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The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2

E >> Edinburgh Review >> The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay. Vol 2




After this, it would be idle to dwell on facts which would
indeed, of themselves, suffice to render a name infamous, but
which make no perceptible addition to the great infamy of Barere.
It would be idle, for example, to relate how he, a man of
letters, a member of an Academy of Inscriptions, was foremost in
that war against learning, art, and history which disgraced the
Jacobin government; how he recommended a general conflagration of
libraries; how he proclaimed that all records of events anterior
to the Revolution ought to be destroyed; how he laid waste the
Abbey of St Denis, pulled down monuments consecrated by the
veneration of ages, and scattered on the wind the dust of ancient
kings. He was, in truth, seldom so well employed as when he
turned for a moment from making war on the living to make war on
the dead.

Equally idle would it be to dilate on his sensual excesses. That
in Barere as in the whole breed of Neros, Caligulas, and
Domitians whom he resembled, voluptuousness was mingled with
cruelty; that he withdrew, twice in every decade, from the work
of blood, to the smiling gardens of Clichy, and there forgot
public cares in the madness of wine and in the arms of
courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does
not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly
observes that Barere's dissipation was not carried to such a
point as to interfere with his industry. Nothing can be more
true. Barere was by no means so much addicted to debauchery as
to neglect the work of murder. It was his boast that, even
during his hours of recreation, he cut out work for the
Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that his
exertions would hurt his health, he gaily answered that he was
less busy than they thought. "The guillotine," he said, "does
all; the guillotine governs." For ourselves, we are much more
disposed to look indulgently on the pleasures which he allowed to
himself than on the pain which he inflicted on his neighbours.

"Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset
Tempora saevitiae, claras quibus abstulit urbi
Illustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo."

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly
a blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr
Fox. But the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barere.

And now Barere had become a really cruel man. It was from mere
pusillanimity that he had perpetrated his first great crimes.
But the whole history of our race proves that the taste for the
misery of others is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious
may too easily acquire, and which, when once acquired, is as
strong as any of the propensities with which we are born. A very
few months had sufficed to bring this man into a state of mind in
which images of despair, wailing, and death had an exhilarating
effect on him, and inspired him as wine and love inspire men of
free and joyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily
freight of victims, ancient men and lads, and fair young girls,
the binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the
little national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of
blood beneath the scaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the
panier--these things were to him what Lalage and a cask of
Falernian were to Horace, what Rosette and a bottle of iced
champagne are to De Beranger. As soon as he began to speak of
slaughter his heart seemed to be enlarged, and his fancy to
become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades.
Robespierre, Saint Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the
effect of earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who
made a toil of a pleasure. Cruelty was no such melancholy
business, to be gone about with an austere brow and a whining
tone; it was a recreation, fitly accompanied by singing and
laughing. In truth, Robespierre and Barere might be well
compared to the two renowned hangmen of Louis the Eleventh. They
were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havoc. But, while
they murdered, one of them frowned and canted, the other grinned
and joked. For our own part, we prefer Jean qui pleure to Jean
qui rit.

In the midst of the funeral gloom which overhung Paris, a gaiety
stranger and more ghastly than the horrors of the prison and the
scaffold distinguished the dwelling of Barere. Every morning a
crowd of suitors assembled to implore his protection. He came
forth in his rich dressing-gown, went round the antechamber,
dispensed smiles and promises among the obsequious crowd,
addressed himself with peculiar animation to every handsome woman
who appeared in the circle, and complimented her in the florid
style of Gascony on the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of her
eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his suppliants
he dismissed them, and flung all their memorials unread into the
fire. This was the best way, he conceived, to prevent arrears of
business from accumulating. Here he was only an imitator.
Cardinal Dubois had been in the habit of clearing his table of
papers in the same way. Nor was this the only point in which we
could point out a resemblance between the worst statesman of the
monarchy and the worst statesman of the republic.

