Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) Essay 1: Robespierre   By: John Morley (1838-1923)

BY

JOHN MORLEY

VOL. I. Essay 1: Robespierre

London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

ROBESPIERRE.

I.

PAGE

Introduction 1

Different views of Robespierre 4

His youthful history 5

An advocate at Arras 7

Acquaintance with Carnot 10

The summoning of the States General 11

Prophecies of revolution 12

Reforming Ministers tried and dismissed 13

Financial state of France 14

Impotence of the Monarchy 17

The Constituent Assembly 19

Robespierre interprets the revolutionary movement rightly 21

The Sixth of October 1789 23

Alteration in Robespierre's position 25

Character of Louis XVI. 28

And of Marie Antoinette 29

The Constitution and Robespierre's mark upon it 34

Instability of the new arrangements 37

Importance of Jacobin ascendancy 41

The Legislative Assembly 42

Robespierre's power at the Jacobin Club 44

His oratory 45

The true secret of his popularity 48

Aggravation of the crisis in the spring of 1792 50

The Tenth of August 1792 52

Danton 53

Compared with Robespierre 55

Robespierre compared with Marat and with Sieyès 57

Character of the Terror 58

II.

Fall of the Girondins indispensable 60

France in desperate peril 61

The Committee of Public Safety 65

At the Tuileries 67

The contending factions 70

Reproduced an older conflict of theories 72

Robespierre's attitude 73

The Hébertists 77

Chaumette and his fundamental error 80

Robespierre and the atheists 82

His bitterness towards Anacharsis Clootz 86

New turn of events (March 1794) 90

First breach in the Jacobin ranks: the Hébertists 90

Robespierre's abandonment of Danton 91

Second breach: the Dantonians (April 1794) 95

Another reminiscence of this date 97

Robespierre's relations to the Committees changed 98

The Feast of the Supreme Being 101

Its false philosophy 103

And political inanity 104

The Law of Prairial 106

Robespierre's motive in devising it 107

It produces the Great Terror 109

Robespierre's chagrin at its miscarriage 112

His responsibility not to be denied 112

(1) Affair of Catherine Théot 113

" Cécile Renault 114

(2) Robespierre stimulated popular commissions 115

The drama of Thermidor: the combatants 117

Its conditions 118

The Eighth Thermidor 119

Inefficiency of Robespierre's speech 121

The Ninth Thermidor 123

Famous scene in the Convention 125

Robespierre a prisoner 127

Struggle between the Convention and the Commune 129

Death of Robespierre 131

Ultimate issue of the struggle between the Committees and the Convention 132