Saint-Just Et La Force Des Choses

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ALBERT OLLIVIER
Saint-Just
and the
force of things
PREFACE
BY ANDRE MALRAUX
GALLIMARD
to XAVIER DE LIGNAC
to ROBERT GALLIMARD
PREFACE
by
ANDRE MALRAUX
“I don't like this extravagant. He wants to bring France a republic

of Sparta, and it is a republic of Cockaigne that we need. »
Word attributed to DANTON.
That Saint-Just belongs to the domain where history merges with legend, we know it since we
write about him. When pamphlets and panegyrics were succeeded by "objective studies", Saint-Just,
changed into some politician who would call himself like him, became unintelligible. This book
expects from the disciplines of history – and first of all from the richest documentation gathered up
to now – the secret of the legend, not the proof of its imposture. Albert Ollivier does not believe that
the revolutionary soul is confused with an interchangeable exaltation; nor that we open this biography
like that of Robespierre. Although he invests Saint-Just as he would invest Robespierre, he knows
that the first continues in an underground shadow. “The Robespierres, the Dantons, the Saint-Justs,
who now, it seems to me, are lying deflated on the shore,” wrote Barrès around 1920: the world was
beginning or preparing for five revolutions.
Ours is the legendary time of our history; larger than that of Louis XIV, less vague than that of
Saint Louis. It exalts the adolescents of France as the Niebelung exalts those of Germany, as
Plutarch exalted those of the past; it is a metamorphosis of the world, one of the times when
everything becomes possible, when the sons of innkeepers are born who will become kings, the
sons of little gentlemen who will become emperors. There are no more ancestors, there are few relatives.
You don't get old there. When Saint-Just saw Hoche for the last time, they were both twenty-six.
Danton dies at thirty-five, Robespierre at thirty-six. A mutilated marble Youth watches over these few
years, victorious over the old Heraclitean river.
No family; a destiny made by the hand of man; and, at the time of the greatest power of Saint-
Just, no women. The Plutarch era goes from the execution of Madame du Barry, Marie Antoinette
and Madame Roland, to the release of Madame Tallien. The fatherland is the only queen there,
served by eloquence and terror.
His legendary mantle envelopes many great figures, and first of all Robespierre. But the aura of
Saint-Just emanates from him alone, and it is she that I would like to capture.
Dantonist historians have lost much of their authority. If Danton may have been guillotined by
fanaticism, Robespierre was undoubtedly guillotined by rogues. Whether or not the nickname of the
Incorruptible gives rise to a smile, we do not see that Tallien, Barras and Fouché have taken it up.
From the Revolution, the Dantonists seem to have assumed the glory; and the Robespierrists, blood.
History becomes Manichean when it animates dreams and legitimizes passions. And Michelet, the
father of this Manichaeism, does not arrive either at a clear idea of Robespierre or at making us
understand where it draws its power from; while his fraternal penetration as a medium imposes on
us an image of Saint-Just that is both hostile and grandiose, already mythical. No Robespierrist has
his statue in France, but the name of Saint-Just is inscribed in a secret Pantheon. When a teenager
possesses the powers of destiny, he does not seem to have conquered them, but received them
from some deity. However, the "young girl's complexion" of a face with a very low forehead and
whose eyebrows meet, is not enough to call for the expression: Archangel of Terror. Myth gave
Danton the face of Mirabeau, Mirabeau that of Beethoven; but the portrait of Carnavalet shows us
a Danton who resembles the baby Cadum. The legend is not born from the beauty of Saint-Just, its
beauty is born from the legend; for his head to become that of the Archangel of the guillotine, the
executioner must pick it up.
But this executioner slices a historical destiny. Many contemporaries saw in Saint-Just the next
rival of Robespierre. How not to dream of the story interrupted by the ax that frees Hoche and
summons Bonaparte? Its resonance spreads in the silence kept by Saint-Just, from 8 Thermidor to
its execution. Did this silence cover the break with Robespierre, which Michelet conjectured (“This
young Dracon was the one whom all betrayed...”) and of which Albert Ollivier unites and orders
such pressing presumptions? It would justify the somnambulistic disdain of Saint-Just, the "Too
late" whose bell seems to ring in him as soon as his last speech is suspended. This illustrious
orator, interrupted on a point of order, and who occupied the tribune, does not seem to have
attempted to speak again, even during the indictment of Robespierre, even during his own; this
leader who, only of the accused Convention members, knew military matters, spent the hours of his
deliverance watching over the corpse of Lebas... Was the action of the Commune a disaster?
for the defendants? Would the revolutionary tribunal have acquitted them? We can still hear
Robespierre's accent of anguish when he is given the appeal to the people to sign: “In the name of what? »
Saint-Just was less legalistic. No surprise, no succession of events or chance completely veils the
wing of suicide that extends over its last night, does not account for its silence similar to Caesar's
toga raised before his murderers. He seems to have suffered his release with the same bitter
indifference as his execution.
There is still friendship. Let's not overlook its power. Don Quichotte and Sancho, Bouvard and
Pécuchet, the horsemen of Courteline themselves, owe him not to be simple grotesques.
Robespierre's only friends are the Duplays, who belong to little history; in the eyes of the great one,
his friends died with him, for him, like the faithful for an idol with closed eyes; he did not die for
them. While Saint-Just is a man of loyalty. And no doubt history is not mistaken, since he wore the
mask of friendship even under the guillotine.
But neither the mascot of the Terror nor the exemplary friend would irreducibly distinguish the
Grand Accuser from a masterful Fouquier-Thinville; that is to say, in many respects, of Robespierre.
In the memory of France, where the Revolution and the war are united, he continues Danton, whom
he killed: “We are happy with you, Citizen Representative; your plume does not have
moved a single strand, we had our eye on you: you're a good bugger. “Which required some
firmness, the tricolor getup of the representatives making target. But "he charged like a young
hussar." We know that he was not content to charge: he found defeats, and left victories.
Robespierre's energy was parliamentary or clandestine. And the French legend loves the
soldiers more than the military, the victorious generals who pacify the Vendée, and those
Caesarian civilians who hide the accused Jourdan, entrust the army to him, contribute powerfully
to reorganize it, and, when they write: " We presage the victory ", add: " We send the flags ".
Doubtless the presence of Saint-Just in some memoirs is due to that of the soldiers of
Year II in all the others...
These elements belong to his legend, but the whole of them does not paint him, even if
brilliant gifts are added to him. For Saint-Just is not the inexorable Marceau that the prestige of
youth, courage, talent and death should make of him. He is no more eloquent than Vergniaud,
more energetic than Danton, more rigorous than Marat: he is otherwise.
In what we still hear of his speeches, in what we read of his decrees, historians hear less the
echo of Robespierre than that of Bonaparte. The action of the great figures of history begins
with what imposes them on men: before covering the army of Italy with victories, Bonaparte
had to receive its command. The intrigue would have sufficed; Would it have sufficed to
transform tramps into legions, to bring older and more experienced generals into line? Before
the first battle, he is already possessed: possessed by the will to pull an instrument out of
disorder, to which he sacrifices everything, as implacably as Saint-Just. His orders are carried
out because they seem dictated by a higher power, Victory; like those of Saint-Just by the
Republic. And Saint-Just in Strasbourg, before the first battle, does nothing other than Bonaparte
in Italy. He restores faith; and for that, order – and first of all stewardship... They are separated
by their designs, and united by the common spell which depersonalizes them, and from which
they derive their authority.
Let us beware of their literary or sentimental notes: their interest is great; teaching sucks.
Those of Bonaparte, who died at the age of thirty, would make him a character who hardly
resembled Napoleon. These men capable of expressing their action by an incorruptible style
rival, in literature and reverie, sometimes with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sometimes with Cadet-
Rousselle. Carnot too, in his poems; and even Laclos in the Education of Girls. (But Laclos
writes Dangerous Liaisons as Saint-Just writes his speeches...) Although "the force of things"
plays a capital role in historical destinies, every man in history possesses, from his first actions,
a " instinct of things” which sweeps the waste from its notebooks, where we believe to find its
secrets. His confidences and daydreams matter little: his real secret is what allows his actions. Saint-Just note
nonsense about the army; that he should propose its reorganization, he wrote the speech on the amalgam,
which Napoleon would admire. But if his energy and his realism are comparable to those of Bonaparte, they
are in the service of the Republic, and not his. Of a Republic that is not “the government”; that it contributes
to create, pursues, reaches and still pursues, like Bonaparte glory. He identifies himself with this pursuit even
more than the latter with his victories, than Napoleon with the Empire. It remains to be seen what the Republic
means to him.
His Italian campaign is obviously his speech on the death of the king. Michelet received the last shivers
from it: "When, passing through the Gironde and leaving Louis XVI there, he turned one room to the right,
and directed towards her, with his words, his whole person, his harsh and murderous look, there was no one
who did not feel the coldness of steel. The force of this speech did not come from the eloquence of time, but
from formulas which were intended to be Roman – and were. Formulas inseparable from their grip on the
event. His own lose their deep resonance if one sees in them only the accusation of Louis XVI: " This man
must reign or die!" is not addressed to him.
It is the indictment of the Convention by its own conscience. To an assembly whose majority regretted
condemning by justice, Saint-Just enjoined to kill by duty.
It seems today that the death of the King was resolved by some, namely by Danton, in order "to throw the
corpse of Louis XVI between France and the enemy"; but this resolution was not avowed. Hence a “war
criminal” trial where the court felt judge and party, with an uneasiness that was all the more profound in that
it claimed to judge in the name of law and justice. By what right, if not the one he chose? As for justice, eight
centuries of sacred royalty in the cathedrals were not so forgotten that it was derisory to "judge Louis as a
citizen." “ This man, says Saint-Just, will prove to us that everything he did, he did to support the deposit
entrusted to him. Even shooting at the people: was he the first? There remained the flight towards the enemy
army. We are amazed that Saint-Just mentions it incidentally. At least the deposit made sense to him.
He alone, in condemning this man, wanted to sweep away with the sword the crown of Saint Louis and the
purple of Richelieu, to kill the soul of royalty: he did not demand this weak head because he was guilty, but
because he was a usurper. On the corpse which would symbolize those of all the kings of France, the priest
intended to found the Republic by divine right.
This discourse, inconceivable on the part of Bonaparte, he takes up again against Danton, he would have
taken it up again against Hoche. Ambition ? It was quickly filled. Let us not oppose the ambitious Saint-Just
to the modest and pious Fouché, the most skilful of his murderers. His contemporaries speak less of his
ambition than of his fanaticism. We understood by this, later, exaltation and implacability. Exalted? rather
silent, except when he had to talk to the soldiers. It is indeed fanaticism that is involved, because it is a
question of faith.
His vocabulary misleads us, and perhaps he misleads him himself. Sometimes the word principles has
for him the current meaning in the 18th century, and sometimes a quasi-theological meaning. Of course,
he is not a Christian. But he does not only fight to defend a regime he deems good, against the return of
a regime he deems bad: he has the vocation of the Revolution. This created the world in which he lives,
and which the Republic alone has the right to judge. He aspires to be the sword bearer of this judgment
against all, and by all means, from the charges of Fleurus to the Bureau of Police. The Republic will be
saved by the fighting communion of its faithful, and will change the condition of men: its enemies are
therefore not infidels, but scoundrels. Unique mythology? No more than that of the Koran, which some
rather remarkable men of action have served; no more than certain Marxisms. He was twenty-one years
old at the storming of the Bastille, and died the day after Fleurus: his short life as a man unfolded only in
a victorious Apocalypse. But “ You will decide whether the French people should be traders or conquerors
” is not quite politics; and that is Islam.
He dreamed of idyllic ploughmen, blessed by bas-relief old men. Anecdotally. We will one day study his
old men with the bucolic of Auguste and the sheep of Bonaparte. Did he think that the end of privileges,
then that of conspiracies, would be enough to ensure general prosperity? As soon as his voice takes on
the accent with which we recognize it, it means that he is no longer talking about organizing agricultural
production, but about delivering the people: " It is less a question of making the people happy than of
prevent you from being unhappy ". Therefore, to deliver it from its hereditary oppressors, then from the
conspirators who hinder the circulation of grain and cause the currency to fall, especially from the enemy;
but also of the rich people of Strasbourg who left the soldiers of the Army of the Rhine without shoes, –
and of the accuser Schneider whom he had exposed, linked to the amount of the guillotine. The
Robespierrists were not defenders of the bourgeoisie. They were the defenders of the Republic, that is to
say of the State. Although they crushed the Parisian proletariat, the 10th Thermidor crowned the money.
To the music of the Directoire balls, the Council of the Banque de France will sponsor Brumaire: no
Spartan nobility will succeed the last French gentlemen. But nothing is further from Saint-Just than the
idea of the proletariat: “ A trade does not go well with the true citizen: the hand of man is made only for the
earth and for arms. »
Rousseau proclaimed the man made for the earth, he did not proclaim him made for arms. And Saint-
Just lights up singularly, as soon as one understands that its future city comes neither from the Social
Contract, nor from Reason, – nor even from its century.
The boys will leave the paternal house at five years old, and will belong to the Republic until twenty-five
(the age of Saint-Just when he writes). They will spend twenty years in uniform, sometimes as a laborer
and sometimes as a soldier, while the girls will be brought up by their mother. Let's not take this text lightly.
It does not express one of the political fictions, so numerous then, by which lawyers weary of their codes
agreed to
Greuze; and is only absurd if one supposes that it tends to happiness. If we understand, on the contrary,
that it tends towards something else, it takes us to the center of Saint-Just's thought, which is not
quite a thought. The latter only half believes in the laws and in the Senate, so long that morals are not the
guarantee of the laws, that virtue is not the guarantee of the Senate. “The mores” ensure the maintenance
of virtue, and virtue is his: the vocation of the Republic. He wants to create institutions to train men, and
men to want laws worthy of them. Let us stop studying such institutions in the name of happiness, and
even more of reason – between the metric system and the reforms of the Civil Code – their true nature is
revealed; they are the rule of an immense convent, where the cockade replaces the cross. The homeland
prepares to liberate all the oppressed as the nascent monastic orders prepared to liberate souls. The
laconicism he wants to impose is that of the Orders. This uniform is homespun. People believed Saint-
Just to be a rationalist because he was a realist; neither Saint Bernard, nor Saint Dominic, nor Saint
Ignatius – nor Mahomet – were dreamers.
“ All definitions must be brought back to consciousness; the mind is a sophist who leads all the virtues
to the scaffold ”. He calls institutions the means of forming this consciousness, which is not only that of
justice, whatever he may say. He thought he would find them at Sparta; he would have found them in the
Church. If he feels, wants to be linked to the army, is it necessary? It is also that he sees in it the outline
of this Spartan society where the classes are negligible (of which all the Orders are unaware of the conflicts...).
It is not easy to find what was after Jemmapes, after the recapture of Landau, the day after Fleurus, this
unprecedented army, often despoiled, but in which the Republic found its first incarnation, far from
politicians and imposture. When he wrote furiously to the Committee: "I have seen soldiers starve to death
kissing their rifles ", he felt at home there. Not without lucidity. He knows that when he arrived in
Strasbourg, the soldiers were selling their shoes. (He gives them more, and anyone who buys military
effects will be condemned to death.) In its constitution, " an army which elects its leader is declared a
rebel ." But he wanted the liberated villages of Alsace to take the names of the soldiers who distinguished
themselves there, that every wounded person “ wear a gold star on his garment at the place where he
received the wounds; if he is mutilated or if he has been wounded in the face, he will wear the star on his
heart. His Republic is a peasantry framed by another army, by a Society of Jacobins in the service of the
State, and perhaps by Templars of the Revolution recruited from the Freemasonry of his adolescence.
For this son of an officer, brought up by priests, “ the destiny of a people is made up of those who aim for
glory and those who aim for fortune ”. It remained to hand over to those who aim at glory the government
of those who aim at fortune. Our century was to show that such an enterprise is not utopian, on condition
of confusing the former with those who aim for power.
Saint-Just announces neither communism nor fascism as doctrines: he wants to continue Lycurgus, and
would regard industry as superfluous if it were not used to manufacture weapons. But it announces THE
communists and THE fascists, the single and all-powerful party. Passionately totalitarian, he proclaimed
that " It is in the nature of things that our economic affairs become more and more confused, until the
established Republic embraces all relations, all interests, all rights, all duties, and gives a common
appearance to all parts of the State ". He announces, in Thermidor, the approaching time of clemency.
Even if he had abolished the guillotine, I think he would still have developed a
denunciation. In his system, anyone who did not denounce was necessarily an accomplice,
and the Republic could only rest on an austere chivalry, mixed with GPU.
What he means by consciousness then becomes intelligible. It is not the moral conscience, it is,
strictly speaking, a faith. The Republic is for him a supreme value. No doubt he was sensitive, like
his contemporaries, to the gloomy sentimental Colosseum which served as a backdrop to the
Revolution. But for almost all of them – as for Napoleon – antiquity is a repertoire, a stylized world
to which they conform. They imitate its transposition through talent. Him too, on occasion. But it
alone accords with the sinister prestige on which talent was first nourished, with the she-wolf who
transforms her high Roman figures into possessed. " Caesar was immolated in full Senate, without
any other formality than twenty-three stabs and without any other law than the freedom of Rome ".
That the French Revolution joins by the language of blood, and not by that of the theater, the
Lacedaemonian Rome which haunts them all, he alone seems to know; and responds to Danton as
Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor would respond to the author of The Genius of Christianity. He is
fascinating, but he is fascinated. In this time still busy confusing the soul of Brutus with his statue
(and yet Caesar will fill), the forces of Saint-Just combine to discover in the confusion of events the fixed star he cal
Napoleon will call it his; Lenin, the proletariat; Gandhi, India; General de Gaulle, France. The
world of appearances becomes history by gravitating around it. If Saint-Just seems to be playing
better than the others, it's because he's not playing. As soon as he arrived in Strasbourg, he
set up the Revolutionary Commission: " The prevaricators of the administrations will be to
shot ". Emotion Jacobins, dispatching a messenger. Answer: “ We are here, not to fraternize
with the authorities, but to judge them ”. In Landau invested by the Austrians, he responds to
the plenipotentiary who proposes to grant the garrison an honorable capitulation: " The French
Republic receives from its enemies, and sends them, only lead ." Landau saved, Charleroi
invested by Jourdan's army, he did not open the letter sent to him by the governor: “ It is not
paper, but space, that I ask of you. – But if the garrison surrenders at discretion, it dishonors
itself... – We cannot honor you or dishonor you here, as it is not in your power to dishonor or
honor the French nation. There is nothing in common between you and us ”. We have seen in
these answers the eloquence of tragedies, the sequel to Mirabeau. No doubt they affirm that
Saint-Just is there by the will of the people, but they never envisage him leaving by the power
of bayonets: “ Landau or death ”. He does not find “noble answers”, he expresses an
irremediable epic. " One does not make revolutions by halves ", continues the inscription of
Thermopylae ("Passer-by, go tell Lacedaemon - That those who died here have fallen into his
law..."), agrees with the fist of Mucius Scaevola, on the return of Regulus to Carthage, to the
burnt fleet of Alexander. “As one cannot reign innocently ”. A great man is vulnerable by his
plurality, and sometimes by the plurality of what makes him great; Saint-Just only knows
plurality in the means he chooses. Her invulnerability joins – strangely – that of Joan of Arc in
Rouen, because the plan of their answers dominates that of the questions they are asked. “Was Saint Michael
poor to clothe his angels?..." If he is a terrible accuser, it is because he is the deepest conscience
of the Revolution, not by his austerity (he possesses it moreover) but by an apparently intellectual
monolithism , in truth ethical and almost religious. Mahomet is also a legislator. We know the
obsessiveness of his notes. At the Committee of Public Safety, at the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse,
at the Police Office, thinking, for him, means: trying to define a duty.
Like some characters of Claudel, like so many characters of Dostoyevsky whose implacable and
simple logic he has (for the Republic to live, everything that could paralyze it must die) sometimes
mixed with logical delirium, he lives in a truth that calls for communion and not membership; who
wants to convince only to convert. On a pedestal of definitions, he erects the indefinable. Already,
at the King's trial, he had compelled sensitive souls and reasonable minds to see emerging,
behind the decorations of the century torn away one by one, the deep nocturnal sky of the
Revolution; and the orator who followed him seemed ridiculous in returning to the law. Like the
prophets, he had given the mystery the evidence of the truth. For most of his listeners as for him,
the Republic was not only a system of government, but first of all an Apocalypse, and the hope of
an unknown world. He furiously maintained the revolutionary dream by convincing the Convention
that it was their mission to perform exemplary acts – or die. He compelled to live like the great
Romans, men who wanted to speak like them; and dominated them there, until the day when the
enemy defeated, death meant only the guillotine: they found his condemnation in the flags of
Fleurus.
Most of them only wanted to re-establish the state in order to be powerful there; the Directory
has shown it to the point of evidence. Still, victory was needed. But what did Saint-Just want? He
seemed to be trying to perform exemplary acts for themselves; more exactly, to bear witness to
the truth that possessed him. Often, during this book where we follow him page by page, he
seems to call death as the near and necessary end of his life. Does he condemn all the more
firmly, all the more abstractly also, that he wants to be condemned? Against this backdrop of
victories (from his arrival at the Convention until 9 Thermidor, he was never beaten ) we see the
little black shadow of Lenin passing, dancing in the snow of the Kremlin and saying to the amazed
people's commissars: " We lasted one day longer than the Paris Commune! »
The goddess Reason seemed ridiculous to him. He believed vaguely in the Supreme Being,
strongly in the immortality of the soul. Perhaps his last word is in " this independent life that he
had given himself over the centuries and in the heavens ". It was less assured by posterity than
by a heroic absolute. To explain Saint-Just, the 19th century attempted to mix Reason with
individualism; but his individualism is possessive, with Napoleon as with the heroes of Balzac;
and it is the typical feeling by which the petty bourgeois is transformed into a fictional aristocrat.
The Rastignacs envy the power of Saint-Just, but they take him less for a model than for an
extravagant, a term that Danton already applied to him. Energy teacher? What lessons a politician,
an ambitious historian of the Second Empire or the Third Republic, a Rubempré,
a Julien Sorel even, would they draw from him? What is there in common between the skill at the
game of social chess which dazzles them, and the conduct of a legendary action; between the
complaisance they put on their portrait, and the fury he put on his statue? Because this faceless
statue is one of the symbols of the Republic, between the Marseillaise, the flags of Year II (to which
he gave their colors) and the guillotine... He seems to have taken very little interest in his person, of
which a book like this, which brings together everything about him, gives us almost nothing. Proud,
certainly; of a priestly pride, very different from vanity. He wanted to be only his acts, and that these
acts were exemplary. Now, if the theatrical act adorns the individual, the exemplary act dispossesses
him. This sovereign sleepwalker walks through the Terror like Lady Macbeth through Dunsinane
Castle, but haunted only by the Republic, and holding out her bloody hands like hands of justice.
There is no "good pleasure" of Saint-Just.
"I wanted a Republic that everyone would have loved," said Desmoulins sadly. Ceasing to be the
promise of a golden age, what became of it? First, what the kings attacked; Saint-Just was, with
Carnot, its most effective defender. We have seen his first prestige stem from his wanting to be the
sword of freedom. “ Freedom consists in depending on reasonable laws ”. If it consisted only of that,
we would have forgotten him long ago. But on the eve of Fleurus, the Revolution was still a vast
domain of imagination. Against Michelet, against Victor Hugo – especially against the Commune –
many historians have tried to confuse its history with that of the interests that clashed there. We
know, however, that Victor Hugo did not invent Fleuras, and the night of August 4 is difficult to
explain by the interest of the nobility. A few experiences have taught our century that revolutions are
also revolutionary. The Republic, concrete because threatened, was otherwise a world out of joint,
out of destiny; where “men will one day have lived according to their hearts”. Above all according to
their dreams: in the daze suggested by the legend, and which none of the ends he sets for himself,
happiness or justice, sheds light on. Revolutionary exaltation dies of wear, and lives on the future or
the unknown. He sought there the state of those who aim at glory and seize their present as the
imagination seizes the legendary past. The future he expected from the institutions he was
preparing; perhaps he expected it more from glory itself, as if it had carried within it much more than
institutions, as if a heroic world had necessarily generated a liberated world.
How many times did this obsessed with grandeur launch his action as a stake! His power to make
men live in the epic, to transform beaten troops into soldiers of the year II, he put it at the service of
a Republic which did not have time to exist. What he possessed of inexorable greatness seems to
guarantee the lenient greatness of this Republic guillotined with him. But it is not a Sparta of twenty
million souls that we foresee in the limbo from which death separated it. He often spoke of peace, of
indifference abroad; like Napoleon. He knew his Republic was contagious; the kings knew it too, and
Thermidor only postponed the epic. He didn't possess the military genius of the Emperor? Neither
did Mahomet and Stalin. The Revolution driven out by the husband of Marie-
Louise prays like a faithful pauper at the tomb of Marie-Antoinette's murderer, and one of the drafts of
the poem of France tells the story of an army from Sambre-et-Meuse which became the Grande Armée.
Because the Republic of Saint-Just would not have carried within it the perfect State, but the Islamic
ride.
Part of his prestige comes from his talent, which is not strictly speaking literary.
All of his speeches and notes are addressed only to specialists; his genius is made up of isolated
sentences to which his actions give the meaning that spans the centuries because it is hardly individual,
because it seems to be the very language of history. He wanted to live in it as the saints live in faith, to
merge with the Republic as the saints lose themselves in God; if the dead republics were resurrected,
what voice would that of Year II, Danton executed, have if not his own? To live in history was to demand
from the implacable service of the fatherland the possession of a few eternal dreams. In his time, which
was one of the greatest epochs of hope, no one so passionately hoped to change man, by forcing him
into a transfiguring epic.
And perhaps its aura comes from the fact that the lightning of the ax that fell in the evening sun killed
with the murderer of Louis XVI, with the accuser of Danton and the craftsman of Fleurus, the greatest
adventure of the revolution.
I said that Albert Ollivier did not contrast the search for reality with Saint-Just's hold on the imagination.
He does not subordinate it to him any more. He tries to specify the action, and to grasp the man. He is
afraid of romanticizing the history of the Convention (which he is led to redo) by subjecting it to one of
the received interpretations. It sheds light on the double games, the evolutions of groups, and the
“contacts”, of which our time has shown us that the story hardly happens. But he is careful not to find
the key to events there. Hence the hypotheses he suggests, and which could be extended...
Did Robespierre consider becoming the Regent of Louis XVII? It is doubtful. Has he discussed it?
It's possible. Did Saint-Just find out? We don't know. A rupture would then become very likely, because
Saint-Just would have accepted his friend's dictatorship, provided it took on some Roman color – but
not the restoration of the Bourbons... The author does not compare the rupture and the relative talks to
the regency, but the rapprochement arises from the elements he brings. And it brings many others: all
of them, I believe. Together, Robespierre's disarray, the madness that drives him to attack Carnot at
the very moment when the French army defeats the coalition, calls up the shadowy perspectives that
make great events the poem of destiny. One cannot study Saint-Just without going through this book
which tries to exhaust the possible, and whose strength and weakness are those of modern history.
She agrees to circumscribe what she ignores, instead of inventing it... We regret the Shakespearian
figure created by Michelet; but we know that, believing to paint the facts, his
genius recreated souls and imposed fatalities. Here, the possible becomes the object of the book: it is
no longer a question of schematizing complexity, even to transform it into a myth, but of making it
intelligible as such. This book orders it by bringing out the continuity of the main texts, by linking them
to a discontinuity to which it wants to leave its bubbling chaos; much more than a new portrait of Saint-
Just or a new interpretation of his politics, it is the richest and most complete interrogation that modern
history poses to him. However, if the legend did not exist, it would arise from it.
As for the man... We will read everything that is known about him. He eludes us to such an extent
that one wonders if he did not become his action alone, as he wished. But Albert Ollivier finally brings
to light a crucial text, the pseudo-fragment of a novel that Saint-Just kept until his death. The tone of
fiction was then so alien to all reality, that writing "he" was enough to make one feel masked. However,
no one can mistake the autobiographical character of these pages, probably relating to Louise Gellé,
where a " Let's overcome our weakness " that we know well, follows and precedes some traditional
Greuzes. The silences, noted like words, are enough to throw into nothingness what remains of
literature in this cryptography... Albert Ollivier could have transcribed it into a theatrical dialogue where
the silence of the woman (she refuses five times to answer) would play a role – principal – of which the
writers of the time had no idea. Saint-Just, here, does not care about art; but writing to remember her,
he also writes to remember him. Here, then, after so many years, is his only confidence, the only sound
of his secret voice, for his letters have no other personal accent than that of his anger, and we knew
him. It's not Julien Sorel, because he seems granted in advance to the death of what he loves (was he
so as much as he thought, and was she mistaken?); but he speaks to Madame de Renal... "That lofty
and proud soul," said Michelet, who was well aware of what France was risking with him. When he
returned from the front, grumbling at victories and tamed history, absurd and striking like the kings of
Assyria who absentmindedly brought their lions' whips to the council, he noted in the notebook found
on his corpse: "To be happy with women, you have to make them happy without making them feel it.
That the Sanseverina, under her bouqui, perhaps, sometimes called for a draconian smile...what
Parma violets, transmits to Fabrice this
The dream does not end quickly with the reality it collects, when it is that of Saint-Just.
ANDRE MALRAUX.
FOREWORD
Historians and biographers often give in to the temptation to play reverse soothsayers, sorcerer doctors,
lawyers - incriminating or discharging - by trying to find in certain gestures and words of the character evoked,
in some gossip of his contemporaries, the the seal of a predestination, the index of a dominant quality or of a
fatal flaw.
Thus, in recent years, we have seen a lot of advances in the physiological or social element. But to explain
Sade by prison, Baudelaire by the Oedipus complex , Dostoyevsky by epilepsy, Rimbaud by a pituitary
syndrome, and Proust by hardly convincing. The characters then appear to us as the shrunken heads of the
Jivaros.
The authenticity of skin and hair does not restore the whole being to us. There are elements – often precious
– to remember, parts of a whole; and nothing more.
Ah ! certainly, in history there is no last judgment, nor true resurrection. We can only testify.
As everyone knows, the meaning and value of the testimony depend not only on the facts and documents
to which it refers, on the rigor applied to their use, but also on the perspective adopted. The point of view
translates a choice, a conception of the development of human affairs in the world; and generally, it finds itself
inflected, crystallized by the ideas, the facts which thunder under the window of the work desk. Because,
however detached, so devoid of bias or abandonment to a prejudice that the historian wants to affirm, he
cannot remain deaf to the noises of the time in which he lives.
Certainly, the mass and the jostling of historical writings invite us to beware of any assimilation to current
events and any rational simplification, especially when it comes to the French Revolution, a tragedy whose
plot has many knots.
This revolution has caused even more ink to flow than blood. After a phase of idealism and lyricism - from
Lamartine to Michelet - which left beautiful romantic engravings, not devoid of excellent features, but often
superficial, even inaccurate, the Third Republic saw the fruition of a " Dantonist " school - from Dr. Faucet to
Louis Barthou and Aulard – who became attached to the cult of the parliamentary “ sacred monster ” . But his
idol was pulverized by Albert Mathiez – who demonstrated what was rotten in Danton – and founded a rival “
Robespierrist ” and somewhat Marxist school. A whole part of the quarrel between these schools has grown
old: for example, the Dantonists blamed Robespierre for not having been anticlerical, a kind of recital, or rather
criterion, a little outdated. On the other hand, if Marxist conviction usefully led a Jean Jaurès, then a Mathiez
to study and bring out the social aspect and the
financial combinations of the revolution, it falsified the truth a little by wanting to present Robespierre, from
start to finish of his career, as a spokesman for the working class. On this, the Trotskyist tendency, with M.
Daniel Guérin recently, was able to score points, even though it falls somewhat into the same
error.
For my part, I do not believe that history follows a single path, as " progressives " and reactionaries
believe. The former judge the ascending path, the latter descending. In truth, the roads are multiple and
undulating; the whole thing, for the historian, is to try to draw a faithful map of it, without forgetting any
current, any important crossing. He must not give in to the temptation to simplify, to the pretension of
explaining a behavior, an event by a single cause.
And then, in a critical moment like the Revolution, and especially the Terror, the social collectivities – of a
spiritual or material order – which form the bases of the State, find themselves entirely called into question.
There are hardly any homogeneous clans any more, but many provisional regroupings, variable as to
doctrine and nature: such as the National Guard, popular societies such as that of the Jacobins, and
parliamentary tendencies such as those of the Girondins, the Montagnards or moderates. Between the
current ideologies and the social forces of the moment there is an alternation of coagulation and dissolution,
games of osmosis that rulers and their opponents, through their politics or their personal intrigues, provoke
or sometimes undergo as sorcerer's apprentices. Wrongly, the most brutal acts of force are often attributed
to those who benefit from them, whereas their true inspirations are sometimes the first to be defeated.
What interested me about Saint-Just was the experience of a man coming to power, young enough and
sincere enough to fully believe in the ideas he displays, but led by his functions to decide brutally or to come
to terms with what is. In one of his speeches, he said it very clearly: “ Perhaps the force of things leads us
to results which we have not thought of. In this way, he finds himself obliged to play the great game whose
master pieces are called the Ideal, the Possible and Fatality.
To judge the game, we can not therefore stick to the cards shot down by one of the players, we must
consider those that the others have already advanced or hold in the shadow of their hands. That's what I
wanted to do here. While following Saint-Just on the various grounds where he spoke publicly, I tried to
penetrate the secrets of the Committee of Public Safety, in particular the disagreements which may have
separated, three months before 9 Thermidor, Robespierre and the one who will be nicknamed " the angel
of Terror ". On this level, we can only formulate hypotheses, but we will see on what arguments and what
documents they are based.
Finally, if the ambient air has influenced my work, it is above all about international relations. The youth
of a French nation without family relations with other European states, did not prevent foreign countries from
trying to bring down the Republic not only with their military troops but with their agents of the interior,
responsible for creating fights or to buy off the supporters of the regime. Just as, for the negligence of
Danton and his comrades, the most recent scholarship has reestablished an opinion which was already that
of the Convention and the Directory, so, for the interference of neighboring States, the stripping
of the Archives of the Quai d'Orsay encourages us to judge that the fear of " agents of Pitt and consorts " is much more
justified than has generally been believed .
Patient pens, handled with erudition and foresight have with time unraveled many threads of the forces of the revolution,
but the skein retains tangled corners, knots that are difficult to undo, troublesome breaks. And, however determined one may
be not to give in to reflexes of sympathy or antipathy, to not omit any important piece of the file, to elude any aspect of the
problem, one can never claim in touch bottom. At least we see better how the human condition and the destiny of a country
are called into question.

