3. CHAPTER III
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CONVENTION
1. The Legend of the Convention.
THE history of the Convention is not merely fertile in
psychological documents. It also shows how powerless the
witnesses of any period and even their immediate successors are
to form an exact idea of the events which they have witnessed,
and the men who have surrounded them.
More than a century has elapsed since the Revolution, and
men are only just beginning to form judgments concerning this
period which, if still often doubtful enough, are slightly more
accurate than of old.
This happens, not only because new documents are being
drawn from the archives, but because the legends which enveloped
that sanguinary period in a magical cloud are gradually vanishing
with the passage of time.
Perhaps the most tenacious legend of all was that which
until formerly used to surround the personages to whom our
fathers applied the glorious epithet, “the Giants of the
Convention.”
The struggles of the Convention against France in
insurrection and Europe in arms produced such an impression that
the heroes of this formidable struggle seemed to belong to a race
of supermen or Titans.
The epithet “giant” seemed justified so long as
the events of the period were confused and massed together.
Regarded as connected when it was simply simultaneous, the work
of the armies was confounded with that of the Convention. The
glory of the first recoiled upon the second, and served as an
excuse for the hecatombs of the Terror, the ferocity of the civil
war, and the devastation of France.
Under the penetrating scrutiny of modern criticism, the
heterogeneous mass of events has been slowly disentangled. The
armies of the Republic have retained their old prestige, but we
have been forced to recognise that the men of the Convention,
absorbed entirely by their intestine conflicts, had very little
to do with their victories. At the most two or three members of
the committees of the Assembly were concerned with the armies,
and the fact that they were victorious was due, apart from their
numbers and the talents of their young generals, to the
enthusiasm with which a new faith had inspired them.
In a later chapter, devoted to the revolutionary armies,
we shall see how they conquered Europe in arms. They set out
inspired by the ideas of liberty and equality which constituted
the new gospel, and once on the frontiers, which were to keep
them so long, they retained a special mentality, very different
from that of the Government, which they first knew nothing of and
afterwards despised.
Having no part whatever in their victories, the men of the
Convention contented themselves with legislating at hazard
according to the injunctions of the leaders who directed them,
and who claimed to be regenerating France by means of the
guillotine.
But it was thanks to these valiant armies that the history
of the Convention was transformed into an apotheosis which
affected several generations with a religious respect which even
to-day is hardly extinct.
Studying in detail the psychology of the “Giants”
of the Convention, we find their magnitude shrink very rapidly.
They were in general extremely mediocre. Their most fervent
defenders, such as M. Aulard, are obliged to admit as much.
This is how M. Aulard puts it in his History of the
French Revolution:—
“It has been said that the generation which from 1789
to 1799 did such great and terrible things was a generation of
giants, or, to put it more plainly, that it was a generation more
distinguished than that which preceded it or that which followed.
This is a retrospective illusion. The citizens who formed the
municipal and Jacobin or nationalist groups by which the
Revolution was effected do not seem to have been superior, either
in enlightenment or in talents, to the Frenchmen of the time of
Louis XV. or of Louis Philippe. Were those exceptionally gifted
whose names history has retained because they appeared on the
stage of Paris, or because they were the most brilliant orators
of the various revolutionary Assemblies? Mirabeau, up to a
certain point, deserved the title of genius; but as to the rest—
Robespierre, Danton, Vergniaud—had they truly more talent, for
example, than our modern orators? In 1793, in the time of the
supposed `giants,' Mme. Roland wrote in her memoirs: `France was
as though drained of men; their dearth during this
revolution is truly surprising; there have scarcely been any but
pigmies.' ”
If after considering the men of the Convention
individually we consider them in a body, we may say that they did
not shine either by intelligence or by virtue or by courage.
Never did a body of men manifest such pusillanimity. They had no
courage save in their speeches or in respect of remote dangers.
This Assembly, so proud and threatening in its speech when
addressing royalty, was perhaps the most timid and docile
political collectivity that the world has ever known. We see it
slavishly obedient to the orders of the clubs and the Commune,
trembling before the popular delegations which invaded it daily,
and obeying the injunctions of the rioters to the point of
handing over to them its most brilliant members. The Convention
affords the world a melancholy spectacle, voting, at the popular
behest, laws so absurd that it is obliged to annul them as soon
as the rioters have quitted the hall.
Few Assemblies have given proof of such weakness. When we
wish to show how low a popular Government can fall we have only
to point to the Convention.
2. Results of the Triumph of the Jacobin
Religion
Among the causes that gave the Convention its special
physiognomy, one of the most important was the definite
establishment of a revolutionary religion. A dogma which was at
first in process of formation was at last finally erected.