Of Barere's peculiar vein of pleasantry a notion may be formed
from an anecdote which one of his intimate associates, a juror of
the revolutionary tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a
conspicuous part in the orgies of Clichy implored Barere to use
his power against a head-dress which did not suit her style of
face, and which a rival beauty was trying to bring into fashion.
One of the magistrates of the capital was summoned and received
the necessary orders. Aristocracy, Barere said, was again
rearing its front. These new wigs were counter-revolutionary.
He had reason to know that they were made out of the long fair
hair of handsome aristocrats who had died by the national
chopper. Every lady who adorned herself with the relics of
criminals might justly be suspected of incivism. This ridiculous
lie imposed on the authorities of Paris. Female citizens were
solemnly warned against the obnoxious ringlets, and were left to
choose between their head-dresses and their heads. Barere's
delight at the success of this facetious fiction was quite
extravagant: he could not tell the story without going into such
convulsions of laughter as made his hearers hope that he was
about to choke. There was something peculiarly tickling and
exhilarating to his mind in this grotesque combination of the
frivolous with the horrible, of false locks and curling-irons
with spouting arteries and reeking hatchets.

But, though Barere succeeded in earning the honourable nicknames
of the Witling of Terror, and the Anacreon of the Guillotine,
there was one place where it was long remembered to his
disadvantage that he had, for a time, talked the language of
humanity and moderation. That place was the Jacobin club. Even
after he had borne the chief part in the massacre of the
Girondists, in the murder of the Queen, in the destruction of
Lyons, he durst not show himself within that sacred precinct. At
one meeting of the society, a member complained that the
committee to which the supreme direction of affairs was
entrusted, after all the changes which had been made, still
contained one man who was not trustworthy. Robespierre, whose
influence over the Jacobins was boundless, undertook the defence
of his colleague, owned there was some ground for what had been
said, but spoke highly of Barere's industry and aptitude for
business. This seasonable interposition silenced the accuser;
but it was long before the neophyte could venture to appear at
the club.

At length a masterpiece of wickedness, unique, we think, even
among Barere's great achievements, obtained his full pardon even
from that rigid conclave. The insupportable tyranny of the
Committee of Public Safety had at length brought the minds of
men, and even of women, into a fierce and hard temper, which
defied or welcomed death. The life which might be any morning
taken away, in consequence of the whisper of a private enemy,
seemed of little value. It was something to die after smiting
one of the oppressors; it was something to bequeath to the
surviving tyrants a terror not inferior to that which they had
themselves inspired. Human nature, hunted and worried to the
utmost, now turned furiously to bay. Fouquier Tinville was
afraid to walk the streets; a pistol was snapped at Collot
D'Herbois; a young girl, animated apparently by the spirit of
Charlotte Corday, attempted to obtain an interview with
Robespierre. Suspicions arose; she was searched; and two knives
were found about her. She was questioned, and spoke of the
Jacobin domination with resolute scorn and aversion. It is
unnecessary to say that she was sent to the guillotine. Barere
declared from the tribune that the cause of these attempts was
evident. Pitt and his guineas had done the whole. The English
Government had organised a vast system of murder, had armed the
hand of Charlotte Corday, and had now, by similar means, attacked
two of the most eminent friends of liberty in France. It is
needless to say that these imputations were, not only false, but
destitute of all show of truth. Nay, they were demonstrably
absurd: for the assassins to whom Barere referred rushed on
certain death, a sure proof that they were not hirelings. The
whole wealth of England would not have bribed any sane person to
do what Charlotte Corday did. But, when we consider her as an
enthusiast, her conduct is perfectly natural. Even those French
writers who are childish enough to believe that the English
Government contrived the infernal machine and strangled the
Emperor Paul have fully acquitted Mr Pitt of all share in the
death of Marat and in the attempt on Robespierre. Yet on
calumnies so futile as those which we have mentioned did Barere
ground a motion at which all Christendom stood aghast. He
proposed a decree that no quarter should be given to any English
or Hanoverian soldier. (M. Hippolyte Carnot does his best to
excuse this decree. His abuse of England is merely laughable.
England has managed to deal with enemies of a very different sort
from either himself or his hero. One disgraceful blunder,
however, we think it right to notice. M. Hippolyte Carnot
asserts that a motion similar to that of Barere was made in the
English Parliament by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This assertion
is false. We defy M. Hippolyte Carnot to state the date and
terms of the motion of which he speaks. We do not accuse him of
intentional misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him of
extreme ignorance and temerity. Our readers will be amused to
learn on what authority he has ventured to publish such a fable.
He quotes, not the journals of the Lords, not the Parliamentary
Debates, but a ranting message of the Executive Directory to the
Five Hundred, a message, too, the whole meaning of which he has
utterly misunderstood.) His Carmagnole was worthy of the
proposition with which it concluded. "That one Englishman should
be spared, that for the slaves of George, for the human machines
of York, the vocabulary of our armies should contain such a word
as generosity, this is what the National Convention cannot
endure. War to the death against every English soldier. If last
year, at Dunkirk, quarter had been refused to them when they
asked it on their knees, if our troops had exterminated them all,
instead of suffering them to infest our fortresses by their
presence, the English government would not have renewed its
attack on our frontiers this year. It is only the dead man who
never comes back. What is this moral pestilence which has
introduced into our armies false ideas of humanity? That the
English were to be treated with indulgence was the philanthropic
notion of the Brissotines; it was the patriotic practice of
Dumourier. But humanity consists in exterminating our enemies.
No mercy to the execrable Englishman. Such are the sentiments of
the true Frenchman; for he knows that he belongs to a nation
revolutionary as nature, powerful as freedom, ardent as the
saltpetre which she has just torn from the entrails of the earth.
Soldiers of liberty, when victory places Englishmen at your
mercy, strike! None of them must return to the servile soil of
Great Britain; none must pollute the free soil of France."