FIRST PART
IN SEARCH OF A PURPOSE
FIRST CHAPTER
AT FIRST GLANCE
The physiognomy is changeable enough that the portraits hardly resemble each other. The mouth with
thick and cruel lips in the painting by Prud'hon, smiling and a little mocking in the portrait of David,
delicate and distinguished in that of Greuze. The gaze sometimes hard and direct, sometimes dreamy
and lost, the nose straight and fleshy like that of adolescents, or else slightly arched and of an already
imperious frame, such appears Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, through the different images that we possess
of him.
A single constant, which had caught Michelet's attention: the stubborn forehead, quite broad, but "very
low, the top of the head as if depressed”.
One can hardly think of attributing so much disparity to the experiences of life or to age alone. In truth,
these portraits deliver to us like snapshots, with an unequal fidelity, but also an irrefutable force, the
contradictory possibilities which share a nature which the trade, the acquired situation have not yet
domesticated. Because the surprising thing is that despite the hardening of age, the margin of availability
remains equal, present in each image like an indelible shadow.
It is true that this is a man arrested and, more often than not, posing. Launched into action, forced to
face others, his face testifies, in the eyes of his fellow adversaries, to the sole desire to impose himself,
to dominate. If we balance on the physiological, one considering him "weak in body" (Levasseur) the
other, on the contrary, seeing him "a healthy body, proportions that express strength" (Paganel), the we
almost agree on psychology. Thus, Camille Desmoulins notes: “In the gait and posture of Saint-Just we
see that he regards his head as the cornerstone of the republic and that he carries it on his shoulders
with respect like a holy sacrament. »
And Barrère speaks of "his unbearable pride", and Carnot of "his arrogance (which) exceeded all limits".
But these are polemical judgments. To get an overview, we must return to the description of the
conventional Paganel. She has the merit of precision: A medium height,
a healthy body, proportions which expressed strength, a large head, thick hair, bilious complexion,
lively and small eyes, disdainful gaze, regular features and austere countenance, strong but veiled voice,
a general tinge of anxiety, the dark accent of concern and
distrust, extreme coldness in tone and manners... suspicious, concealed, dark, he knew without advice
and without study, to be impenetrable and to keep his secret1.
It is this “secret”, what they think is dissimulation, that colleagues and adversaries of the Convention
stumble upon. For most, this self-control is the mask of pride and dictatorial ambitions. But at the same
time, they are almost unanimous in recognizing that such height is based on exceptional value. Barrère
concedes him a "rare talent", Marc Antoine Baudot judges that he had "a much stronger and more
powerful head than Robespierre".
Carnot also considers him "much superior to his friend" and Levasseur maintains that he had "a greater
share in the conduct of affairs than Robespierre himself".
Without venturing too much, one can conjecture that there was less self-assurance and self-
satisfaction in this attitude than it seems. Knowing his youth, devoid of that exuberant and jovial way
which allows others to immediately gain sympathy and respect, in no way an improviser (he writes and
carefully learns his speeches) devoid of a real spirit of repartee, Saint- Just strives to gain authority
through the austerity of his dress and the rigor of his remarks. For him the maximum efficiency of the
forces does not go without a severe economy of means: "One does not govern without laconicism", he
will say, or even: "The Empire is phlegmatic. This constant concern will sometimes translate itself
naively: at the moment of leaving for Alsace as commissary of the armies, he will let his mustache grow
in order to age himself a little.
Obviously, Saint-Just is far from the intriguing or even the ambitious vulgar. He thinks less of the
means of arriving in a given society than of those of responding validly to the human condition which is
his. Also, behind his sharpest affirmations, one sometimes feels an anguish welling up – a “tinge of
anxiety” as Paganel said – an anguish that pours out freely in some of his notes.
2
. Everything contributes, moreover, to provoking it in him: his temperament, his historical
situation, the torn between contradictory possibilities. Conscious of being on the edge of a dizzying
void, he stubbornly seeks solid points of support.
His very courage is not to be confused – far from it – with an unalterable optimism or with an icy
indifference. In general, his biographers emphasize his fearlessness and even his recklessness during
battles. But, if we believe Levasseur, who met him on the battlefields, on different occasions, his
audacity was rather a fear, an overcome emotion. Authorizing himself from a few anecdotes, the
Conventional of Sarthe writes of the young commissary of the armies: Without physical courage and
weak in body, to the point of fearing the whistle of bullets, he had the courage of reflection which makes
you wait for a certain death for not sacrificing an idea. Despite the awkwardness of expression, and the
possible exaggeration, the assertion has every chance of containing a good deal of truth.
The will to dominate – but first of all to dominate oneself – does not exclude the desire to please.
Like many men of his time, he liked to wear earrings: from his “physionottrace” portrait to David's
painting, many drawings attest to this.
Moreover, the oral tradition completes this rather contrasting image of the legendary “archangel of
Terror”. At the school of Oratorians, in Soissons, "his teachers called him a thunderbolt of war", and one of
his regents "would have said after a theme on religion that he would become a great man or a great
criminal 3 " . Like many young people, he liked to rhyme; and, according to the former pupils, by a rather
strange singularity in this serious and reflective character, his poetry often turned to burlesque. One day,
his comrades wrote down the name of Assoucy in his place: his anger was inexpressible. The memories of
the men who were able to know his early years do not agree on his inclinations: some say that he was
good and benevolent, others that he had a taste for destruction and enjoyed games. cruel: both can be
right; it was a nature so complex and so contradictory as that of Saint-Just. Finally, still according to the
same source, more feared than loved by his classmates... his susceptible and badly enduring mood earned
him many quarrels: he did not seem to remember it later, when he was armed with such a terrible power,
when he directed the most pitiless rigors of the committee of public safety, and he exercised no personal
vengeance.
Saint-Just had as a professor of rhetoric at the college of Soissons an oratorian with advanced ideas,
Silvy, who must have exerted a certain influence on him. He seems to have maintained good relations with
his teacher who left the Oratorians in 1791 to marry and become a public prosecutor near the criminal
court of Aisne 4 . (Involved in politics, Silvy was not to leave it after Thermidor: he was first a babouviste,
then, in 1819, electoral agent for another former student of the college of Soissons, General Foy, whose
fine military career under the Empire had not damaged republican feelings or "advanced ideas".)
On the other hand, the pupil Saint-Just distinguished himself by pleasant social talents, in particular a
certain gift for drawing, and, in Reims, where he studied law, the Paris family kept the memory of a
“cheerful, good-natured and affable boy 5 ”. Augustin Lejeune, who was his friend and his collaborator,
having survived him and having rallied to the Empire, not inclined to indulgence, made a rather insightful
judgment. Saint-Just, he writes, comes to my mind as one of the characters in whom the variegated
character of the human mind has manifested itself in the most striking manner. And, of these "variegations of the mind"
6.
Lejeune sees the effect even in men of the Committee of Public Safety. He does not understand these
alternations of kindness, extreme sensitivity and pitiless harshness. But at the same time as they offend
him, these unpredictable and, therefore, disturbing variations fascinate him.
His ascendancy, Saint-Just will owe it in part to this elusive side, to this mixture of severe rigor and
disinterested kindness. To seduce, he does not have the glibness or the dejection of a "bon vivant", he
only has the presence of an intransigent, clear-sighted, but stubborn.
In the choice of his speeches, says Lejeune, and above all in this talent for insinuation which he
possessed to the highest degree, (he) brought about consent and suffrage: moreover, he wore an honest
countenance which gave a new price to all his words.
No doubt, the desire to please was a way for him to test his influence, but it also responded to the need
to re-establish a solidarity between oneself and the world, to escape this loneliness towards
which everything conspired to reject him. At that time when comradeship and friendship did not last long in
front of the scaffold, he knew how to preserve some of them, that of Thuillier, that of Gateau in particular,
faithful beyond death.
Age in him has not changed anything essential. If he has learned to be silent, he continues to offer those
who penetrate his intimacy this two-sided character: dominating and violent on one side, full of kindness on
the other. One of the daughters of the carpenter Duplay, who became the wife of Philippe Le Bas, relates
how, being pregnant, she obtained, not without difficulty, the authorization to accompany her husband and
Saint-Just to Alsace. And, during the trip, she discovered a man she did not know:
Saint-Just had for me, on the way, the most delicate attentions and the attentions of a tender brother. At
each relay, he got out of the car to see if anything was missing for fear of an accident. He saw me in such
pain that he feared for me. Finally, he was so kind and attentive to my sister-in-law and to me that the
journey did not seem long to us. My beloved was very sensitive to all his kindnesses and showed him all
his recognition.
To pass the time, these gentlemen read us plays by Molière or a few passages by Rabelais, and sang
Italian airs; they made every effort to distract us and make me forget my suffering Singer of Italian airs,
reader of 7 .
Rabelais, “tender as a brother”, Saint-Just was not all that by accident. His family correspondence
abounds in traits of the same kind. In 1791, this young provincial of twenty-four gave his brother-in-law – ten
years older than him – advice, both paternal and a little childish, on the art of treating women:
Cheer up your young bride, and, above all, take care that she experiences no domestic grief of the nature
of those which she would not dare confide to you. My idea of your family makes me believe that they will
dearly love this new sister and this new daughter. Make her sovereign, but debonair sovereign, that is how I
understand it. You are made to take the place of everything in the world; but love does not console self-love,
and you know self-love.
To these various considerations are mingled some recipes of medical hygiene for the use of the bride: to
make her take plenty of milk and not to make her drink any water. In short, he speaks like a man who has
experience.
Love does not console self-esteem. But what does he know about love and women? A village love at
sixteen, and after that, almost nothing important. During the Convention, he will take the sister of his friend
Le Bas as his fiancée, but he will treat her with such fierce austerity until the breakup, that we will hardly
know of her love life, despite a few sentimental or sexual outbursts. . Yet oral tradition will give him, in
Blérancourt, for a successful “runner”.
Saint-Just's adventure with Mlle Gellé, a plump young beauty with a face rich in freckles, is only a
schoolboy's marivaudage on vacation, but one of those marivaudages that leaves traces.
There are first walks in the country paths, great oaths, gentle
embraces... The handsome pupil of the Oratorians dazzles the notary's daughter. He assures her that he
will be a great man and probably a great writer. Like all his congeners, he prides himself on poetry and is
already, more seriously, preparing a monograph on the Château de Coucy, the ruins of which he often
haunts with his friend. But soon people gossip, the story turns into a local scandal, and the respectability of
the notary catches fire. Fortunately, the too assiduous lover, who is now nineteen, is stuck in Paris where
he is completing his studies. We take advantage of this to quickly marry Louise Gellé to a colleague: Me
François Thorain, son of the receiver of the Canton Registration.
This is the first wound that existence inflicts on the young Saint-Just. She seems to have hit him hard.
Alone in Paris, he embarks on an extravagant life and commits, it seems, a thousand follies. He frequents
the Palais-Royal, the bad places and establishes relationships with actors and actresses.
However, it is not a question of repressed desires which find the pretext and the occasion to satisfy
themselves, nor of a banal revenge on a sentimental failure. The crisis will express itself and end in ways
other than the attentive listening of a mournful heart. In this respect, nothing less romantic than Saint-Just:
the experiences will only increase his revulsion for exhibitionism, self-indulgence.
As we will see, this rapid shamelessness left him only with a bitter taste. Because, what he will discover, for
which many readings had prepared him, it is the insane character of the time. Not the fundamental absurdity
of the world, but the absurdity of mores, of human conduct.
Everything invites us to consider false – contrary to what I first believed myself – the story of the escape
to Paris of Saint-Just, taking away to sell them, pistols and family jewels, and its put in a house of arrest, at
8.
the request of his mother No, after completing his
education, after a few escapades in places of pleasure, Saint Just wanders between Paris, Blérancourt,
Soissons and Reims. His mother found him a place in the study of Me Dubois Decharmes, prosecutor in
Soissons, where he learned law. According to M. Gustave Laurent 9 in a letter “dated in the middle of ,
1787”, he speaks of his installation in Reims and the settlement of “certain small matters” for the study of
his boss or for his family. There, after a first law exam, on September 24, 1787, he registered his name on
the register of the faculty from October 1787: he passed his baccalaureate on February 14, 1788 and his
"licence in laws" on April 15. 1788.
Curiously enough, these law examinations at the faculty of Reims required, at that time, sometimes
several years, sometimes only five or six months. Whatever M. Laurent thinks, it is not forbidden to believe
the Girondin Brissot to be true when he writes in his memoirs:
I thought (...) of having myself admitted as a lawyer. It was necessary to take degrees in the faculty of
law, and, as it was only a vain formality, I preferred the quickest route, that of buying them at Reims. The
trip I made to this city convinced me of the debasement of its university, and of the contempt deserved by
all these establishments which were less a school than a securities market. Everything was sold there, and
10 .
degrees, and theses and arguments
Led under these conditions, student life in Reims could hardly encourage Saint-Just to
respect the society in which his life began. In any case, he found enough leisure to write a long
erotic-pamphleteering poem, Organt, which, put up for sale in Reims and Paris, soon brought
him to be prosecuted by the police.
1. To avoid confusion, all long or important quotations will be found in italics.