This dogma was composed of an aggregate of somewhat
inconsistent elements. Nature, the rights
of man, liberty, equality, the social contract, hatred of
tyrants, and popular sovereignty formed the articles of a gospel
which, to its disciples, was above discussion. The new truths
had found apostles who were certain of their power, and who
finally, like believers all the world over, sought to impose them
by force. No heed should be taken of the opinion of unbelievers;
they all deserved to be exterminated.
The hatred of heretics having been always, as we have
seen, in respect of the Reformation, an irreducible
characteristic of great beliefs, we can readily comprehend the
intolerance of the Jacobin religion.
The history of the Reformation proves also that the
conflict between two allied beliefs is very bitter. We must not,
therefore, be astonished that in the Convention the Jacobins
fought furiously against the other republicans, whose faith
hardly differed from their own.
The propaganda of the new apostles was very energetic. To
convert the provinces they sent thither zealous disciples
escorted by guillotines. The inquisitors of the new faith would
have no paltering with error. As Robespierre said, “The
republic is the destruction of everything that is opposed to
it.” What matter that the country refused to be regenerated?
It should be regenerated despite itself. “We will make a
cemetery of France,” said Carrier, “rather than fail to
regenerate it in our own way.”
The Jacobin policy derived from the new faith was very
simple. It consisted in a sort of equalitarian Socialism,
directed by a dictatorship which would brook no opposition.
Of practical ideas consistent with the economic
necessities and the true nature of man, the theorists who ruled
France would have nothing to say. Speech and the guillotine
sufficed them. Their speeches were childish. “Never a
fact,” says Taine, “nothing but abstractions, strings of
sentences about Nature, reason, the people, tyrants, liberty:
like so many puffed-out balloons uselessly jostling in space. If
we did not know that it all ended in practical and dreadful
results, we should think they were games of logic, school
exercises, academical demonstrations, ideological
combinations.”
The theories of the Jacobins amounted practically to an
absolute tyranny. To them it seemed evident that a sovereign
State must be obeyed without discussion by citizens rendered
equal as to conditions and fortune.
The power with which they invested themselves was far
greater than that of the monarchs who had preceded them. They
fixed the prices of merchandise and arrogated the right to
dispose of the life and property of citizens.
Their confidence in the regenerative virtues of the
revolutionary faith was such that after having declared war upon
kings they declared war upon the gods. A calendar was
established from which the saints were banished. They created a
new divinity, Reason, whose worship was celebrated in Notre-Dame,
with ceremonies which were in many ways identical with those of
the Catholic faith, upon the altar of the “late Holy
Virgin.” This cult lasted until Robespierre substituted a
personal religion of which he constituted himself the high
priest.
The sole masters of France, the Jacobins and their
disciples were able to plunder the country with impunity,
although they were never in the majority anywhere.
Their numbers are not easy to determine exactly. We know
only that they were very small. Taine valued them at 5,000 in
Paris, among 700,000 inhabitants; in Besançon 300 among
300,000; and in all France about 300,000.
“A small feudality of brigands, set over a conquered
France,” according to the words of the same author, they were
able, in spite of their small numbers, to dominate the country,
and this for several reasons. In the first place, their faith
gave them a considerable strength. Then, because they
represented the Government, and for centuries the French
had obeyed those who were in command. Finally, because
it was believed that to overthrow them would be to bring
back the ancien régime, which was greatly
dreaded by the numerous purchasers of the national domains.
Their tyranny must have grown frightful indeed to force
so many departments to rise against them.
The first factor of their power was very important. In
the conflict between powerful faiths and weak faiths victory
never falls to the latter. A powerful faith creates strong
wills, which will always overpower weak wills. That the Jacobins
themselves did finally perish was because their accumulated
violence had bound together thousands of weak wills whose united
weight overbalanced their own strong wills.
It is true that the Girondists, whom the Jacobins
persecuted with so much hatred, had also well-established
beliefs, but in the struggle which ensued their
education told against them, together with their respect for
certain traditions and the rights of others, scruples which did
not in the least trouble their adversaries.
“The majority of the sentiments of the
Girondists,” writes Emile Ollivier, “were delicate and
generous; those of the Jacobin mob were low, gross, and brutal.
The name of Vergniaud, compared with that of the `divine' Marat,
measures a gulf which nothing could span.”
Dominating the Convention at the outset by the superiority
of their talents and their eloquence, the Girondists soon fell
under the domination of the Montagnards—worthless energumens,
who carried little weight, but were always active, and who knew
how to excite the passions of the populace. It was violence and
not talent that impressed the Assemblies.
3. Mental Characteristics of the Convention.
Beside the characteristics common to all assemblies there are
some created by influences of environment and circumstances,
which give any particular assembly of men a special physiognomy.
Most of the characteristics observable in the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies reappeared, in an exaggerated form, in the
Convention.
This Assembly comprised about seven hundred and fifty
deputies, of whom rather more than a third had sat in the
Constituent or the Legislative Assembly. By terrorising the
population the Jacobins contrived to triumph at the elections.
