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pleasecallmealsip · 12 days

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"And what shall be the reward of spilling so much blood, one drop of which has more worth than all the crowned heads of the world?"

L’Ami du Peuple, No 634, from Thursday 19th April 1792. [The very next day, on the 20th April 1792, war was declared against Austria]

If it was still impossible to doubt the traitorous dispositions of the court, after all the plots that it has formed to this day, in order to crush the people, to ruin the nation, and to re-establish despotism, the scene of high scandal that the ministerial cabinet has just been playing out should have sufficed to open the eyes of all.

On the 14th of this month, the ministers presented themselves in the Assembly. The Minister of Foreign affairs [Dumouriez; he took this post on 15th March 1792] took the floor to communicate to them, after the orders of the king, of the dispatches that, he said, were delivered by an extraordinary courier who arrived during the night. He first read out the letter written [by Louis XVI] to sieur [Louis Marie Antoine, Vicomte de] Noailles, ambassador at the court of Vienna, demanding the new king of Hungary [Franz II of the Holy Roman Empire, nephew of Antoinette] to give a categorical response on his attitudes towards France. He then read out the response of sieur Noailles, containing a formal refusal to continue a negotiation that he [Noailles] said was impracticable and an announcement of his [Noailles’s] resignation. He [Dumouriez] proceeded to give a reading of a very pressing dispatch [from Louis XVI] addressed to sieur Noailles. Finally, he [Dumouriez] announced that Louis XVI had just written in his own hand a letter to the king of Hungary, and sieur Molle the field marshal was to deliver it. The response to this letter would arrive on the 10th of next month at the latest and would decide whether peace or war would be. In this epistle, one can clearly sense that Louis XVI is repeating his crude joke of professing his love for the Constitution.

Scarcely had these readings been finished than sieur Briche and sieur Guadet demanded a decree of indictment against sieur Noailles for having disobeyed the orders of the king; they must say so, for he had betrayed the interests of the nation and compromised public safety. After several light debates, this decree was given a near-unanimous pass. Already the ones that did not follow the thread of the story were singing to their victory, for they saw that he was declared a nation-harming (lèse-nation) criminal, he who is an ambassador of France, a close relative (cousin-germain) to sieur Motier [Noailles and Lafayette had the same father-in-law], a member of the Tuileries committee, and a pillar of the Feuillant club; that is to say, one of the main conspirators, bolstered by all the forces of his accomplices, and sure of the support of the vast majority of counter-revolutionary conscript fathers. But their joy was short-lived. Several hours after the decree of indictment, the veil was ripped to lay bare the juggleries of the ministerial cabinet. Sieur Dumouriez appeared on stage to announce to the president a letter that he had allegedly just received from sieur Noailles, who had finally obeyed the orders of Louis XVI and had given news that the king of Hungary refused all negotiations, declaring war on the French nation. Immediately Thuriot, Goupilleau, Vaublanc, Gentil, Dumas ＊and the other gangrenous ministers demanded that the decree of indictment be revoked. Sieur Kersaint and Sieur Delacroix ⁑ proposed that the letter of the minister [Dumouriez] and the dispatch of the ambassador be sent back to the diplomatic committee, so that the report would be done on time.

The report done, under the name of the committee, by sieur Lasource, the decree of indictment was adjourned. Such was the conclusion of the ministerial and senatorial farce against sieur Noailles. Thus, by the method of a double correspondence, the perfidious agents of the prince will always get away with their deeds, just like how pirates escape by the method of using false flags. Always the artifices of the court will render the laws illusory; always the apparent acts of justice from the legislator will be none but lures to deceive the people; and no matter how things turn out, always the public enemies at the helm of the vessel of the State will manage to throw it at the reefs, and to direct it in such a way as that shall see it broken by the storm and engulfed by the waves in the end.

