Page images
PDF
EPUB

governors; after which, and not before, as the dates show, however frequent and false the contrary assertion may be and has been, England declared war against France; to pass by the fact that the invasion was thus justified upon the first principles of international jurisprudence. What is the value of the defence thus set up? We cannot answer better than in the language of a French historian, of a far graver and soberer character than the author upon whom we are commenting :

"Dire que la convention a bien fait ce qu'elle a fait, parce qu'elle a fait pour sauver la Révolution, ou le principe révolutionnaire, d'une ruine imminente, c'est une erreur enorme et barbare! C'est immoler les droits de la justice et de l'humanité à une divinité inconnue, qu'on appelle révolution, à laquelle il faut tout immoler,-la France, la vie des Francais, leurs richesses, leur industrie, leur gloire,-parce qu'il faut sauver la révolution! On ne défend que ce qu'on possède or je ne sache pas que la liberté, dont la France jouissait sous la convention valût la peine d'être défendue. . . . Elle défendit la France à peu près comme le tigre défend l'entrée du répaire qui cache sa proie.-Desmarais, Etudes crit. et hist. de la Revol. 230. 234.

P.

Moreover, it may not unreasonably be asked of M. De Lamartine, why he considers Dumouriez more a traitor than La Fayette. True it is, that, when the latter preferred the alternative of relying upon the generosity of the enemy, to obeying the rulers, or trusting to the justice of the revolutionary monster which thirsted for his blood at Paris, he was, by an act which we are not called upon to defend, consigned to the prison of Olmutz. But he, not less than Dumouriez, would, according to our author, have restored by force of arms a limited monarchy to France, and he, not less than Dumouriez, deserted the army of which he was in command. Here let us observe that we are obliged to M. De Lamartine for confirming our previous opinion of this pinchbeck patriot. His vanity, his mediocrity of intellect, his infirmity of purpose, his ignorance of the principles of all government, civil or military, his mean love of mob popularity, and his disloyalty to his sovereign, may be gathered as fully from the pages before us, as from those of preceding histories of the same time.

Who, then, it may be asked, is the hero of this epic which we are criticising? The answer is not, perhaps, certain; but we think that, on the whole, M. De Lamartine intended the pedestal for Robespierre. His acts are not, indeed, expressly vindicated; his conduct is not directly justified; the massacres of the bloodiest despotism ever known are not defended upon the plea of necessity, to attain the end of which M. De Lamartine approves

viz. a Republic. But the same ingenuity exerted in other parts of the work to exaggerate characters into monsters of virtue and vice, is displayed in this instance, to extenuate the conduct of this hateful wretch. His incorruptibility is paraded: the sobriety of his habits and dress is carefully pointed out: his fanaticism, as it is called, is described as sincere. Acts and thoughts of confession wholly fabulous and unsupported by evidence are ascribed to him, and he is represented as having really at heart one holy object,the regeneration of society.

This is, indeed, horrible. We cannot conceive a more fearful and ominous portent of the social and moral condition of a people, than the fact, that such an account should find many admiring readers. We have seen, since the publication of this work, how cardinal an article the worship of Robespierre is in the creed of these Red Republicans, whom M. De Lamartine sincerely, we doubt not, disavows. It is not merely that, before such a doctrine can find disciples, their readers must have been degraded and led captive by the pettiest sophistry, but their hearts must have been emptied, not only of all true religious feeling, but of all moral sensibility, generosity, courage, sympathy; all the qualities that ennobled and inspired the virtuous heathen, must have as much lost their charm as the supernatural and divine graces of the Christian, for those who deliberately, and, on a full knowledge of the facts, hold up to admiration, or to any feeling akin to it, the character of Robespierre. It reminds us of nothing so much as of the morbid passion to obtain interviews with, and preserve relics of, atrocious criminals, which has more than once disgraced not uneducated persons in England.

Let us for a moment examine the grounds of this perverted and shocking opinion; and the admirers of Robespierre cannot complain if the object of their adoration is tried by the test which he himself proposed as the only true touchstone of character. "Ce n'est par aux phrases, mais à la conduite et aux faits qu'il faut juger les hommes," was his constant exclamation.

Let us apply the test: how many bloody murders, now defended by no party but that of the Red Republic, if, indeed, by them, were committed, with scarcely the pretext of a judicial form, during the period of his domination? Actually more than can be now enumerated. What was the system of terrorism, the instrument invented, chosen, and tried by him for the purpose of purging the Republic? a system, by which every thing and person not in accordance with the virtues and inflexible uprightness of Robespierre was to be annihilated; and every person who had possessed such title, reputation, or property under the monarchy, cut off by the edge of the guillotine, in order that France might

come forth young, virtuous, and invincible, after undergoing so righteous a lustration.

This was his deliberate system of government. This was the end which his pious and philosophical mind had conceived in the virtuous solitude of the humble roof, under which he lodged in Paris, and from which end he never swerved. The necessary means, his admirers say, were really disagreeable to him; but his patriotism was too sincere and firm to be weakened by a fastidiousness which might have deterred men of a less heroic mould. He saw with the calm eye of that virtuous-should we not say pious?-philosophy which afterwards restored the worship of a Supreme Being to the people who, in the excess of their reason, had recently done homage to a half-robed harlot with the same calm eye of patriotism did he see from fifty to one hundred and fifty victims every day offered upon Liberty's chosen altar-the guillotine. We almost see, such is the vivid power of description in these pages of our author, the various classes of criminals hurried along to their doom. Now pass before our eyes the troop of girls, the eldest of whom has not reached the age of eighteen, expiating the guilt of having danced with Prussian soldiers in their native town of Verdun: the system of Robespierre, not Robespierre (as his friends say), required that they should all perish under the guillotine. Another page sets before us in unfading colours (we are not careful about the exact historical order of these executions during the reign of terror) such miscreants as Malesherbes and Barnave, on their way to the death of felons. Now every living nun of every age is brought from the Abbey of Montmartre, and placed under the edge of that patriotic instrument (toasted, by the way, the other day in Paris, at a Red Republican dinner): now a batch of Girondins: now Danton, once the coadjutor of this great man: now fortyfive magistrates: now twenty-seven merchants: it would be illiberal to mention the death of the royal family,—or even that of the sister of the queen, whose spirit fled, if ever spirit did, "Santa del suo patir," to heaven. to heaven. The sickening atrocities-we beg pardon, the necessary sacrifices to patriotism-which took place under Fouché at Lyons, Lebon at Arras, Carrier at Nantes, cannot be said to have passed under the physical eye of Robespierre; and he is said to have disapproved of them in private.

