms against the Convention,
and were not put down till much blood had been shed in the streets
of Paris. The vigilance of the public authorities was therefore now
directed chiefly against the Royalists; and the rigour with which the
Jacobins had lately been treated was somewhat relaxed. The Convention,
indeed, again resolved that Barere should be sent to Guiana. But this
decree was not carried into effect. The prisoner, probably with the
connivance of some powerful persons, made his escape from Saintes and
fled to Bordeaux, where he remained in concealment during some years.
There seems to have been a kind of understanding between him and the
government, that, as long as he hid himself, he should not be found,
but that, if he obtruded himself on the public eye, he must take the
consequences of his rashness.
While the constitution of 1795, with its Executive Directory, its
Council of Elders, and its Council of Five Hundred, was in operation,
he continued to live under the ban of the law. It was in vain that he
solicited, even at moments when the politics of the Mountain seemed to
be again in the ascendant, a remission of the sentence pronounced by the
Convention. Even his fellow-regicides, even the authors of the slaughter
of Vendemiaire and of the arrests of Fructidor, were ashamed of him.
About eighteen months after his escape from prison, his name was again
brought before the world. In his own province he still retained some of
his early popularity. He had, indeed, never been in that province since
the downfall of the monarchy. The mountaineers of Gascony were far
removed from the seat of government, and were but imperfectly informed
of what passed there. They knew that their countryman had played an
important part, and that he had on some occasions promoted their local
interests; and they stood by him in his adversity and in his disgrace
with a constancy which presents a singular contrast to his own abject
fickleness. All France was amazed to learn that the department of the
Upper Pyrenees had chosen the proscribed tyrant a member of the Council
of Five Hundred. The council which, like our House of Commons, was the
judge of the election of its own members, refused to admit him. When his
name was read from the roll, a cry of indignation rose from the benches.
"Which of you," exclaimed one of the members, "would sit by the side of
such a monster? " "Not I, not I! " answered a crowd of voices. One deputy
declared that he would vacate his seat if the hall were polluted by the
presence of such a wretch. The election was declared null on the ground
that the person elected was a criminal skulking from justice; and many
severe reflections were thrown on the lenity which suffered him to be
still at large.
He tried to make his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky
libel on England, entitled, the Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have
confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He
printed three thousand copies, and in order to defray the expense of
publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs.
The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barere is
to be believed, of the villainy of Mr Pitt, who bribed the Directory
to order the Reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the
maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.
Barere had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received
intelligence that the mob of the town designed him the honour of a visit
on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what
he had, in his defence of his friend Lebon, described as substantial
justice under forms a little harsh. It was necessary for him to disguise
himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In
this garb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his
escape into the vineyards which surrounded the city, lurked during some
days in a peasant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniversary was over,
stole back into the city. A few months later he was again in danger. He
now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the neighbourhood
of Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through those towns
where four years before his life had been in extreme danger, passed
through the capital in the morning twilight, when none were in the
streets except shop-boys taking down the shutters, and arrived safe
at the pleasant village of St Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in
seclusion during some months. In the meantime Bonaparte returned from
Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of discontented parties,
covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the Five
Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became
absolute monarch of France under the name of First Consul.
Barere assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he
could not bear to see France again subject to a master; and that if the
representatives had been worthy of that honourable name, they would
have arrested the ambitious general who insulted them. These feelings,
however, did not prevent him from soliciting the protection of the new
government, and from sending to the First Consul a handsome copy of the
essay on the Liberty of the Seas.
The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all the past with a general
oblivion. He belonged half to the Revolution and half to the reaction.
He was an upstart and a sovereign; and had therefore something in
common with the Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist.
All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed to support his
government, were readily received--all, whether Jacobins or Royalists,
who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Men
who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men
who had fought in the army of Conde, were to be found close together,
both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouche and
Maury with the same cross. He sent Arena and Georges Cadoudal to the
same scaffold. From a government acting on such principles Barere easily
obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to
grant.
