From “Statesmen of the Time of George III.”

A MAN of Robespierre’s character, and with his great defects as a revolutionary chief, may be able to raise himself in troublous times to great eminence, and possibly even to usurp supreme power, but he never can take the lead in bringing great changes about; he never can be a maker of the revolutions by which however he may profit. His rise to distinction and command may be gained by perseverance, by self-denial, by extreme circumspection, by having no scruples to interfere with his schemes, no conscience to embarrass, no feelings to scare him; above all, by taking advantage of circumstances, and turning each occurrence that happens to his account. These qualities and this policy may even enable him to retain the power which they have enabled him to grasp; but another nature and other endowments are required, and must be added to these, in order to form a man fitted for raising the tempest, and directing its fury against the established order of things. Above all, boldness, the daring soul, the callous nerves, the mind inaccessible to fear, and impervious to the mere calculations of personal prudence, almost a blindness sealing his eyes against the perception of consequences as well to himself as to others, is the requisite of his nature who would overturn an ancient system of polity, and substitute a novel regimen in its place. For this Robespierre was wholly unfit; and if any man can more than another be termed the author of the French Revolution, it is Danton, who possessed these requisites in perfection.

  There can hardly a greater contrast be found between two individuals than that which this remarkable person presented in all respects to Robespierre. His nature was dauntless; his temper mild and frank; his disposition sociable; naturally rather kind and merciful, his feelings were only blunted to scenes of cruelty by his enthusiasm, which was easily kindled in favor of any great object; and even when he had plunged into bloodshed, none of the chiefs who directed those sad proceedings ever saved so many victims from the tempest of destruction which their machinations had let loose. Nor was there anything paltry and mean in his conduct on these occasions, either as to the slaughters which he encouraged or the lives which he saved. No one has ever charged him with sacrificing any to personal animosity, like Robespierre and Collot d’Herbois, whose adversaries fell before the Revolutionary Tribunal, or those against whom offended vanity made them bear a spite; and it is certain that he used his influence in procuring the escape of many who had proved his personal enemies. His retreat to Arcis-sur-Aube, after his refusal to enter the Committee of Public Safety, and finally his self-sacrifice by protesting against the sanguinary course of that terrible power, leave no doubt whatever resting upon his general superiority in character and in feelings to almost all the other chiefs.

  His natural endowments were great for any part in public life, whether at the bar or in the senate, or even in war; for the part of a revolutionary leader they were of the highest order. A courage which nothing could quell; a quickness of perception at once and clearly to perceive his own opportunity, and his adversary’s error; singular fertility of resources, with the power of sudden change in his course, and adaptation to varied circumstances; a natural eloquence springing from the true source of all eloquence—warm feelings, fruitful imagination, powerful reason, the qualities that distinguish it from the mere rhetorician’s art,—but an eloquence hardy, caustic, masculine; a mighty frame of body; a voice overpowering all resistance; these were the grand qualities which Danton brought to the prodigious struggle in which he was engaged; and ambition and enthusiasm could, for the moment, deaden within him those kindlier feelings which would have impeded or encumbered his progress to eminence and to power. That he was extremely zealous for the great change which he so essentially promoted cannot admit of a doubt; and there is no reason whatever for asserting that his ambition, or any personal motive, overtopped his honest though exaggerated enthusiasm. The zeal of Saint Just and Camille Desmoulins was, in all probability, as sincere as Danton’s; but they, especially Saint Just, suffered personal feelings to interfere with it, and control their conduct to a very much greater extent; and their memory, especially Saint Just’s, is exposed to far more reproach for their conduct in the bloody scenes to which the Revolution gave birth.

  The speeches of Danton were marked by a fire, an animation, very different from anything that we find in those of Robespierre, and the other leaders of the Revolution, except perhaps Isnard, the most ardent of them all. In Danton’s eloquence there appears no preparation, no study, nothing got up for mere effect. We have the whole heart of the man poured forth; and accordingly he rises upon any incidental interruption, and is never confounded by any tumult or any attack. In one particular, as might be expected from his nature, he stands single among the great speakers of either France or England—the shortness of his speeches. They are, indeed, harangues prompted by the occasion. And we never lose the man of action in the orator….

  A charge of corruption has often been brought against Danton, but upon very inadequate grounds. The assertion of Royalist partisans that he had stipulated for money, and the statement of one that he knew of its payment, and had seen the receipt (as if the receipt could have passed), can signify really nothing, when put in contrast with the known facts of his living, throughout his short public career, in narrow circumstances, and of his family being left so destitute that his sons are at this day leading the lives of peasants, or, at most, of humble yeomen, and cultivating for their support a small paternal farm in his native parish. The difference between his habits and those of the other great leaders gave rise to the rumors against his purity. He was almost the only one whose life was not strictly ascetic. Without being a debauched man, he indulged in sensual pleasures far more than comported with the rigid republican character; and this formed one of the charges which, often repeated at a time when a fanatical republicanism had engendered a puritan morality, enabled Robespierre, himself above all suspicion of the kind, to work his downfall.