So finally here is war declared on the French by the powers plotted against freedom. However, who does not see that all these pretend ministerial negotiations with foreign courts had no other goal than to amuse the nation and to buy time, until all these powers have their batteries loaded, and they are ready to shoot us? Who does not see that all these bellicose preparations, arranged by the Assembly, had no other goal than to lure the nation to sleep in deep dreams of security? Who does not see that all these sending-back to the executive power, the denunciations, the prevaricating ministers, and these complaints of citizen soldiers crammed onto the frontiers and left without munitions, without weapons, without clothes, without pay, had no other goal than to leave the patrie with no means of defence, to leave the State in the grip of the machinations of the court, of the undertakings of the fugitive plotters, of the attacks of the foreign lackeys.

Will there be war? Everybody is saying yes. It is certain that this opinion has finally prevailed in the cabinet, after the representations of sieur Motier who, without doubt, has made it the only way in order to distract the nation from the concerns within to occupy with concerns without, in order to make the nation forget the internal dissensions in favour of news in gazettes, in order to dissipate the national property into military preparations, instead of employing it to liberate the State and to comfort the people, in order to crush the Nation under the feet of taxes, and in order to slit the throats of patriots of the infantry and of the citizen army, leading them to the butcher’s, under the pretext of defending the barriers of the empire. It is always certain that he pressures the monarch to stop negotiating and to order the campaign to be started, which he regards as a means to honourably end his own career, if he runs out of ways to regain the nation’s confidence with new acts of seduction and of hypocritical devotion to the cause of liberty.

Lost in the heady rhetoric from Brissot, from Lemontey, from Girardin, from Delacroix, from Gouvion, from Dumas and from other scoundrels who have sold themselves to the court, seduced by a false image of national forces, intoxicated by the fumes of Gallic boastfulness, the people seem no less desiring for war than their implacable enemies do. For three years I have represented war as the last resort of counter-revolutionaries and I have not stopped working to thwart the various undertakings of the cabinet to set it aflame. Since then, my attitude has not changed, and in my eyes, war is always the cruellest curse that may be cast on the kingdom. Whatever new focus that war will draw public attention to, by only fixing it onto news in gazettes, war will leave an open field for the enemies within to machinate at their ease and to breathe the fire of civil dissensions into all parts of the kingdom, to instigate troubles, and to set traps for proponents of freedom; the war will completely squander the national property and accelerate public bankruptcy; the war will consummate the loss of everything that France has in good citizens and it will drain the State of all the patriotic youth, because it is the most zealous proponents of the revolution who have been rushing to the defence at the frontiers, and they will always do so. However fearless they may be, they are without weapons ¹, without discipline, without tactics, without idea of grand manoeuvres ², without the smallest notion of the art of war, without experienced chiefs, without shrewd and faithful generals. How would the soldiers of the patrie resist the attacks from the disciplined armies of lackeys, they who are commanded by shrewd generals?

If war happens, I repeat, regardless of the bravery of the defenders of freedom, it does not take an eagle-eyed genius to foresee that our armies will be crushed in the first campaign.

I can conceive that the second campaign would be less disastrous and that the third could even be a glorious success, since it is impossible that we would not learn at our own expense, impossible that some great man would not be given a position. Yet, to wrest victory from our enemies, we will need to suffer a long and disastrous war. Now, it would fall short of the truth, to say that our losses, over three campaigns, shall round to a billion livres and five hundred thousand combatants.

How shall we compensate for the loss of so many brave soldiers, the flower of the French citizens? And what shall be the reward of spilling so much blood, one drop of which has more worth than all the crowned heads of the world? To prevent this precious blood from being shed, I have proposed for a hundred times an infallible method, which is to take hostage among us Louis XVI, along with his wife, his son, his daughter, his sisters ⁂, and hold them accountable to what happens. A senate faithful to the patrie will speak to him thus: “King of the French, it is in vain that you (vous) hide in the detours of a tortuous policy to see us ensnared in the disasters of war; you have no escape from the avenging power of the people. We declare to you, in the name of the nation, who is your august sovereign, that we do not wish to deal with your fellowmen, the princes of Europe, that we wish to make no preparations at all for war. Whether or not you compromise with them is your choice. The duty to remind your rebellious brothers and cousins is upon you, and so is the duty to divert your fellowmen from all hostile undertakings. The barriers of the State will stay open, yet rest assured that upon certain news that the first corps of enemies shall have crossed them, your culpable head will roll at your feet, and your entire dynasty shall be extinguished in its own blood.” But a senate faithful to the patrie is even rarer than a patriotic king. How insensible the people is, that they do not sense the necessity to finally choose a supreme dictator, to give him powers that would be circumscribed, so that he would have no authority to dominate, but unlimited authority to cut down the chief conspirators that the public voice has identified, to force the corrupt legislator to put at a price the heads of kings, of princes and of the generals who will come with weapons against us, to offer sums of gold to their troops who will deliver these kings, princes, and generals to us, living or dead, and to receive these troops among children of the State. Soon we shall see their numerous legions, running with weapons and equipment under the flags of freedom, and France shall be delivered from her enemies forever.

