VII. 1791. CHAP. make too undisguised a use of them; her obvious superiority to her husband led her to assume, too openly, the lead of him in the direction of political affairs. Vehement, impassioned, and overbearing, she could not brook contradiction, and was often confirmed in error by opposition. Her jealousy of the Queen was extreme, and she often expressed herself in reference to her fall and sufferings in terms of harsh and unfeeling exultation, unworthy alike of her character and situation. Hence she was more fitted, as women eminent in talent generally are, for adversity than for prosperity, and owes her great celebrity chiefly to the extraordinary heroism of her last moments. She lived to lament the crimes perpetrated in the name of liberty, and died a victim to her conjugal fidelity; evincing, in the last hour, a degree of intrepidity rarely paralleled even in the annals of female 1 Lac. ii. 14, heroism, and which, had it been general in the men of i. 18, 19. her party, might have stifled the Reign of Terror in its 15. Roland, 17. birth.1 * Vergniaud was the most eloquent speaker of the Character of Gironde, but he had not the vigour or resolution requisite Vergniaud. for the leader of a party in troubled times. Passion, in general, had little influence over his mind he was humane, gentle, and benevolent; difficult to rouse to * Pierre Victorin Vergniaud was born at Limoges in 1759; so that in 1791 he was only thirty-two years of age. His father was an advocate in that town, and bound his son to the same profession, designing him to succeed him in his business there; but young Vergniaud, being desirous of appearing on a more important theatre, repaired to Bordeaux, where his abilities and power of speaking soon procured him a brilliant reputation, though his invincible indolence prevented him from succeeding in the more thorny, but lucrative branches of his profession. Like all the young barristers of his province, he at once, and with the utmost ardour, embraced the principles of the Revolution; and he was even remarkable among them for the vehemence of his language, and the impassioned style of his eloquence. He was, however, indolent in the extreme; fond of pleasure, and, like Mirabeau, passionately desirous of enjoy. ment; but when roused, either by his feelings or necessity, he rivalled that great man in the power and influence of his oratory. He had little ambition for himself, but lent himself to the designs of others who were consumed with the desire to raise themselves to the head of affairs. He was chosen one of the deputies for Bordeaux, in 1791, for the Legislative Assembly, and soon rose to eminence by his remarkable oratorical powers.—Biographie Universelle, xlviii. 192, 193 (VERGNIAUD). VII. exertion, and still more to be convinced of the wicked- CHAP. ness, either of his adversaries, or of a large portion of his supporters. Indolence was his besetting sin, ignorance 1791. of human nature his chief defect. But when great occasions arose, and the latent energy of his mind was roused, he poured forth his generous thoughts in streams of eloquence which never were surpassed in the French Assembly. His oratory was not like that of Mirabeau, broken and emphatic, adapted to the changing temper of the audience he addressed; but uniformly elegant, sonorous, and flowing, swelling at times into the highest strains of impassioned fervour. That such a man should have been unable to rule the Convention, only proves how unfit a body elected as they were is to rule the destinies of a great nation, or a man of such elegant accomplishments 138. to sustain the conflict with a rude democracy.1 1Th. iii. 137, 18. character. But the one of all the Girondist party who took the most decided lead in the Assembly was BRISSOT.* Unlike Brissot. His Vergniaud, he was activity itself; and poured forth the stores of an ardent but ill-regulated mind with a profusion which astonished the world, even in those days of universal excitement and almost superhuman exertion. * Jean Pierre Brissot was born at Duarville, near Chartres, on the 14th January 1754. His father was a pastrycook, but gave his son a college education, and before he left the seminary where he received it, he had already become an author. A pamphlet he published on the inequality of ranks, in 1775, procured for him a place in the Bastille, from which he was liberated by the influence of Madame Genlis, one of whose maids he soon after married. From thence he was sent to England, on a secret mission from the French police, and afterwards went to America, vainly seeking for some fixed employment; but no sooner did the Revolution break out in France in 1788, than he returned to that country, and immediately began to take an active part in promoting republican principles. After commencing with the publication of several pamphlets, he set up a journal entitled, "Le Patriote Français," which continued to be issued for two years, and acquired a great reputation. This procured for him, on occasion of the Revolution of 14th July, a place in the municipality of Paris-a body then, and still more afterwards, of not less importance than the National Assembly itself. In conjunction with Laclos, of the Orleans faction, he drew up the famous petition of the Champ de Mars, which demanded the dethronement of the King after the journey to Varennes, which procured him a place in the Legislative Assembly, where he became an ardent opponent of Lafayette and the Constitutional party.