  The patriarchs of the revolution, who till late survived, and whom I knew, such as M. Lakanal, always held Danton to be identified with the revolution, and its principal leader. In fact the 10th of August, which overthrew the monarchy, was his peculiar work. He prepared the movement, headed the body of his section (the Cordeliers) in their march first through the Assembly, demanding, with threats of instant violence, the King’s deposition, then attacking the palace to enforce their requisition. When, soon after that memorable day, the Prussians were advancing upon Paris, and in the general consternation the Assembly was resolved to retreat behind the Loire, he alone retained his imperturbable presence of mind, and prevented a movement which must have proved fatal, because it would have delivered over Paris to the Royalists and the allied armies. The darkest page in his history, however, swiftly follows his greatest glory. He was minister of Justice during the dreadful massacre of September, and he was very far from exerting his power to protect the wretched victims of mob fury. On that occasion was pronounced his famous speech already cited on the necessity of bold measures—a speech by which he was long known, and will be long remembered, throughout all Europe. Other traits of his vehement nature are still recorded. When interrogated at his trial, his answer was, “Je m’appelle Danton; mon sejour sera bientot le neant; mon nom vivra dans le pantheon de l’histoire.” When taking leave of his young and fair wife, and for a moment melted to the use of some such expressions as, “Oh, ma bien aimee! faut-il que je te quitte?”—suddenly recovering himself, he exclaimed, “Danton, point de faiblesse! Allons en avant!”—And the same bold front was maintained to the end. His murder was the knell of Robespierre’s fate; and while choked with rage on his own accusation, and unable to make himself heard, a voice exclaimed, “C’est le sang de Danton qui t’etouffe!” It is the blood of Danton that chokes you! But it must be admitted to have been a fine, a just, and an impressive lesson which, goaded by the taunt, the tyrant, collecting his exhausted strength for a last effort, delivered to his real accomplices, the pusillanimous creatures who had not dared to raise a hand, or even a voice, against Danton’s murder—“Laches! que ne le defendiez-vous donc?” Cowards! then why did you not defend him? On the scaffold, where Danton retained his courage and proud self-possession to the last, the executioner cruelly and foolishly prevented him from embracing for the last time his friend Herault de Seychelles, a man of unsullied character, great acquirements, and high eminence at the bar, as well as of noble blood. “Fool!” exclaimed Danton indignantly, and with the bitter smile of scorn that often marked his features; “Fool! not to see that our heads must in a few seconds meet in that basket!”

  The fall of Danton and his faithful adherent Camille has ever been regarded as one of the most surprising events of the Revolution. His habitual boldness, and the promptitude with which he always took and pursued his course, seems for the moment to have forsaken him; else surely he could have anticipated the attack of the committee, which was fully known beforehand. The Triumvirate had become generally the object of hatred and of dread. The Gironde, though broken and dispersed, and hostile to Danton, as well as to the other partisans of the Mountain, were the last men to approve the course which had been followed since the destruction of their leaders, and were anything but reconciled to mob government, which they had always detested and scorned, by the desperate excesses to which it had led. On the scattered fragments of that once powerful party, then, he might well have relied. Even if he was ignorant of the impatience which Tallien, Bourdon de l’Oise, Legendre, and others felt under the Triumviral domination, and which the two former had not yet perhaps disclosed, he never could have omitted the consideration that some of them, especially Legendre, had before, and prematurely, given vent to their hostile feelings towards Robespierre, and were therefore sure to display them still more decidedly, now that he was so much less powerful, and had so much more richly earned their aversion. As for the charges against Danton, they were absolutely intangible; the speech of Robespierre, and report of Saint Just, presented nothing like substantial grounds of accusation, even admitting all they alleged to be proved. Their declamation was vague and puerile, asserting no offense, but confined to general vituperation; as that he abandoned the public in times of crises, partook of Brissot’s calm and liberticide opinions, quenched the fury of true patriots, magnified his own worth and that of his adherents; or flimsy and broad allegations of things wholly incapable of proof,—as that all Europe was convinced of Danton and Lacroix having stipulated for royalty, and that he had always been friendly towards Dumouriez, Mirabeau, and d’Orleans. The proposition of Legendre to hear him before decreeing his prosecution was rejected by acclamation; and the report of Saint Just against him, though, by a refinement of injustice, as well as an excess of false rhetoric, addressed to him in one continual apostrophe of general abuse an hour long, was delivered and adopted in his absence, while he was buried in the dungeons of the state prison. The revolutionary tribunal, for erecting which he asked pardon of God and man, having nothing like a specific charge before them, much less any evidence to convict, were daunted by his eloquence and his courage, which were beginning to make an impression upon the public mind, when the committees sent Saint Just down to the Convention with a second report, alleging a new conspiracy, called the Conspiration des Prisons,—an alleged design of Danton and his party, then in custody, to rush out of the dungeons, and massacre the Committee, the Jacobin Club, and the patriots in the Convention; liberate young Capet, that is, Louis XVII., and place him in Danton’s hands. Upon this most clumsy fabrication, every word of which refuted itself, it was at once decreed that the tribunal should proceed summarily, and prevent any one of the accused being heard who should resist or insult the national justice—that is, who should persist in asserting his innocence. Sentence and execution immediately followed.