The fate that awaits her is less consoling for the friends of the patrie, but the fate that awaits her enemies will be terrible.

At the first shot of the canon fired on the frontier, the departments agree on a plan to reduce the castles and the gardens to ashes and to slit the throats of all public enemies who can be found in cities and in the countryside. As the army will massacre its own perfidious chiefs and conspiratorial generals, and as the entire nation will rise up against its own worthless representatives to seize back the powers that they have stripped from her, the mysterious veil long hung over the intrigues of the cabinets will be torn: however impatient the cabinets are to put the French back into chains, I strongly doubt that Louis XVI shall have the humour to do nothing if he even takes a look at this terrible picture. Let some good man have the courage to put it before his eyes.

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Notes in the original:

[1] It is an unchanging fact that sieur de Grave, despite all his civic affectations, has not given a single order to prompt the ministry to arm the national guards of the frontiers since he arrived at the ministry. It is upon their actions, and not upon their talk, that the royal agents must be judged.

[2] It was to prevent the citizen battalions from training for grand manoeuvres that the generals have kept them divided and dispersed into different posts.

Translator's notes:

＊This would be Mathieu Dumas (1753 - 1837), a colonel of the general staff of Paris, long lambasted by Marat for refusing to fight, and whose name had come from his father, and not to be confused with Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (1762 - 1806) the Haitian general, whose name had come from his mother, an enslaved and nigh-erased woman.

⁑ This would be Jean-François Delacroix (1753 - 1794) the Dantonist, not to be confused with Charles-François Delacroix (1741 - 1805) the Thermidorian, and father to the painter Eugène Delacroix (1798 - 1863).

⁂ Marat notably did not mention either of the brothers of Louis XVI, because the comte de Provence (future Louis XVIII) emigrated in June 1791 to the Austrian Netherlands, and the comte d’Artois (future Charles X) emigrated even earlier, on 17th July 1789 to Savoy.

I am indebted to @citizen-card for helping me with finding out about the relation between Motier and Noailles, and to @lamarseillasie for making me interested on "just what was Marat's view on dictatorship" in the first place.

#frev #french revolution #jean paul marat #marat

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anotherhumaninthisworld · 8 months

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Did Robespierre supported the September massacres?

In a speech to the Convention held on November 5 1792, Robespierre said the following regarding his part in the massacres that had taken place two months earlier:

Those who have said that I had the smallest part in [the September massacres], are either excessively credulous or excessively perverse; as for [Louvet] who, counting on the success of the defamation of which he had arranged the whole plan in advance, thought he could then claim with impunity that I directed them, I would content myself with abandoning him to remorse, if remorse did not suppose a soul. I will say, for those whom the imposture could have led astray, that before the massacres began, I had ceased to frequent the general council of the commune, since the electoral assembly of which I was a member had begun its sessions. I learned what was going on in the prisons only through general rumours and later, no doubt, than did most citizens; for I was either at home, or else in those places to which my public duties called me.

It can however he established that he’s wrong when claiming he ceased to frequent the Paris commune before the massacres began — he is proven to have been present and intervened in debates there already on the evening session of September 1, the day right before the start of them. He was also there on the morning session of September 3, and was then, together with Deltroit and Manuel, tasked with going to the Temple to ”ensure tranquility,” making you wonder if his claim to only have been informed of the massacres through ”general rumours” it too is a post construction. Finally, Robespierre was also present at the commune during the evening session of September 2, when the following is recorded to have happened:

MM. Billaud-Varenne and Robespierre, developing their civic feelings, paint the deep pain they feel over the current state of France. They denounce to the General Council a plot in favor of the Duke of Brunswick, whom a powerful party wants to bring to the throne of the French.

