We have really no acceptable explanation of the ascendancy which the dictator finally obtained.Without influence in the National Assembly, he gradually became the master of the Convention and of the Jacobins.``When he reached the Committee of Public Safety he was already,'' said Billaud-Varennes, ``the most important person in France.''
``His history,'' writes Michelet, ``is prodigious, far more marvellous than that of Bonaparte.The threads, the wheels, the preparation of forces, are far less visible.It is an honest man, an austere but pious figure, of middling talents, that shoots up one morning, borne upward by I know not what cataclysm.
There is nothing like it in the Arabian Nights.And in a moment he goes higher than the throne.He is set upon the altar.
Astonishing story!''
Certainly circumstances helped him considerably.People turned to him as to the master of whom all felt the need.But then he was already there, and what we wish to discover is the cause of his rapid ascent.I would willingly suppose in him the existence of a species of personal fascination which escapes us to-day.
His successes with women might be quoted in support of this theory.On the days when he speaks ``the passages are choked with women...there are seven or eight hundred in the tribunes, and with what transports they applaud! At the Jacobins, when he speaks there are sobs and cries of emotion, and men stamp as though they would bring the hall down.'' A young widow, Mme.de Chalabre, possessed of sixteen hundred pounds a year, sends him burning love-letters and is eager to marry him.
We cannot seek in his character for the causes of his popularity.
A hypochondriac by temperament, of mediocre intelligence, incapable of grasping realities, confined to abstractions, crafty and dissimulating, his prevailing note was an excessive pride which increased until his last day.High priest of a new faith, he believed himself sent on earth by God to establish the reign of virtue.He received writings stating ``that he was the Messiah whom the Eternal Being had promised to reform the world.''
Full of literary pretensions, he laboriously polished his speeches.His profound jealousy of other orators or men of letters, such as Camille Desmoulins, caused their death.
``Those who were particularly the objects of the tyrant's rage,''
writes the author already cited, ``were the men of letters.With regard to them the jealousy of a colleague was mingled with the fury of the oppressor; for the hatred with which he persecuted them was caused less by their resistance to his despotism than by their talents, which eclipsed his.''
The contempt of the dictator for his colleagues was immense and almost unconcealed.Giving audience to Barras at the hour of his toilet, he finished shaving, spitting in the direction of his colleague as though he did not exist, and disdaining to reply to his questions.
He regarded the bourgeoisie and the deputies with the same hateful disdain.Only the multitude found grace in his eyes.
``When the sovereign people exercises its power,'' he said, ``we can only bow before it.In all it does all is virtue and truth, and no excess, error, or crime is possible.''
Robespierre suffered from the persecution mania.That he had others' heads cut off was not only because he had a mission as an apostle, but because he believed himself hemmed in by enemies and conspirators.``Great as was the cowardice of his colleagues where he was concerned,'' writes M.Sorel, ``the fear he had of them was still greater.''
His dictatorship, absolute during five months, is a striking example of the power of certain leaders.We can understand that a tyrant backed by an army can easily destroy whom he pleases, but that a single man should succeed in sending to death a large number of his equals is a thing that is not easily explained.
The power of Robespierre was so absolute that he was able to send to the Tribunal, and therefore to the scaffold, the most eminent deputies: Desmoulins, Hebert, Danton, and many another.The brilliant Girondists melted away before him.He attacked even the terrible Commune, guillotined its leaders, and replaced it by a new Commune obedient to his orders.
In order to rid himself more quickly of the men who displeased him he induced the Convention to enact the law of Prairial, which permitted the execution of mere suspects, and by means of which he had 1,373 heads cut off in Paris in forty-nine days.His colleagues, the victims of an insane terror, no longer slept at home; scarcely a hundred deputies were present at sessions.
David said: ``I do not believe twenty of us members of the Mountain will be left.''
It was his very excess of confidence in his own powers and in the cowardice of the Convention that lost Robespierre his life.
Having attempted to make them vote a measure which would permit deputies to be sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which meant the scaffold, without the authorisation of the Assembly, on an order from the governing Committee, several Montagnards conspired with some members of the Plain to overthrow him.
Tallien, knowing himself marked down for early execution, and having therefore nothing to lose, accused him loudly of tyranny.
Robespierre wished to defend himself by reading a speech which he had long had in hand, but he learned to his cost that although it is possible to destroy men in the name of logic it is not possible to lead an assembly by means of logic.The shouts of the conspirators drowned his voice; the cry ``Down with the tyrant!'' quickly repeated, thanks to mental contagion, by many of the members present, was enough to complete his downfall.
Without losing a moment the Assembly decreed his accusation.
The Commune having wished to save him, the Assembly outlawed him.
Struck by this magic formula, he was definitely lost.