The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted; and he was
allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in
the most honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the
special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his
court at the Luxembourg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was
honoured with a few dry and careless words by the master of France.
Here begins a new chapter of Barere's history. What passed between him
and the Consular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to
us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention. It is,
however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions
scattered over these lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion
of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barere: Barere wanted to
sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there
was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.
Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance
on his own genius were not only great but extravagant, looked with
scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite
capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or
of revenge: but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving
for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To
proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with his
policy; but, of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system
included, he liked them the least; and Barere was the worst of them.
This wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and
then by the Council of Five Hundred. The inhabitants of four or five
great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his
vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It
would be unwise to place in any honourable or important post a man so
wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political
duties. At the same time there was a way in which it seemed likely that
he might be of use to the government. The First Consul, as he afterwards
acknowledged, greatly overrated Barere's powers as a writer. The effect
which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the
camp fires of the Republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself,
when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions,
which had much in common with the rhapsodies of his favourite poet,
Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman
was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his
proclamations, are sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind;
but we too often detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and
of the Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have
been desirous to secure the aid of Barere's pen. Nor was this the only
kind of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public
Safety might render to the Consular government. He was likely to find
admission into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy
was to be overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no
expiation, hid themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was
too bold or too atrocious for minds crazed by fanatacism, and familiar
with misery and death. The government was anxious to have information of
what passed in their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to
furnish such information than Barere.
For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barere as a
writer and as a spy. But Barere--was it possible that he would submit
to such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had
belonged to that class of criminals who filled the world with the renown
of their crimes; he had been one of a cabinet which had ruled France
with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signal success.
Nay, he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the single
exception of Robespierre, the most conspicuous member of that cabinet.
His name had been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at
Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The blood of the Queen of France, the blood of
the greatest orators and philosophers of France, was on his hands. He
had spoken; and it had been decreed that the plough should pass over the
great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed that
the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is
placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe.
His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino
and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and police runners.
"Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of vice be lost? "
So sang Pope; and so felt Barere. When it was proposed to him to publish
a journal in defence of the Consular government, rage and shame inspired
him for the first and last time with something like courage. He had
filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr Pitt or General
Washington; and he was coolly invited to descend at once to the level
of Mr Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that a wide
distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of the
Revolution who were summoned to the aid of the government. Those
statesmen were required, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle;
but they were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the
vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were made tribunes and
legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators,
and consuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising
fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were destined
to wear the badge of his Legion of Honour and of his order of the Iron
Crown; to be arch-chancellors and arch-treasurers, counts, dukes, and
princes. Barere, only six years before, had been far more powerful, far
more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought
worthy to represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they
received crowds of suitors in gilded antechambers, he was to pass his
life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It
was too much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion
themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. "I could
not"--these are his own words--"abase myself to such a point as to serve
the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many
insignificant, low, and servile people, such as the Treilhards, the
Roederers, the Lebruns, the Marets, and others whom it is superfluous to
name, held the first place in this government of upstarts. "
This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. Napoleon was inexorable.
It is said indeed that he was, for a moment, half inclined to admit
Barere into the Council of State; but the members of that body
remonstrated in the strongest terms, and declared that such a nomination
would be a disgrace to them all. This plan was therefore relinquished.
Thenceforth Barere's only chance of obtaining the patronage of the
government was to subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a
time when, with three words, he might have had the heads of the three
consuls, and to betake himself, humbly and industriously, to the task of
composing lampoons on England and panegyrics on Bonaparte.
It has been often asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barere was
employed by the government not only as a writer, but as a censor of
the writings of other men. This imputation he vehemently denies in his
Memoirs; but our readers will probably agree with us in thinking that
his denial leaves the question exactly where it was.
