No More Learning

" The national thunder must crush the house of every trader
in the town. When Camille Desmoulins, long distinguished among the
republicans by zeal and ability, dared to raise his eloquent voice
against the Reign of Terror, and to point out the close analogy between
the government which then oppressed France and the government of the
worst of the Caesars, Barere rose to complain of the weak compassion
which tried to revive the hopes of the aristocracy. "Whoever," he said,
"is nobly born is a man to be suspected. Every priest, every frequenter
of the old court, every lawyer, every banker, is a man to be suspected.
Every person who grumbles at the course which the Revolution takes is a
man to be suspected. There are whole castes already tried and condemned.
There are callings which carry their doom with them. There are relations
of blood which the law regards with an evil eye. Republicans of
France! " yelled the renegade Girondist, the old enemy of the
Mountain--"Republicans of France! the Brissotines led you by gentle
means to slavery. The Mountain leads you by strong measures to freedom.
Oh! who can count the evils which a false compassion may produce? "
When the friends of Danton mustered courage to express a wish that the
Convention would at least hear him in his own defence before it sent him
to certain death, the voice of Barere was the loudest in opposition to
their prayer. When the crimes of Lebon, one of the worst, if not the
very worst, of the viceregents of the Committee of Public Safety, had so
maddened the people of the Department of the North that they resorted to
the desperate expedient of imploring the protection of the Convention,
Barere pleaded the cause of the accused tyrant, and threatened the
petitioners with the utmost vengeance of the government. "These
charges," he said, "have been suggested by wily aristocrats. The man who
crushes the enemies of the people, though he may be hurried by his
zeal into some excesses, can never be a proper object of censure. The
proceedings of Lebon may have been a little harsh as to form. " One of
the small irregularities thus gently censured was this: Lebon kept a
wretched man a quarter of an hour under the knife of the guillotine,
in order to torment him, by reading to him, before he was despatched,
a letter, the contents of which were supposed to be such as would
aggravate even the bitterness of death. "But what," proceeded Barere,
"is not permitted to the hatred of a republican against aristocracy? How
many generous sentiments atone for what may perhaps seem acrimonious in
the prosecution of public enemies? Revolutionary measures are always
to be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is not
lawful to lift. "

After this, it would be idle to dwell on facts which would indeed,
of themselves, suffice to render a name infamous, but which make no
perceptible addition to the great infamy of Barere. It would be idle,
for example, to relate how he, a man of letters, a member of an Academy
of Inscriptions, was foremost in that war against learning, art, and
history which disgraced the Jacobin government; how he recommended a
general conflagration of libraries; how he proclaimed that all records
of events anterior to the Revolution ought to be destroyed; how he laid
waste the Abbey of St Denis, pulled down monuments consecrated by the
veneration of ages, and scattered on the wind the dust of ancient kings.
He was, in truth, seldom so well employed as when he turned for a moment
from making war on the living to make war on the dead.

Equally idle would it be to dilate on his sensual excesses. That in
Barere as in the whole breed of Neros, Caligulas, and Domitians whom he
resembled, voluptuousness was mingled with cruelty; that he withdrew,
twice in every decade, from the work of blood, to the smiling gardens of
Clichy, and there forgot public cares in the madness of wine and in the
arms of courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does
not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes that
Barere's dissipation was not carried to such a point as to interfere
with his industry. Nothing can be more true. Barere was by no means so
much addicted to debauchery as to neglect the work of murder. It was his
boast that, even during his hours of recreation, he cut out work for the
Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that his exertions
would hurt his health, he gaily answered that he was less busy than they
thought. "The guillotine," he said, "does all; the guillotine governs. "
For ourselves, we are much more disposed to look indulgently on
the pleasures which he allowed to himself than on the pain which he
inflicted on his neighbours.

"Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset
Tempora saevitiae, claras quibus abstulit urbi
Illustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo. "

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a
blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr Fox. But
the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barere.

And now Barere had become a really cruel man. It was from mere
pusillanimity that he had perpetrated his first great crimes. But the
whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of others
is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily acquire,
and which, when once acquired, is as strong as any of the propensities
with which we are born. A very few months had sufficed to bring this man
into a state of mind in which images of despair, wailing, and death had
an exhilarating effect on him, and inspired him as wine and love inspire
men of free and joyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily
freight of victims, ancient men and lads, and fair young girls, the
binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the little
national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood beneath
the scaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the panier--these things
were to him what Lalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace, what
Rosette and a bottle of iced champagne are to De Beranger. As soon as
he began to speak of slaughter his heart seemed to be enlarged, and
his fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades.
Robespierre, Saint Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect of
earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who made a toil of a
pleasure. Cruelty was no such melancholy business, to be gone about
with an austere brow and a whining tone; it was a recreation, fitly
accompanied by singing and laughing. In truth, Robespierre and Barere
might be well compared to the two renowned hangmen of Louis the
Eleventh. They were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havoc. But,
while they murdered, one of them frowned and canted, the other grinned
and joked. For our own part, we prefer Jean qui pleure to Jean qui rit.