The Convention, thoroughly tamed and silenced, acquiesced in
Barere's motion without debate. And now at last the doors of the
Jacobin Club were thrown open to the disciple who had surpassed
his masters. He was admitted a member by acclamation, and was
soon selected to preside.

For a time he was not without hope that his decree would be
carried into full effect. Intelligence arrived from the seat of
war of a sharp contest between some French and English troops, in
which the Republicans had the advantage, and in which no
prisoners had been made. Such things happen occasionally in all
wars. Barere, however, attributed the ferocity of this combat to
his darling decree, and entertained the Convention with another
Carmagnole.

"The Republicans," he said, "saw a division in red uniform at a
distance. The red-coats are attacked with the bayonet. Not one
of them escapes the blows of the Republicans. All the red-coats
have been killed. No mercy, no indulgence, has been shown
towards the villains. Not an Englishman whom the Republicans
could reach is now living. How many prisoners should you guess
that we have made? One single prisoner is the result of this
great day."

And now this bad man's craving for blood had become insatiable.
The more he quaffed, the more he thirsted. He had begun with the
English; but soon he came down with a proposition for new
massacres. "All the troops," he said, "of the coalesced tyrants
in garrison at Conde, Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies,
ought to be put to the sword unless they surrender at discretion
in twenty-four hours. The English, of course, will be admitted
to no capitulation whatever. With the English we have no treaty
but death. As to the rest, surrender at discretion in twenty-
four hours, or death, these are our conditions. If the slaves
resist, let them feel the edge of the sword." And then he waxed
facetious. "On these terms the Republic is willing to give them
a lesson in the art of war." At that jest, some hearers, worthy
of such a speaker, set up a laugh. Then he became serious again.
"Let the enemy perish," he cried, "I have already said it from
this tribune. It is only the dead man who never comes back.
Kings will not conspire against us in the grave. Armies will not
fight against us when they are annihilated. Let our war with
them be a war of extermination. What pity is due to slaves whom
the Emperor leads to war under the cane; whom the King of Prussia
beats to the shambles with the flat of the sword; and whom the
Duke of York makes drunk with rum and gin?" And at the rum and
gin the Mountain and the galleries laughed again.