  These circumstances make it apparent that Danton’s supineness in providing for his own safety by attacking the Committee first, must have proceeded from the ascendant which the Triumvirate had gained over his mind. Originally he had a mean opinion of Robespierre, holding him void of the qualities which a revolutionary crisis demands. “Cet homme-la [was his phrase] ne saurait pas cuire des œufs durs.” That man is not capable of boiling eggs hard. But this opinion was afterwards so completely changed that he was used to say, “Tout va bien tant qu’on dira Robespierre et Danton; mais malheur a moi si on dit jamais Danton et Robespierre.” All will go well as long as men say Robespierre and Danton; but woe be to me if ever they should say Danton and Robespierre. Possibly he became sensible to the power of Robespierre’s character, forever persisting in extreme courses, and plunging onwards beyond any one, with a perfect absence of all scruples in his remorseless career. But his dread of such a conflict as those words contemplate was assuredly much augmented by the feeling that the match must prove most unequal between his own honesty and openness, and the practiced duplicity of the most dark, the most crafty of human beings.

  The impression, thus become habitual on his mind, and which made him so distrustful of himself in a combat with an adversary like the rattlesnake, at once terrible and despicable, whose rattle gives warning of the neighboring peril, may go far to account for his avoiding the strife till all precaution was too late to save him. But we must also take into account the other habitual feeling, so often destructive of revolutionary nerves; the awe in which the children of convulsion, like the practicers of the dark art, stand of the spirit they have themselves conjured up; their instinctive feeling of the agnostic throes which they have excited in the mass of the community, and armed with such resistless energy. The Committee, though both opposed and divided against itself, still presented to the country the front of the existing supreme power in the State; it was the sovereign de facto, and retained as such all those preternatural attributes that “do hedge in” monarchs even when tottering to their fall; it therefore impressed the children of popular change with the awe which they instinctively feel towards the Sovereign People. Hence Danton, viewing in Robespierre the personification of the multitude, could not at once make up his mind to fly in the face of this dread power; and his hesitation enabled his adversaries to begin the mortal fray, and win their last victory. Plainly, it was a strife in which the party that began was sure to carry the day.

  The history of Danton, as well as that of Robespierre, both those passages wherein they were jointly successful, and those in which one fell beneath the power and the arts—the combined force and fraud—of the other, is well calculated to impress upon our minds that, in the great affairs of the world, especially in the revolutions which change its condition, the one thing needful is a sustained determination of character; a mind firm, persevering, inflexible, incapable of bending to the will of another, and ever controlling circumstances, not yielding to them. A quick perception of opportunities, a prompt use of them, is of infinite advantage; an indomitable boldness in danger is all but necessary; nevertheless Robespierre’s career shows that it is not quite indispensable, while Danton’s is a proof that a revolutionary chief may possess it habitually, and may yet be destroyed by a momentary loss of nerve, or a disposition to take the law from others, or an inopportune hesitation and faltering in recurring to extreme measures. But the history of all these celebrated men shows that steady, unflinching, unscrupulous perseverance—the fixed and vehement will—is altogether essential to success. “Quod vult, id valde vult,” said one great man formerly of another, to whom it applied less strikingly than to himself, though he was fated to experience in his own person that it was far from being inapplicable to him of whom he said it. It was the saying of Julius Cæsar respecting Junius Brutus, and conveyed in a letter to one who, celebrated, and learned, and virtuous as he was, and capable of exerting both boldness and firmness upon occasion, was yet, of all the great men that have made their names illustrious, the one who could the least claim the same habitual character for himself. Marcus Tullius could never have risen to eminence in the Revolution of France, any more than he could have mingled in the scenes which disgracefully distinguished it from the troubles of Rome.