ATTACK ON ROLAND

175

dreamt that our mighty tree of liberty, which binds together the foundations of the Republic, with its roots, would be overthrown. From that hour he could not restrain his rancour against Paris, Paris, whose existence is inseparable from that of the Republic; for Paris belongs to all the Departments. Paris is the focus of all enlightenment, and every Department contributes to it a ray. This is Roland's great error, his great blunder, his great fault, that out of rancour he has helped to stir up the Departments against Paris. I myself will remind him of what he has used against me as an accusation. When he spoke of a Departmental Guard to me I said, 'It is repugnant to all principle, but it is a foregone conclusion, and you will carry it. What then? No sooner has it taken up its abode in Paris than it will take the tone of the people, for the people's sole passion is for liberty.' Well, citizens, do you doubt that now? Are not the Fédérés of the Departments and the citizens of Paris of one mind? No man doubts it, not even you, Roland's friends. Many citizens were deluded, and they see it now; but who deluded them? I say with sorrow that it was Roland. For proof you have only to turn to one of your committees. It was Roland who circulated pamphlets based on the muddy idea in which his own mind wallowed that Paris wished to domineer over France..

He went on to disapprove of domiciliary visits, but to suggest the reconstitution of the Committee of General Security, with extended powers, and, on suspicion of conspiracy, with the right of entry to any house should two-thirds of the Committee think it expedient, a characteristically sensible modification of Bréard's proposition. Then turning to what he said were higher matters, he adjured all parties

to devote their energies to prosecution of the war with Europe instead of the war among themselves. It must be waged ungrudgingly, unparsimoniously.

Il

faut, pour économiser le sang des hommes, leurs sueurs. The soldiers were bravest of the brave. Tell them to go to Vienna or drop on the, road, and their answer would be, Vienna or death.' But the army must be reorganised; nor ought they to rely on the genius of any one man. The nation was greater than they were. The genius of the people was the people itself. All that was wanted was wisdom in its legislators and a light hand on the reins of a noble nation.

Lastly he spoke of Pache-circumspectly, for Pache had friends among his own friends, but yet uncompromisingly, as a man without initiative and that eagle eye necessary to one in so terribly onerous a post as Minister of War. And he proposed that some one else should divide his functions.

Dumouriez, if Lamartine may be believed, had advised the Girondins to come to terms with Danton. Surely some of them, even though only for a moment, must have repented of not taking his advice as they listened to this speech, a damning indictment if it was sincere and a masterpiece of hypocrisy if it was not.

CHAPTER XVI

1793-continued

SECOND MISSION TO BELGIUM-DEATH OF WIFE-OUTLOOK ABROAD

SPEECHES ON MARCH 8, 10, AND 11 RESPECT FOR
PROPERTY DEBTORS RIOTS IN PARIS DANTON DEFENDS
DEPRECATES FACTION
ΤΟ STRENGTHEN

DUMOURIEZ AND

TRIBUNAL PROPOSAL

-

DANTON ABJURES OFFICE

THE

REVOLUTIONARY
EXECUTIVE-

DURING the whole of February, and till March 5, Danton was absent in Belgium. He had been engaged at first in superintending the convocation of the primary Assemblies, but when news of the reverses at Maestricht and Liège arrived he and his colleagues issued orders for reinforcing the army by levies of the newly incorporated Belgians, and then, Lacroix and he having done all that was possible on the spot, hastened back to Paris.

It was a gloomy home-coming. His wife had died in February. The King's death, which it had been thought might obliterate factions, had in fact given them for the first time free play. On the other hand it had exasperated foreign Courts. All the objects of French diplomacy seemed to have miscarried. The attempts-persisted in to the verge of infatuation-to detach Prussia from Austria, to detach Austria from Prussia, to obtain the goodwill of Genoa at the expense of Sardinia, of Sardinia at the expense of Genoa, of England at the expense of Spain, had failed. So had the revolutionary propaganda essayed in Spanish towns.

N

Belgium and the Rhenish towns had been alienated by ill-usage. The friendship of Sweden and Turkey was more of a shadow than a substance. The second partition of Poland had been settled two days after the execution of Louis, and Prussia had promised Russia to make no separate peace with France. Dumouriez had been unable to cross the Meuse; Miranda had been checked at Maestricht. Liège was reoccupied by the Austrians. The armies were dispirited and disorganised, not yet having felt the effects of the decree for incorporating volunteers with regulars, destined afterwards to produce great results. France was at war with Austria, Prussia, England, Holland, Sardinia, and Spain. And just as what Lafayette might do was uppermost in men's minds at the beginning of the previous August, so now at the beginning of March the treason of the infinitely more dangerous soldier Dumouriez threatened to give the staggering Republic its mortal blow.

Now too, as in August, when men's hearts were failing them for fear, Danton remained undaunted, and for the second time infused his own spirit into the nation. Fondly attached to his wife, he was at first broken-hearted at her death, and is even said to have exhumed her body in order to see her face once more. But in the public cause he suppressed his private grief, and on March 8, 10, and 11 he made a succession of great speeches on the imminence of the danger and the spirit in which it should be met. Robespierre also spoke on the 8th and the 10th, and his speeches are an instructive contrast. In all misfortunes and reverses the great delator' can trace only one hand-the aristocrat's -and for remedy can suggest nothing but suspicion, inquisition, arrest. Patriotism with him is a detective's

DANTON AND DUMOURIEZ

179

vigilance, and to be victorious the army needs only to be better policed. Not that, like Marat, he suspected Dumouriez. Quant à Dumouriez,' he said, 'j'ai confiance à lui.' And he went on to give his reasons -the reasons for a constable's confidence in a ticket-ofleave man because the invasion of Holland was his own plan three months ago, because he is so closely bound to the success of our arms by his personal interests and his military reputation.'

Danton had his doubts of Dumouriez as well as Robespierre, but by instinct he expresses himself more nobly, and with a nobler inference.

With a general's genius Dumouriez unites the art of inspiring and cheering the soldier. We have heard the army even in the hour of defeat calling for him with loud cries. History will judge his talents, his passions, his faults. But one thing is certain-that his interest is in the splendour of the Republic. If we support him, if we send an army to aid him, he will soon make our enemies repent of their past successes.

He said this in the first of his speeches, after some letters from Dumouriez had been read in the Assembly. The necessity of reinforcing the army was its keynote.

Only danger could evoke the full energy of Frenchmen. Recruiting was well enough, but what was wanted was volunteers, the volunteers of 1792, the volunteers of Paris. Paris must rekindle the blaze she lighted then, and do it at once, without a moment's delay. Commissioners must visit every Section that very night ('ce soir '), and call out its members to enlist, to fly to the defence of Belgium, in redemption of liberty and their oaths to their country. It was not the generals but themselves who were to blame in having promised reinforcements never sent. In 1792 the enemy had begun by victories. But those victories had roused the nation.