M. De Lamartine tells us, that after Robespierre had proclaimed to the people that there was a Supreme Being, they rejoiced; and that they were still more rejoiced at certain laws announced soon afterwards in the Convention, in which the state undertook those easy and practicable duties, her capacity to

execute which is so fully warranted by experience ancient and modern, by analogy, by philosophy, by revelation, and which he expresses by these among other sentences:

"Elle (l'état) réalisa en fraternité pratique la fraternité théorique de son principe. . . . . Elle déclara que la mendicité était une accusation contre l'égoïsme de la propriété, et contre l'imprévoyance de l'état. Elle honora dans ses décrets le travail. Elle accueillit l'enfance. Elle éleva la jeunesse. Elle nourrit la vieillesse. Elle abolit misère."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The people were full of joy, naturally enough, at the Paradise thus seen through the perspective of the guillotine; but still, while that instrument existed, they were not quite at their ease; "L'échafaud (says our author quite gravely) seul contrastait avec ces aspirations." Robespierre, we are told, secretly wished to destroy it. Such being his secret wish, he took an open course, which appears to us to combine all that is most wicked and most hateful in one act-hypocrisy, cowardice, and cruelty. He proposed ("inopinément" (!)) to the Convention, in concert with Couthon, the most sanguinary law (projet Draconien) which had yet been enacted; its object was to make suspicion a ground for capital punishment.

"Il n'y avait plus d'innocence dans la nation, plus d'inviolabilité dans les membres du gouvernement; c'était l'omnipotence des jugements et des pénalités, la dictature non d'un homme, mais de l'échafaud."tom. viii. 1. 58. c. 13.

It could not be better described. Divine justice, outraged so long, caused the wretch who enacted the decree to be the artificer of his own death; but before this blessed day numbers of innocent persons were sacrificed. Sixty condemned by one report, including two, a father and son, "coupables de compassion et de décence envers les princesses captives," and not including two afterwards added (after an attempt had been made by Ladmiral to assassinate Collet-d'-Herbois) to the bloody list, because "coupables tous deux de n'avoir pas fait éclater assez de joie quand l'assassin avait été arrété." O for a Tacitus instead of a De Lamartine to record such acts! what lessons in the refinement of diabolical cruelty might the dull sense of a Nero have learnt from the ingenuity of a French democracy?

But these were not Robespierre's acts: no, he only invented the machine, and was the colleague of the men who set it in motion. What was this lowest of mankind's conduct, when his friend, the beautiful Madame de Sainte Amaranthe, who plays a strange and mysterious part in a little drama of blasphemy, which was pri

vately acted for the benefit of Robespierre, in the last days of terror, was condemned, in order to wound his feelings, to the guillotine!

"Robespierre en écoutant les noms de Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe et de sa famille s'était tu. Il craignait de paraître protéger des contrerévolutionnaires. Il savait bien que c'était son nom qu'on frappait, mais il retirait timidement ce nom pour ne pas paraître frappé luimême situation déplorable des hommes qui prennent la popularité au lieu de la conscience pour arbitre de leur politique! Ils se couvrent du corps des victimes innocentes, au lieu de se couvrir de leur intrépidité." -tom. viii. c. xi. l. 59.

Here we leave this hero of many now alive in France, with the admission that he was not a man constitutionally inclined, like Danton, to gross sensuality, or guilty of avarice: tyranny over his fellow-creature was the devouring lust of his heart.

Here we leave him to his admirers, expressing our cordial concurrence in the opinion of a French writer, not our author.

"Robespierre n'a jamais voulu anéantir la République, mais il la couvrait de crimes et de sang, et il croyait en préparer la force et les prospérités: ce n'était pas un ambitieux tyran, c'était un monstre.”Garat, Buchez et R. 18. 335.

In conclusion, we will briefly express our opinion upon the two cardinal faults in the work before us; passing by the obvious blemishes of the absence of all marginal notes, of all references to authorities (not covered, in our estimation, by the excuse given in the preface, that the author is in possession of them, and can produce them if attacked); passing by also the graver errors of the novelist tone and character which is too often substituted for the gravity and sobriety of history, and many minor inaccuracies; passing by these, we must lift up our voice against the religious and the political doctrines insinuated throughout its pages. Both are as shallow and as false as ever were promulgated, and as ever were greedily imbibed by people whose aggregate character is that of extreme and unthinking susceptibility of any new impression which appears before them in an attractive shape. The basis of the political doctrine is, that government is matter of will, and not of reason and convention; that the mob told by the head, not citizens selected for worth and the presumptions of worth, are intended by nature, that is, by God, to choose their governors and their form of government; that democracy and liberty are synonymous terms. The gross logical fallacy of such a doctrine it would be an insult to our readers to expose: the practical effects of it cannot receive a more luminous commentary than they have already obtained from M. De Lamartine's own

« PreviousContinue »