2. Among those published after his death under the title Fragments des Institutions.
3. This quotation and the following ones in this paragraph are taken from the Histoire de Soissons by HENRI MARTIN and P.-L. JACOB
(1837).
4. Cf. the studies of M. GUSTAVE LAURENT (Annales historique de la Révolution française, 1924, nos . 3, 4 and 5).
5. G. LAURENT, Champagne Revolutionary Figures.
6. Lejeune in 1794, as we shall see, exercised the functions of chief of the administrative surveillance offices of the police
general, under the orders of Saint-Just.
7. Memory of Mrs. Le Bas (cf. STEFANE-POL, Le Bas).
8. I give in appendix 1 the reasons which led me to think so.
9. The Faculty of Law of Reims (Annales historique de la Révolution française, July-August 1929).
10. Memoirs of BRISSOT (t. I, p. 193). He says he "paid six hundred pounds for this joke."
CHAPTER II
DESCENT INTO HELL

(1786-1787)
Many commentators have wanted to see in Organt only a collection of obscenities or else a satirical poem in
the fashion of the century. To tell the truth, it cannot be reduced to either one or the other. It's a kind of
“summary”, where under the mask of anecdotes, allegories, apologues, a twenty-year-old boy shoves in bulk
everything that is close to his heart. It is both the assessment and the extension of an experience. In the famous
verse which serves as a preface: I am twenty years old, I did badly, I could do better, we see a man who takes a
step back with regard to his life and the work he submit to the public.
Organt's originality and interest are not literary. They reside in the deep theme that the poem implies
throughout. On this, no possible ambiguity since Saint-Just takes care to indicate it in the clarifications placed at
the end of the volume: it is a general analogy of morals with madness.
Indeed, the very confused anecdote matters little. The adventures of the knight Organt, bastard of the
archbishop of Sens, Turpin, the holy war of Charlemagne against the heretical Saxons, the gallant adventures,
the rapes, the descents into Hell, the battles of the gods, the journeys to heaven, in the moon, all this is a pretext
to signify and illustrate a desperate view of the human condition.
How does madness manifest itself? :
Madness is foolish; yes but she is pretty
.....
All the countries where her taste directs
her Lose her sense; the scepter of humans
The golden scepter, disguised in his hands,
Sows everywhere a spirit of vertigo.
.....
For the misfortune of the brains of France
Dame Folie had in our climates
Fixed his chariot, and the spirit of madness
Had gained Ministers, Magistrates,

Priests and clerics, generals and soldiers,
They were mad, but according to their wealth
According to their rank, their power, their nobility

All could not be mad.
The muleteer, with a jealous heart Of
the Financier, envied the stupidity
And lamented his petty folly; The

colonel envied the Séjan: From
clumsiness finally to clumsiness, None
was stupid enough as he pleased: All

desired; and the Prince of the blood, Of the
King his master envied foolishness.
Here and there some astrogot spirit Saved

himself the honor of being foolish, But
this species was everywhere booed As
foolish and meaningless.
In short, madness here is the mother of stupidity, vertigo and envy. She makes men lose the
aware of what they are. It is, above all, a madness of powers as degrading as it is harmful.
At first glance, one would be tempted to see in this a pessimistic view, very similar to that of our
classical moralists. But among moralists, there is always a latent Manichaeism: alongside evil,
however extensive it may be, a place is carefully left for the possible good. Moreover, the plot
remains the mainspring of their worlds – which allows us to maintain that they are a bit of a novelist
– above all dishonest “means of achieving” are denounced. Whereas here, it is nature that is
denounced as ambiguous: good appears to be intertwined with evil, quite mysteriously.
The heart of man is the enigma of the sphinx. What if we could discover its secrets...
The conquerors, under the impostor names Of

freedom, of supporters, of avengers With
a surprised eye, would perhaps discover A
scoundrel ashamed to appear so...
.....
Homer paints us in vain in Achilles, With a fiery
arm, untamed courage, He was a man and
remained calm, Without the sting of a little
vanity Without Briseis and necessity.
Rather than conquering a social position, it is a question of overcoming a “necessity”, of escaping

an unbearable feeling (“shame”, “indifference”). So we do not dream of referring to “Nature” or to the
categories of “good and evil”. Just consider the man himself:
He's just the first beast

Of this stay of which he calls himself the King
Master of the world, slave to himself

He digs everything, does not know

what it is His heart, steeped in pride and
self-interest Fear what he hates, despise what
he loves Impudently he calls virtue
The deaf crime of a sophistry dressed.
Nothing is certain or distinct, reason no more than virtue. With strength, Saint-Just already opposes with all
his conscience the rationalist optimism of the century. For him, the reason...
... is only a black compound Of

skillful pride and interested pride.
And when Organt sees her in the Underworld, she offers herself in a strange device:
Forty spirits, not evil spirits; But I don't know

what, neither Demons, nor Elves, Holding a
cracked trumpet in their hands, Horns
on their head, and girded with a beautiful thistle,
Climbed up towards the sad assembly.

On a large monster, called Reason This
animal has a pointed head
Three knotted feet and horsehair on the sight.
(Note that Saint-Just will not change his mind on this. In his Fragments on Institutions, he will write: "All
definitions must be brought back to consciousness: the mind is a sophist who leads the virtues to 'scaffold.')
If it is impossible to rely on reason, on morality, where are the indisputable evidence on which to base
wisdom?
The traditional wisdom of nations? He mocks her in a curious apologue: the valet of Organt tells how, having
met Saint John in heaven, he drank a vial in which was preserved the spirit of the seven sages of Greece:
Then I had a fit of impetuous wisdom,

and I no longer knew What vices
were, what virtues Sometimes joyful,
sometimes in a stoic mood, Timid afterwards,
and then in a cynical mood, I encouraged
and good and evil, I believed myself
sometimes an animal Sometimes
a god; I changed nature, And a courier put
on the neck.
The moral of this story is twofold: from “Greek common sense” we derive only contradictory remarks and
attitudes and, moreover, it is pointless to pretend to assimilate the spirit of others: it is incommunicable to us.
Religion ? The former pupil of the Oratorians and the Jesuits does not hesitate to blaspheme with
application. He reissues the popular images of fat and bawdy monks, imbecile theologians, and above all
attacks the spirit of conquest which wraps itself in the mantle of holiness. For him, the pagan gods are worth
the Christian God. Organt exclaims:
Oh ! if ever I had the power I would soon
have avenged antiquity And swept away
the divine Apogee Of Angels,
of Saints in frocks or white or black.
And if there is a divine power, it is:
That God is nothing but wisdom itself And that

honour, virtue, reason Long before us, in
Emile and Cato Were worth their price
without the seal of baptism.
But this price, the author of Organt strongly contested it elsewhere. So the reality of the kingdom of God
remains quite uncertain. There remains the opposing world, that of Hell. Before William Blake celebrated "the
marriage of Heaven and Hell", Saint-Just liked to imagine their proximity, and sometimes the substitution of
one for the other. Also his Satan retains all his arrogance:
I have lost everything, my supreme dignity,

My golden scepter, and this immortal throne
Which ruled the powers of heaven; But, in
spite of everything, I am still myself Independent of

the decrees of Fate I was a God, I will
be so without end.
The divine power being given as fragile, we see it compromised by nothings. It is God who falls asleep:
And yet the reins of the Earth Wandered
without guide and floated haphazardly.
It is Saint Peter who drops the key to Paradise, and immediately the devils shut themselves up there, which
leaves the sky "in a frightful chaos".
To this Hell, the author and his hero most often dedicate themselves casually, but not without
provocation. Organt shouts to his guardian angel:
I want to sin, me; nothing prevents me And what
makes you, bluebelly, that I sin?
I want to roast with these famous people
Worthy perhaps, and more than you, of the heavens.

But, as the argument of Canto XVIII clearly indicates, from all this we derive an "equivocal moral." On the one
hand, we invite you to grab the bottle, to "caress the beauties of our time" and on the other, we sigh:
Ah! happiness is only an illusion

Congratulatory fruit of conception.
However, the best is perhaps, according to the author, to make a pact with "the illusion", the dreams and
the pleasures of a moment:
... if I have to cry my fault one day, And

if it is said that from the arms of a girl I
will go cry to the mansion where they
grill, Let's hurry – to get drunk on love.
and elsewhere :
So what if life is a dream?

Let us at least dream that we are happy To God
so great, and no doubt equitable, Who
subjects us to sad destinies Can he
still find man guilty Of having loved the work
of his hands?
Admittedly, this kind of recourse is extremely commonplace. And, obviously, it only half satisfies Saint-Just.
Because for him, if reason is deceptive, the flesh is no less so. He does not conceive of an arrangement of
happiness or pleasure in the manner of the refined libertines of his century. Insofar as eroticism marks the
intervention of constraint, of will, in matters of love, one can say that it has no place in Organt. What comes back,
on the other hand, like an obsession, is the sexual power escaping from the human being like an infernal power;
and Saint-Just, more often than not, retains its taint. As much as it envelops the physical loves of Organt and the
fresh Nicette, it dwells on the rapes of nuns, the fornication of fat monks, the relationship between a beauty and a
donkey. Above all, the emphasis is on the pleasure experienced, despite the unworthiness of the partner and the
means he uses.
Here, for example, is the case of the beautiful Adelinde. Taken from her lover, she suffers the last outrages at
the hands of a lustful monk:
Linde was dying of pleasure and rage

Cursed him wiggling his ass
And sometimes forgot his virtue
.....
But how sad it is, alas, to be confused
With someone you can't love
To feel regretfully inflamed
And in spite of oneself burn and answer him.
This fatal confusion is illustrated by Saint-Just with particularly lively enthusiasm in Canto IX in the scene
of the violated convent. As the barbarians approach, the old nuns decide to lock themselves in the tower
and offer the young novices a holocaust to the soldiery. To prepare the innocent, they are persuaded that
angels will visit them. We guess what's next. Here is the tone:
The rushing waves of his noisy breath

From his lungs exhaled with difficulty
He was choking her, wanting to caress her;
He was biting her, wanting to fuck her
His awful and furiously tender tongue,

De la Nonnain was looking for the piebald tongue,
And our Sister, who took him for God,

To his holy efforts lent himself,
Going to hell, and burning Mary,
When the sheep, after this sweet kiss

Felt the bird somewhere creep
To go, to come, and the tutelary Angel
From her white breast the two roses suck,
She understood that was the mystery;

She felt a divine ardor,
Growing warmer in his heart.
In passages of this kind, the humor competes with the ignoble, without ever encumbering itself with the
slightest moral consideration. Sexuality is only one more manifestation of the "madness" of the world. At
one point, Organt visits a place in heaven which is, says Saint-Just, a transfiguration of the Palais-Royal.
The entrance pediment bears the inscription “extravagance dwells in these places”. And, immediately
Organt stops a look devoid of tenderness:
There I see tanned courtesans

Whitewashed tombs: those antiquated roses
Sell people the death that feeds them Playing

on love, its fury and its flame, The serene
brow, the rage deep in the soul, Give a
heart for a piece of bread.
It is in these places, he says, that one goes to seek "the happiness which was called V...le" (pox, I
suppose). However, it is not excluded that Saint-Just tasted a “happiness” of this kind. Which could only
have fortified his repugnance for certain commerce in the flesh.
But there is more. This obsession and this dissatisfaction sometimes express themselves in a rather
troubling way. Adelinde has been separated from her lover and the latter transformed into a donkey by a
formidable magician. They finally meet again: the donkey shows an enterprising tenderness and by its fiery
impulses it makes itself recognized. But :
Alinde had a magic ring

Whose virtue, either from the devil or from heaven
Returned everything to its natural state
Linde would perhaps have loved the
bourique Her heart experiences a friendly
struggle: But her voice she feared the
brilliance Let's change her head; she touches, she
changes How many kisses given, then confused,
Precipitated, asked for, returned!
Let's change those feet, and that itchy hair. Everything
changed. Therefore she hesitated If, for the
rest, she would change it.
It's a great pain, said the beauty at last; But this
ring is of such virtue That it has no effect on
the rest, Being blessed; and Linde was
weeping!
.....
Sosnit departing, becoming himself again
Apart from that, used very tenderly

Rights of a donkey and rights of a lover
Oh ! how sweet it is to be an ass however
Between the arms of the weak object that one
loves Linde distraught, at what hurt her
Wanted to touch, and yet did not touch...
This passage, after those which precede, completes to paint an image of the physical love whose
haunting background is the humiliation. One can hesitate whether it is a question of humiliation felt as an
insufficiency and fascinated by the most animal sexual force, or whether it is a question, conversely, of
humiliating the act which can cause shameful illnesses. Whatever the secret inspiration, even unconscious,
in using donkeys as he does, very abundantly, Saint-Just was not without seeking an effect. Also, he makes
no secret of having taken example from Voltaire:
Oh ! That Arouet showed genius By
celebrating in his piety courage A hard
donkey... a vigorous donkey!

Average was to interest the beautiful ones.
However, Organ's donkey goes further than that of the Maid and rather evokes Apuleius' donkey.
It remains that the freshness, the savory weakness of the loved object is a theme that Saint-Just takes up
on his own account, on a more subdued register:
I want to have a mistress. I do not mean
by a goddess a race; For I will fetch him among
the fields.
I want her to have a nice waist, an open
heart, always to be fifteen

May she be gentle, and may her eye

sparkle; I would like a little delicate
smile, Without boldness, a little
mischievous air; With me especially that
she blushes, And that she is finally such as Nice!
This is only a Greuze, it will be said, we find in these verses the most conventional feminine ideal of
the eighteenth century. Without a doubt. But he corresponds quite faithfully to the women who will slip
into the life of Saint-Just, to Louise Gellé, to Henriette Le Bas. This inclination towards modest and
peasant ingenuity is clearly opposed to the search for maternal protection in women. Once again the
desire to dominate is associated with the desire to please in the author of Organt.
From these daydreams, from these confidences, we get a fairly coherent impression. From the point
of view of sexuality, Saint-Just appears dissatisfied, either for spiritual reasons or for physiological
reasons. Delivered to loneliness, emerging from perhaps disappointing experiences, placed at a time
when man is beginning to be surprisingly armed against himself, the problem of “the other” presents
itself as a major obsession. How to connect with life in this time when the human being is so divided in
itself, broken by the spirit of analysis into three sections: the spirit, the sex, and the "sentimental", as
we say then ? On what reality to base its existence and its action?
The thirst for the absolute that grips him will never be appeased. The "Principle" of beings and
things, which would make it possible to discriminate between them, to judge them, eludes his research.
Everything merges in a world doomed to madness. Organt is suggestive from this point of view. To the
confusion of good and evil is added that of forms, human and animal, which interpenetrate, sometimes
replacing each other. In other words, Saint-Just enters into the myth of metamorphosis – one of the
most persistent in Western literature.
Certainly, many erotic authors of the 17th and 18th centuries exploited the theme of metamorphosis.
They took it to give entertainment. Whereas here, as closer to us with Kafka, the metamorphosis, the
degradation of man into an animal come first to bear witness to the misery of his condition and the
subtle, indescribable links which unite him to the cosmos by some of his bodily strength.
Thus, in Organt, the donkeys sometimes embody sexual force (the lover Sornit), sometimes a
consequence of sin (Bishop Turpin's metamorphosis), sometimes, more generally, the condition of
men, foolish and mad. (In “Asinomaïe”, a country where donkeys take the place of men and vice versa,
Organt examining their cults, their works and their arts, concludes: “We do all the same”). The three
aspects, as we can see, are complementary, the donkeys represent "the dark forces" which draw man
away from true spirituality.
We can therefore see in Organt a kind of descent into Hell, analogous to those of ancient mythology
where they symbolized the exhaustion of forms and lower states; appearing
a kind of death, they ended in a new birth, that is to say properly an initiation.
Consciously or not, Organt corresponds to something of this order . Only Saint-Just remained
halfway through the ascent: the work remains negative, no new assurance has been acquired,
the absolute truth has not been discovered. Saint-Just remains in an intermediate zone between
detachment and attachment, powerless to dominate this world which oppresses him, powerless
to bind himself to it.
It is interesting to compare the author of Organt with that of L'Ane d'or. Neo-Platonist, placed
on the borders of paganism and Christianity, initiated into many sects, fervent of the magic of a
decadent Egypt, Apuleius perhaps had in writing The Golden Ass a purpose that is difficult for
us to break through today, in the ignorance where we are of esoteric symbolism, and because
of the modifications that the copyists had to submit to this text (which already seems to have
been only a compilation of much older legends) . But no matter, the general theme is obvious
enough to fall unquestionably into the “descent into Hell” category. The hero, transformed into
a donkey by the gods who want to impose a test on him, recovers his human form, thanks to
Isis, during a great religious ceremony. Following which, the hero – who then suddenly merges
with the author – is initiated into the cult of Isis and Osiris, of which he becomes high priest.
The metaphysical aspect of the Golden Ass was all the less hidden in the 18th century, as
the main edition of the time included in the same volume another work by Apuleius: the Demon
of Socrates, a fairly mediocre study. where we find the neo-Platonic conception of demons
which holds them precisely as intermediaries, agents of liaison between heaven and men.
I said that Saint-Just was not completely out of Hell. It is curious that one of the last visions
of Organt on the threshold of pagan Hell is as if marked by an attraction towards Terror:
The heart moved with a holy tremor
He contemplated these tottering rocks Of

Mount Etna the burning entrails; Pompous
debris where the Terror sits: On an abyss we
see her lost Measuring her dark depth
Of leprechauns, specters surrounded
Near her we see the dreams fluttering
Every night the Terror disperses them To
frighten the sleep of tyrants.
By stakes, by bloody knives, And revive the vulture
that pierces them.
In sleep, she gives back to the ungrateful the

feeling of a betrayed friendship
And the picture of the benefit that is forgotten.

But there is another work – a century later than Organt – in which quite surprising premonitory visions also emerge,
a work which does not conceal the fact that it is an exploration into the infernal abysses: the Season in Hell.
Rimbaud and Saint-Just. The similarity of situation and gait requires attention. Both had a military father, who
disappeared from their lives early on, an austere and authoritarian mother, uninviting. Both ran away to escape the
suffocation of provincial solitude. Both were pulled on their own by the social unrest of the moment. And if one went
rather to literature and the other to politics, they were harassed by the same appetite for knowledge of the absolute.
Rimbaud thought he had found the solution. Remember the seer's letter. He then proclaimed that “the poet arrives
at the unknown by the disruption of all the senses”. He immediately adopted the opposite extreme of a “culture of the
self”; far from seeking to differentiate itself, it aspired to deepen the fundamental communion of man with the world.
He declared: “I am another. He mocked individualism: “So many selfish people call themselves authors; there are
many others who take credit for their intellectual progress. And he defined this new poet as a "thief of fire... in charge
of humanity, of animals themselves." Going in search of the universal essence, he was led to blur the forms, like
Saint-Just:
To each being, several other lives me. seemed due. This gentleman does not know what he is doing: he is an
angel. This family is a brood of dogs. In front of several men, I chatted aloud with a moment from their other lives. –
So I liked a pig.
I stop here the parallel that we could pursue further, not flattering myself to explain Saint Just by Rimbaud and
even less the reverse. Only, without identifying them, their kinship ties (which we are asked not to exaggerate) are
interesting in that, in an analogous situation and at the same age, these two men respond in the same way: by
committing " a spiritual battle as violent as the battle of men”. Less impenetrable than that of the Season in Hell, the
mystery of Organt is of the same nature. Both delve deeply into the being of their author, until they reach the great
myths of humanity.
However, at the end of the Season in Hell, Rimbaud lost his availability (at least for literature), while, after Organt,
Saint-Just kept his full. He is too social, too much of his time to abandon himself to an anguish that would tear him
away from the community of men. He has a taste for happiness and, in some ways, he retains the casualness and
agility of the "beautiful spirit".
I like to read Chaulieu after I have read Plato... This does not prevent him from being, throughout his life, obsessed
by this secret which would also be the key to a "sacred".
But back to the ascendants. His father, Louis-Jean de Saint-Just de Richebourg, knight of the royal military order
of Saint-Louis, cavalry captain, quartermaster of the gendarmes under the title of Berry, had left his son the memory
of a tall officer with rough features, who grumbled
in his retirement against the difficulty of advancement. Painfully removed from the ranks, he had been
able to measure how, however advantageous the name of Saint-Just de Richebourg, he did not replace
an authentic and old nobility. Scion of a family of farmers, his effort to get out of it had resulted in only
partial success. Even his marriage to Marie-Anne Robinot had not been without difficulty. Saint-Just's
grandfather – although his daughter, at thirty-one, had not yet found a suitor – was, for some reason,
opposed to his child's amorous wishes. Old Robinot, a good bourgeois, quite rich with his duties as royal
notary, attorney in the châtellenie and granary in the salt attic, provided with several properties,
doubtless did not intend to abandon to the first comer the fortune which his child was going to inherit.
elder. But the daughter of this family which, for several generations, had produced as many priests as
notaries, was not lacking in ideal passion or realistic obstinacy. Not having succeeded in convincing her
father, Marie-Anne addressed a request to the lieutenant-general of the bailliage and presidial seat of
Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, to ask him for authorization to issue Léonard Robinot "the three respectful
summons , to which the laws subject him", and, for this, to be assisted by a notary. Considering her age
(because they married early then), the supplicant had obtained satisfaction, and had presented herself
to her father accompanied by the notary Grenot and two friendly witnesses: Antoine-Emmanuel de
Champrobert, squire, captain of the hunts of Monseigneur le Duke of Nevers, and Eustache-Robert de
Chery, squire, lord of Montigny, former bodyguard of the King, captain in the regiment of Auvergne.
The father having refused to hear them, the trio and the young girl returned to the attack three times,
leaving at each visit a notarial act, summons and respectful prayer. These legal formalities fulfilled, the
two fiancés went to sign their marriage contract, in the presence of a few members of the family, but not
of the father or the two brothers of Marie-Anne Robinot.
And, six days later, an uncle of hers, Antoine Robinot, parish priest of Saint-Laurent-de-Verneuil,
consecrated the marriage almost clandestinely in his church. This benevolent uncle was to be the
godfather of the child whom, fifteen months later, the young couple had baptized by another obliging
uncle, Edmond Robinot, parish priest of Saint-Aré-de-Decize.
It was August 25, 1767, and the newborn, Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just, was to express by mixing
them in an unexpected, unusual form, the essential traits of the parents, military and mystical aspirations,
stubbornness, the meticulousness of lawyers, to which he will add a pessimism stemming from
incredulity, and a boldness that the questioning of everything in what and with what one must live will
lead to new ground.
Thus, at the age of twenty, the young Louis-Antoine engendered an imaginary but pernicious and
inescapable child in the royal world: Organt. As soon as it appeared, it was banned and seized by the
police. Obliged to hole up in Paris, Saint-Just hid with a merchant from Aisne, no doubt a friend of the
family: the merchant Dupey.
In the capital, he attends the first revolutionary days; but he retains enough attachment to his work to
write a Dialogue between MD.. and the author of " Organt ", unfortunately lost today. And it was around the
same time that he was to compose a small one-act play entitled: Harlequin Diogenes.
Like many politicians, Saint-Just loved the theater. He was indignant in Organt that people no
longer knew how to play Corneille and that dramatic art was sinking into affection. In Paris, he
had been able to go backstage, actors and actresses (one of them, after his death, will claim the
name of Saint-Just). He had defended "Dorfeuille, a sublime actor, full of naturalness, and
consequently condemned by French actors, despite the public itself, who asked for it four times 1
And then, ".
a way of confronting an audience in a closed field, of acting on his sensitivity, a means of

expressing himself through intermediaries, under masks, the theater had enough to tempt a man
who wanted to be linked to his time and who, however, was still looking for himself...
Instinctively, he is inspired by the princes of the mask, the Italian comedians, and the author
the most concealed drama, or if you prefer the most modest: Marivaux.
The argument of the act is simple: Harlequin, to excite the passion of a pretty shepherdess,
pretends to have renounced love and the goods of the earth. Unfortunately, he falls victim
to his own trap; for having discovered the stratagem, the shepherdess employs it in her
turn. The denouement, of course, is happy, but its extreme speed leaves a slight ambiguity
and a reluctance to conclude clearly. Very lively, the act unfolds essentially around the
renunciation of love, which he exploits with singular joy:
My heart is free. He broke his chains, And
freed from human foolishness, He
tramples pleasures, loves...
And the design is taken forever...
or :
Love is nothing but a frivolous need And

with a big heart it must be far away.
Having learned from life that nothing that passes for important really is, Harlequin proclaims:
And from now on I am... Original

Original, yes morbleu, that is to say
That I want to live in my own way
henceforth Taunt, flatter, speak, keep
silent, laugh Love, hate!...
We hasten to laugh at everything, out of fear... These light antics at the edge of the abyss carry the last
smile of Saint-Just. In him, the "old man" disappears, as if exhausted by pranks and wantonness. He
throws away the habit of the disillusioned Harlequin, this costume "all gilded with crimes", variegated with
colors like his being of possibilities.
Now he will choose himself. After having entertained himself with life, after having sounded it out, he
will undertake to change it. Oh, it's not a flip-flop he's doing. Doubt and skepticism never stifled his appetite
for action. At the time of Organt, when he could only dream, he was already interrupting his recounting of
the adventures of Charlemagne in order to caress "a beautiful chimera":
For a moment, I am King of the earth, Evil

Aspen, your happiness will end.
Humble virtues, approach my throne; Head

raised, walk beside me; Weak orphan,
share my crown...
But at this word, my error abandons me; The
orphan cries: Ah! I am not king!