The ”powerful party” here is obviously the Girondins. Exactly which of them the denounciation was aimed at is hard to know, but the next day Brissot could nevertheless report the following:

Yesterday, Sunday, I, as well as parts of the deputies of the Gironde, and other equally virtuous men, was denounced at the Paris Commune. We were accused of wishing to hand over France to the Duke of Brunswick, of having received millions from them, and of having concerted ourselves to go to England to save ourselves. Citizens, I was denounced at ten o'clock in the evening, and at this time they were slaughtering in the prisons... This morning, around seven o'clock, three commissioners of the Commune came to my house... for three hours, they examined, with all possible care, all my papers.

Both Prudhomme and Pétion claimed Danton saved Roland from an arrest warrant issued against him during the massacres, which undoubtly sounds like it could be related to Billaud and Robespierre’s denounciation. On September 25, Vergniaud did in his turn accuse Robespierre ”of implicating him, Brissot, Guadet, Lasource etc. in the complot denounced at the commune on September 2.” Robespierre did however deny this to have been the case both then and on November 5:

They have dared, by an atrocious comparison, to insinuate that I had wished to compromise the safety of some deputies, by denouncing them to the commune during the executions of the conspirators. I have already responded to this infamy, recalling that I had ceased to go to the commune before these events, that it was no more given to me to foresee the sudden and extraordinary circumstances which brought them about. Must I tell you that several of my colleagues before me had already denounced the persecution plotted against the commune by the two or three people we are talking about, and this plan to slander the defenders of freedom and to divide the citizens at the moment when it was necessary to unite their efforts to stifle the conspiracies of the interior and to push back the foreign enemies? But what is this dreadful doctrine that denouncing a man and killing him are the same thing! In what republic do we live, if the magistrate who, in a municipal assembly, explains freely about the authors of a dangerous plot, is no longer regarded as anything but a provocateur to murder!

Historians on Robespierre’s side have suggested he might not have heard of the massacres yet (Ward, Maximilien Robespierre: a study in deterioration) or even that the denounciation was made before they had begun (McPhee, Robespierre: a revolutionary life). I’m however having a hard time believing the second theory could be true if Robespierre and Billaud made their statement late in the evening. The question of what exactly Robespierre was trying to do here has already been analyzed in this old post, so you can check that out for further discussion.

Looking over the interventions Robespierre is confirmed to have made before and during the massacres, it can be observed that there’s nothing suggesting he encouraged or supported them nor anything implying he condemned or tried to stop them. According to Pétion, Robespierre did however still contribute to things turning out the way they did through his own influencial attitude, and in his Discours de Jérôme Pétion sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre, released two months after the massacres, he described the following encounter the two had had during it:

The surveillance Committee launched an arrest warrant against Minister Roland; it was the 4th (September), and the massacres were still going on. Danton was informed of it, he came to town hall, he was with Robespierre; […] I had an explanation with Robespierre, it was very lively. I tell him: “Robespierre, you are doing a lot of harm; your denunciations, your alarms, your hatreds, your suspicions, they agitate the people; explain yourself; do you have any facts? Do you have any proof? I fight with you; I only love the truth; I only want freedom.” [the two then launch into a long argument over Robespierre’s suspicions regarding Brissot that Danton at last has to break up].

In her memoirs, Charlotte Robespierre too talks of a meeting between her brother and Pétion regarding the massacres, but in her version it is instead is the former who accuses the latter of doing a lot of harm. Some have suggested this meeting is the same Pétion is describing above, though if that’s the case I wonder why he doesn’t mention Charlotte anywhere in his account (as well as why Robespierre would even bring his sister with him when going to discuss political matters in a city where a prison massacre is currently taking place…)

A few days after the events of 2 and 3 September, Pétion came to see my brother. Maximilien had disapproved of the prison massacres, and would have wanted each prisoner to be sent before judges elected by the people. Pétion and Robespierre conversed on these latest events. I was present at their interview, and I heard my brother reproach Pétion for not having interposed his authority to stop the deplorable excesses of the 2nd and 3rd. Pétion seemed piqued by this reproach, and replied dryly enough: All I can tell you is that no human power could have stopped them. He rose some moments later, left, and did not return. Any kind of relations ceased, from this day, between him and my brother. They did not see each other again until the Convention, where Pétion sat with the Girondins and my brother with the Mountain.

