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.