If I were, everything would change; Of
the rich haughty who tramples the
needy, My heavy hand would crush the
audacity, Will overthrow the insolent
culprit, Would raise the timid
innocent, And would weigh, in its

equal balance, Obscurity, greatness, poverty, rank.
Now that the Constituent Assembly has begun to hold its assizes, the time is no longer for litterateurs,
these superior spectators of themselves and of the world, it belongs to men of doctrine and action.
Saint-Just will become what it is: always demanding, never satisfied, in search of its reason for living 2 .
1. Let us note that around 1790 the curious Dorfeuille circulated throughout France to spread the propaganda of the Jacobins in popular societies
or give their instructions. "We have found traces of him in particular in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Tulle, Bergerac, Clairac, Montauban, Agen, Sainte-Foy-la-
Grande, Angers, Vendôme, Niort, Auch, Isle-en-Jourdain, Gimont, Nice, Lyon”, writes ML DE CARDENAL in his book La Province pendant la
Révolution (Paris, 1929). The Jacobins printed and circulated some of his speeches.
2. It was then, I believe, that he began to write a book that was never completed, under the title Of Nature, Civil Status, the City, or the Rules of the
Independence of Government, the manuscript of which , which entered the National Library in 1944, was deciphered by Mr. Albert Soboul.
As Saint-Just took up certain ideas, even certain phrases, in his first speeches at the Convention, we will have the opportunity to speak of them later.
CHAPTER III
NEITHER MASTERS NOR SLAVES
A people overwhelmed with taxes has little fear of revolutions and barbarians . This is a well-known, and
even banal, truth; so commonplace that we often fail to put it in its place when speaking of insurrections and
national revolts. We forget too much: before the fury of empty bellies dares to declare itself, the collective
thirst for freedom, the peoples must experience that they have nothing more to lose, so impoverished are
they, crushed in their material lives, with no hope of relief. This is the moment of extreme and perilous
availability.
The first thrills, the first turbulence of the masses always swing between enthusiasm and despair, between
conquest and abandonment. They are first of all a leap into the unknown, a credit opening to complete
change, wherever it comes from. So, the statesman, the professional “leader whatever it is, overwhelmed
as they are by the tidal wave. of crowds” find themselves momentarily prevented from driving. For
generalized misery does not induce revolt, it only makes the idea acceptable and even desirable. We stop
fearing the worst.
This leap, this passage from one state of acceptance to another state of acceptance, and the period of
hesitation, and the delusions that run through it, all of this had struck Saint-Just a great deal. Studying the
psychology of the infancy of the Revolution, he tried to disentangle this swarm of interests and passions in
the midst of which he had exhausted his own adolescence:
France was teeming with malcontents ready for the signal, but the selfishness of some, the cowardice of
others, the fury of despotism in its last days, the crowd of poor people who ate at court, the credit and fear of
creditors, the old the love of kings, the luxury and frivolity of the little ones, and the scaffold: all these causes
united stopped the insurrection.
So true is it that the strongest guarantees of any regime are the complicity and compromise of the greatest
number. The fear of losing one's material possessions has always been a powerful brake on civic courage.
You have to touch the lowest so that collective audacity is born:
The misery and rigors of the year 1788 moved the sensibility. Calamities and blessings united hearts; we
dared to say to ourselves that we were unhappy, we complained. (..) We hated the grown-ups we envied.
The great were indignant at the cries of the people. Despotism becomes all the more violent as it is less
respected or weakened.
We like that there is in these lines – and in those that follow – no help to bring these historic moments into
legend. This is not the tone of Camille Desmoulins. It is rather that of Cardinal de Retz and the great Roman
historians. This young man who is nothing, makes it a point of honor to place himself at equal distance from the
"two obstinate parties" which clash in the revolution:
That of the people, who, wishing to fill their legislators with power, loved the irons which they gave themselves;
that of the prince, who, wishing to raise himself above all, troubled himself less with his own glory than with his
fortune.
Didn't Saint-Just take sides? If one understands the expression in its modern political sense – to enlist –
probably not. But neither Saint-Just nor his contemporaries conceived of intervention in public affairs in this way.
If they were with the poor, with those who suffer, they did not conclude that misfortune gives the gift of lucidity
and the virtue of greatness.
(On the contrary, one could almost say...) It would not have occurred to them that social good and evil, the true
and the false, the just and the unjust could be thought of in terms of class. . Mass in itself had no value for them.
But, let Saint-Just draw to the end what he calls "the chain of indignities": Posterity will hardly be
able to imagine how greedy, miserly, frivolous the people were: how much the needs that their presumption
had forged in them placed them in the dependence of the great; so that the debts of the multitude being
mortgaged on the favors of the court, on the treachery of the debtors, the deception went by reproduction to the
sovereign, then descended from the sovereign to the provinces, and formed in the civil state a chain of indignities.
All the needs were extreme, imperious, all the means were atrocious.
Finally, everything is shaken, a day of glory:
The Bastille is abandoned and taken, and despotism, which is only the illusion of slaves, perishes with it.
The people had no morals, but they were lively. The love of liberty was a projection, and weakness gave birth
to cruelty. I do not know that the people have ever been seen, except among slaves, to carry the heads of the
most odious personages on the end of their spears, to drink their blood, to tear out their hearts and to eat them;
the death of a few tyrants in Rome was a kind of religion.
We will see one day, and more justly perhaps, this frightful spectacle in America; I saw it in Paris, I heard the
cries of joy of the desperate people who played with shreds of flesh, shouting: Long live freedom ! long live the
King and M. d'Orléans!
The blood of the Bastille cried out throughout France: the previously unresolved anxiety spilled over into the
detentions and the ministry. It was the public moment like that when Tarquin was driven from Rome. No thought
was given to the most solid of advantages, the flight of the troops blockading Paris; we rejoice in the conquest of
a state prison. What bore the imprint of the slavery with which one was overwhelmed struck the imagination more
than what threatened the freedom one did not have; it was the triumph of servitude...
The conduct of the people became so fiery, their disinterestedness so scrupulous, their rage so anxious,
that it was plainly seen that they took advice only from themselves. He respected nothing superb; his arm
felt the equality he did not know. After the defeat of the Bastille, when the victors were registered, most of
them did not dare to say their name: they were hardly sure when they passed from fear to audacity. The
people exercised a kind of despotism in their turn; the King's family and the Assembly of the States
marched captive to Paris, among the most naive and formidable pomp that ever was. We saw then that
the people acted for the elevation of no one, but for the abasement of all. The people are an eternal child;
he made his masters obey with respect and afterwards obeyed them with pride; he was more submissive
in his moments of glory than he had been crawling before; fear made him forget that he was free; we no
longer dared to stop or talk to each other in the streets; everyone was taken for conspirators; it was the
jealousy of freedom...
And here is the verdict:
As long as we judge things sanely, the revolutions of this time only offer everywhere a war
reckless slaves who fight with their irons and walk drunk.
The painting lacks neither strength nor style. But, were it not for the tone, a lover of modern etiquettes
might classify this view as 'liberal-moderate'. Indeed, this disapproval of bloodthirsty excesses, this
haughtiness with regard to the people, this denunciation of the "triumph of servitude", of "the slave war"
do not coincide with the romantic extremism that is readily attributed to Men of Terror.
It will be said: “Saint-Just wrote thus in 1790, lost in his province, but two years later, provided with a
seat at the Convention, he will change his mind. " It is not so. In what is considered to be his political
testament, he judged that the Revolution was "frozen". Because, he will say, “all the principles are
weakened ; there are only red caps worn by intrigue”.
Here, the etiquette lover might wonder: this acerbic criticism of committee intrigues, after so much
revulsion with regard to crowd movements, does it not testify to a secret inclination for authoritarian
regimes? ? We shall have occasion to examine this question under its various aspects. Let's say right
away that his pessimism held Saint-Just back, prevented him from embarking on the road to utopia.
Doctrinaire, yes, no doubt, by his stubbornness in wanting to accord his action to principles and values
forming a rule of life, but by no means an ideologue encumbered with political a priori . Fully informed as
he was about economic questions, the dilemma “economic first or political first” would have seemed to
him as absurd as it was futile. His principles were beyond these two areas.
Deep down, he didn't believe in ready-made solutions. He had discovered – not without surprise – that
in this matter, “the healthiest ideas are reversed”. Above all, he seemed to take the side of human dignity
(a dignity that was moreover quite stoic) to which he submitted the classic values of the liberal spirit. He
wrote bluntly: The freedom of an evil people is perfidy
general. Or again: Any will, even sovereign, inclined towards perversity is void... It is no less criminal
for the sovereign to be tyrannized by himself than by others.
It was precisely in the name of human dignity that he repudiated the morality of slaves and that of
masters as equally degrading. After having examined the work of the Constituent Assembly, and
having praised it on many points, he concluded:
Dare I put on paper a reflection that everyone has made, it is that France soon saw masters in the
person of its legislators and thus lost its dignity... They were called august representatives; the officers
tyrannized over the sovereign people, under the name of brothers, bowed before the legislators whom
they should only respect and love... Cowards that you were, you believed them to be kings, because
your weakness knew only hope or fear.
One might be tempted to see here a surge of egalitarian lyricism. But Saint-Just, in the same work,
specified that he conceived as only possible equality in political rights – or equality of all citizens
before the law – while economic equality seemed to him as fatal as it was impracticable. ..
SO ? In the name of what, of what morality, did this young man allow himself to limit the precepts
of obedience to the legislators, the principles of liberty and the general will of the people? What was
the key to this position, apparently so personal, since it authorized him to proclaim that, having sought
new reasons to obey, he had convinced himself that he should only obey his own virtue? Beyond the
blood of the Bastille, beyond the first delirium of the Revolution, what experiences, what awareness
had led him on this path?
1. This quotation and those that follow are taken from the book by SAINT-JUST, L'Esprit de la Révolution. We will see later how
it was written and published.

CHAPTER IV
"THE SPIRIT OF MADNESS AND WISDOM"
From time immemorial, peoples alternately serve as a means of accomplishing the great
work of Providence according to their crimes as well as according to their virtues.
L.-C. FROM SAINT-MARTIN,

Letter to a friend, 1796.
Am I free ? By asking this question, Saint-Just did not intend to measure his degree of emancipation
or his independence. He wanted to know what meaning to give to his life, or better, what meaning gave
him a year of Revolution, what possibilities opened before him, what wishes were allowed.
So many men have spoken of this Revolution and most have said nothing about it. What mattered to
him, in fact, the innumerable accounts of events, the libels, the pamphlets? All dealt with the adventure
by the menu of the anecdote or the immediate claim. And he thought only of the fatal character of the
Revolution. He saw all of Europe "walking along with great strides." He proclaimed: All the efforts of
despotism will not stop it. The Revolution was Destiny, its Destiny: The spirit of madness and wisdom
that makes its way through men and brings everything to an end. And, ambiguity being in the very
nature of Destiny, it could not be a question of adoring it submissively as an idol, nor of fighting it as a
declared enemy. It had to be elucidated like an enigma whose key would reveal the rules of conduct to
be followed. To what extent one could favor it, to what extent to oppose it, that was what was important
to know. “My purpose is not to have a dream. He wanted to grasp the reality of the moment, to embrace
the roughest necessity.
Admittedly, such a concern is found – more or less consciously – among all politicians worthy of the
name. The handling of public affairs implies the foresight of a certain historical destiny. To undertake an
action supposes that one is situated in a defined perspective.
Only mediocrity of character or intelligence often reduces foresight to a vague hope if not to a gamble.
For Saint-Just, discernment came first.
The title, a little long: the Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France, therefore indicated
something other than a concession to an already old fashion accommodating the word spirit in all sauces.
As Grimm said, who made fun of this mania as early as 1754, we seemed to want "every quintessential,
pass everything to the crucible”. But what had often been only ornament and vain pretension corresponded,
with Saint-Just, to a sincere intention. He really intended to seek "the principle and the harmony" of new laws,
by unraveling the threads of fate and will or, if you prefer, of necessity and freedom.
It was towards the beginning of the summer of 1790 that Saint-Just had decided to tackle this question. A
letter addressed to the municipality of Blérancourt had given him the opportunity. The missive came from London.
The correspondent, a certain M. de Cugnières, had sent it after the village had distinguished itself by burning
the declaration of the clergy. “Very scholarly letter,” said Saint-Just; and we know nothing more. But the
reference to the clergy statement points the way.
Indeed, it was this affair that enabled Saint-Just to conquer a leading position in Blérancourt.
At the beginning of 1790, despite the great social turbulence, the horizon remained blocked for him in
Blérancourt as much as in Paris. Father Gellé was not to see favorably the return of his daughter's seducer.
However, Father Gellé was a notable: notary to the King, member of the bailiwick of Vermandois, he enjoyed
such considerable authority in the commune that he was appointed "commander-in-chief" of the first "national
militia" organized in Blérancourt. , January 3, 1790. Of course, the notary had around him, as officers: Thorin
the younger, his son-in-law, who had blown the beautiful Louise to Saint-Just, Emmanuel Decaisne, young
notary, widow of Thorin's sister. What could the author of Organt expect from an organization whose leaders
included the father and husband of the woman who had been denied him?
Fortunately, in troubled times fortune changes sides fairly quickly. At the renewal of the municipality, on
January 31, 1790, an old friend of the family, Honoré, was elected mayor, and the national guard choosing its
chiefs, named Decaisne colonel, Binart major, Clay Lefebvre, Raart and Beaulieu captains. Almost all were
favorably disposed towards Saint Just. The colonel himself, Emmanuel Decaisne, having found consolation in
his widowhood with Louise de Saint-Just (he married her in February), broke with the Thorin-Gellé camp.
Finally, the same month, a close friend of Saint-Just, Thuillier, was appointed secretary-clerk. This time the way
was open.
The National Guard was the ideal institution to satisfy an ambition that was seeking employment.
One could easily earn ranks and carve out an important place for oneself in local affairs, as long as one had a
few recommendations. Moreover, such a form of action had something to attract a young man whose childhood
had taken place in the shadow of his father's uniforms, lulled by the stories of American liberation, exalted by
the teaching of the great Roman virtues. Ambition spurred on by the taste for glory – in the Cornelian sense of
the word – much more than by that of power (we have seen that he could not forgive the monarchy for
encumbering itself less with its own glory than with its fortune"), he could hope to find
there enough to elevate the action above petty petty quarrels, and give it the style and attitudes that
Livy, Tacitus and Plutarch had taught it.
But Father Gellé, the sacked Commander-in-Chief, did not see it that way. At home, people rebelled
against the role played by this detested young man and they rebelled against a militia that veered
towards the people and the Revolution.
On March 16, the syndic prosecutor informed Mr. Gellé for "insults to the cockade". And, a fortnight
later, a real fight broke out when Captain Clay-Lefebvre appeared with his men to summon the notary to
come and take his shift. The Gellé woman scolded Clay, telling him “fuck off; that her husband would not
keep watch, not being made to be with one. bunch of scoundrels, rascals and beggars like him and
those who made up their damn militia”. After which, she tried to throw ashes in the eyes of the National
Guards, and finally wanted to beat them. It was necessary to threaten her with the saber to bring her
back to calm.
This was the vaudeville side, very constant, local dissensions. It offered nothing satisfactory for
someone who wanted to live in the Roman way. So Saint-Just attached himself to nobler enterprises. He
worked to group the municipalities of the Soissonnais by a federative pact, embarking on a path where
1.
other regions had preceded him with glory.
Nevertheless, in this respect, the municipality of Blérancourt was ahead of many of its neighbors.
On April 2, the new mayor of Soissons, Grouillart, congratulated Blérancourt on having already been
provided with a national guard, “this indispensable creation”. And, responding to the offer of a federative
pact, he did not hesitate to write: "It is only through this holy confederation that the revolution can only
be perfected and that truly regenerated municipalities can arise." »
In this enterprise, Saint-Just showed great ardor during the spring and summer of 1790, not contenting
himself with uniting already existing militias, but taking charge of supplying them with arms, sometimes
even founding them. We do not know to what extent the attempt at federation was crowned with success,
but we know, on the other hand, that on July 2 Saint-Just was named "honorary commander of the
national guards of the canton", which rather underlines the importance of his role in this case.
However, he was not a man to get drunk on this kind of promotion. The taste for the absolute and the
feeling of the relative virtue of the National Guard prevented him from limiting his aspirations to this local
army corps. The judgment he was to reserve for it, a few months later, was not unqualified: In the midst
of anarchy, amid the storm of freedom, this dangerous institution calmed everything; the people bound
themselves with his hands, mastered themselves. As for the feast of the Federation which marked the
apogee of revolutionary optimism, on July 14, 1790, Saint-Just – although he was officially delegated to
it – did not share the legendary enthusiasm any more than he did. shared that of the storming of the
Bastille. For quite different reasons, however. Bastille Day had seemed to him like
"an intoxication of slaves", that of the Champ-de-Mars seemed to him "the effect of a few men who wanted
to spread their popularity".
Certainly not that he suspected or underestimated these local federations. On the contrary, he saw a
great future for them: They will balance the strength of the political state a little, if it loses its popularity. But,
he added, as he foresaw conflicts with Girondin federalism and the Vendée, would to God that civil discords
be prevented and that the love of peace be long preserved among the geniuses of arms.
That was what he dreaded. Undoubtedly, the federation constituted an admirable spring to strengthen
the public spirit, it was good, but the moment had not come. For the time being, interests were trying to
confiscate it for their own benefit. And they had the good part, because it is a marvelous means of attacking
men to arm themselves against them with their weaknesses or their virtues.
However, if the possibilities on the side of the National Guard seemed to him ultimately quite slim, on
the other hand, a new path had opened up to him: the Constitution had made him elector of Blérancourt.
And, at the same time, he did not hesitate to consider himself eligible.
To tell the truth, he could not claim this privilege, according to the law. He was only twenty-three years
old and the law required twenty-five. His very capacities as an elector were quite artificial. He could be an
active citizen quite easily (you had to pay a direct contribution equal to the value of three days of work) but
it was already more difficult for him to be an elector of the department (you had to pay a contribution equal
to the value of ten days of work). Finally, let us recall that the Constitution reserved eligibility for men paying
the marc of silver and possessing, in addition, landed property. However, the paternal property belonged to
Madame de Saint-Just and nothing should oblige her son to pay heavy taxes. However, he confided to
Camille Desmoulins, in the second half of May: in the next legislature, I could be one of you in the National
Assembly.
Where did he get so much confidence from? What support or prestige did he enjoy? In the previous
days, he had won, in quick succession, two big successes.
On May 11, he had had the good fortune to receive thirty copies of a pamphlet entitled: Declaration of a
part of the National Assembly on a decree issued on April 13, 1790, concerning religion. This protest
against the civil constitution of the clergy was addressed to him, "with a letter in which he was engaged,
says the report, to use his influence in the country to defend religion." Who had had the strange idea of
thinking of Saint-Just for this service? What relationships could have caused this misunderstanding? We
will probably never know.
In any case, the young officer of the National Guard jumped at the opportunity offered to him. He took
the hot pamphlets to the municipality, and organized, with the assistance of the latter, a ceremony in the
best Roman style.
On May 15, at the end of a beautiful spring evening, the municipal officers, the soldiers of the National
Guard and the entire population of Blérancourt were assembled on the main square, where a stake had
been erected. Saint-Just came forward and threw into the flames the pamphlets against
revolutionaries, while the drums beat. Then, extending his hand over the fire, he swore to die for his country, the National
Assembly, and to perish by fire rather than forget this engagement. Such a renewed attitude of Mucius Scaevola wrung,
says the report, “tears from everyone”. After which, the municipal body filed past, in front of the stake, repeated the oath of
Saint-Just and the mayor, finally, turning towards the instigator of the ceremony, exclaimed full of enthusiasm: "Young man,
I have known your father, your grandfather and your tayon: you are worthy of them: continue as you began and we will see
each other at the National Assembly. »
This little triumph was timely. Two days later, the electors of the department met in Chauny to elect the chief town of the
department of Aisne. Saint-Just, despite his age, despite the virulent opposition of Mr Gellé, was delegated to represent
the commune of Blérancourt.
In itself, the subject of the debate had nothing to excite: it was necessary to choose between Soissons and Laon.
It seems to me that it is only a point of honor between the two cities, and the points of honor are very
few things almost of all kinds, he confided to Desmoulins 2 .
Also, on Sunday May 17, in front of voters “men of all calibers and calibers”, he undertook, not to elevate the debate –
which was hardly possible – but to illustrate it with his personal attitude:
My age and the respect I owe you do not allow me to raise my voice among you; but you
have already proved to me that you are indulgent.

