CHAPTER XVIII 1793-continued DANTON REBUTS GIRONDIN CHARGES-SPEECH OF LASOURCE-SCENE IN THE CONVENTION DANTON'S REJOINDER LEVASSEUR'S - DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE. DUMOURIEZ was summoned on March 30 to appear before the Assembly. A report proving his treason was laid before it on April 1. When it had been read Pénières, a Girondin member of the Committee of General Defence, said that on its being settled to suppress for the time the letter of Dumouriez Danton declared that if Dumouriez did not retract he would himself denounce him, but when he came back did not go either to the Assembly or the Committee. He now demanded why Danton had not kept his promise. The historian of the Terror has made the same demand, adding that Danton lied impudently' in saying he did not return till Friday the 29th. It has been shown already that Danton, having spoken in the Assembly on March 27 and 28, could not possibly have told the Assembly on April 1 that he had not returned till the 29th. Even on April 1 he could not have so hoped to befool his listeners. He said Friday the 29th instead of Friday the 22nd accidentally, as no doubt everybody who heard him understood at once. We have also seen why Danton did not go to the Assembly after the 22nd. He was waiting to hear from Lacroix, whom he had left in Belgium. He was still hoping against hope that it might be possible to avoid coming to extremities with Dumouriez. And on the 25th he was elected member of the Committee of General Defence. This will clear up much of what followed in one of the most dramatic scenes which ever occurred in a representative assembly. Danton, in answer to Pénières, said that having arrived at 9 o'clock P.M. (he mentions no date here) he did not go to the Committee (implying evidently that it was too late and he was too tired, as well he might be after being in a post chaise some twenty-one hours consecutively); but next day he did go to the Committee (Pénières had said he did not), told it of the insolent language Dumouriez was using, and recommended the immediate publication of the whole affair, so that every one present must have understood that he thought Dumouriez ought to be arrested at once. He and the other Commissioners had done their best to thwart Dumouriez by advocating the incorporation of Belgium, which he resisted, and by accusing him of the reverses in Belgium while themselves accused of shielding him. He had called Dumouriez' plan superb. So it was, and if it had succeeded he might have remained loyal. In any case England would have been humbled and Holland conquered. Dumouriez had been led on to treason by members of that Assembly. A commission should be appointed to unmask the criminals, and it would then be seen that everything the Commissioners had done had been done with the Convention's approval. To undo the past a Committee of War should be at once named to improvise another army of 50,000 men, the other Commissioners should be recalled from Belgium, and the Executive Council should lay before the Assembly an exact account of what they had done in Belgium. To arrest Dumouriez at the head of his army would have been to disorganise the army. The Commissioners had no force at their disposal, and not having any badge to denote their having semi-civil, semi-military functions, would have had no sufficient authority in the eyes of the soldiers. No general would, or, if he would, could, have LASOURCE ATTACKS DANTON 197 arrested Dumouriez when fighting was going on every two leagues. He made himself personally responsible for all the acts of the Commission, certain that so far from his head falling on the block it would be a Medusa's head to strike terror into all aristocrats. The Girondin Lasource then rose and in a plausible speech gave his version of the facts. How could Danton say no general would arrest Dumouriez when he had said that the army was so republican that if it read in the papers of his being arraigned for treason it would itself bring him to the bar of the Assembly? When Robespierre proposed enquiry into Dumouriez' conduct Danton opposed it, yet now he said that he told the Committee there was nothing more to be hoped from Dumouriez. Maure here interrupted that it had been proposed to send (the Girondin) Gensonné, as being all-powerful with Dumouriez, to concert measures with him. Lasource, in continuation, said that Dumouriez wished to restore monarchy. To do so he must be at the head of an army. Who ensured this? Danton. To make the plot succeed it must be popular, and be worked conjointly in Belgium and Paris. So Lacroix gave himself popular airs in Belgium, while Danton came to Paris to adopt measures of defence,' and going to the Committee said not a word about what was going on. Danton: That's a falsehood!' When asked to say why he had quitted Belgium Danton's reply was not to the point. And why did he still stay in Paris, not having resigned his post as Commissioner? To make the plot succeed it was necessary to depreciate the Convention. This was why Danton had upbraided it with inactivity and threatened an insurrection. To abase the Convention was to exalt Dumouriez. That was what Danton did. To foster the plot it was useful to exaggerate the national danger, so as to alarm the timid or provoke an outbreak of the people, which Dumouriez might be called in to quell. Danton and Lacroix acted accordingly. Then Lasource added that he seconded Danton's demand for a Commission and proposed the arrest of Philippe Egalité and sentence of death on any one aspiring to royalty or dictatorship (i.e. Orleans and Danton). The Girondin Biroteau interposed here, charging Fabre d'Eglantine, whom all the world knows as Danton's intimate friend,' with having said, at the Committee of General Defence, that he was in favour of a king. Biroteau added that Fabre d'Eglantine had only been induced to declare himself by being told that opinion was free and that anything said at the meeting was said under the pledge of secresy. He appears to have been unconscious of anything dishonourable in these revelations, which were received with cries of That is a lie!' and with an outburst from Danton. It is infamous. You, the King's champions, want to saddle me with your own crimes.' Biroteau was proceeding to quote, as he alleged, Fabre's very words, when Delmas intervened, declaring that such a discussion was ill-timed and that they had better await the results of the Committee proposed by Lasource. This was agreed to, but Danton called on Cambon to say what he knew about the 100,000 crowns sent to Danton and Lacroix,' and about their conduct in the matter of the incorporation of Belgium. He was interrupted by shouts of Let it be referred to the Committee,' and this also was agreed to. But as he sat down the whole of the Extreme Left rose and recalled him to the tribune. Danton sprang to it amid thunders of applause from the galleries and a great part of the Assembly. The President, putting on his hat and demanding silence, left it to the Assembly to decide. whether Danton should speak or not. Amid tumultuous cries for and against his claim Lasource begged that Danton might be heard, and by a very large majority the Assembly decided in his favour. While Lasource had been delivering his oration Danton sat motionless in his seat, curling his lip contemptuously, with a look of wrath and scorn. On reaching the tribune his first words were the key to the whole speech. Turning to the Mountain he told them, amid fierce interruptions, that they had judged more wisely than he in blaming him for temporising with the Right, who blindly or basely had conspired to save the King and yet were so insolent as to assume the attitude of denunciators. Then he explained that he had come back at 8 P.M., Friday, the 29th, twenty-four hours later than some of his colleagues supposed, they being under the impression that he set out immediately his fellow Commissioners in Belgium had come to a decision. By this he meant, as has been explained already, that he did not set out from Louvain at 3 A.M. on the 21st, but from Brussels in the small hours of the morning of the 22nd. Previously he had named Nine o'clock as the hour and had not mentioned any date. Evidently the slip was due to the agitation under which he was labouring. If it had not been so obviously a mistake and he had lied impudently,' scores of tongues would have convicted him on the spot. He went on to say |