An article written in 1960 by Gabriel Pioro and Pierre Labracherie wanted to dismiss Charlotte’s story as they could see no reason for her to be in Paris in early September 1792, almost a whole month before her younger brother was elected to the National Convention and the two went to the capital for that reason. Though I suppose it’s not impossible for Charlotte to have gone to visit Maximilien beforehand, or that she’s simply very generous with what she describes as ”a few days.”

Charlotte’s description of her brother as horrified by the massacres nevertheless seems rather well confirmed by what Louis Blanc in his Histoire de la Révolution française (1869) reports Robespierre’s doctor Joseph Souberbielle to have told him decades after the fact:

When he had recovered from his emotion a little, Doctor Souberbielle told us, among other particulars which will find their place in this book, that Robespierre had never spoken to him of the September days but with horror, and that one day he exclaimed before him, apropos of Ronsin's barbarism: Blood! Always blood! Ah! They will end up drowning the Revolution in it, the unfortunates!

But regardless of what his private feelings might have been, the public Robespierre never once denounced the massacres, instead accepting them as regrettable but necessary. November 5 was the day he spoke the most about them, arguing that they had been the inevitable sequel to the Insurrection of August 10, and that to condemn one would therefore be to condemn the other. He also argued that, if it was self-evident that what had happened had been awful, the sympathy felt for the thousand something killed in the prisons was better given to the millions of people who had perished under the Ancien Régime:

To form a just idea of these events, one must seek the truth, not in the writings or in the slanderous speeches which distorted them, but in the history of the last revolution. If you thought that the movement imprinted on people's minds by the insurrection of the month of August had entirely expired at the beginning of September, you were mistaken; and those who have sought to persuade you that there was no analogy between one and the other of these two epochs have pretended to know neither the facts nor the human heart.

The day of August 10 had been marked by a great combat, of which many patriots, and many Swiss soldiers, had been the victims. The greatest conspirators were saved from the wrath of the victorious people, who had consented to place them in the hands of a new tribunal, but the people were determined to exact their punishment. However, after convicting three or four lesser culprits, the criminal tribunal lazed off. Montmorin had been absolved, Depoix and several conspirators of this importance had been fraudulently released. Great claims of this kind had transpired; and new proofs of the tribunal conspiracy grew every day; almost all the patriots who had been wounded at the Tuileries died in the arms of their Parisian brothers; bullets taken from the bodies of several Marseillois and several other Federals were placed in the office of the Commune; indignation was in all hearts.

However, a new and much more important cause brought the fermentation to its height. A great number of citizens had thought that the day of the 10th had broken the threads of royal conspiracies, and regarded the war as ended, when suddenly the news spread through Paris that Longwi had been taken, that Verdun had been taken, and that at the head of an army of a hundred thousand men, Brunswick advances towards Paris. No stronghold separates us from the enemies. Our divided army, almost destroyed by the betrayals of Lafayette, lacked everything; it was necessary to think at the same time of finding arms, camp effects, provisions, and men. The executive council concealed neither its fears nor its embarrassment. The danger was great; it seemed greater still.

