Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 | Page 5

time of the Revolution, the three men most distinguished as Montagnards and Jacobins were Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. Mirabeau, the orator of the Revolution, had already disappeared, being so fortunate as to die naturally, before the practice of mutual guillotining was established. After him, Vergniaud, the leader of the Girondists, was perhaps the most effective speaker; and till his fall, he possessed a commanding influence in the Convention. Danton was likewise a speaker of vast power, and from his towering figure, he seemed like a giant among pigmies. Marat might be termed the representative of the kennel. He was a low demagogue, flaunting in rags, dirty, and venomous: he was always calling out for more blood, as if the grand desideratum was the annihilation of mankind. Among the extreme men, Robespierre, by his eloquence, his artifice, and his bold counsels, contrived to maintain his position. This was no easy matter, for it was necessary to remain firm and unfaltering in every emergency. He, like the others at the helm of affairs, was constantly impelled forward by the clubs, but more so by the incessant clamours of the mob. At the H?tel de Ville sat the Commune, a crew of blood-thirsty villains, headed by Hebert; and this miscreant, with his armed sections, accompanied by paid female furies, beset the Convention, and carried measures of severity by sheer intimidation. Let it further be remembered that, in 1793, France was kept in apprehension of invasion by the Allies under the Duke of Brunswick, and the army of emigrant noblesse under the command of Cond��. The hovering of these forces on the frontiers, and their occasional successes, produced a constant alarm of counter-revolution, which was believed to be instigated by secret intriguers in the very heart of the Convention. It was alleged by Robespierre in his greatest orations, that the safety of the Republic depended on keeping up a wholesome state of terror; and that all who, in the slightest degree, leaned towards clemency, sanctioned the work of intriguers, and ought, accordingly, to be proscribed. By such harangues--in the main, miserable sophistry--he acquired prodigious popularity, and was in fact irresistible.
Thus was legalised the Reign of Terror, which, founded in false reasoning and insane fears, we must, nevertheless, look back upon as a thing, at least to a certain extent, reconcilable with a sense of duty; inasmuch as even while signing warrants for transferring hundreds of people to the Revolutionary Tribunal--which was equivalent to sending them to the scaffold--Robespierre imagined that he was acting throughout under a clear, an imperious necessity: only ridding society of the elements that disturbed its purity and tranquillity. Stupendous hallucination! And did this fanatic really feel no pang of conscience? That will afterwards engage our consideration. Frequently, he was called on to proscribe and execute his most intimate friends; but it does not appear that any personal consideration ever stayed his proceedings. First, he swept away Royalists and aristocrats; next, he sacrificed the Girondists; last, he came to his companion-Jacobins. Accusing Danton and his friends of a tendency to moderation, he had the dexterity to get them proscribed and beheaded. When Danton was seized, he could hardly credit his senses: he who had long felt himself sure of being one day dictator by public acclamation, and to have been deceived by that dreamer, Robespierre, was most humiliating. But Robespierre would not dare to put him to death! Grave miscalculation! He was immolated like the rest; the crowd looking on with indifference. Along with him perished Camille Desmoulins, a young man of letters, and a Jacobin, but convicted of advocating clemency. Robespierre was one of Camille's private and most valued friends; he had been his instructor in politics, and had become one of the trustees under his marriage-settlement. Robespierre visited at the house of his _prot��g��_; chatted with the young and handsome Madame Desmoulins at her parties; and frequently dandled the little Horace Desmoulins on his knee, and let him play with his bunch of seals. Yet, because they were adherents of Danton, he sent husband and wife to the scaffold within a few weeks of each other! What eloquent and touching appeals were made to old recollections by the mother of Madame Desmoulins. Robespierre was reminded of little Horace, and of his duty as a family guardian. All would not do. His heart was marble; and so the wretched pair were guillotined. Camille's letter to his wife, the night before he was led to the scaffold, cannot be read without emotion. He died with a lock of her hair clasped convulsively in his hand.
Having thus cleared away to some extent all those who stood in the way of his views, Robespierre bethought himself of acting a new part in public affairs, calculated, as he thought, to dignify the Republic. Chaumette,