them, and render them conducive to the great ends of public freedom. If the people could have appreciated the wisdom of that proposal, if they had adopted it in all its plenitude, they would have swept off, on the day the Bastille was taken, five hundred heads from the conspirators. Everything, had this been done, would now have been tranquil. For the same reason, I have frequently proposed to give instantaneous authority to a wise man, under the name of tribune, or dictator,-the title signifies nothing; but the proof that I meant to chain him to the public service is, that I insisted that he should have a bullet at his feet, and that he should have no power but to strike off criminal heads. Such was my opinion ; I have expressed it freely in private, and given it all the currency possible in my writings; I have affixed my name to these compositions; I am not ashamed of them; if you cannot comprehend them, so much the worse for you. The days of trouble are not yet terminated; already a hundred thousand patriots have been massacred because you would not listen to my voice; a hundred thousand more will suffer, or are menaced with destruction; if the people falter, anarchy will never come to an end. I have diffused these opinions among the. public; if they are dangerous, let enlightened men refute them with the proofs in their hands. For my own part, I declare I would be the first to adopt their ideas, and to give a signal proof of my desire for peace, order, and the supremacy of the laws, whenever I am convinced of their justice. Am I accused of ambitious views? I will not condescend to vindicate myself; examine my conduct; judge my life. If I had chosen to sell my silence for profit, I might have now been the object of favor to the court. What, on the other hand, has been my fate? I have buried myself in dungeons; condemned myself to every species of danger; the sword of twenty thousand assassins is perpetually suspended over me; I preached the truth with my head laid on the block. Let those who are now terrifying you with the shadow of a dictator, unite with me; unite with all true patriots, press the assembly to expedite the great measures which will secure the happiness of the people, and I will cheerfully mount the scaffold any day of my life. MAXIMILIEN ISIDORE DE ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794) THE BLOODHOUND OF THE REVOLUTION T HE character of Robespierre was one of the most extraordinary to be found in all history. He remains an enigma. By some he is regarded as a fanatic, with an honest devotion to his country at the basis of his massacres; by others as a crafty and pitiless demagogue. If we should judge by his utterances, we must believe him sincere and deeply religious; if by his acts, it is difficult to find words to express our abhorrence. The remark of Mirabeau may help to solve the enigma of his life: "He will go far, for he believes all he says." He certainly went far, for he was the inspiring spirit of the frightful Reign of Terror, As an orator Robespierre lacked native powers. He had not the gift of extemporaneous speech, of fine voice, or of commanding personality. A FINAL APPEAL [If we could judge from Robespierre's speeches, he was a much maligned individual, a moralist driven to severity by the vices of his enemies. He tells us in his speech on the sentence of the king, "I abhor the punishment of death, inflicted so unsparingly by your laws. . . . but Louis must die, because the country must live." In a later speech, when the guillotine was doing its bloodiest work at his command, he earnestly, almost pathetically, maintains his belief in a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. In his final speech, made the day before his death, to an assembly thirsting for his blood, he poses still as the patriot and the maligned moralist.] The enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such they would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should grant them impunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support. There would be a covenant between them 604 MAXIMILIEN ISIDORE DE ROBESPIERRE and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny,whither does their path tend? To the tomb and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many detected traitors? You-the people, our principles, -are that faction! A faction to which I am devoted, and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded! The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred principles, the league is formed. My life? O! my life I abandon without a regret! I have seen the past; and I foresee the future. What friend of his country would wish to survive the moment he could no longer serve it,-when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, override the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line of demarcation between themselves and all true men. Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in very different conditions. O, Frenchmen! O, my countrymen! Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette,* no! Death is not an eternal sleep"! Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funeral crape, takes from oppressed inno. cence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the people a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful truth,-"Thou shalt die !" * Chaumette was a member of the Convention, who was opposed to the public recognition of a God and the future state. |