In the midst of the funeral gloom which overhung Paris, a gaiety
stranger and more ghastly than the horrors of the prison and the
scaffold distinguished the dwelling of Barere. Every morning a crowd of
suitors assembled to implore his protection. He came forth in his rich
dressing-gown, went round the antechamber, dispensed smiles and promises
among the obsequious crowd, addressed himself with peculiar animation to
every handsome woman who appeared in the circle, and complimented her in
the florid style of Gascony on the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of
her eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his suppliants he
dismissed them, and flung all their memorials unread into the fire.
This was the best way, he conceived, to prevent arrears of business from
accumulating. Here he was only an imitator. Cardinal Dubois had been in
the habit of clearing his table of papers in the same way. Nor was this
the only point in which we could point out a resemblance between the
worst statesman of the monarchy and the worst statesman of the republic.

Of Barere's peculiar vein of pleasantry a notion may be formed from
an anecdote which one of his intimate associates, a juror of the
revolutionary tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a conspicuous
part in the orgies of Clichy implored Barere to use his power against
a head-dress which did not suit her style of face, and which a rival
beauty was trying to bring into fashion. One of the magistrates of the
capital was summoned and received the necessary orders. Aristocracy,
Barere said, was again rearing its front. These new wigs were
counter-revolutionary. He had reason to know that they were made out of
the long fair hair of handsome aristocrats who had died by the national
chopper. Every lady who adorned herself with the relics of criminals
might justly be suspected of incivism. This ridiculous lie imposed on
the authorities of Paris. Female citizens were solemnly warned
against the obnoxious ringlets, and were left to choose between their
head-dresses and their heads. Barere's delight at the success of this
facetious fiction was quite extravagant: he could not tell the story
without going into such convulsions of laughter as made his hearers hope
that he was about to choke. There was something peculiarly tickling and
exhilarating to his mind in this grotesque combination of the frivolous
with the horrible, of false locks and curling-irons with spouting
arteries and reeking hatchets.

But, though Barere succeeded in earning the honourable nicknames of the
Witling of Terror, and the Anacreon of the Guillotine, there was one
place where it was long remembered to his disadvantage that he had, for
a time, talked the language of humanity and moderation. That place was
the Jacobin club. Even after he had borne the chief part in the massacre
of the Girondists, in the murder of the Queen, in the destruction of
Lyons, he durst not show himself within that sacred precinct. At one
meeting of the society, a member complained that the committee to which
the supreme direction of affairs was entrusted, after all the changes
which had been made, still contained one man who was not trustworthy.
Robespierre, whose influence over the Jacobins was boundless, undertook
the defence of his colleague, owned there was some ground for what
had been said, but spoke highly of Barere's industry and aptitude for
business. This seasonable interposition silenced the accuser; but it was
long before the neophyte could venture to appear at the club.