If Barere had been able to effect his purpose, it is difficult to
estimate the extent of the calamity which he would have brought
on the human race. No government, however averse to cruelty,
could, in justice to its own subjects, have given quarter to
enemies who gave none. Retaliation would have been, not merely
justifiable, but a sacred duty. It would have been necessary for
Howe and Nelson to make every French sailor whom they took walk
the plank. England has no peculiar reason to dread the
introduction of such a system. On the contrary, the operation of
Barere's new law of war would have been more unfavourable to his
countrymen than to ours; for we believe that, from the beginning
to the end of the war, there never was a time at which the number
of French prisoners in England was not greater than the number of
English prisoners in France; and so, we apprehend, it will be in
all wars while England retains her maritime superiority. Had the
murderous decree of the Convention been in force from 1794 to
1815, we are satisfied that, for every Englishman slain by the
French, at least three Frenchmen would have been put to the sword
by the English. It is, therefore, not as Englishmen, but as
members of the great society of mankind, that we speak with
indignation and horror of the change which Barere attempted to
introduce. The mere slaughter would have been the smallest part
of the evil. The butchering of a single unarmed man in cold
blood, under an act of the legislature, would have produced more
evil than the carnage of ten such fields as Albuera. Public law
would have been subverted from the foundations; national enmities
would have been inflamed to a degree of rage which happily it is
not easy for us to conceive; cordial peace would have been
impossible. The moral character of the European nations would
have been rapidly and deeply corrupted; for in all countries
those men whose calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the
defence of the public weal enjoy high consideration, and are
considered as the best arbitrators on points of honour and manly
bearing. With the standard of morality established in the
military profession the general standard of morality must to a
great extent sink or rise. It is, therefore, a fortunate
circumstance that, during a long course of years, respect for the
weak and clemency towards the vanquished have been considered as
qualities not less essential to the accomplished soldier than
personal courage. How long would this continue to be the case,
if the slaying of prisoners were a part of the daily duty of the
warrior? What man of kind and generous nature would, under such
a system, willingly bear arms? Who, that was compelled to bear
arms, would long continue kind and generous? And is it not
certain that, if barbarity towards the helpless became the
characteristic of military men, the taint must rapidly spread to
civil and to domestic life, and must show itself in all the
dealings of the strong with the weak, of husbands with wives, of
employers with work men, of creditors with debtors?

But, thank God, Barere's decree was a mere dead letter. It was
to be executed by men very different from those who, in the
interior of France, were the instruments of the Committee of
Public Safety, who prated at Jacobin Clubs, and ran to Fouquier
Tinville with charges of incivism against women whom they could
not seduce, and bankers from whom they could not extort money.
The warriors who, under Hoche, had guarded the walls of Dunkirk,
and who, under Kleber, had made good the defence of the wood of
Monceaux, shrank with horror from an office more degrading than
that of the hangman. "The Convention," said an officer to his
men, "has sent orders that all the English prisoners shall be
shot." "We will not shoot them" answered a stout-hearted
sergeant. "Send them to the Convention. If the deputies take
pleasure in killing a prisoner, they may kill him themselves, and
eat him too, like savages as they are." This was the sentiment
of the whole army. Bonaparte, who thoroughly understood war, who
at Jaffa and elsewhere gave ample proof that he was not unwilling
to strain the laws of war to their utmost rigour, and whose
hatred of England amounted to a folly, always spoke of Barere's
decree with loathing, and boasted that the army had refused to
obey the Convention.

Such disobedience on the part of any other class of citizens
would have been instantly punished by wholesale massacre; but the
Committee of Public Safety was aware that the discipline which
had tamed the unwarlike population of the fields and cities might
not answer in camps. To fling people by scores out of a boat,
and, when they catch hold of it, to chop off their fingers with a
hatchet, is undoubtedly a very agreeable pastime for a
thoroughbred Jacobin, when the sufferers are, as at Nantes, old
confessors, young girls, or women with child. But such sport
might prove a little dangerous if tried upon grim ranks of
grenadiers, marked with the scars of Hondschoote, and singed by
the smoke of Fleurus.