I have been denounced, I have been envied the glory of serving my country; but if malice had been able to tear me from
my body, from my country and from you, it would not have torn my heart from you.
It is under your eyes that I will have made my first weapons, it is here that my soul was soaked in freedom,
and this freedom you enjoy is even younger than me.
The wishes of my constituents and the rigor of my mission force me to take sides in the quarrel which divides you;
forced to take only one, my conscience is one and my heart both; young as I am, I have to spy on wise examples to profit
from them, and if anything touched me, it was the respective moderation that you put into your discussions this morning.
He was not yet the man whose eloquence was to be "sharp as the guillotine's ax." Applying himself to soften his listeners
on his age, not to alienate either of the two camps, he obviously sought to seduce, to prepare his own election for the next
legislature. He was not fooled by the game and was amused to have "received a lot of politeness" from MM. Saulce and
Violette and to have "left laden with compliments like the donkey of relics his failed father-in-law, come to denounce him,
3
"chased by the shoulders To end the day with dignity, Saint-Just offered ". Finally, he had had the keen pleasure of seeing
himself a new gesture to the Roman. The peasants of my canton, he explains again 4 ”.
to Desmoulins, had come, then on my return from Chauny, to look for me in Manicamp. The Comte de Lauraguais was
greatly astonished at this rustic-patriotic ceremony. I took them all to his house to visit. We are told that he is in the fields
and I, however, acted like

Tarquin; I had a stick with which I cut off the head of a fern that was near me, under the windows of the
chateau, and without saying a word we turned around.
Too intelligent to take these various manifestations seriously, he was nevertheless careful not to lose the
benefit of them. Before going to Chauny, he had written or caused to be written an address to the National
Assembly in order to ensure proper publicity for the oath taken over the flames. He had no intention of
abandoning the mayor's words to the wind, nor of allowing such a Roman illustration of his patriotism to be
lost. This time, we raised the tone shamelessly.
"Monseigneur, here is what is happening in the countryside, while you are working for freedom.
May they blush on reading what follows, the tyrants who seek to seduce us, and who represent religion to
us as fortune, a purse in hand, which is so pure and so moderate. »
After having reproduced the official report, the address concluded: “Happy are the people whom freedom
makes virtuous and who are only fanatics of truth and virtue. This is the spirit that animates us, Monsignor;
and what is most consoling for us is that all of France experiences the same feelings. Excuse the peasants
who do not know how to express tenderness, gratitude, but who keep hearts, blood and bayonets in the
National Assembly on occasion. »
The day after the sitting of the electoral assembly at Chauny, the Constituents testified by vigorous
applause that they were not insensitive to these great impulses of the heart, to these supreme demands.
Better still, they asked for and obtained the printing of this patriotic document.
And it was thus, no doubt, that he one day crossed the Channel and fell into the hands of a member of the
" Philanthropic Society " of London. It inspired him to write the famous "scholarly letter" which, in turn,
inspired the Spirit of the Revolution.
The loop being closed, we can better see the probable content of the English letter, and its motive.
She had to applaud and comment on what stood in front of temporal religion. It was to revolve around the
relations of the Revolution, of religion and of morality.
We understand how justified was the title: the Spirit of the. Revolution.
The important thing in this little book, much more than its conclusions on the politics of the moment -
basically, an adherence to the constitutional monarchy - were the expectations, the incidences scattered
here and there, which came out of the same theme: a categorical questioning the sacred.
Now, who fixes the sacred, if not religion, laws, institutions, morals, mores, customs, in short, this
complex, almost inextricable whole that man spends his time undoing and redoing? And again, is this
considering the sacred only as a social fact. But for the individual, a choice is constantly offered: he can
simply contest the existence of the sacred, or agree to take it into account and comply with it as a necessary
convention, or even submit to it as something beyond him and for which he feels responsible. In each of
these positions – with their variants and their indefinite shades – man takes the measure of his freedom.
Rejecting both the sacred religious and the sacred profane of his century – Reason according to
Montesquieu – Saint-Just seemed doomed to the absurd. Organt foreshadowed it, presenting itself as "the analogy
morals with madness”. But since then, the author of Organt had recognized that fate is not only the spirit of
madness but also that of wisdom. And to know how one articulates with the other was equivalent, for him, to
knowing the sacred, this hinge on which beats the life of the world.
No anguish, a serene certainty made him write: Everything is relative in the world, God himself, and all that
is good is a prejudice for the weak, the truth is sensitive only to the wise. And elsewhere: Nothing is sacred
except what is good; what has ceased to be sacred is no longer sacred, truth alone is absolute.
To maintain, on the one hand, that “what is good” is a prejudice and on the other, that it is sacred, can seem
contradictory if one forgets that it was always only a matter of relative good. . Related to what?
To the situation of man in the world, to the conditions of the moment, such as they are shaped by the mores of
a people.
On this, Saint-Just put forward examples to which he was not afraid to return several times.
That of Lycurgus in particular:
When a legislator has bent wisely to the vices of a nation and bent the possible virtues of the people to
himself, he has done everything. Lycurgus ensured chastity by violating modesty and turned the public mind to
war because it was fierce.
And, about the Hebrews, this astonishing sight: God
gave bad laws to the Hebrews; these laws were relative, and were inviolable only so long as the Jews were
evil; they became a good compared to ingrates; they would have been an evil compared to saints; any way
that leads to order is pure; any path that does not stray from wisdom is pure and leads to God.
This was to posit in principle that the sacred had ceased to move throughout history, obliged as it was to
come to terms with madness and evil. Also – capital consequence – no constituted body could boast of
eternally holding the rules of justice and injustice. To say that "truth is sensible only to the wise" was to judge it
reserved for the small number of those who had attained supreme knowledge.
Not concealing his hostility against any "theocracy", he included in this reprobation the government of the
priests and the claim to apply a divine right. To priests and monks, he blamed himself for having confiscated
God for their benefit and engendered fanaticism. The earth belongs to the arms of men and the priests to the
laws of the world, in the spirit of truth. To the prerogatives of divine right, he opposed the conviction that God
does not confuse time or men; (that) his wisdom varies his advice. Before him, it is true, Saint Paul had already
said: "God alone knows his own." »
Logically with himself, he hardly dreamed of confusing the history of Christianity with that of the Churches:
The first
Romans, the first Greeks, the first Egyptians were Christians. They had morals and charity: that is
Christianity. What have been called Christians since Constantine were mostly only savages or madmen. And,
long before Dostoyevsky wrote the famous parable of Ivan Karamazov, Saint-Just imagined that if Christ were
reborn in Spain, he would again be
crucified by the priests, like a factious, a subtle man, who under the bait of modesty and charity,
would meditate the ruin of the Gospel and the State.
Admittedly, there was nothing particularly original about these views. Many minds of the time –
who today are classed as deists or theosophists – went in the same direction.
It was, as early as 1730, Tindal publishing an essay with a significant title: “Christianity is as old as
creation. The Gospel is only a new publication of the law of nature. It was, a few years later, Pope,
with his famous Essay on Man, who began to poetically popularize the same principles, Pope who
Saint-Just was indignant that he did not have his statue in Paris. It was, finally, among many others,
the Catholic Freemason, Joseph de Maistre, who wrote: “The true religion is well over eighteen
centuries old. She was born the day the days were born. »
Moreover, the impersonality of the tone, the dogmatism of his assertions showed enough that
Saint Just was not aware of innovating in the matter. His singularity, he would show it by pushing to
their extreme consequences, practical and political, the positions held until then by men very
detached from public affairs. With him, speculation became action.
In his eyes, the variations in mores and morals, by provoking a constant displacement of the
sacred in the history of peoples, did not only testify, as Pascal asserted, to the misery of man, nor,
as the believed Montesquieu, of the insufficiency of the progress of reason. For him, there were no
immutable values: rights did not exist, only merits counted.
So freedom. We have seen Saint-Just consider liberty among an evil people to be "a general
perfidy." We will see him, at the Convention, rise up against “freedom (which) makes war on
morality”, in certain circumstances. And when, at the beginning of his book, he announced his
purpose, he specified that he intended not only to know whether the legislation deserved his
obedience, but also to seek in the bottom of his heart what virtue he had in order to know what he
deserved freedom. In short: two merits to be evaluated face to face.
However, how to weigh the merits? Weren't the reasons for his adhesion to the civil war the same
ones which radically excluded a Pascal from it? "The greatest of evils is civil war," wrote the author
of Les Pensées. They are sure, if one wants to reward the merits, because all will say that they
deserve. But Pascal despised action and politics, he only judged human movements sub specie
aeternitatis. On the contrary, the author of The Spirit of the Revolution endeavored to reconcile the
Eternal with History. For the Jansenist, human justice was irremediably false; for the revolutionary,
it was only relative, and the duty consisted in establishing as close a relationship as possible. For
the first, the man had to die in the world, to cut all the carnal and social bonds which attach it to him;
for the second, man had to assume his mission of mediator between earth and heaven. The
conception of greatness was not the same.
For Saint-Just, the tragedy of the Revolution, as well as its object, was having to compensate for
lost contacts. Nature, he asserted, came out of the hearts of men and hid itself in their imagination.
And elsewhere, in identical terms: Heaven was no longer in the hearts of men.
The individual folded in on himself had, at the same time, lowered himself. The mores – in which
the author of the Spirit of the Revolution sought “the relations which nature has established
between men” – bore witness to the degeneration. Filial piety confused with “fear; love (with)
gallantry; friendship (with) familiarity", the little value recognized in human life, effeminate
manners, the scorned woman, there was nothing in this mixture of delicacy and brutality that did
not bristle those who looked like ages of gold Egypt and the first Rome.
How far could one go up such a current? Without illusion, but not without bitterness, he said:
All these secondary institutions will not replace the original virtue. In truth, men could tend to
approach nature in its "primitive simplicity", but not achieve it by the only forces of their will. The
circle of their corruption had to be closed. It was necessary to go to the end of the historical cycle
to find the starting point. A path quite different from the beautiful rectilinear and ascending avenue
in which progressive optimism invited humanity to embark.
Certainly, in this abandonment of nature, in this "fall", one could see a sort of secularization of
original sin, and as the residue of a Christian education. Hadn't the former pupil of the Oratorians
of Soissons, of the priests of the Louis-le-Grand college, remained marked enough by the
Catholic climate to place Bossuet on the same level as Montesquieu and respectfully salute "his
admirable Universal History"? Will we not see him cry, in Strasbourg, in front of the anti-religious
masquerades?
The explanation is easy, but incomplete. For the reference to a golden age is found, implicit or
explicit, in all the social renovators, the revolutionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries, from Jean
Jacques Rousseau to Karl Marx. I mean that everyone grants man the benefit of “original” moral
capacities that should be freed so that they can blossom naturally (without constraint) in
fundamental justice. Admittedly, among themselves, these thoughts are distinguished by the
means they propose to recover the original purity – the dictatorship of the proletariat does not
resemble the social contract – but, in the end, the choice of means depends on the cause to
which the "fall", evil and human misery are attributed.
Of the state of nature, Saint-Just, like Rousseau, seemed to see the best approximation, the
most faithful illustration, in the wild. However, if he yielded on this point to sentimentality, to the
clichés of the time, he defended himself from "wanting to hunt man in the forests". Better, while
the author of the Discourse on Inequality attributed the perversion of man to society, to economic
interests. ("It is iron and wheat that have civilized men and ruined the human race") the author
of the Spirit of the Revolution nailed man and society to the same pillory. The human heart
marches from nature to violence, from violence to morality; one must not believe that man first
sought to oppress himself: the mind unravels a long alteration between primitive simplicity and
the idea of conquest and preservation. More clearly still: Man is dependent only when he has
begun to civilize himself without principles.
Thus, according to Saint-Just, the fall, the enslavement of man was less caused by a moral fault
than by a departure from true principles. It was from the depths of his decline that man had had to
resort to morality and law in order to defend himself. ("In the state of nature, man has no rights because
he is independent.") No doubt, in this "long alteration", humanity had known brilliant rebounds during
the antiquity. But what was left today? Obviously, all human values could only be considered as by-
products.
Starting with the most beautiful of the fruits of “the corruption of independence”: freedom. Saint
Just considered it “lovable” insofar as “it leads back to simplicity through the force of virtue”. And to
blame Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, not having subjected freedom to these conditions, had made it,
like so many others, “the art of human pride”.
But what is the use, it will be said, of seeking sources if one considers them to be lost or out of
reach? Because, Saint-Just would have replied, their knowledge is no less essential to the man who
wants to guide his life than is the knowledge of the stars to the navigator on the ocean. “A free
constitution is good in proportion as it brings morals closer to their origin. And then, everything must
be grasped at its source, so as not to err any longer, and it is only through exact knowledge of nature
that one can constrain it with more artifice. Obsessed with efficiency as much as with truth, he intended
to satisfy both equally.
Only the bitter hand-to-hand combat of Providence and the Will constituted, for him, a combat
worthy of man. The wisdom he invoked did not resemble that quality of moderation, a little flabby,
which the moderns generally ascribe to him. He conceived of wisdom as a battle of knowledge, as a
never-ending battle.
If he held that "the truth descends from the eternal God", teaching "intelligent harmony", variable in
its forms, he did not confer, for all that, on this God, omnipotence. Placed outside the blows of Destiny,
the latter "has its laws to which it conforms, but which can do all the good it wants, without being able
to do evil." He is truly the Supreme Being with whom there is only individual communication. At the
other pole, there is the earth, the laws of nature. To act is to fill everything in between by relying on the
necessities of the moment and by accepting to "bend" to them. We find here a distant echo of the
Pythagorean ternary: Providence, destiny, will.
I don't pretend to sue anyone. He was everyone and everything. Not as a rebel, not even as a
political adversary, but as a religious spirit if we mean by religious spirit, “the one, as André Malraux
says, who feels to the depths of his soul the anguish of being a man” . In this sense, we can evoke
Pascal about him, as Aulard did. Because this worry will never leave him. On the verge of death, she
will inspire him with the famous heartbreaking cry: I defy anyone to tear away from me this independent
life that I have given myself over the centuries and in the heavens. Then, he will want to convince
himself that he has conquered by merit this supreme freedom: independence beyond death.
Thus it will be necessary to wait three years so that, in the terrible doubts of the Terror, in the
shadow of the guillotine, he answers in the affirmative to the question posed when he enters political life:
am i free ? He will measure his freedom in the world at the moment of leaving it, defeated by it, but sure
of having triumphed over time.
1. We remember that the first local federation was that of the Star near Valence. It grouped together fourteen municipalities of
Dauphine. His oath dates from November 28, 1789.
2. Letter already quoted.

3. Letter to Desmoulins.
4. Same.
CHAPTER V
THE ORACLE
Let's not fall into the trap of an overly idealistic psychology.

Observing a vigil of arms, collecting an examination of conscience and reflections prior to action, the
historian is always tempted to play the reverse soothsayer. Knowing the future of his subject, he can
quickly usurp the privilege of fixing the stigmata of predestination. Easily, he can imagine himself in the
situation of the palmist to whom he offers himself, wide open, the palm with the tangled lines of a hand
which he knows with what force it will soon tense up on the event...
But the hand is never quite there. And thick shadows remain, inviting
circumspection.
The conception of destiny and freedom, which I have tried to bring out, was nothing other, for Saint
Just, than a kind of line of the head: the curve of his deepest will. Not dug only by what he wished to
appear and obtain in this world, but by what he demanded of himself.
He was himself in this tension, but he himself was also in a thousand familiar gestures and remarks
that will always elude us. How did he live in Blérancourt? What relationship did he have with his mother
and sisters? How were the family meals, and in what tone were the conversations? If he still caught a
glimpse of Louise, despite the fact that she had become Madame Thorin, was he sleeping with her?
And, finally, what depressions, what exaltations could grip this heart which stirred, with equal impetuosity,
desires for glory and truth?
How to confine this walker, - as indefatigable as Rimbaud - in his civic enterprises?
Lieutenant-colonel of the National Guard, legal adviser to the town, elector of the department, like all
that, ultimately, must have seemed to him derisory in view of the notoriety of his compatriot Desmoulins.
The appetite for the absolute and the pawing of a young ambition haunt, in turn, the Spirit of the
Revolution. Sometimes they contradict each other. He who reproaches Rousseau for having made
freedom "the art of human pride" is the same who begs the readers of his essay "to love the heart of its
author" and solemnly warns them: I ask for nothing more, and I have no other pride than that of my
freedom.
To please, he did not hesitate to use the methods he disapproved of. Selling the fuse, he kept enough to
light it for his use, without shame.
No doubt there was less of a contradiction there than it seems. Above all, our hero intended, like Lycurgus,
to take advantage of the “vanities and lights of the century”. Since "heaven was no longer in the hearts of men",
it was necessary to give them "another bait more in conformity with human interest".
The first effects of the Revolution taught it: As virtue is still a prestige among proud and corrupt mortals, that
what is good appears beautiful there, everyone became intoxicated with the rights of man, and philosophy and
pride found no less proselytes.
You had to take your place at this feast or meddle in nothing.
But the guest that we notice is the one who knows how to stand out, while keeping a tone of good company.
This is how Saint-Just wanted to behave. Giving, sometimes in the tastes and whims of the moment, sometimes
disengaging from them with haughtiness, he practiced an alternation which was neither totally unconscious nor
devoid of intentions. Don't be terrified by the boldness of my paradoxes, he wrote to his publisher. Those who
only say what everyone says are not read.
However, make no mistake about it. The conviction to support his audacity on a skilful literary strategy,
instead of pushing him, as in other times, to mystify his reader, invited him, more seriously, to advance beyond
the lines of the penholder. I have entered new paths where reading would not have led me, he had again
replied to his publisher who reproached him, foolishly, for lacking reading material and know-how.
Obviously, the quant-à-soi remained, with him, very vigorous; and his whole step was but a series of
engagements and withdrawals. What he imposed most forcefully had more to do with the government of
oneself than the government of others. He hovered around the situation made for France, casting sly glances
at it, haughty sarcasm, adhering to it jerkily, sometimes with effusion, rarely without reserve. In the final
analysis, why so many contortions in the face of current events?
I don't think I've said everything by noting what went into these manners, both undulating and imperious, of
concern to please and concern to dominate. No more than by granting the part – certain – of youthful
awkwardness, of uncertainties of the spirit. There comes a point where disentangling what is concession to
the opinion of the moment from what is deep conviction is very risky.
In truth, there was something else. What Saint-Just came up against was the old quarrel that
had been shaking world politics for four centuries: the dispute over legitimacy.
Because it is not enough to live according to one's time and what one believes to be the truth, it is also
necessary – if one claims to be in politics – to bring others there. And, to achieve this, there is hardly any other
means than the law. But how do you tell a good law from a bad one? What confers on a law the legitimacy,
that is to say the undisputed authority which is indispensable to it?
We know the answers of Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For the first, the law was defined as
"human reason insofar as it governs all the peoples of the earth", hence
promotion of public discussion and of the English-style representative system. For the second, more reticent
towards parliaments, the essential of the relationship between rulers and ruled had to be fixed by a social
contract faithful to the popular will: "The general will is always right and always tends towards utility. public.
»
None of these answers could completely satisfy Saint-Just. The dogma of the sovereignty of the people,
of the general will inspired him with great mistrust, for it seemed to him capable of covering up all the
undertakings of "perversity" and tyranny. As for reason, he had never believed much in her power - he
would hardly use the word in his speeches - as if the linear constructions of the "new goddess" had seemed
to him insufficient to account for the lightning zigzags of the 'History.
And then, while the gentleman of Brède had worked in the serenity of his castle, dominating the History
of the universe from the top of his library, he, forty years later, had known the political world in the rush of
troubles. social.
With what force had he not felt that the historical movement went beyond men, and changed them and
carried them away in spite of themselves?
In short, while the author of the Spirit of the Laws worked as a laboratory man, immobilizing the material
of his analysis, that of the Spirit of the Revolution observed a movement, seeking how to control it, that is
to say fit into it to dominate it as far as possible.
Without doubt, Montesquieu, before him, had underlined the obligation to adapt the laws to the physicality
of the country, to its climate, to its extent, its government, its mores, its religion, etc., and Pascal had
already written: “ States would perish if the laws were not often bent to necessity,” but Saint-Just intended
to push this relativism further in the work of legislation, he wanted it based on the condition of man.
As this presents itself under a double aspect – the metaphysical and the historical – Saint-Just sometimes
found himself led to make two opposing judgments on the same measure. For example, for property. He
was indignant that it could be considered a natural right. For him, body and matter merging, transient beings
under the sky, hadn't death taught us that, far from the earth belonging to us, our sterile dust belonged to
it ? But, to correct myself immediately: What is the use of reminding men of a morality henceforth useless,
unless the circle of their corruption brings them back to nature... Property has laws which can be full of
wisdom, which prevent the corruption to dissolve, and evil to abuse itself.
Ultimately, it was always a question of weighing merits on the scales of truth, that is, of rendering justice.
And, in fact, along with the law, his classic attribute, it is justice that forms the keystone of Saint-Just's
political conception. She is, he says, the spirit of all that is good, and the height of wisdom. She is the
guardian of the laws. It fosters virtue among the people and makes them love it.
It is in relation to the laws that everything is ordered: “Serfdom consists in depending on unjust laws: the
freedom of reasonable laws. In a few words: The laws are the fatherland. They should not be considered
as a convention, but as a relationship between nature and society, which is convention.
To come to terms with transcendent truths, with the mores and opinion of the moment, that is the object of
justice, according to Saint-Just. And, very explicitly, he compares a good constitution – one that represses
morals and turns them to its advantage – to a robust body that feeds on vile food.
Such a conception detaches itself from the organizing empiricism of a Montesquieu and the encyclopaedists,
without falling into the rationalist apriorism of a Rousseau concerning the popular will. In her definition of the
legislative body she agrees, curiously, with Aristotle. The legislative body, says Saint-Just, is like the motionless
light which distinguishes the form of all things and the air which nourishes them: in fact, it maintains the balance
and the spirit of the powers by the severe ordering of the laws (...) He is the point toward which everything
presses; he is the soul of the constitution (...) He is the essence of freedom.
Isn't this something very similar to what the Greek philosopher called "the
motor stationary”?
So let us not be surprised to hear the young theoretician of the Revolution call legislators oracles. And don't
think that's a metaphor. For him, those who establish the laws have not a power, but a spiritual authority.
Addressing them, he will never cease to remind them of what they are and should be with regard to the people:
You are their providence, and nothing should alter your wisdom in calculating their destinies... The people
created no masters, he sought only oracles and his happiness... The paths of philosophy and persuasion are
the only ones that suit you... Strength is in the magistrate and not in the legislator
1.
In short, the legislator, according to Saint-Just, was a pontiff, in the etymological sense of the word, that is
to say a mediator forming the bridge between heaven and earth or, if you prefer, between the immutable and
the contingent.
Great pontiffs in his eyes, not only a Lycurgus, a Moses, but also Jesus Christ of whom he wrote: This
legislator dealt the blow to the Roman Empire. The reign of virtue, of patience, of poverty, was to bring down
the pride of the monarchy by rectifying morals.
Certainly, one is not an oracle without having the gift of prophecy. And Saint-Just loved to prophesy, to riddle
the future with arrows, in a Cassandra tone. What did he say, for example, of the colonies? The colonies have
become the nerve of the metropolises, until they have corrupted them, they have shaken off their unjust
domination; then the spirit of commerce which today compresses all the activity of Europe being lost, the spirit
of conquest will take its place: Europe will become barbarous, its governments tyrannical, and the other
continents will perhaps flourish again.
In the midst of so many optimists, before the 19th century and its flatterers of a post-revolutionary paradise,
Saint-Just stands like a prophet announcing terrible punishments. He is of the race of witnesses who have their
throats cut by the fatality they have denounced. He launched: The laws which reign by the executioners perish
by the blood and the infamy, and, one day, his severed head would testify some.
Undoubtedly, it is the 9 Thermidor that gives this sentence a sound that moves us, and deceives us.
Reduced to itself, it only strongly expresses an idea as old as the world: violence attracts violence. But
don't all the prophecies of the irremediable carry commonplaces (when they don't create any) insofar as
they refer to moral precepts, to the ancient wisdom of peoples? Only, in general, the prophets of the
irremediable are, in modern times, artists, philosophers, never politicians. Every great political adventure
takes its breath in a hope. Exceptionally, that of Saint-Just will be a struggle between the demon of hope
and that of the irremediable.
Did he measure the difficulties he was raising before him, the one who repudiated all theocracy at the
same time as he conferred on the laws "the rank of God, of nature and of man", prohibiting them from
owing anything to opinion but prescribing them to "bend everything to morality and to bend there themselves"?
It was not yet Hegel. The author of L'Esprit did not raise up an elite, justified in using all the means of
power, because "aware of the future of the world". He wanted legislators attentive to history, certainly, but
also full of wisdom, imbued with morals and eternal truths.
This is fine and good. For if the competence of opinion, as arbiter, is disputed, who will distinguish the
depth of wisdom, the rigor of morality in the legislator? And what privileges will enable him to carry out his
task to the end, sheltered from public opinion, if he holds no power?
This is the impasse, which is that of legalism. In truth, the conjunction of a spiritual authority and a
temporal power had disappeared with Christianity. In medieval law, the royal legislative power was
circumscribed, on the one hand, by the customs of the kingdom – unwritten law, considered as expressing
“the internal order of things” – of which the King was only the arbiter, and, on the other hand, by the
supreme spiritual authority of Christendom: the Pope. But, after Philip the Fair had freed the power of
spiritual authority and strengthened the state by concentration, a new law was born, based on the individual,
power and reason.
Supported and developed by the jurists and humanists of the Renaissance, this right was to, after having
confirmed royalty in its power, becoming the instrument of its ruin, two centuries later.
That, Saint-Just had guessed. Attracted by the Middle Ages, in “pre-romantic” as his biographers say –
he had understood it better than many of his contemporaries. While working on a monograph of the
Château de Coucy, he had studied feudalism, and, if he condemned its "fanaticism", he had nevertheless
been able to see that everything in its legislation was "united by a secret dependence."
Convinced of the determining character of the structures of law, he wrote: Revolutions are less
an accident of arms than an accident of laws... There is a time in the political order when everything is
decomposed by a secret germ of consumption; everything depraves and degenerates; the laws lose their
natural substance and languish. And to retrace the historical process: The nerve of the civil laws of France
has maintained tyranny since the discovery of the New World; these laws have triumphed over mores and
fanaticism: but they needed organs to enforce them; these organs were the parliaments;
these parliaments, having risen up against tyranny, carried it away. The lesson of experience is simple: Tyrants
perish through the weakness of the laws they have enervated. (Hear: that they have deprived of their nerve.)
But how to give back to the laws their “nerve” and their “natural substance”, precisely, without resorting to a
heavy apparatus of courts and police to enforce them? All revolutions since 1789 have come up against this. All
have increased the coercive power of the state. And, finally, it is not even the magistrates, men subjected at
least theoretically to an order, to the principles of law, who will constitute the pivot of totalitarian regimes, but the
auxiliary police.
It was serious to make the following observation: A State which was free at first, like Greece before Philip of
Macedonia, which then loses its freedom, as Greece lost it under this prince, will make vain efforts to reconquer
it; the principle is no longer: were it given back to him even as Roman policy gave it back to the Greeks, offered
it to Cappadocia to weaken Mithridates and as the policy of Sylla wanted to give it back to Rome itself, it is
unnecessarily; souls have lost their marrow, if I may say so, and are no longer strong enough to feed on freedom;
they still love its name, desire it as ease and impunity and no longer know its virtue.
It was to agree that if the legislator and the power were able to reinvigorate the nerve of the laws, they were
powerless to change their “natural substance”; this was given by time and place. But this was an additional
reason why the legislator was essentially a spiritual authority, endeavoring to modify mores by persuasion and
adaptation.
When exercising power, as we will see, Saint-Just felt that the laws could not suffice to fulfill this function, and
even that "great laws are public calamities." Then, he will turn to institutions, to education in order to establish a
true ritual of life, the last escape from legalism.
In 1791 he was still supported in his hopes by the prestige of Roman law, which he considered "the purest
source that ever was." And we understand why. Fruit of a belated secularization of justice, this law constituted a
skilful compromise between the sacred and the profane, distinguishing divine laws from human laws, the fas du
jus , while proclaiming, under the pen of a Cicero (Traité des laws) that "the respect of the laws is only a form of
the respect of the gods". In this dualism where society occupied only second place, where humanism had its
place, where the codification of civic virtues had been illustrated by so many famous examples, there was
everything needed to seduce a spirit like that of Saint-Just. But this enthusiasm, which he shared with many
others, had its gray area: When Rousseau praises the freedom of Rome, he no longer remembers that the
universe is in chains. And then: When I think where the discipline and frugality of so many heroes were to end,
when I think that this was the fate of the most rebellious constitutions and that liberty always lost its principles in
order to conquer, that Rome died after Cato and that the his excess of power produced monsters more terrible
and more superb than the Tarquins, grief rends my heart and arrests my pen.
No recipes in the heritage of civilization, only examples and lessons,