At length a masterpiece of wickedness, unique, we think, even among
Barere's great achievements, obtained his full pardon even from that
rigid conclave. The insupportable tyranny of the Committee of Public
Safety had at length brought the minds of men, and even of women, into
a fierce and hard temper, which defied or welcomed death. The life which
might be any morning taken away, in consequence of the whisper of a
private enemy, seemed of little value. It was something to die after
smiting one of the oppressors; it was something to bequeath to
the surviving tyrants a terror not inferior to that which they had
themselves inspired. Human nature, hunted and worried to the utmost,
now turned furiously to bay. Fouquier Tinville was afraid to walk
the streets; a pistol was snapped at Collot D'Herbois; a young girl,
animated apparently by the spirit of Charlotte Corday, attempted
to obtain an interview with Robespierre. Suspicions arose; she was
searched; and two knives were found about her. She was questioned, and
spoke of the Jacobin domination with resolute scorn and aversion. It is
unnecessary to say that she was sent to the guillotine. Barere declared
from the tribune that the cause of these attempts was evident. Pitt and
his guineas had done the whole. The English Government had organised a
vast system of murder, had armed the hand of Charlotte Corday, and
had now, by similar means, attacked two of the most eminent friends of
liberty in France. It is needless to say that these imputations were,
not only false, but destitute of all show of truth. Nay, they were
demonstrably absurd: for the assassins to whom Barere referred rushed
on certain death, a sure proof that they were not hirelings. The whole
wealth of England would not have bribed any sane person to do what
Charlotte Corday did. But, when we consider her as an enthusiast, her
conduct is perfectly natural. Even those French writers who are childish
enough to believe that the English Government contrived the infernal
machine and strangled the Emperor Paul have fully acquitted Mr Pitt of
all share in the death of Marat and in the attempt on Robespierre.
Yet on calumnies so futile as those which we have mentioned did Barere
ground a motion at which all Christendom stood aghast. He proposed a
decree that no quarter should be given to any English or Hanoverian
soldier. (M. Hippolyte Carnot does his best to excuse this decree. His
abuse of England is merely laughable. England has managed to deal with
enemies of a very different sort from either himself or his hero. One
disgraceful blunder, however, we think it right to notice. M. Hippolyte
Carnot asserts that a motion similar to that of Barere was made in
the English Parliament by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This assertion is
false. We defy M. Hippolyte Carnot to state the date and terms of
the motion of which he speaks. We do not accuse him of intentional
misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him of extreme ignorance
and temerity. Our readers will be amused to learn on what authority he
has ventured to publish such a fable. He quotes, not the journals of
the Lords, not the Parliamentary Debates, but a ranting message of
the Executive Directory to the Five Hundred, a message, too, the whole
meaning of which he has utterly misunderstood. ) His Carmagnole was
worthy of the proposition with which it concluded. "That one Englishman
should be spared, that for the slaves of George, for the human machines
of York, the vocabulary of our armies should contain such a word as
generosity, this is what the National Convention cannot endure. War
to the death against every English soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk,
quarter had been refused to them when they asked it on their knees,
if our troops had exterminated them all, instead of suffering them to
infest our fortresses by their presence, the English government would
not have renewed its attack on our frontiers this year. It is only the
dead man who never comes back. What is this moral pestilence which has
introduced into our armies false ideas of humanity? That the English
were to be treated with indulgence was the philanthropic notion of the
Brissotines; it was the patriotic practice of Dumourier. But humanity
consists in exterminating our enemies. No mercy to the execrable
Englishman. Such are the sentiments of the true Frenchman; for he
knows that he belongs to a nation revolutionary as nature, powerful
as freedom, ardent as the saltpetre which she has just torn from
the entrails of the earth. Soldiers of liberty, when victory places
Englishmen at your mercy, strike! None of them must return to the
servile soil of Great Britain; none must pollute the free soil of
France. "

The Convention, thoroughly tamed and silenced, acquiesced in Barere's
motion without debate. And now at last the doors of the Jacobin Club
were thrown open to the disciple who had surpassed his masters. He was
admitted a member by acclamation, and was soon selected to preside.

For a time he was not without hope that his decree would be carried
into full effect. Intelligence arrived from the seat of war of a sharp
contest between some French and English troops, in which the Republicans
had the advantage, and in which no prisoners had been made. Such
things happen occasionally in all wars. Barere, however, attributed
the ferocity of this combat to his darling decree, and entertained the
Convention with another Carmagnole.

"The Republicans," he said, "saw a division in red uniform at a
distance. The red-coats are attacked with the bayonet. Not one of
them escapes the blows of the Republicans. All the red-coats have been
killed. No mercy, no indulgence, has been shown towards the villains.
Not an Englishman whom the Republicans could reach is now living. How
many prisoners should you guess that we have made? One single prisoner
is the result of this great day. "

And now this bad man's craving for blood had become insatiable. The more
he quaffed, the more he thirsted. He had begun with the English;
but soon he came down with a proposition for new massacres. "All the
troops," he said, "of the coalesced tyrants in garrison at Conde,
Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, ought to be put to the sword
unless they surrender at discretion in twenty-four hours. The English,
of course, will be admitted to no capitulation whatever. With the
English we have no treaty but death. As to the rest, surrender at
discretion in twenty-four hours, or death, these are our conditions.
If the slaves resist, let them feel the edge of the sword. " And then he
waxed facetious. "On these terms the Republic is willing to give them a
lesson in the art of war. " At that jest, some hearers, worthy of such
a speaker, set up a laugh. Then he became serious again. "Let the enemy
perish," he cried, "I have already said it from this tribune. It is only
the dead man who never comes back. Kings will not conspire against us in
the grave. Armies will not fight against us when they are annihilated.
Let our war with them be a war of extermination. What pity is due to
slaves whom the Emperor leads to war under the cane; whom the King of
Prussia beats to the shambles with the flat of the sword; and whom the
Duke of York makes drunk with rum and gin? " And at the rum and gin the
Mountain and the galleries laughed again.