Thus much is certain, that he was not restrained from exercising the
office of censor by any scruple of conscience or honour; for he did
accept an office, compared with which that of censor, odious as it is,
may be called an august and beneficent magistracy. He began to have what
are delicately called relations with the police. We are not sure that
we have formed, or that we can convey, an exact notion of the nature
of Barere's new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has
indeed often happened in England that a plot has been revealed to the
government by one of the conspirators. The informer has sometimes been
directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the
evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is done, he
is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure
village or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent,
is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy by
profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from
wolves. In France the race is well-known, and was never more numerous,
more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, than under the government of
Bonaparte.
Our idea of a gentleman in relations with the Consular and Imperial
police may perhaps be incorrect. Such as it is, we will try to convey it
to our readers. We image to ourselves a well-dressed person, with a
soft voice and affable manners. His opinions are those of the society
in which he finds himself, but a little stronger. He often complains,
in the language of honest indignation, that what passes in private
conversation finds its way strangely to the government, and cautions his
associates to take care what they say when they are not sure of their
company. As for himself, he owns that he is indiscreet. He can never
refrain from speaking his mind; and that is the reason that he is not
prefect of a department.
In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking
earnestly about the King and the Count of Artois. He follows them into
a coffee-house, sits at the table next to them, calls for his half-dish
and his small glass of cognac, takes up a journal, and seems occupied
with the news. His neighbours go on talking without restraint, and in
the style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart;
and he follows them half round the boulevards till he fairly tracks them
to their apartments, and learns their names from the porters. From
that day every letter addressed to either of them is sent from the
post-office to the police, and opened. Their correspondents become
known to the government, and are carefully watched. Six or eight honest
families, in different parts of France, find themselves at once under
the frown of power without being able to guess what offence they have
given. One person is dismissed from a public office; another learns with
dismay that his promising son has been turned out of the Polytechnic
school.
Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old
republican, who has not changed with the times, who regrets the red cap
and the tree of liberty, who has not unlearned the Thee and Thou, and
who still subscribes his letters with "Health and Fraternity. " Into the
ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth a long series
of complaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the
Mountain governed France! What is the First Consul but a king under a
new name? What is this Legion of Honour but a new aristocracy? The old
superstition is reviving with the old tyranny. There is a treaty with
the Pope, and a provision for the clergy. Emigrant nobles are returning
in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than the men of the
10th of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What
terrors has death to the true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire,
bestows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints that there will soon
be great news, and that the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not quite
extinct. The next day he is close prisoner, and all his papers are in
the hands of the government.
To this vocation, a vocation compared with which the life of a beggar,
of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is honourable, did Barere now descend. It
was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new
party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first
a Royalist; and he made atonement by watering the tree of liberty with
the blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he made atonement by
murdering Vergniaud and Gensonne. He fawned on Robespierre up to the
eighth of Thermidor; and he made atonement by moving, on the ninth, that
Robespierre should be beheaded without a trial. He was now enlisted
in the service of the new monarchy; and he proceeded to atone for his
republican heresies by sending republican throats to the guillotine.
Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who
had been employed in an office of high trust under the Committee of
Public Safety. This man was fanatically attached to the Jacobin system
of politics, and, in conjunction with other enthusiasts of the same
class, formed a design against the First Consul. A hint of this design
escaped him in conversation with Barere. Barere carried the intelligence
to Lannes, who commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville was arrested,
tried, and beheaded; and among the witnesses who appeared against him
was his friend Barere.
The account which Barere has given of these transactions is studiously
confused and grossly dishonest. We think, however, that we can discern,
through much falsehood and much artful obscurity, some truths which he
labours to conceal. It is clear to us that the government suspected him
of what the Italians call a double treason. It was natural that such
a suspicion should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote,
zealously preached the Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyrant
deserves higher praise than he who saves a citizen. Was it possible
that the member of the Committee of Public Safety, the king-killer, the
queen-killer, could in earnest mean to deliver his old confederates, his
bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they had planned an
act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in the
highest degree virtuous and glorious? Was it not more probable that he
was really concerned in the plot, and that the information which he gave
was merely intended to lull or to mislead the police? Accordingly,
spies were set on the spy. He was ordered to quit Paris, and not to come
within twenty leagues till he received further orders. Nay, he ran no
small risk of being sent, with some of his old friends, to Madagascar.