this is what struck Saint-Just.
In the end, what sustained him was the deep questioning character of
the time, its possibilities of returning to the sources, of true adherence to the march of the world:
I believed at first glance, like many others, that the principles of the Constitution of France, incoherent by
their nature, would wear out with movement and would not bind together; but when I entered the mind of the
legislator, I saw order emerge from chaos, the elements separate and create life.
The intelligent world, in which a particular republic is like a family within the republic itself, everywhere offers
contrasts and sometimes oddities so marked that they can only be a relative good in the grand design of the
General Constitution. , more or less as in the physical world, the imperfections of detail contribute to universal
harmony.
In the narrow circle that embraces the human soul, everything seems to her as out of order as she does, because she sees
everything detached from its origin and its end.
This was the main theme that commanded the thought and sensitivity of Saint-Just: the belief in a
fundamental order, or Providence, perceived through Nature and History. The genius of the legislator, of the
sage, consisted in knowing it, in drawing the consequences.
Of course, he was not the only one to take advantage of such a point of view. The reference to the “great
design of the General Constitution” sounded very much like what the Freemasons called “the plan of the Grand
Architect of the Universe”.
Was the meeting fortuitous?
1. Discourse on subsistence, to the Jacobins (November 12, 1792).

CHAPTER VI
PATHWAYS TO POWER
1. OCCULT REASONS.
The first steps of the Revolution, Saint-Just evoked and judged them while surveying the garden of the
family house. Three tables, it is said, were laid out, laden with paper, and the young lieutenant-colonel of the
National Guard of Blérancourt stopped at one or the other to jot down what memory or reflection suggested to
him.
What was this strange – and somewhat childish – way of working? Hard to know. There is no shortage of
writers who have worked while walking. Some, noting in a notebook or random sheets the fruits of their
meditation, like Nietzsche; the others, having a board in their study to write on standing up, like Victor Hugo.
Here we can clearly see the taste for working in the open air, in contact with nature, which obsessed the spirits
of the time only because they were aware of being cut off from it . Because I was young, it seemed to me that I
was closer to
nature.
It was more than an alibi, it was a privilege that Saint-Just put forward in his preface, an assurance that he
intended to cultivate. He saw in it, sincerely, a way to overcome social prejudices.
But that does not explain the three tables, which are more likely to complicate the drafting than to facilitate it.
One cannot help comparing this fact reported by the oral tradition with another, which came by the same route.
"It is said that at Reims," writes Michelet, "he had hung his bedroom with a black curtain with white tears,
closing the windows, spending long hours in this sort of sepulchre, as if he were pleased to believe that he was
dead and already in antiquity. These two ways of behaving – assuming that the facts are authentic – have this
particularity in that they recall certain Masonic rites.
Was Saint-Just a Freemason? Nothing proves it, any more than for Robespierre. A Masonic historian,
Charles Bernardin, confirms this 1 . But above all, as we will see, it is the acts of Saint-Just, the manifestation
of his thought, his relationships that invite us to think about him.
The influence of Freemasonry on the Revolution, a fiercely debated question, has caused much nonsense
to be printed. Political concerns, the desire to plead distorted the testimonies
historical, both among Masonic historians and among Anti-Masonic historians. Moreover, the examination of
the history of Freemasonry presents all the more difficulties in that many of its archives have been destroyed.
But, from the outset, it appears that the accusation of conspiracy, as uttered in 1797 by the Abbé Barruel in
his famous book, Memoirs to serve in the history of Jacobinism, hardly stands up to scrutiny. .
In truth, the extraordinary flowering of Freemasonry in the 18th century coincided with a degeneration.
Attached by its name and its symbolic instruments to the profession of cathedral builders, a branch of an
ancient esoteric tradition, Freemasonry had already lost the clear consciousness of what it was, of what it
had to transmit. From "operative", it had become "speculative", and in its congresses or "convents", it
disputed its origin, its filiation or non-filiation with the Templars, the Rose-Croix, a national character with the
2 , of his vocabulary 3 .
foundation of the Grand East of France in 1773. She reached out to take
Finally and above all, it was divided into quite different tendencies. In just one of these tendencies, the
rectified Scots diet, a Masonic historian distinguished: “The rectified Scotsman of Dresden from the rectified
been practiced in Germany before the establishment of the strict observance; Scotsman said to have
Scot; It was the rectified Scotsman of Tschoudy;Glayre's Rectified Scotsman; and Swedenborg's Rectified
4
and unbelievers.
therefore not a question of one Church, but of several. Each had its own Saint-Martin...believers
Many were only looking for an opportunity for drinking and meetings.
Officers of the nobility had their so-called "ambulant" military lodges which followed the army corps in their
movements. Spies and informants sought to tap into these brotherhoods, more or less serious, for information
and useful contacts. Adventurers like Cagliostro and Casanova found in it the occasion for fruitful swindles.
But, alongside those who took advantage of the craze, followed the fashion, there were devoted and sincere
followers, men, such as Martinez de Pasqually or very differently Claude de Saint-Martin, who searched
across France -masonry a path to perfection and knowledge. Let us add to this that, to complete the
confusion, a secret society whose designs were properly of social subversion, had just been grafted onto
Freemasonry: the Illuminati of Bavaria. Discovered and hunted down from 1784 to 1786 by the Grand Elector
of Bavaria, the sect nevertheless had time to establish links with the high dignitaries of French Masonry,
notably Mirabeau.
To completely unravel this tangle of tendencies is a task honest minds have had to give up. If in these
great semi-subterranean currents, it is all of 18th century Europe that we see moving, it would be excessive
to reduce Freemasonry in France – as we have done a lot – either to a English or German bridgehead, or
under the obedience of the Grand Orient of Paris and its master, the Duke of Orléans. In truth, the six
hundred and twenty-nine lodges in France in 1789 were far from all showing total submission to the Grand
Mastership. Not only because differences of doctrine and origin opposed it, but also
because the difference or the amalgam of the social conditions of the followers – aristocrats,
ecclesiastics 5 , bourgeois – gave the lodges an eminently local character.
That said, let's not underestimate the importance of Freemasonry in the 18th century. Its
prodigious expansion leads it – as is constant in these sorts of institutions – to popularize and
accommodate itself to the thought, to the sensitivity of the moment, in short, to gain in scope but
to lose in depth. She is influenced as much as she influences. The most famous of these Parisian
lodges, the Nine Sisters, brings together, alongside the greatest names of the nobility,
philosophers of the “enlightenment”: Condorcet, Lacépède, Lalande, Chamfort and a few others.
Voltaire, solemnly admitted in 1778, received the Masonic apron of Helvétius there. On the eve
of the Revolution one finds names there which were not long in becoming famous; Brissot,
Sieyès, Bailly, Pétion, Guillotin, Camille Desmoulins, Danton... But if the Nine Sisters offer a
rather exceptional example, more a social salon than a lodge, the fact remains that deism beyond
religions, the cult of being supreme, of virtue, of morality, are the product of an osmosis between
philosophies and an old tradition. It is significant that one of the first Frenchmen initiated into
English Masonry was Montesquieu. It is also significant to find among the names of the Dauphin's
tutors proposed by the Constituent Assembly in 1791, Claude de Saint-Martin, the "Unknown
Philosopher", alongside the famous names of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Sieyès and Condorcet.
A meeting ground where new relationships were forged between people, where strengths,
appetites and fervors gathered, Freemasonry asserted itself above all as the commonplace of a
thought, of a sensitivity which oscillated between the rationalism and a taste for occult things.
No epoch has been able to live on a single rational Creed. She swayed between the thick
volumes of the Encyclopedia and the tubs of Mesmer and his animal magnetism. Both were the
secret delights of a dying court.
In the end, the role of Freemasonry in the French Revolution can be judged nil or considerable
depending on the plan on which one places oneself. None, if it is considered as the action of a
strongly hierarchical party, aiming to orient policy in a determined direction. We will see masons
send each other to the scaffold without the slightest hesitation. But considerable action
nevertheless, if one observes that it contributed to form a new elite of leaders and
rulers.
On this, the testimony of Joseph de Maistre, Catholic Freemason, is very clear. “It is infinitely
probable that the Freemasonry of France served the Revolution, not perhaps, what I think of as
Freemasonry, but as an association of clubs. Four-fifths of the people who composed them were
revolutionaries. Then, the presence of the Duke of Orleans at the head of the Grand Orient made
Maistre say that it was "natural that the lodges were converted into clubs". And this hypothesis
has since found, in local studies and monographs, serious confirmations.
It is necessary to reread the oath required to be convinced of the seriousness of the commitment: "I promise and
oblige myself before the Grand Architect of the Universe and this honorable company never to reveal the secrets of the
masons and masonry, nor to be the direct or indirect cause that said secret is revealed, engraved or printed in any
language or character whatsoever. I promise all this on pain of having my throat cut, my tongue torn out, my heart torn;
all to be buried in the deep abysses of the sea, my body burned and reduced to ashes, and thrown to the wind, that there
be no memory of me among men and masons This fierce cult of secrecy, with the romantic mist that envelops it, we will
find it acute in Saint-Just.
6
.»
Misunderstandings were not lacking, which burst under the revolutionary fire. The object of these lodges, whether
frivolous or severe, was never directly political. It was on morals that the Masonry closest to the philosophers, that of the
Grand Orient, based its hopes. In 1773, Henrion de Rensey affirmed in a speech 6 : Yes, if the regeneration of mores is
possible, it is to Masonry that it is given to operate this prodigy... The art of governing men varies with depending on the
circumstances. There are none where it is not necessary to give them morals. Through them the ancients did great
things. Customs, as well as laws, are the pillars on which rests the prosperity of empires. With morals, we would do
without laws, without morals the wisest regulations are ineffective.
Regeneration of morals, this typical expression of Masonry will make a fortune during the Revolution.
And Saint-Just, who moreover would often use it in his speeches, brutally confided to his friend Lejeune: “We must
regenerate a people corrupted by centuries of barbarism and slavery. »
For those who shared this state of mind inherited from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Freemasonry, the Revolution
was conceived as a reaction, not in the modern political sense of the word, but as a return to morality, to the absolute
principles. For them, the feeling of nature was not limited to the affection of the noble savage. The religion of progress,
with all the optimism that goes with it, will be preached by the Condorcets, the sons of the Encyclopedia, but not by the
disciples of the “Savoyard Vicar”. Not that the latter reject any possibility of human progress, but they place it, they wish
it in the spiritual order, instead of expecting it from commerce and machines.
The ways and means envisaged are not identical. Some give priority to profane rationalist philosophy, others to rites, to
intuition, to initiation. Thus, the Philalethes seem, if we are to believe ME Dermenghem, "to have considered masonry
above all as a science, like the High Science 7 ". The Marquis de Chefdebien who, under the name of Eques a capite
galeato, presided over the destinies of this society, alongside Savalette de Langes, specified in an architectural sketch
of the Rit primitif (sic) that the chapter of the Rose Brothers Cross of the Grand Rosary was to lead to a knowledge
having for object: the rehabilitation and the reintegration of the intellectual man in his rank and his primitive rights
8
.
2. THE “ FRIENDS REUNITED ” LODGE.
That Saint-Just belonged to this sect – today we would say, more precisely, this family
spiritual – the orientation and the concerns of the Spirit of the Revolution invite us to believe it.
But, it will be said, does such communion in thought and feeling necessarily imply affiliation to any
lodge whatsoever?
Already, a large part of Freemasonry, by its imbrication in the philosophies of the century, inclined
towards popularization and, on the other hand, wanting to be traditional, it drew abundantly from the
philosophies of antiquity. By these two paths, it joined the culture of the century. Not only did the
reading of a Rousseau or a Plato require no hiding, but even that of a mystical dissident of Masonry,
like Claude de Saint-Martin, despite the rocky and abstruse character of his work, had found quite a
large following. And nothing prevents us from thinking that, to remedy rural isolation, at an age when
one throws oneself willingly at any printed material, Saint-Just read Errors and Truth or the Natural
Table of relationship between God, man and nature. In the midst of a heavy jumble, he could have
found there something to hold back his
attention.
A Masonic influence, indirect, without initiation, is therefore not inconceivable. All the more so since,
at the time when he was writing L'Esprit de la Révolution, Saint-Just exchanged regular correspondence,
on the problems of religion and politics, with Nicolas Leclerc, one of his former classmates at the faculty
of Reims, theology student. Of these letters, unfortunately destroyed by a descendant of Saint-Just's
friend, we only know the subject. But it is enough. This being added to the rest, it must be admitted that
there was no lack of opportunities, which could maintain, in the lieutenant-colonel of the National
Guard, the obsession with the "metaphysical-political", if I dare say so, and the plug into a current that
came from the depths of time.
However, participating in a collective psyche as a reader is one thing. It is another thing to take part
in it as an actor, even an extra, drawn into the action by human relationships. Not – once again – that it
could be a shadowy conspiracy; but who has not experienced, in his life, the truth of "Tell me who-you-
haunt, I'll tell you who-you-are?" Let's not think of influences, but of doors open or closed, of services
rendered, of tripping up, of jealousies, of sympathies that mark the course of an existence and a career.
In this intermediate zone between friendship and professional obligations, there are “relationships”
whose choice, nature and evolution are revealing. It is through this corner that one of the forms of
adaptation of man to society is clarified. Even though he hardly uses it, the ambitious man cannot be
indifferent to this scale of social elevation.
What useful connections could Saint-Just have? If a Thuillier was only a good town clerk, an
Emmanuel Decaisne was already a notable and his brother, Claude, showed himself to be an active
partisan of the Revolution in Saint-Quentin. But neither could be of a high
protection. On the other hand, as we have seen, the author of Ogant, had quickly met with Camille
Desmoulins, the youngest and greatest glory of Picardy. The latter, well introduced to society Masonry, a
member of the lodge of the Nine Sisters, former secretary of Mirabeau, was well placed to know the detours
of Masonry, and to serve as an introducer. However, Saint-Just having only met him in the last months of
1789, his affiliation would have to be delayed until then, which would render the history of Reims, reported
by Michelet, worthless.
However, the very environment of the university town, the place held there by masonry, would rather invite
date from the years 1786 and 1787 the first contacts of Saint-Just with the lodges.
In a book, with unverifiable and therefore suspect sources, Le Couteux de Canteleu 9 cites Saint-Just
among the members of the Lodge of Friends reunited, alongside men like Marat and Mercier. The comparison
is disturbing, because it happens that, among the personalities to which the Spirit of the Revolution alludes,
Marat and Mercier are among the rare ones that its author judges apart from their speeches, as if he had
found himself in a relationship private with them. De Mercier – now known as the author of the Tableau de
Paris – is said to have “the levity of a gazette was little suited to the pride of his character”. As for Marat, for
whom the future conventional will always retain a certain respect, he grants him "a soul full of meaning but
too worried"...
These reunited Friends, linked to the Grand Orient of Paris, were controlled by the Philalètes and, in
particular, by Savalette de Langes, guard of the royal treasury, director of the Grand Orient correspondence
chamber and founder of the National Guard.
The accumulation of these last functions would explain many things.