If Barere had been able to effect his purpose, it is difficult to
estimate the extent of the calamity which he would have brought on the
human race. No government, however averse to cruelty, could, in justice
to its own subjects, have given quarter to enemies who gave none.
Retaliation would have been, not merely justifiable, but a sacred duty.
It would have been necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every French
sailor whom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar reason to
dread the introduction of such a system. On the contrary, the operation
of Barere's new law of war would have been more unfavourable to his
countrymen than to ours; for we believe that, from the beginning to the
end of the war, there never was a time at which the number of French
prisoners in England was not greater than the number of English
prisoners in France; and so, we apprehend, it will be in all wars while
England retains her maritime superiority. Had the murderous decree of
the Convention been in force from 1794 to 1815, we are satisfied that,
for every Englishman slain by the French, at least three Frenchmen would
have been put to the sword by the English. It is, therefore, not as
Englishmen, but as members of the great society of mankind, that we
speak with indignation and horror of the change which Barere attempted
to introduce. The mere slaughter would have been the smallest part of
the evil. The butchering of a single unarmed man in cold blood, under an
act of the legislature, would have produced more evil than the carnage
of ten such fields as Albuera. Public law would have been subverted from
the foundations; national enmities would have been inflamed to a degree
of rage which happily it is not easy for us to conceive; cordial peace
would have been impossible. The moral character of the European nations
would have been rapidly and deeply corrupted; for in all countries those
men whose calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the defence of
the public weal enjoy high consideration, and are considered as the best
arbitrators on points of honour and manly bearing. With the standard of
morality established in the military profession the general standard
of morality must to a great extent sink or rise. It is, therefore, a
fortunate circumstance that, during a long course of years, respect for
the weak and clemency towards the vanquished have been considered as
qualities not less essential to the accomplished soldier than personal
courage. How long would this continue to be the case, if the slaying of
prisoners were a part of the daily duty of the warrior? What man of kind
and generous nature would, under such a system, willingly bear arms?
Who, that was compelled to bear arms, would long continue kind and
generous? And is it not certain that, if barbarity towards the helpless
became the characteristic of military men, the taint must rapidly spread
to civil and to domestic life, and must show itself in all the dealings
of the strong with the weak, of husbands with wives, of employers with
work men, of creditors with debtors?

But, thank God, Barere's decree was a mere dead letter. It was to
be executed by men very different from those who, in the interior of
France, were the instruments of the Committee of Public Safety, who
prated at Jacobin Clubs, and ran to Fouquier Tinville with charges of
incivism against women whom they could not seduce, and bankers from whom
they could not extort money. The warriors who, under Hoche, had guarded
the walls of Dunkirk, and who, under Kleber, had made good the defence
of the wood of Monceaux, shrank with horror from an office more
degrading than that of the hangman. "The Convention," said an officer to
his men, "has sent orders that all the English prisoners shall be shot. "
"We will not shoot them" answered a stout-hearted sergeant. "Send them
to the Convention. If the deputies take pleasure in killing a prisoner,
they may kill him themselves, and eat him too, like savages as
they are. " This was the sentiment of the whole army. Bonaparte, who
thoroughly understood war, who at Jaffa and elsewhere gave ample proof
that he was not unwilling to strain the laws of war to their utmost
rigour, and whose hatred of England amounted to a folly, always spoke of
Barere's decree with loathing, and boasted that the army had refused to
obey the Convention.

Such disobedience on the part of any other class of citizens would have
been instantly punished by wholesale massacre; but the Committee
of Public Safety was aware that the discipline which had tamed the
unwarlike population of the fields and cities might not answer in camps.
To fling people by scores out of a boat, and, when they catch hold of
it, to chop off their fingers with a hatchet, is undoubtedly a very
agreeable pastime for a thoroughbred Jacobin, when the sufferers are,
as at Nantes, old confessors, young girls, or women with child. But
such sport might prove a little dangerous if tried upon grim ranks of
grenadiers, marked with the scars of Hondschoote, and singed by the
smoke of Fleurus.