He made his peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not
only permitted, during some years, to live unmolested, but was employed
in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while
he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter
which deserves to be inserted. It was from Duroc, who is well known to
have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence and favour.
"The First Consul, having been informed that Citizen Barere is about to
set out for the country, desires that he will stay at Paris.
"Citizen Barere will every week draw up a report on the state of
public opinion on the proceedings of the government, and generally on
everything which, in his judgment, it will be interesting to the First
Consul to learn.
"He may write with perfect freedom.
"He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc's own hand,
and General Duroc will deliver them to the First Consul. But it is
absolutely necessary that nobody should suspect that this species of
communication takes place; and, should any such suspicion get abroad,
the First Consul will cease to receive the reports of Citizen Barere.
"It will also be proper that Citizen Barere should frequently insert in
the journals articles tending to animate the public mind, particularly
against the English. "
During some years Barere continued to discharge the functions
assigned to him by his master. Secret reports, filled with the talk
of coffee-houses, were carried by him every week to the Tuileries. His
friends assure us that he took especial pains to do all the harm in his
power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if Napoleon was
not apprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquesses who
had lost their estates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices,
uttered against the imperial system. M. Hippolyte Carnot, we grieve to
say, is so much blinded by party spirit that he seems to reckon this
dirty wickedness among his hero's titles to public esteem.
Barere was, at the same time, an indefatigable journalist and
pamphleteer. He set up a paper directed against England, and called the
"Memorial Antibritannique". He planned a work entitled, "France made
great and illustrious by Napoleon. " When the Imperial government was
established, the old regicide made himself conspicuous even among the
crowd of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation.
He translated into French a contemptible volume of Italian verses,
entitled, "The Poetic Crown, composed on the glorious accession of
Napoleon the First, by the Shepherds of Arcadia. " He commenced a new
series of Carmagnoles very different from those which had charmed
the Mountain. The title of Emperor of the French, he said, was mean;
Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an
appellation; Napoleon's style ought to be King of Kings.
But Barere laboured to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as
a writer nor as a spy was he of much use. He complains bitterly that
his paper did not sell. While the "Journal des Debats", then flourishing
under the able management of Geoffroy, had a circulation of at least
twenty thousand copies, the "Memorial Antibritannique" never, in its
most prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and
these subscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far
from Paris, probably Gascons, among whom the name of Barere had not yet
lost its influence.
A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect
to any cause rather than to the true one; and Barere was no exception to
the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury.
That city, he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to
subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real wants and interests of
the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The
higher classes of the capital have always been devoted to England.
A corporal from London is better received among them than a French
general. A journal, therefore, which attacks England has no chance of
their support.
A much better explanation of the failure of the "Memorial" was given
by Bonaparte at St Helena. "Barere," said he to Barry O'Meara, "had
the reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so.
I employed him to write; but he did not display ability. He used many
flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but coglionerie
wrapped up in high-sounding language. "
The truth is that, though Barere was a man of quick parts, and could do
with ease what he could do at all, he had never been a good writer. In
the day of his power he had been in the habit of haranguing an excitable
audience on exciting topics. The faults of his style passed uncensured;
for it was a time of literary as well as of civil lawlessness, and a
patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition as
well as the ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But
there had now been a literary as well as a civil reaction. As there was
again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy,
so was there a revival of classical taste. Honour was again paid to
the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of Racine and
La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the
Convention was not only as much out of date as the language of
Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind
with images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the
guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy, his
conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had
become as odious as the cant of the Puritans was in England after the
Restoration.