First, the National Guard. Many authors have emphasized, even exaggerated, the links which united this
institution to Freemasonry. We know that its main leaders, beginning with La Fayette, were notorious masons.
Then, the regional federations, of the kind that Saint-Just undertook to constitute, were, according to certain
authors, provoked by directives coming from Paris, according to others, they coincided with the provincial
grand lodges.
Be that as it may, Saint-Just's initiative, his efforts to federate the militias of the Aisne, the fact that he was
able to provide some of them with weapons and equipment, all of this would be better understood if the
lieutenant-colonel would have benefited from powerful support and encouragement. One can even wonder if
he did not experience setbacks on this side (in the end, the federation does not seem to have gone beyond
the canton); hence his resentment, at the Champ de Mars, against the intrigues of "a few men who wanted
to spread their popularity" by making use of the National Guard.
As for the other function of Savalette de Langes, it deserves that we stop there. As in charge of
correspondence, he applied himself to cultivating esotericism and exotericism in parallel, traditional “High
Science” and the philosophy of enlightenment. Very significant in this respect the convocation that he
launched for a meeting to be held on June 15, 1786.
opinions, to clarify the most important points on the principles, the dogmas, the advantages and the true goal of
Freemasonry, considered only as science. In a later writing by Brother Savalette de Langes (February 9, 1787), we see
that the meeting of the Assembly was postponed to February 21, 1787 and that its work remained unanswered No
matter: the desire for amalgamation was obvious.
10 . »
As for the atmosphere of the lodge, it was curious to say the least, if we are to believe Father Barruel.
A mixture of "all the sophistical systems, Martinists and Masons", it was also, according to a well-established fashion, a
lodge of pleasures and luxury. Sumptuous balls attracted the finest crews of the aristocracy. Under the twinkling of the
torches, to the rhythm of the light violins, "the brothers and their female followers", as Barruel crudely puts it, danced and
sang, exhilarated by the feeling of frolicking in a semi-clandestine place, renowned before guard.
As it should be, these social events were only appearance and trompe-l'oeil for the use of the police.
In the room above the ballroom, the threads of the great Masonic spider were woven earnestly and silently. This lair was,
in fact, the famous correspondence chamber, where sat the secret committee of the United Friends. The door, guarded
by two “Terrible Brothers”, swords in hand, was forbidden to ordinary followers. The same person who received all the
parcels from the brothers from Germany or Italy was not allowed to cross the threshold of the door: he did not know the
number of the correspondence which he transmitted to Savalette de Langes and the secret remained on the committee.
Still according to Barruel, this committee brought together Villermoz, the disciple of Martinez de Pasqually, and Chappe
de la Henrière.
Touching on the talks between the Illuminati of Weishaupt, Barruel puts forward the following: I
am assured by several Freemasons that the invitation to come and deliberate with the German deputies came from
the Committee of Friends , so I cannot stick to the authors who make them descend to the Social Contract 11 and
attribute to this lodge the political committees established after their arrival. It was to the committee of the United Friends
that Mirabeau addressed his brothers who had arrived from Germany. Savalette and Bonneville had made this committee
the central point of the most ardent adepts. kadosh or rose-cross, those of La Sourdière, the Nine Sisters, Candeur , and
even the most secret committees of the Grand Orient. It was the rendezvous of traveling brothers arriving from Avignon,
Lyon or Bordeaux; the brothers who arrived from Germany with the new mysteries could not find in Paris a center more
favorable to their mission.
This embassy, which would take place during the year 1787, probably did not have the results nor the importance
attributed to it by Barruel, who moreover admitted that he had known nothing of the secret deliberations. Weishaupt's
men attempted a "coring" of the masonry and only partially succeeded. However, with regard to the lodge of the United
Friends, the assertions of Abbé Barruel are not to be neglected. He had a whole part of his documentation first hand.
However, if a young provincial like Saint-Just could not go to the great balls of Paris, on the other hand, nothing
did not prevent him from finding himself in contact with the lodge as one of these "travelling adepts" or as a
correspondent of the United Friends.
A relation of this order would, in any case, make it possible to glimpse the meaning of the craziest page, the
more enigmatic than Saint-Just wrote: his letter to Daubigny.
3. THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER.
It was the day after 9 Thermidor, in Saint-Just's papers, that this letter was found. It was probably never
shipped. Dated July 20, 1792, it is addressed to Daubigny, a resident of Blérancourt who has been living in
Paris since 1773. It begins with an invitation.
I beg you, my dear friend, to come to the party; I beg you ; but do not forget however
in your municipality.
How can one imagine, as Mme Centore-Bineau does , that the holiday in question could be that of July 14,
when the letter is dated the 20? And what is this ceremony of which we find no trace? On this, moreover, Saint-
Just does not dwell long; he has many other concerns.
I send by the same mail, to your brother, the second. Get it when it's ready.
Give it to MM. of Lameth and Barnave; I talk about them there. You will find me great there sometimes.
What is this mysterious “second”? To suppose, as Madame Centore-Bineau still does , that this concerns a
new edition of the Spirit of the Revolution is a pleasant joke.
First, because there is no indication that the book was reissued at this time. Then, because it does not mention
Barnave's name anywhere. Finally, the context seems to prove that it is a letter.
I gave Clé a note by which I beg you not to give him a copy of my letter. I
you very expressly forbid it, and if you did, I would regard it as the trait of an enemy.
These letters, since there are two of them, are therefore presented as a carefully written political commentary
(“You will find me great there sometimes”) intended to be reproduced and put into circulation (we speak of a
copy) but nevertheless confidential ( not to be revealed to the messenger). One can be surprised at this last
condition, given that the bearer of the missive must have been this same Clé (or Clay) captain of the National
Guard, the young lieutenant colonel's confidant. Obviously, the author of the letters did not want to be
recognized by his compatriots (“I have everything here to spare”, he writes a little further on).
Such broadcast conditions could only apply to a kind of libel. But, to

whose intention was it written? And what could be the theme?
It is surprising that no biographer or commentator on Saint-Just noticed what was unusual in writing, in July
1792, about Lameth and Barnave, and above all, in asking that a copy be shown to them. On the one hand,
both had ceased to occupy an important place in the life
public. Their functions as deputies had ended with the Constituent Assembly on September 30, 1791.
On the other hand, both had deserted the Jacobins on July 16, 1791 to join the "Feuillants" alongside Duport
and Lafayette. From that moment on, they were "burnt", classified as renegades and counter-revolutionaries.
As regards Barnave in particular, he had left Paris in January 1792 to return to Dauphiné, where he would
not leave until August. Nobody, in July, spoke of him any more. He was, apparently, out of the game. And
only will bring him out of the obscurity in which he took refuge, the discovery (after August 10) of the
documents proving his complicity in the royal cause. Arrested by the Assembly on August 15 – at the same
time as Lameth – he was arrested in his home in Saint-Égrève on August 19. It is difficult to understand why
Saint-Just would have been interested in such a character then. Especially since Daubigny was nothing less
than an intimate friend of the Lameths and the Barnaves
12
.
In contrast, a year earlier, the same men were at the forefront of the news. They formed, with Duport, the
famous triumvirate which had long ruled the Jacobins. Certainly, since the month of April, they had seen a
formidable adversary rise up against them: Robespierre. Their glory had already passed its zenith, but it still
shone brightly enough to attract lively hatred and admiration.
Everything therefore suggests that the letter to Daubigny dates from 1791 and not from 1792. Saint-Just
must have written it when people were beginning to dispute, not without confusion, the comparative merits
of the Republic and the Monarchy. The failed flight from Varennes (June 21) opened not only the crisis of
the regime, but a crisis within Masonry and the Jacobins.
Since June 21, four forces have observed each other before brutally confronting each other. First, the
Barnave and Lameth clan who, within the Assembly, tried to exonerate the King in the Varennes affair. On
July 15, Barnave distinguished himself, from the rostrum of the Assembly, by launching his famous speech
in favor of the Monarchy. For his part, two days before, Robespierre, who had avoided choosing between
the Monarchy and the Republic, had nevertheless pronounced a veritable indictment against the intrigues of
the Lameths and the work of the committees of the Assembly. During this time, the Grand Orient was plotting
hard to replace Louis XVI with a regency of his grand master, the Duke of Orleans. He presented himself at
the Jacobins club on June 23 and was immediately admitted.
His secretary, Choderlos de Laclos, responsible for the newspaper of the society, used it, as much as he
could, in order to serve the duke and to fight the divergent tendencies of Freemasonry. Because a whole
part of it was under the influence of Nicolas de Bonneville, "the mystical Freemason" as Michelet calls him,
whose newspaper La Bouche de Fer and the company Cercle Social 13 Amis de la Vérité, embodied Or
Republican extremism of the moment. However, the two Masonic tendencies found, at the Cordeliers club,
their point of agreement: the eviction of Louis XVI.
As early as June 22, the Cordeliers set the tone with the famous declaration of the tyrannicides:
The Free French, composing the society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, declare to all
their fellow citizens that they contain as many tyrannicides as members, who have all sworn individually, to stab
the tyrants who will dare to attack our borders or attack our liberty and constitution in any way.
Embellished with a few verses adapted from Voltaire's Brutus , this Roman-style commitment had quickly
become a leitmotif of the proclamations of the hour. And one cannot help but associate the final cry of Saint-Just's
letter:
O God, must Brutus languish forgotten far from Rome! My decision is taken, however: if Brutus does not kill the
others, he will kill himself.
Undoubtedly, the apprentice Brutus, fed up with finding himself away from Paris, from the great political scene,
while capital acts were being played out there, was chomping at the bit, very nervously.
It is unfortunate that I cannot stay in Paris. I feel enough to survive in the century. Fellow
of glory and liberty, preach it in your sections; let peril inflame you.
But, evidently, he was not on the side of the Lameths and Barnave. If he cared that they were shown what he
wrote about them, it was – unless it was ironically – that he was unaware of the July 6 split (which, incidentally, did
not appear not immediately as definitive). Moreover, if he had not adopted an “advanced” position, would he have
feared so strongly that his libel would be known in Blérancourt?
Moreover, let us not forget that news from Paris took a certain time to reach the provinces. What information
did Saint-Just have to judge the Parisian situation? This knot of intrigue that modern historians have had so much
trouble unraveling was enough to disconcert him. Especially since the position of a Robespierre was far from clear.
But the allusion to "peril" indicates that the author of the Spirit of the Revolution must have placed himself between
Robespierre and the Cordeliers.
Still, this fierce resentment had other motives.

Go see Desmoulins, kiss him for me, and tell him that he will never see me again, that I esteem his patriotism,
but that I despise him, because I have penetrated his soul, and that he afraid that I will betray him.
Tell him that he is not abandoning the good cause and recommend him to him, for he does not yet have the
audacity of magnanimous virtue.
Where and on what occasion had Saint-Just penetrated the soul of Desmoulins? Their last known exchange of
correspondence dated back to the previous year. Since then, the young pamphleteer had married and lived in a
plush apartment furnished by the grace of the Duke of Orleans. It is true that in this month of July he showed no
particular "magnanimous audacity." As Michelet so aptly wrote, “we would make a book of the variations of poor
Camille. We see him, almost at the same time, for and against Mirabeau, for and against the Lameths; not long
ago two hours away, he shook hands with Lafayette, and wept for Robespierre”. But was that essentially what
Saint-Just reproached him for, since he claimed to value his compatriot's "patriotism"?
Wasn't it the settlement of a personal matter that had prompted such implacable contempt? Indeed, after this
couplet on Desmoulins, he shouted, rather than wrote: Adieu! I am above
this misfortune. I will endure everything; but I will tell the truth. You are all cowards who did not appreciate
me. My palm will rise, however, and perhaps obscure you. Infamous that you are, I am a cheat, a scoundrel,
because I have no money to give you. Tear out my heart and eat it, you will become what you are not: great !
What was this "misfortune" that had struck him?

The relationship between the shortage of the purse and such insulting epithets as "deceitful", "scoundrel"
suggests that the attack masked a defence. Only an accused can attempt to establish such an unusual
relationship between deceit and poverty. He is the man who responds to the charges by attributing base
reasons to his whistleblowers.
However, if it was an offense under the law or simple civic morality, traces should have remained. Especially
since Daubigny, the day after 9 Thermidor, became the detractor of Saint Just. However, the brochure
published by Daubigny, however lacking in arguments, makes no allusion to anything similar.
On the other hand, everything would be explained if Saint-Just had been guilty of inconsiderate chatter
about masonry. Hence the Tear out my heart and eat it which evokes the commitment of the freemason to
keep secrets under pain of having his tongue torn out, his heart torn out.
On the other hand, by rebelling against Daubigny, Desmoulins and the others who "didn't like him" because
he had no money to give them, Saint-Just lets it be understood that he collided with a society where you had
to prove your fortune and pay your share.
This indication is valuable. Indeed, as Albert Mathiez has shown, "in large clubs as in Masonic lodges, the
entrance fees are high and these fees do not exempt from". Only the Cordeliers club was an exception.
14 quite expensive monthly contributions too
But for the Masonic order, the fee demanded of affiliates had been a source of difficulty for a long time. As
early as 1780, the Grand Orient, by fixing the annual tithe at ninety-six livres, had provoked disaffection,
especially among the officers who complained of not being able to pay such a sum. As, moreover, Saint-Just
could not claim to belong to the Jacobins of Paris, being domiciled in the provinces, it is a difficulty with the
Masonic organization which remains the most plausible.
(It should be emphasized in passing that this question of money provides an additional reason for dating
the letter to 1791. At that time, Saint-Just must have found himself all the more deprived because he had just
-brother enough to save his publisher from bankruptcy. On the contrary, a year later, he will find the means to
acquire national assets in the region, in June and July. He would therefore have been unwelcome to avail
himself, in the same months, of his poverty.)
In the end, Saint-Just seemed above all to reproach Camille Desmoulins for an interested prudence, a fear
of compromising himself which would have harmed him. As if he had
been the victim of an unfriendly "drop", as if Desmoulins had withdrawn his support in an important circumstance. And he did
not fail to bring out the unfortunate consequences of an abandonment which plunged him into the mold and the thorny
bushes of provincial life...
I am feared by the administration, I am envied, and as long as I do not have a fate which puts me at the shelter of my
country, I have everything here to take care of.
That he was envied, we already knew. He complained a year earlier to the electoral assembly of Chauny. His stripes as
a lieutenant-colonel made a certain number of citizens of Blérancourt squint, especially on the side of the Gellé. And, even
more, his duties as an elector, as a legal adviser. But how could he inspire fear in the administration? Having no newspaper,
no big club to make himself heard, he was only the important citizen of a small town. To be feared, one had to know that he
was protected by a powerful force. And, precisely, his misfortune, no doubt, was that this protection had not been confirmed
and reinforced by Desmoulins, Daubigny and their friends. Strong enough to worry the others, but too weak to "put him in
the shelter", she placed him in a cantilevered position.
What did he want? It is not excluded that, from this moment, he sought electoral support. For a year he had dreamed of
entering the Assembly which would succeed the Constituent Assembly. But if, in July 1791, the latter had not completed its
work, we knew its numbered days. And there was talk all the more of the following one since, since May 16, a decree had
prohibited the members of the Constituent Assembly from presenting their candidacy for the next elections. It cleared the
way nicely for young ambitions. And Saint-Just, in a hurry to "take shelter", to "float in the century", did not intend to miss this
chance. Only handicapped by his age, threatened by the Gellé, he had an urgent need for vigorous support.
Why was he addressing Daubigny? First because it was his compatriot. Then, because he was in contact with influential
figures, in particular with Danton. Established in Paris, he owned a law firm there, rue Montpensier, whose income must not
have been very apparent, since in order to be classified as an active citizen, he had to ask for a certificate from the "municipal
and guard officers national” of Blérancourt. However, in this certificate, dated April 5, 1790, it was attested that "Mr. Villain
d'Aubigni (or Daubigny) son of the deceased Mr. Jean Baptiste Michel Villain, former notary in Blérancourt", had paid the
debts left by his father (died in 1780) and supported his mother on a pension, without touching the estate. Where did his
money come from? The indictment of theft of which he will be the object, the day after August 10, lets sniff out fairly shady
business.
A member of the Tuileries section, then a member of the Jacobins (whose meetings he would occasionally preside over),
his position and his friendships had earned him the acclaim of Saint-Just in these terms, not very compromising it is true:
"Was less known (than Marat) because he did not write, but he discoursed vigorously. »
Freemason, he certainly was. Nothing attests to this better than a certain passage from an address,
written by him, "to all the members of the Societies of Friends of the Constitution affiliated with that of Paris."
There is this evocation of the mysteries of Memphis which the masons of the time loved.
(Hasn't Cagliostro taken advantage of this enthusiasm to found, in 1784, a rite of "high Egyptian masonry
by adoption"?) Nothing is more revealing than the way in which Daubigny exploits these ancient beliefs
for commercial advertising. It's worth a quote 15 .
Among the ancients, there was an association that Memphis had seen born, which assured each of its
members, care, help, and protection, in whatever part of the world they were or had business and
commercial relations. , from those who were affiliated with it. It no longer exists... It has perished like all
the useful, but mysterious, but emblematic institutions of ancient Egypt... Let's try to revive among us, not
its mysteries, not its hieroglyphs, they have disappeared forever, but its usefulness, that sweet and simple
fraternity which must reign between men newly recalled to nature, to liberty, and to the worship of the
laws.
This astonishing "legal counsel", whose activity we unfortunately do not know, brought together
alongside Daubigny, Danton, Legendre and the Grand Saint-René. Under the guise of utility and fraternity,
it must have been, in the mind of its creator, a business. And the crook was breaking through the last
lines. We do not believe it necessary to speak of the honorariums which will be granted to us; they will be
such as Jacobin brothers and constitutional friends must presume.
But, to what Masonic obedience did Daubigny belong? Presumably, in the Grand Orient. Because he
was denounced as an agent of the Duke of Orleans, remunerated at the rate of two thousand crowns per
month. In his Precis justificative, he took the trouble to defend himself against it, affirming that it was a
slander invented to lose "this estimable citizen (the Duke of Orléans) in public opinion, because he had
served and was serving frankly the cause of the people and of freedom”. In other words, if Daubigny
protested his disinterestedness, he did not hide his respect for the great master of French masonry.
Finally, Saint-Just speaks to Daubigny about his "brother" to whom the mysterious "second" is sent.
However, there is no trace of a brother of Daubigny living in Paris. It is therefore appropriate to understand
the word "brother" figuratively, as used by Freemasonry and patriotic societies.
Who could this brother be? A man like Bonneville who, as we have seen, played a major role in the
Lodge of Friends, would respond all the better to this job as he brought together, as editor of the Cercle
social, writers from all Masonic backgrounds. : from Condorcet to Claude de Saint-Martin and Thomas
Payne. In any case, if it wasn't Nicolas de Bonneville, he was a character of the same order 16
.
So many conjectures to arrive at such simple observations, such uncertain probabilities, the booty is
meager, I agree. But scholars may come who will shed light on this letter. It is worth stopping by. Because,
what M. Gignoux considers
as "properly insane", translates the pangs of an ambition, which one can condemn, but not contest its lucidity
or logic.
One thinks of Napoleon declaring: "You say that power came to me of his own accord, but I know
what it has cost me in pains and watchings. »
1. Historical summary of the Grand Orient (1909). And, about ten years earlier, one found in the Dictionary of the occultism of
E. DESORMES and A. BASILE the name of Saint-Just among famous masons.
2. At Wilhensbad in 1782.
3. At the convent of the Parisian Philalèthes in February 1785 (cf. ÉMILE DERMENGHEM, Joseph de Maistre mystique, Paris, 1946).
4. Historical Note on Martinesism and Martinism, by “a Knight of the Crescent Rose” (ABEL THOMAS).
5. Of the 629 venerables who presided over the lodges, 27 belonged to the clergy.
6. Quoted by LOUIS AMIABLE, La Franc-Maçonnerie au XVIIIe siècle , Paris.
7. E. DERMENGHEM, op. cit., p. 72.
8. BENJAMIN FABRE, An Initiate of Higher Secret Societies (1753-1914), Franciscus, Eques a capite galeato, Paris, 1913.
9. LE COUTEUX DE CANTELEU, Sects and Secret Societies, Paris, 1863.
10. KLOSS, History of Freemasonry in France, Leipzig, 1846.

11. Let us recall that the Social Contract was the mother-lodge of the Scottish rite, therefore in direct competition with the Grand Orient.
12. It was at Daubigny's home that Barbaroux met Marat, in March-April 1792 (cf. Memoirs of BARBAROUX, Edit. “Les Classiques de la
Révolution française”, p. 139).
13. From the first issue of the journal (November 30, 1790) Laclos denounced the Cercle social , of which: “The system,” he wrote, “appears
be a mixture of those of the Anabaptists, Martinists and Rosicrucians. »
14. ALBERT MATHIEZ, The Cordeliers Club during the crisis of Varennes, Paris, 1910.
15. Especially since this text seems to have escaped historians who have studied Daubigny. It is filed in the National Library under
the name of J.-M. Villain (Ln 27 20.446). It is undated, but certainly from 1791.
16. The great animator of the Cercle social, Abbé Fauchet, wrote in his Journal des amis of April 24, 1793: “Saint-Just presents himself with
views and talent. If he does not allow himself to be cut off by the slaughterers, he will be able to rise to the height of genius. This homage is all the
more curious as the former bishop of Calvados considered the regicides to be "monsters" and considered Robespierre to be the "viper of Arras" (cf.
DAUTRY, Annales historique..., 1951 , p . 189). But everything can be explained if Saint-Just was linked to the Cercle social and if his letter to
Daubigny accompanied a text intended for La Bouche de fer, the circle's periodical, whose purpose was to publish letters, observations and
complaints from the public.
CHAPTER VII
THE AUTUMN OF THE MONARCHY
1. PROVINCIAL FEVER.
Thrown into anger, crackling with anger, broken by the gasps of a conscience by anguish, the
sentences of the letter showed a high temperature. There was no rhetorical device in the confession:
For me, I am stirred by a republican fever which devours and consumes me.
Obviously, without rising every day to such a degree, the fever was chronic. She had to keep Saint-
Just – from the beginning of 1791 until September 1792 – in a state constantly oscillating between
dejection and over-excitement.
In the first months of the winter of 1791, he completed the Spirit of the Revolution, multiplying
the author's corrections, adding whole pages which upset the placards already printed, pursuing a
revolution which moved faster than his pen and a thought constantly spurred on by the event.
For his editor, he was still one of those storytellers who make work so difficult. “I do think,
admitted Saint-Just, that the inconsistent mailings that I sent to you will have disturbed your boards,
if that were the case. " Obviously. And then, he was one of those young writers who love to confide,
to tell their misfortunes. Of course, Blérancourt was not to be frolicking in the bitter cold of winter.
Also, he scolded M. Beuvin melancholy: Sloth, where
are your promises ? Why don't I hear from you? If, like you, I was placed under an arcade
[Beuvin was installed at the Palais-Royal] where so many species of beings pass, if, like you, I had
a restless life, I feel that the uselessness who overwhelms me here sometimes would be less
pressing... I don't know who invented the gossip and chatter, but he was a benefactor of the human
race. What do you want me to become here ? On the Thursday and Saturday evenings that I
expect to hear from you, having nothing better to do, I say to myself: M. Beuvin is forgetting you. I
am isolated here like a saint, and the life of a saint is a sad life... Farewell, be well and hurry up our
work. Tell me what you think. I want to start a journal until I turn twenty-five, because I'm only
twenty-three, what should I do ? I am bored, and this continual work obsesses me. Besides, I would
like to be in Paris to frequent the libraries which I can no longer do without.
And then, this book in which he had put his hopes, his beliefs, his opinions, a little in bulk, this book which
had caused him so many worries – not the least of which was to snatch funds from his brother-in-law. to save
Beuvin from a bankruptcy where the Spirit would have sunk – what did he think of it, what had it brought him?
We hardly know. It is said that, published in June, the edition was sold out in a few days. But the circulation
should not be high. If I were a little known by this work, I would be a little more daring to come forward, and
perhaps everything depends on that for me. Alas, the little ephemeral notoriety that he was able to derive
from it was not enough to authorize great boldness.
In the end, all his attempts to escape Picardy and "float in the century" ended in failure. His friends, his
relations slipped away, he remained imprisoned in solitude.
But Robespierre, you will say? In the summer of 1790, Saint-Just got in touch with him, sending him an
extremely flattering letter. (You who support the tottering fatherland against the torrent of despotism and
intrigue, you whom I know only, like God, by wonders... You are a great man. You are not only the deputy of
a province, you are that of humanity and of the Republic.) All this apropos of a business of free market which
it was a question of moving from Blérancourt to Coucy. No matter, the Incorruptible – at that time, more
mocked than admired – treasured the missive, which was found in his papers the day after 9 Thermidor.
But this letter is the only one. And if it is highly probable that Saint-Just, during his travels in Paris, visited
Robespierre, there is however no written evidence of their meetings.
Bitter summer than that of 1790, for Saint-Just. Disappointments in the National Guard: the great hopes of
May had been denied. On June 27, Manicamp had asked Blérancourt to send him four national guards as
observers in the municipal elections. This fell under the authority of Saint-Just, promoted lieutenant-colonel
three weeks ago. But the interventions of the observers were doubtless not very happy. Incidents and violence
occurred in Manicamp and the surrounding area. In short, Blérancourt saw himself inflicted a reprimand by
the administration of Aisne 1 It was a bad mark for the lieutenant-colonel. Moreover, this departmental .
administration, which will affirm its Fayettist sentiments, was not to consider Saint-Just's actions favorably. In
July, we saw it, new disappointment, with the festival of the federation in Paris.
Since the National Guard was bogged down in intrigue, it was necessary to look elsewhere. In October, he
put all his legal knowledge at the service of his commune so that it prevailed in a case of communal property.
Then he devoted himself entirely to the Spirit of the Revolution. But the product of so much meditation had
hardly come out when the flight from Varennes called everything into question.
Did Saint-Just escort, as has been said, the royal sedan which brought Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
back to Paris? There are solid reasons to doubt it, since the sad convoy will not cross Soissons, and no
accompaniment of this order is mentioned in the accounts of the trip.
On the other hand, in spite of the abandonment of which he felt victim, he tried a new exit by presenting
himself to the elections of the Legislative one. Another failure. As soon as his candidacy was proposed to the
meeting of the active citizens of Blérancourt, on August 23, the inevitable Gellé, supported by two acolytes,
protested brutally: “Not having the required age, Saint-Just is ineligible. The Assembly jeered the notary and
passed on. But shortly afterwards the district of Chauny agreed with Gellé against Saint-Just. You had to
bow to the law.
What was Saint-Just doing during the last year he was to spend in the Aisne? We almost completely
ignore it. In November, he married his sister Victoire to Adrien Bayard, notary and justice of the peace of
Chaulnes (Somme). He made frequent trips, going to visit the young couple, staying in Paris to meet political
figures...
Meanwhile, the revolution was entering a difficult phase. The assignat had fallen, inflation was producing
its usual effects: rising prices, disappearance of certain essential foodstuffs like bread and sugar. After a
winter tense with cold, splashed by demonstrations by Parisian housewives, the Legislative Assembly, in
the spring, declared war on Austria.
In May, however, Saint-Just found a diversion, in one of these cantonal ceremonies where he took care
of his role, by planting a tree of liberty in Blérancourt. After haranguing his fellow citizens, in the company of
his brother-in-law Decaisne, he led the people to his home to take a bust of Mirabeau and transport it
triumphantly to the public square. He was, it seems, in a state of “incredible feverishness”. His republican
fever did not subside.
In the months of June and July, Saint-Just acquired national property in the Noyonnais. It was not a family
2
loan, . How had he procured the necessary down payment?
because, after his death, by requesting the lifting of sequestration under the Empire, to regain possession
of these lands, his mother would have reported him. Presumably, under these conditions, it would not even
be she who would have taken the step but probably the lender.
Moreover, what prompted Saint-Just to want to become an owner? Money as such hardly interested him,
obsessed as he was with power. But experience (see the letter to Daubigny) had taught him that there are
circles where it is useful to have deep pockets. Finally, watching for the next elections and anticipating the
dam of old Gellé, perhaps he wanted to confirm his qualities as an active citizen, financially, since the
question of age could no longer arise...
More than ever all his thoughts were to be directed to Paris where the Constitutional Monarchy was
coming to an end. Various clans maneuvered, agitated, drew up plans. And as this would result, a few
months later, in the polarization of the Convention between Girondins and Montagnards, between whom
Saint-Just would first have to choose in order to ultimately be the accuser of the former, we must, here,
move away from Aisne in order to examine the unfolding of the intrigues of the capital, which are more
complex and more decisive than is often believed.
It is not a question of forgetting Saint-Just, but of considering in what situation he will find himself, or
rather the nature of the forces present.
2. JACOBIN CRISIS AND MINISTERIAL CRISIS

