bitter opponents on both sides in the Convention should offer to leave it in order to promote peace. Danton started up, with his eyes full of tears, and said, 'I will go to the Convention and propose it, and offer to go myself first to Bordeaux as a hostage for the arrested members.' In the Convention, however, the idea leaked out before any one made the offer from the rostrum, and Robespierre covered it with ridicule as a snare laid against the Republic. The offer was actually made, however, by Danton and all the other members. of the Committee of Safety on the 6th. But Robespierre spoke against it. Pétion and Barbaroux wrote against its acceptance, and it came to nothing. To Marat the Committee's suggestion did not commend itself. With more logic than wisdom he contended that accused conspirators ought not to be invited to pose as martyrs. C'est à moi, vrai martyr de la liberté, à me dévouer.'

While the suggestion was being discussed the crowd outside grew more threatening. Lacroix, Danton's friend, protested against its violence, and Danton said that the Committee of Safety would avenge vigorously the national majesty, now being outraged.' Lacroix then obtained a vote from the Convention ordering the armed men intruding themselves into the Assembly to quit its precincts. The order was taken to Hanriot, who sent back a flat refusal, couched, it is alleged, in brutal terms. At last the frightened and wearied Assembly decreed the arrest of all except two of the members of the Committee of Twelve, of the Ministers Lebrun and Clavière, and of twenty-two members of the Right.

Meanwhile the Committee of Safety had sent for Pache and Hanriot. All, or almost all, its members

were distressed at the day's events. Cambon charged Bouchotte with connivance. 'Minister of War,' he said, 'we are not blind. I see very well that your subordinates have had a hand in all this.' Lacroix appeared embarrassed, as a man who has won without winning much glory. Danton seemed uneasy and ashamed. When Pache came he brought with him two of the Insurrectional Committee, who declared its readiness to resign the powers given it by the Sections. This was accepted. But Hanriot did not come. He sent an aide-de-camp, and his disrespect indicated the impotence materially of the Committee of Safety. All the physical force of Paris was, as Garat says, enlisted on the side of the insurrection. No doubt Danton was ashamed of some of the occurrences of the day. But he was not ashamed of or sorry for its net results. There had been no bloodshed. He said in September that Hanriot, with eyes vomiting salt petre,' had prevented the sacrifice of 30,000 lives. But the majority which any day might have reimposed some Committee of Twelve was broken up. He was free to replace the two ejected Ministers by his own friends. We may discredit St. Just, on the one hand, who charged him with having demanded Hanriot's head, and Barère, on the other, who said he wrote with his own hand in the committee-room of Public Safety the petition which the Commune sent to the Convention on May 31. There was nothing to tempt him to the one step or the other. He approved of the insurrection just so far as it checkmated an arbitrary majority. His speeches in the Convention no doubt inspired and encouraged those who brought it about. He considered, with another national leader of our own day, that a true revolutionary movement should partake both of a constitutional and an illegal

character. It should be an open and a secret organisation, using the Constitution for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret combinations. He took one course in the Convention, l'Evêché another in the streets. It seems improbable that they had in common anything except a common foe.

CHAPTER XXII

1793-continued

DANTON'S SECOND MARRIAGE-HIS ENERGY-LA VENDÉE-DIRE STRAITS OF THE REPUBLIC LEVÉE EN MASSE'-'HÂTONS-NOUS TERMINER LA RÉVOLUTION '-ATTEMPTS AT ALLIANCESFOREIGN POLICY-WHY IT FAILED

DE

In the middle of all these stormy scenes Danton married. his second wife, Mademoiselle Sophie Gély. There is a story that his first wife had recommended the marriage. Other stories represent her successor as the owner of a pretty face, and of aristocratic leanings, who, after her husband's execution, was ashamed of his name. Still other stories represent him as so molten down in mere uxoriousness' as to have lost energy for public affairs. Whatever else may be true, that at least is false. Never in all his life was he more energetic. He was on the Committee of Safety and on the Constitution. Committee. This meant that in these early days of June he had to work day and night. On the 10th eager demands were made for the draft of the new Constitution. Thuriot pleaded for one more hour, saying, Le comité a passé la nuit à l'achèvement de son travail.' As member of the Committee of Safety he had to attend to the report on the arrest of the members, to the disturbances in the Departments, and to all the letters from arrested Deputies, which, with other matters innumerable, the Convention placed in the Committee's hands. Thus on June 3 we find the

Convention adopting the Committee's schemes for the formation of a company of national artillery in every Department, for sending three companies from Paris to the Pyrenees, for sending Robert Lindet to Lyons, for indemnifying the people of Nantes for loss inflicted by the rebels, and so on. Of an easy, indolent disposition, and averse to drudgery, Danton could display enormous energy at a crisis. He did so now. He was still chief Tribune of Paris, and he controlled the foreign policy of France.

The Committee of Safety dated from April 7. As the supreme executive power, with secret-service money at its disposal, it was responsible only to the Convention. And as it deliberated in secret it was to a great extent responsible only nominally. There were other influential men in it, such as Cambon, Barère, Robert Lindet, and Lacroix. Cambon and Lindet were concerned with finance and home affairs, Lacroix and Delmas with the war, Danton and Barère with foreign affairs. But Danton was indubitably its ruling spirit. He sat in it for three months, and for that space it may be said, roughly, that he governed France. A detailed description of events at Paris in April and May was indispensable to comprehension of his position and character, but it is time now to see what was his policy in the wider sphere which he had already occupied for two months.

The revolt of La Vendée was perhaps his first anxiety. The people there had originally favoured the Revolution. The suppression of the old taxes and the militia filled them with enthusiasm. But they were attached to their priests, who, during 1791 and 1792, sowed discontent and disaffection at nocturnal meetings into which Royalist agents gradually insinuated themselves.