Bonaparte, who had never loved the men of the Reign of Terror, had now
ceased to fear them. He was all-powerful and at the height of glory;
they were weak and universally abhorred. He was a sovereign; and it
is probable that he already meditated a matrimonial alliance with
sovereigns. He was naturally unwilling, in his new position, to hold
any intercourse with the worst class of Jacobins. Had Barere's literary
assistance been important to the government, personal aversion might
have yielded to considerations of policy; but there was no motive for
keeping terms with a worthless man who had also proved a worthless
writer. Bonaparte, therefore, gave loose to his feelings. Barere was not
gently dropped, not sent into an honourable retirement, but spurned
and scourged away like a troublesome dog. He had been in the habit of
sending six copies of his journal on fine paper daily to the Tuileries.
Instead of receiving the thanks and praises which he expected, he was
drily told that the great man had ordered five copies to be sent back.
Still he toiled on; still he cherished a hope that at last Napoleon
would relent, and that at last some share in the honours of the state
would reward so much assiduity and so much obsequiousness. He was
bitterly undeceived. Under the Imperial constitution the electoral
colleges of the departments did not possess the right of choosing
senators or deputies, but merely that of presenting candidates. From
among these candidates the emperor named members of the senate, and the
senate named members of the legislative body. The inhabitants of the
Upper Pyrenees were still strangely partial to Barere. In the year 1805,
they were disposed to present him as a candidate for the senate. On this
Napoleon expressed the highest displeasure; and the president of the
electoral college was directed to tell the voters, in plain terms, that
such a choice would be disgraceful to the department. All thought of
naming Barere a candidate for the senate was consequently dropped.
But the people of Argeles ventured to name him a candidate for the
legislative body. That body was altogether destitute of weight and
dignity; it was not permitted to debate; its only function was to vote
in silence for whatever the government proposed. It is not easy to
understand how any man who had sat in free and powerful deliberative
assemblies could condescend to bear a part in such a mummery. Barere,
however, was desirous of a place even in this mock legislature; and a
place even in this mock legislature was refused to him. In the whole
senate he had not a single vote.
Such treatment was sufficient, it might have been thought, to move the
most abject of mankind to resentment. Still, however, Barere cringed and
fawned on. His letters came weekly to the Tuileries till the year
1807. At length, while he was actually writing the two hundred and
twenty-third of the series, a note was put into his hands. It was from
Duroc, and was much more perspicuous than polite. Barere was requested
to send no more of his Reports to the palace, as the Emperor was too
busy to read them.
Contempt, says the Indian proverb, pierces even the shell of the
tortoise; and the contempt of the Court was felt to the quick even by
the callous heart of Barere. He had humbled himself to the dust; and he
had humbled himself in vain. Having been eminent among the rulers of
a great and victorious state, he had stooped to serve a master in the
vilest capacities; and he had been told that, even in those capacities,
he was not worthy of the pittance which had been disdainfully flung to
him. He was now degraded below the level even of the hirelings whom the
government employed in the most infamous offices. He stood idle in
the market-place, not because he thought any office too infamous, but
because none would hire him.
Yet he had reason to think himself fortunate; for, had all that
is avowed in these Memoirs been known, he would have received very
different tokens of the Imperial displeasure. We learn from himself
that, while publishing daily columns of flattery on Bonaparte, and while
carrying weekly budgets of calumny to the Tuileries, he was in close
connection with the agents whom the Emperor Alexander, then by no means
favourably disposed towards France, employed to watch all that passed at
Paris; was permitted to read their secret despatches; was consulted by
them as to the temper of the public mind and the character of Napoleon;
and did his best to persuade them that the government was in a tottering
condition, and that the new sovereign was not, as the world supposed,
a great statesman and soldier. Next, Barere, still the flatterer and
talebearer of the Imperial Court, connected himself in the same manner
with the Spanish envoy. He owns that with that envoy he had relations
which he took the greatest pains to conceal from his own government;
that they met twice a day; and that their conversation chiefly turned
on the vices of Napoleon; on his designs against Spain, and on the best
mode of rendering those designs abortive. In truth, Barere's baseness
was unfathomable. In the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower deeps.