-See BRISSOT, Mémoires, i. 9-213; and Biog. Univ. v. 624, 625 (BRISSOT). VII. 1791. CHAP. But he was neither a speaker nor a writer of distinguished talent. His style in the Assembly, as well as in his pamphlets, was verbose and monotonous; his information often scanty or inaccurate; and he was totally destitute either of philosophic thought or elevation of sentiment. He owed his reputation, which was great, and his influence, which for a considerable time was still greater, to his indefatigable industry, to the prodigious multitude of his pamphlets and speeches, which, by the sheer weight of number, kept him continually before the public; to his ultra-revolutionary zeal, which rendered him ever foremost in supporting projects of innovation or spoliation; and to his continual denunciation of counter-revolutionary plots in others, which rendered his journals and pamphlets always an object of curiosity. Like the rest of his party, he was irreligious, with all the political fanaticism which then supplied the place of religion. Calm and imperturbable in manner, he was full of hatred and envenomed feeling in character. Consumed by revolutionary passions, he was superior to the vulgar thirst for money; and though he had many opportunities of making a fortune, he left his wife and children, when brought to the scaffold by Robespierre, in a state of poverty. He was weak in constitution, ungainly in figure, with a pale countenance, and an affectation of Jacobin simplicity or rudeness of attire. Univ.v.624, Like many other men of passing celebrity, he was always de Brissot, beneath his reputation, which was in a great degree owing Mém. de to the abilities of Secretary Girey Dupry, who wrote the best articles in his journals, and shared his fate on the scaffold.1 1 Biog. 625. Mém. i. 121, 232. Condorcet, i. 179. 19. Guadet was more animated than Vergniaud: he seized Guadet, with more readiness the changes of the moment, and Isnard, Bar- preserved his presence of mind more completely during baroux, and the stormy discussions of the Assembly. Gensonné, with Gensonné, others. inferior talents for speaking, was nevertheless looked up to as a leader of his party from his firmness and resolution of character. Barbaroux, a native of the south of VII. 1791. France, brought to the strife of faction the ardent CHAP. temperament of his sunny climate; resolute, sagacious, and daring, he early divined the bloody designs of the Jacobins, but was unable to prevail on his associates to adopt the desperate measures which he soon foresaw would be necessary, to give them anything like an equality in the strife. Isnard, Buzot, and Lanjuinais, were also distinguished men of this illustrious party, who became alike eminent by their oratorical talents and the heroism which they evinced in the extremity of adverse fortune. The elevated feelings, generous character, and pleasing manners of Barbaroux, won the heart, though they never shook the virtue, of Madame Roland. But what they and all the leaders of their party wanted, and which rendered them alike unfit to rule or contend with the Revolution, was a feeling of duty or rectitude on the one hand, and true knowledge of mankind on the other. The want of the first induced them, under the impulse of selfish ambition, to engage in a treasonable conspiracy against the throne, which led to its destruction; the want of the latter disqualified them from contending, after their common victory, with the associates whom they had summoned up for that criminalTh. iii. enterprise, and at once conducted themselves to the Lam. Hist. scaffold, and destroyed the last remnants of freedom 172. in France.1 138, 139. des Gir. v. Very different was the character of the JACOBINS, that 20. of the terrible faction whose crimes have stained the annals of Picture France with such unheard-of atrocities. Their origin Jacobins. dates back to the struggles in 1789, when, as already noticed, a certain number of deputies from the province of Brittany met in the convent of the Jacobins, formerly the seat of the assemblies of the League, under the name of the "Club Breton." The popularity of this club soon attracted to it the most audacious and able of the democratic party. They seemed to have inherited from their predecessors in the Roman Catholic Church at once their VOL. II. I .1791. CHAP. tyrannical disposition and their arrogant exclusiveness.* VII. The nave of the church was transformed into a hall for the meeting of the members; and the seat of the president made of the top of a Gothic monument of black marble, which stood against the walls. The tribune, from whence the orators addressed the assembly, consisted of two beams placed across each other, in the form of a St Andrew's cross, like a half-constructed scaffold; behind it were suspended from the walls the ancient instruments of torture, the unregarded but fitting accompaniments of such a scene; numbers of bats at night flitted through the vast and gloomy vaults, and by their screams augmented the din of the meeting. Such was the strife of contending voices, that muskets were discharged at intervals to produce a temporary cessation of the tumult. A great number of affiliated societies, in all the large towns of France, early gave this club a decided preponderance: the eloquence of Mirabeau thundered under its roof; and all the principal insurrections of the Revolution were prepared by its leaders. There the revolts of the 14th July, the 20th June, and the 10th August, were openly discussed long before they took place; there were rehearsed all the great changes of the drama which were shortly 1 Toul. ii. afterwards to be acted in the Assembly. The massacres 137. Cha of 2d September alone appear to have been unprepared Mém. 76. by them; their infamy rests with Danton and the municipality of Paris.1 232, and v. teaubriand, 21. tion of the Jacobin club, and As usual in democratic assemblies, the most violent Composi- and outrageous soon acquired the ascendancy; the mob applauded those who were loudest in their assertion of tests applithe sovereignty of the people. The greater part of its ed previous members consisted not of the mere ignorant rabble; had it been so, it never could have acquired its fatal ascendancy. It was for the most part composed of the most to admission. * "Ils suivent hardiment le vieux dogme-' Hors de nous, point de salut!' Sauf les Cordeliers qu'ils ménagent, dont ils parlent le moins qu'ils peuvent, ils persécutent les clubs, mêmes révolutionnaires."-MICHELET, Histoire de la Révolution, ii. 412. |