Danton presents himself to the Legislative Assembly, vividly shows them the dangers and the resources, urges them to take some vigorous measures, and gives a great impulse to public opinion. He goes to city hall and invites the council-general to ring the tocsin. The council-general of the commune feels that the fatherland can be saved only by the prodigies which enthusiasm for liberty alone can give birth to, and that all of Paris must be set in motion to run to meet the Prussians. It rings the tocsin to tell all citizens to pick up arms; it obtains it for them through all its means of power; the alarm cannon thundered at the same time; in an instant, 40 000 men are armed, equipped, assembled, and marching towards Châlons... In the midst of this universal movement, the approach of foreign enemies awakens the feeling of indignation and revenge which smolders hearts against the traitors who had called them. Before abandoning their hearths, their wives and their children, the citizens, the conquerors of the Tuileries want the punishment of the conspirators that they have been promised so many times; one runs to the prisons... Could the magistrates arrest the people? For it was a popular movement, and not the partial sedition of a few scoundrels paid to assassinate their fellows, as has been ridiculously supposed. If it had not been so, how could the people not have prevented it? How could the National Guard, how could the Federals have made no movement to oppose it? The Federals themselves were there in large numbers. We know the vain requisitions of the Commander of the National Guard; we know the vain efforts of the commissioners of the Legislative Assembly, who were sent to prison.

I heard some people tell me coldly that the municipality should proclaim martial law. Martial law, approaching enemies! The military law, after the day of the 10! Martial law, for the accomplices of the dethroned tyrant, against the people! What could the magistrates do against the determined will of an indignant people, who opposed to their speeches the memory of its victory, the development with which it was about to rush to meet the Prussians, and who blamed the laws themselves for the long impunity of the traitors who would destroy the bosom of their fatherland. Unable to induce them to rely on the tribunals for the care of their punishment, the municipal officers urged them to follow the necessary forms, the object of which was not to confuse the culprits whom they wished to punish with the detained citizens foreign to the August 10 conspiracy; and it is the municipal officers who exercised this ministry, the only service that circumstances allow of rendering to humanity, who have been presented to you as bloodthirsty brigands! The most ardent zeal for the execution of the laws can justify neither exaggeration nor calumny; I could cite here, against the declamations of M. Louvet, a non-suspicious testimony; it is that of the Minister of the Interior, who, while blaming popular executions in general, did not hesitate to speak of the spirit of prudence and justice which the people (that was his expression) had shown in this occasion. What did I say ? I could quote, in favor of the council-general of the commune, M. Louvet himself, who began one of his posters with these words: "Honor to the council-general of the commune, it rang the tocsin bell, it saved the fatherland.” This was at the time of the elections.

It is said that an innocent person perished; the number has been exaggerated; but one alone is doubtless one too many. Citizens, let us mourn this cruel mistake. We have mourned him for a long time; he was a good citizen, they say, so he was one of our friends. Let us mourn even the guilty victims, reserved for the revenge of the laws, who fell under the sword of popular justice; but let your pain have an end, like all human things.

Let us save a few tears for more touching calamities. Weep for a hundred thousand patriots immolated by tyranny; mourn our fellow citizens expiring under their burning roofs, and the sons of citizens massacred in the cradle, or in the arms of their mothers. Have you not also brothers, children, wives to avenge? The family of French legislators is the fatherland; it is the entire human race, minus the tyrants and their accomplices. Weep then, weep for the humanity beaten down under their odious yoke; but console yourself if, imposing silence on all vile passions, you want to ensure the happiness of your country and that of the world; console yourself if you wish to recall exiled equality and justice to earth, and get rid, by just laws, of the source of the crimes and misfortunes of your fellows.

The sensibility that groans almost exclusively for the enemies of liberty is suspect to me. Stop waving before my eyes the bloody robe of the tyrant, or I will believe you want to put Rome back in chains. Seeing the pathetic depictions of the catastrophe of the Lamballes, of the Montmorins, of the consternation of bad citizens, and these furious declamations against men known in the completely opposite way, did you not think you were reading a manifesto of Brunswick or of Condé? Eternal slanderers, do you want to avenge despotism? Do you want to brand the cradle of the republic? Do you want to dishonor in the eyes of Europe the revolution which gave birth to it, and supply arms to all the enemies of liberty? Truly admirable love of humanity, which tends to cement the misery and servitude of peoples, and which hides the barbarous desire to bathe in the blood of patriots!

Finally, on January 20 and February 4 1793, Robespierre also opposed a suggestion to pursue ”the provocateurs, authors, accomplices and adherents of the murders and banditry of September 2 and 3 1792.”

#robespierre #maximilien robespierre #ask #french revolution #frev #long post

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