Barere, however, found some consolation. If he could not succeed in
murdering the English and the Hanoverians, he was amply indemnified by
a new and vast slaughter of his own countrymen and countrywomen. If the
defence which has been set up for the members of the Committee of Public
Safety had been well founded, if it had been true that they governed
with extreme severity only because the republic was in extreme peril,
it is clear that the severity would have diminished as the peril
diminished. But the fact is, that those cruelties for which the public
danger is made a plea became more and more enormous as the danger became
less and less, and reached the full height when there was no longer any
danger at all. In the autumn of 1793, there was undoubtedly reason to
apprehend that France might be unable to maintain the struggle against
the European coalition. The enemy was triumphant on the frontiers. More
than half the departments disowned the authority of the Convention. But
at that time eight or ten necks a day were thought an ample allowance
for the guillotine of the capital. In the summer of 1794, Bordeaux,
Toulon, Caen, Lyons, Marseilles, had submitted to the ascendency of
Paris. The French arms were victorious under the Pyrenees and on
the Sambre. Brussels had fallen. Prussia announced her intention of
withdrawing from the contest. The Republic, no longer content with
defending her own independence, was beginning to meditate conquest
beyond the Alps and the Rhine. She was now more formidable to her
neighbours than ever Louis the Fourteenth had been. And now the
Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was not content with forty, fifty,
sixty heads in a morning.
It was just after a series of victories, which
destroyed the whole force of the single argument which has been urged
in defence of the system of terror, that the Committee of Public Safety
resolved to infuse into that system an energy hitherto unknown. It was
proposed to reconstruct the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to collect in
the space of two pages the whole revolutionary jurisprudence. Lists of
twelve judges and fifty jurors were made out from among the fiercest
Jacobins. The substantive law was simply this, that whatever the
tribunal should think pernicious to the republic was a capital crime.
The law of evidence was simply this, that whatever satisfied the
jurors was sufficient proof. The law of procedure was of a piece with
everything else. There was to be an advocate against the prisoner, and
no advocate for him. It was expressly declared that, if the jurors were
in any manner convinced of the guilt of the prisoner, they might convict
him without hearing a single witness. The only punishment which the
court could inflict was death.

Robespierre proposed this decree. When he had read it, a murmur rose
from the Convention. The fear which had long restrained the deputies
from opposing the Committee was overcome by a stronger fear. Every
man felt the knife at his throat. "The decree," said one, "is of grave
importance. I move that it be printed and the debate be adjourned. If
such a measure were adopted without time for consideration, I would blow
my brains out at once. " The motion for adjournment was seconded. Then
Barere sprang up. "It is impossible," he said, "that there can be
any difference of opinion among us as to a law like this, a law so
favourable in all respects to patriots; a law which insures the speedy
punishment of conspirators. If there is to be an adjournment, I must
insist that it shall not be for more than three days. " The opposition
was overawed; the decree was passed; and, during the six weeks which
followed, the havoc was such as has never been known before.

And now the evil was beyond endurance. That timid majority which had
for a time supported the Girondists, and which had, after their
fall, contented itself with registering in silence the decrees of the
Committee of Public Safety, at length drew courage from despair. Leaders
of bold and firm character were not wanting, men such as Fouche and
Tallien, who, having been long conspicuous among the chiefs of the
Mountain, now found that their own lives, or lives still dearer to
them than their own, were in extreme peril. Nor could it be longer kept
secret that there was a schism in the despotic committee. On one side
were Robespierre, Saint Just, and Couthon; on the other, Collot and
Billaud. Barere leaned towards these last, but only leaned towards
them. As was ever his fashion when a great crisis was at hand, he
fawned alternately on both parties, struck alternately at both, and held
himself in readiness to chant the praises or to sign the death-warrant
of either. In any event his Carmagnole was ready. The tree of liberty,
the blood of traitors, the dagger of Brutus, the guineas of perfidious
Albion, would do equally well for Billaud and for Robespierre.

The first attack which was made on Robespierre was indirect. An old
woman named Catherine Theot, half maniac, half impostor, was protected
by him, and exercised a strange influence over his mind; for he was
naturally prone to superstition, and, having abjured the faith in which
he had been brought up, was looking about for something to believe.
Barere drew up a report against Catherine, which contained many
facetious conceits, and ended, as might be expected, with a motion
for sending her and some other wretched creatures of both sexes to
the Revolutionary Tribunal, or, in other words, to death. This report,
however, he did not dare to read to the Convention himself. Another
member, less timid, was induced to farther the cruel buffoonery; and the
real author enjoyed in security the dismay and vexation of Robespierre.

Barere now thought that he had done enough on one side, and that it was
time to make his peace with the other. On the seventh of Thermidor,
he pronounced in the Convention a panegyric on Robespierre. "That
representative of the people," he said, "enjoys a reputation for
patriotism, earned by five years of exertion, and by unalterable
fidelity to the principles of independence and liberty. " 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.