Barere, however, found some consolation. If he could not succeed
in murdering the English and the Hanoverians, he was amply
indemnified by a new and vast slaughter of his own countrymen and
countrywomen. If the defence which has been set up for the
members of the Committee of Public Safety had been well founded,
if it had been true that they governed with extreme severity only
because the republic was in extreme peril, it is clear that the
severity would have diminished as the peril diminished. But the
fact is, that those cruelties for which the public danger is made
a plea became more and more enormous as the danger became less
and less, and reached the full height when there was no longer
any danger at all. In the autumn of 1793, there was undoubtedly
reason to apprehend that France might be unable to maintain the
struggle against the European coalition. The enemy was
triumphant on the frontiers. More than half the departments
disowned the authority of the Convention. But at that time eight
or ten necks a day were thought an ample allowance for the
guillotine of the capital. In the summer of 1794, Bordeaux,
Toulon, Caen, Lyons, Marseilles, had submitted to the ascendency
of Paris. The French arms were victorious under the Pyrenees and
on the Sambre. Brussels had fallen. Prussia announced her
intention of withdrawing from the contest. The Republic, no
longer content with defending her own independence, was beginning
to meditate conquest beyond the Alps and the Rhine. She was now
more formidable to her neighbours than ever Louis the Fourteenth
had been. And now the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was not
content with forty, fifty, sixty heads in a morning. It was just
after a series of victories, which destroyed the whole force of
the single argument which has been urged in defence of the system
of terror, that the Committee of Public Safety resolved to infuse
into that system an energy hitherto unknown. It was proposed to
reconstruct the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to collect in the
space of two pages the whole revolutionary jurisprudence. Lists
of twelve judges and fifty jurors were made out from among the
fiercest Jacobins. The substantive law was simply this, that
whatever the tribunal should think pernicious to the republic was
a capital crime. The law of evidence was simply this, that
whatever satisfied the jurors was sufficient proof. The law of
procedure was of a piece with everything else. There was to be
an advocate against the prisoner, and no advocate for him. It
was expressly declared that, if the jurors were in any manner
convinced of the guilt of the prisoner, they might convict him
without hearing a single witness. The only punishment which the
court could inflict was death.

Robespierre proposed this decree. When he had read it, a murmur
rose from the Convention. The fear which had long restrained the
deputies from opposing the Committee was overcome by a stronger
fear. Every man felt the knife at his throat. "The decree,"
said one, "is of grave importance. I move that it be printed and
the debate be adjourned. If such a measure were adopted without
time for consideration, I would blow my brains out at once." The
motion for adjournment was seconded. Then Barere sprang up. "It
is impossible," he said, "that there can be any difference of
opinion among us as to a law like this, a law so favourable in
all respects to patriots; a law which insures the speedy
punishment of conspirators. If there is to be an adjournment, I
must insist that it shall not be for more than three days." The
opposition was overawed; the decree was passed; and, during the
six weeks which followed, the havoc was such as has never been
known before.

And now the evil was beyond endurance. That timid majority which
had for a time supported the Girondists, and which had, after
their fall, contented itself with registering in silence the
decrees of the Committee of Public Safety, at length drew courage
from despair. Leaders of bold and firm character were not
wanting, men such as Fouche and Tallien, who, having been long
conspicuous among the chiefs of the Mountain, now found that
their own lives, or lives still dearer to them than their own,
were in extreme peril. Nor could it be longer kept secret that
there was a schism in the despotic committee. On one side were
Robespierre, Saint Just, and Couthon; on the other, Collot and
Billaud. Barere leaned towards these last, but only leaned
towards them. As was ever his fashion when a great crisis was at
hand, he fawned alternately on both parties, struck alternately
at both, and held himself in readiness to chant the praises or to
sign the death-warrant of either. In any event his Carmagnole
was ready. The tree of liberty, the blood of traitors, the
dagger of Brutus, the guineas of perfidious Albion, would do
equally well for Billaud and for Robespierre.

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