The majority of the electors, six millions out of seven,
preferred to abstain from voting.
As to the professions, the Assembly contained a large
number of lawyers, advocates, notaries, bailiffs, ex-magistrates,
and a few literary men.
The mentality of the Convention was not homogeneous. Now,
an assembly composed of individuals of widely different
characters soon splits up into a number of groups. The
Convention very early contained three—the Gironde, the Mountain,
and the Plain. The constitutional monarchists had almost
disappeared.
The Gironde and the Mountain, extreme parties, consisted
of about a hundred members apiece, who successively became
leaders. In the Mountain were the most advanced members:
Couthon, Hérault de Séchelles, Danton, Camille
Desmoulins, Marat, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Barras,
Saint-Just, Fouché, Tallien, Carrier, Robespierre, &c. In
the Gironde were Brissot, Pétion, Condorcet, Vergniaud,
&c.
The five hundred other members of the Assembly—that is,
the great majority—constituted what was known as the Plain.
This latter formed a floating mass, silent, undecided, and
timid; ready to follow every impulse and to be carried away by
the excitement of the moment. It gave ear indifferently to the
stronger of the two preceding groups. After obeying the Gironde
for some time it allowed itself to be led away by the Mountain,
when the latter triumphed over its enemy. This was a natural
consequence of the law already stated, by which the weak
invariably fall under the dominion of the stronger wills.
The influence of great manipulators of men was
displayed in a high degree during the Convention. It was
constantly led by a violent minority of narrow minds, whose
intense convictions lent them great strength.
A brutal and audacious minority will always lead a fearful
and irresolute majority. This explains the constant tendency
toward extremes to be observed in all revolutionary assemblies.
The history of the Convention verifies once more the law of
acceleration studied in another chapter.
The men of the Convention were thus bound to pass from
moderation to greater and greater violence. Finally they
decimated themselves. Of the 180 Girondists who at the outset
led the Convention 140 were killed or fled, and finally the most
fanatical of the Terrorists, Robespierre, reigned alone over a
terrified crowd of servile representatives.
Yet it was among the five hundred members of the majority,
uncertain and floating as it was, that the intelligence and
experience were to be found. The technical committees to whom
the useful work of the Convention was due were recruited from the
Plain.
More or less indifferent to politics, the members of the
Plain were chiefly anxious that no one should pay particular
attention to them. Shut up in their committees, they showed
themselves as little as possible in the Assembly, which explains
why the sessions of the Convention contained barely a third of
the deputies.
Unhappily, as often happens, these intelligent and honest
men were completely devoid of character, and the fear which
always dominated them made them
vote for the worst of the measures introduced by their dreaded
masters.
The men of the Plain voted for everything they were
ordered to vote for—the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal,
the Terror, &c. It was with their assistance that the Mountain
crushed the Gironde, and Robespierre destroyed the
Hébertists and Dantonists. Like all weak people, they
followed the strong. The gentle philanthropists who composed the
Plain, and constituted the majority of the Assembly, contributed,
by their pusillanimity, to bring about the frightful excesses of
the Convention.
The psychological note always prevailing in the Convention
was a horrible fear. It was more especially through fear that
men cut off one another's heads, in the doubtful hope of keeping
their own on their shoulders.
Such a fear was, of course, very comprehensible. The
unhappy deputies deliberated amid the hootings and vociferations
of the tribunes. At every moment veritable savages, armed with
pikes, invaded the Assembly, and the majority of the members no
longer dared to attend the sessions. When by chance they did go
it was only to vote in silence according to the orders of the
Mountain, which was only a third as numerous.
The fear which dominated the latter, although less
visible, was just as profound. Men destroyed their enemies, not
only because they were shallow fanatics, but because they were
convinced that their own existence was threatened. The judges of
the revolutionary Tribunals trembled no less. They would have
willingly acquitted Danton, and the widow
of Camille Desmoulins, and many others. They dared not.
But it was above all when Robespierre became the sole
master that the phantom of fear oppressed the Assembly. It has
truly been said that a glance from the master made his colleagues
shrink with fear. On their faces one read “the pallor of
fear and the abandon of despair.”
All feared Robespierre and Robespierre feared all. It was
because he feared conspiracies against him that he cut off men's
heads, and it was also through fear that others allowed him to do
so.
The memoirs of members of the Convention show plainly what
a horrible memory they retained of this gloomy period.
Questioned twenty years later, says Taine, on the true aim and
the intimate thoughts of the Committee of Public Safety,
Barrère replied:—
“We had only one feeling, that of self-preservation;
only one desire, that of preserving our lives, which each of us
believed to be threatened. You had your neighbour's head cut off
so that your neighbour should not have you yourself
guillotined.”
The history of the Convention constitutes one of the most
striking examples that could be given of the influence of leaders
and of fear upon an assembly.