(MARCH-JUNE 1792).
The formation by Louis XVI, in March 1792, of a government uniting, for the first time, four Jacobin ministers,
Dumouriez, Roland, Servan and Clavière, marked an important turning point.
People were astonished to see its leader, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, General Dumouriez, go to the
Jacobins, wearing a Phrygian cap, and embrace Robespierre. They spoke of Roland, Minister of the Interior,
who had frightened the master of ceremonies with his shoes without buckles.
Robespierre had not taken a stand against Jacobin participation in the government. "I am not one of those
who believe that it is absolutely impossible for a minister to be a patriot," he had declared to Dumouriez, at the
Jacobins. But his friend Legendre reacted strongly against the participation, a few days later, causing "various
movements" within the club.
And "l'Incorruptible" went, shortly after, indirectly but violently, to the opposition, accusing Brissot of liaison
with La Fayette, because Brissot, smooth talker, active journalist, having relations in important circles, was a
little father of this government. He was to boast, at the trial of the Girondins, of having indicated to Dumouriez
in search of ministers the names of Roland, Clavière and Servan. He was a gentleman who made court
appearances and always found a place with the Duc d'Orléans and Madame Roland. He had traveled to London
with the family and the entourage of the first, and he haunted the salon of the noisy politician and woman of
letters who was the second.
The struggle to seize the vital forces of the nation was tight. As has been well shown by Mr.
Gérard Walter, Robespierre did not campaign against the monarchical regime. We know his disillusioned
formula at the time: “Republic? Monarchy? words invented by diplomats. He was standing on home ground. As
he had disapproved of imprudent declarations of war, he feared among the French generals agreements with
foreign countries. His natural mistrust, his extra-parliamentary situation predisposing him to fear intrigues
everywhere, he took La Fayette and Brissot as Turkish heads.
Alongside a sincere civic friendliness, there was perhaps in him a concern for a personal career.
Indeed, if everything was to be settled at the Tuileries castle and at the borders, it was all over for the Jacobins
who brought him the springboard necessary for his prestige.
Moreover, however individual his criticisms were, they touched the rulers and the majority of the Assembly.
So we were already talking about the desire for dictatorship. And it was a Marat who came to his defense in
L'Ami du Peuple:
The dissensions which agitate the society of the Jacobins and the split with which it is threatened are the
subject of all the conversations of the capital (...) Robespierre, leader of the party! He would doubtless have
one, if he had wanted to debase himself to the role of intriguer like his slanderer, but his only partisans were the
true friends of freedom
. .
Of course, the new ministers intended to prevail over the King by relying on the Legislative Assembly. They
demanded measures against the clergy to prohibit priests
disenfranchised the right to exercise, and the constitution of an independent Parisian armed force. Without
hesitation, Guadet, in his capacity as deputy of the Legislative Assembly, addressed a letter to Louis XVI
ordering him to dismiss his unsworn priest confessor. Thereupon Dumouriez lost his temper and the
government split.
It must be said that the methods used to fix the line of the government did not contribute to making it
coherent. In the early days, gentlemen ministers held a sort of cabinet meeting over lunch together to agree
their policy before presenting it to the King. But, Mrs. Roland had wanted to participate in the meals in order to
play her role of inspiration.
Dumouriez, already irritated by the presence of Marie-Antoinette on the Grand Council, had dismissed the
"beautiful female spirit ." As a result, the Rolandists had held small private councils with the Minister's wife.
And, it is there that Servan stopped the project which it went to present any hot in front of the Assembly, on
June 4th. It was a question of mobilizing men by canton in order to establish a camp of twenty thousand armed
men under the walls of Paris. This could seduce the Assembly but not the King and even less the Queen. The
Rolands hoped to win the game by intimidation, but if Louis XVI doubted him, he remained sure of his
prerogatives. Attacking him roughly could only reinforce his intransigence. Yet this is what Roland did by
publicly reading before the King the letter of disapproval that he had addressed to him. And, Dumouriez not
following them, Louis XVI dismissed, on June 13, Roland, Clavière and Servan.
Certainly, the ministers had known how to use the credits at their disposal to their advantage. Roland took
advantage of secret funds to finance a newspaper in his service which he entrusted to the talent of Louvet.
On the other hand, he pushed Pétion to ask for thirty thousand pounds under the pretext of maintaining a more
active police in Paris. And the mayor of the capital got the credit.
But now, for Roland, the situation presented itself unequivocally. He could no longer count on the King's
sympathy to find his wallet. It had to impose itself by an external force.
In this respect, there was a man not devoid of means or future: the Duc d'Orleans.
3. THE ORLEANS FACTION .
If contemporary memoirs and writers of the revolution have often exaggerated the role of
Duke of Orleans, on the other hand, historians today have diminished him a little too much.
Although in a bad financial situation in the spring of 1792, Philippe d'Orléans kept troops and agitators in
Paris, notably in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
His great tactician was, as everyone knows, Choderlos de Laclos. The author of Dangerous Liaisons gave of
his person: did he not, it is said, go so far as to disguise himself as a woman to incite the rioters? However, for
d'Orléans as for Roland, the inspiration came from a real woman.
The latter, the Comtesse de Genlis, who became the Marquise de Sillery by marrying the old captain of
the Orleans guards, remained a demanding and authoritarian mistress. She received many people in her
salons and even performed there as an attraction with the daughters of the Duke of Orleans. Desmoulins
was to mention one of these evenings in his Histoire des
Brissotins : We were alone in the yellow salon in the rue Neuve des Mathurins. Old Sillery, in spite of his
gout, had himself rubbed the floor with chalk, lest the feet of the charming dancers slip.
Madame Sillery had just sung on the harp a song which I keep preciously, in which she invited inconstancy,
and Mlle Pamela and Sercey were dancing a Russian dance of which I have only forgotten the name, but so
voluptuous and which was executed so that I do not believe that the young Herodias danced in front of his
uncle one more likely to turn his head, when it was a question of obtaining the letter of cachet against John
the Baptist.
Robespierre, Desmoulins tells us, was never invited to the Sillerys. But it was perhaps precisely because
he remained outside this circle and this faction that he delivered his threatening speech of April 23rd.
That evening, at the Jacobins club, like Chabot, he shook a big scarecrow. He gravely announced that he
was going to unmask the traitors and, in three days, open a file whose documents would prove the conspiracy.
Robespierre not being a frivolous, impulsive, imprudent orator, one might think that he knew what he was
getting into. However, when the day came, he eluded the subject and solemnly held out his hand to his
adversaries. Undoubtedly, this gesture of reconciliation brought him great success, but he may also have
found other advantages in it. (Fifteen days later, he had the necessary means to publish a personal
newspaper: the Defender of the Constitution). In an unsigned book – attributed to Richer-Serisy, friend and
collaborator of Camille Desmoulins – we read, in connection with the threats of Robespierre and Chabot, on April 23:
It was necessary either to lose these two whistleblowers or to buy them. By sacrificing these two men of
the people, d'Orleans would have ruined himself. He therefore took the most prudent course, that of buying
them. Robespierre and Chabot not only kept silence, but even enlisted under the banner of Orleans and the
Republicans to get rid of the King; and this meeting lasted until August 10, the time of the new split which
5.
took place between these three factions
In any case, a few weeks later, on June 4 – the very day that Servan presented his plan for a Parisian
military camp to the Assembly – Robespierre publicly refused to come out against d'Orléans and to believe
in his faction.
The incident came to the Jacobins, after a brutal intervention by Ribes in the Legislative Assembly. This
one had declared that the Austrian committee was confused, for him, with the “faction of Orleans” which, “in
liaison with Pétion, Dumouriez, and Bonne Carrère”, formed “the horrible plot to massacre the King, his
family and all those who want the Constitution".
In the evening, the Jacobins had grown heated discussing this denunciation. The venerable Sillery having
launched into a great apology for the Duke of Orléans, Legendre had upset the audience by asking
abandonment of people issues.

Robespierre put an end to the debate by sending the speakers back to back, so kindly for d'Orléans
that Sillery declared himself "not angry" and even wished to be able to print Robespierre's reply. And we
left it there .
6 But, on what, it will be said, did Robespierre want to rely for his indictment? His announcement and
his explanations confuse the trail quite well. He first spoke of a "draft decree", then invoked two cases: a
"plot to destroy or paralyze the Jacobins" and "truths important to the public safety". It was a question of
something other than the plots of La Fayette, which he always clearly denounced. Perhaps he was
thinking of this military organization of Paris which Servan was going to establish.
In the end, Robespierre remained independent enough to speak out against the project – however
extremely popular – of the Ministry of War. As a result, he found himself insulted, as he had been a
month earlier, by the Gironde press (notably the French Patriot), who accused him of being a member of
the "Austrian committee".
Distrust, if not timidity, anguished ambition, sincere attachment to the philosophy of his time, everything
in his situation and his character brought Robespierre back on himself, and detached him from petty
intrigues. He was not good at social events. "Never," said Madame Roland, "has the smile of confidence
rested on Robespierre's lips, while they are almost always contracted by the bitter laughter of envy which
wishes to appear to disdain." The man who, so mocked at his beginnings, laughed in the salons while
eating his nails, did not want to venture lightly, nor be disconcerted.
With two means of expression, the Tribune des Jacobins and his newspaper, he tirelessly took up,
here and there, the same themes: the defense of France, the criticism of intriguers and the emotional
justification of his person. By which he seduced some and irritated others. But all these reflexes focused
the public's attention on him.
Freed from parliamentary maneuvers, he could attack the game of the Brissotins and other groups,
sending them back to back: They are
the ones who want to divide the representative assemblies into right and left sides; and who eternally
insist on these distinctions in their speeches and in their writings; so that the misguided public may judge
their patriotism and the wisdom of their operations, not by the principles of justice and the public good,
but by the place where sit those who propose them or who adopt them. Convenient method for the
perfidious deserters of the public cause who abandon the people without abandoning the benches where
7.
they had appeared to defend them
The Rolands could hardly count on the Jacobins and not on d'Orléans, whom they had never met.
The prince appeared to Madame Roland as a "dangerous mannequin". The situation of the Rolandist
group became all the more difficult in that to its discredit with the King was added the unfortunate Servan
scandal, which the Assembly found itself seized with.
On June 13, Dumouriez, head of the new government, had denounced before the Legislature the fiddling
of the former Minister of War in his concessions of contracts for the equipment of the army. Of course, the
Assembly had decided to form a commission of inquiry. As, a few days earlier, the same majority had voted
a decree deploring the dismissal of the three Rolandist ministers, a member of the right ironically recalled
this vote: "I ask that we add to the decree, where it is said that M. Servan takes the regrets of the nation, that
he also takes away the money. »
The scandal came up four times before the Assembly: on June 26, with Blanchard, rapporteur for the
military committee, on July 6 with Beugnot, rapporteur for the commission of inquiry, on July 7 with Lafon
Ladebat, rapporteur for the accounts committee of the Ministry of War, and, on July 21, once again with
Beugnot. But, as is often the case, all these reporters received only the silence of parliament.
4. STREET MOVEMENTS.
Smothered as it was, the affair brought the Rolands back to Brissot for intrigues with the court and to
Barbaroux for street movements. Their idea was to intimidate the King, to force his hand.
Roland invited Barbaroux to his home to lay down a grand plan of action.
The twenty-eight-year-old lawyer Barbaroux had just become famous for his action in the South with his
independent troops. He immediately seduced the mistress of the house with his "eagle gaze" and his "slender
face" which as a good intellectual Mrs. Roland considered to be that of Antinous.
To tell the truth, his male colleagues will leave less flattering portraits of the Marseillais: according to
Lautard, Barbaroux “had an ultra-ruddy and fairly puffy face; his stature was only a little above the average,
8
his height was common and his slender legs were "as fat as a man of forty." But if the ". For Louvet, he
little lawyer offered himself already fattened in self-satisfaction, he was not lacking in drive. Unfortunately,
this sanguine dynamism often led him to clumsy violence.
Opposite this optimistic plumpness, Roland displayed his pessimistic leanness. Lyon industrialist having
written a dictionary of manufactures, he resembled, says the Marquis de Ferrières, “a Quaker in his Sunday
best: flat, white hair, very little powder and a black coat”. This technician, no longer a child, had views on the
future as gloomy as his costume. According to him, "La Fayette was planning treachery in the north" and the
army in the center was "completely disorganized", devoid of ammunition, "everything was ready for the
Austrians to be in Paris in six weeks".
Wanting to convince Barbaroux, he said:
“Have we worked, for three years, at the most beautiful revolution only to see it overthrown in one day?... Let us
prevent this misfortune, save Paris and the departments of the North; or, if they succumb, let us carry the Statue of
Liberty to the South, and found somewhere a colony of independent men.
9
.»
Basically, the minister accommodated himself better to the loss of territory than to the loss of his place in power. He
needed armed forces to force the King to return his portfolio to him in Paris, or go and retrieve it in the South.
For Barbaroux, separatism was a long-planned operation. He even had to boast about it: “Four months before the
storming of the Bastille, he wrote, we had the project of making alliances and of making ourselves independent.
10 . »
The two pored over the maps and discussed troop movements. For Paris, Barbaroux considered that "the safest thing
was to execute the decree on the Paris camp, despite the King's veto... and the opposition of Robespierre". They agreed
to decide that a battalion and two pieces of cannon would be brought up from Marseilles.
Others also thought of riots, but with very different designs. For June 20, "I must say," writes Roederer, "that during
the Convention, the butcher Legendre declared to Boissy d'Anglas, from whom I learned, that the plan had been to kill
11
the King, denounced by three citizens of the faubourg Saint- ". The day after the same night, Chabot was
Antoine as having also wanted to massacre Louis XVI. Finally, in his testimony, Lareynie was to speak of secret
committee meetings at Santerre, who commanded the Orléanist shock troops, with Robespierre, Sillery, Pétion, Manuel
and Alexandre.
However, we had to agree on the ends. In his testimony at the trial of the Girondins, Chabot
explains, in his own way, why the coup did not succeed:
If the Brissotins then, instead of wanting ministers to their liking, had sincerely wanted the Republic, the people of
Paris were ready to found it, and the departments moved to second our efforts; but the Brissotins wanted to perpetuate
our constitutional chains... I shared these fears with Robespierre. Until then he had fought them with his natural
attachment to principles, even enduring their insults and diatribes too patiently. From June 8 to 20, he convinced himself,
like me, that they were intriguers; he instructed me to go to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, to prevent a movement which
had no other object than that of bringing the instruments of the intrigue back into place. The friends of Brissot, Girey-
Dupré, Boisguyon and a few others neglected nothing to put us into their systems, and we had to hide from them to go,
with some friends of Robespierre, to conjure the people to make movements only for the overthrow of the throne, to wait
for this effect and the arrival of the Marseillais, and to be satisfied with a simple petition, to have the decrees useful to the
people sanctioned.
It was perhaps not for the reasons indicated by Chabot, but, although preceded the day before by a great banquet on
the Champs-Élysées, the riot of June 20 was a serious failure. The date had been chosen because the anniversary of
the Jeu de Paume oath. According to Choudieu, who was in front
the Tuileries the demonstrators shouted: No veto, no priests! The camp under Paris and our ministers! clearly
indicating who had inspired them. And Chabot adds: On the morning of the 21st, I
found Brissot in the Allée des Feuillants. I say to him: you have set freedom back three centuries by this
irregular movement. “ You're mistaken,” he said to me, “he produced all the work we expected from him:
Roland, Clavière and Servan are going to enter the ministry.
In fact, not only was the government not changed, but the mayor of Paris, Pétion, was suspended from
office. And, fifteen days later, the General Council decided to try the municipal officers.
Chabot claims that Roland and his friends were afraid, thinking that they were going to be prosecuted for
this "insurrection". But Chabot should not be quiet, because he himself could be involved.
In the eyes of the people, the effect produced promised to be disastrous for the revolutionaries. Everything
invites us to believe Roederer, when he writes: A great movement was taking place in favor of the King, in the
opinion of the majority of the inhabitants of Paris... General indignation was exalted against the rebels by the
.
communication of impressions that everyone had received from the events of the1220
Obviously, it was to rekindle this extinct opinion that Roland generously paid his agent Gendron to come
and read before the Assembly a protest address by presenting it, with a strong delegation, as the spontaneous
work of the citizens of the faubourg. Saint Anthony. But, more seriously, the clumsiness of La Fayette,
advancing as the savior of the Monarchy and the adversary of the Jacobins and, above all, the military defeats
sanctioned by the proclamation of the fatherland in danger, on July 4, contributed to raise the opposition.
The game then became tighter than ever.
5. WITH OR AGAINST PARLIAMENTARIANS.
Prudhomme, whose newspaper had the largest circulation, wrote on July 7: “A second revolution has
become indispensable. “His colleague Carra, a week later, came out in favor of the suspension of the King.
And, on July 21, the General Journal of Europe presented the decisive programme.
He demanded the appointment by the National Assembly of a "general commander of the Parisian guard who
13 .
will answer on his head for the person of the King and those of the royal family"
On the other hand, during the war, MM. Roland, Servan and Pétion, "these true and incorruptible friends of the
people" will be named "dictators" and the Assembly will be dissolved. The next day, the Universal Gazette
announced the program.
A coup was planned for the same day. We were to take Louis XVI and lock him up as a prisoner at
Vincennes. But, either out of obligation or out of tactical prudence, Brissot – the Figaro of the revolution as we
have said 14 – declared himself, before the Legislative Assembly, hostile to the suppression of the
Monarchy. The mayor of Paris, Pétion, harangued "the people and the federates gathered on the place de
la Bastille to prepare for the siege of the Tuileries". By arresting them, Pétion prevented an operation which,
according to Chabot, "that day would not have cost patriotism a tear." When Robespierre reproached him,
Pétion replied: “I wanted the insurrection, but I was afraid that it would not succeed. »
Most parliamentarians thought like the mayor. Finding themselves close to power, they intended to put
pressure on it, but not to question everything with an uncontrollable mass uprising.
More than ever, they feared a coup d'etat in favor of Orleans. Also, writes Barbaroux, some wise men
placed in the committee of general defense of the legislative body saw the trap and tried other means.
Without them, executive power passed into the hands of the most dissolute man 15
.
Barbaroux does not specify what these “other means” were. But everything suggests that it was a
question of neutralizing the extra-parliamentary forces, by absorbing them.
In his deposition, Chabot recounts that Brissot and his Girondin friends asked the men of the Mountain
for a "meeting elsewhere than at the Jacobins". There, the participationists tried to justify their behavior by
responding to questions and criticism. They were especially reconciled with us, adds Chabot, when they
promised to have the forfeiture pronounced, but that was still a way of intriguing for them; they wanted to
frighten the court in order to govern it better.
Indeed, if the deputy Kersaint – who will be Girondin in the Convention – asked for the forfeiture on July
23, on the other hand, Mrs Roland, in her letter of July 31 to Brissot, declared to stick to “the provisional
suspension of the powers of the King”, in accordance with the manifesto that we have already quoted.
At the same time, Lasource – another future Girondin – urged the Jacobins to dismiss the federated soldiers
so that they would not be employed in a regicide attempt. Finally, Vergniaud, Guadet and Gensonné wrote
to the King to induce him, if he wanted to save himself, to take back the thanked ministers: Roland, Clavière
and even Servan.
Faced with these parliamentary manoeuvres, the Jacobins remained somewhat weakened by their
discords; a new center of opposition was organized: the Commune. After the sections, where Orléanists
played rather - like that of Mauconseil and the Théâtre-Français - had issued brutal demands (in particular
the forfeiture of Louis XVI), the Commune, on the proposal of Manuel, decided, on July 17, to set up a
correspondence office to strengthen and speed up the liaison of the sections.
In the eyes of the Duke of Orleans, the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly seemed certain. He was
sending a letter to his sons inviting them to stand as deputy candidates in the elections for the next
assembly that he was expecting "in a very short time 16 ”.
It is significant that, in this correspondence with the young people of Orléans on the subject of the
electoral campaign to be prepared, they were urged to use the constituency and the advice of the mayor of Metz,
Antoine, who will distinguish himself at the Jacobins, at the same time and in the same direction as Robespierre, by
making remarks that will panic the parliamentarians.
The deputies met and discussed the positions to take in a place called La Réunion, of which Mathiez 17 was the first
to see the importance. As the historian has pointed out, this club, whose sessions were closed to the public, innovated a
method that would become established in France: that of parliamentary groups.
But, when Mathiez regrets that this Reunion club did not leave any other traces than those he evokes, he forgets the
testimonies of the trial of the Girondins. These shed light on the judgment pronounced on July 30 by Brissot and Isnard
against Robespierre and Antoine.
In her testimony, Maribond-Martaut declares that, that day, being in Reunion...
... Brissot arrived there all out of breath and said that the most incendiary motion had just been made to the Jacobins.
He proposed general views for stopping the effect and... Lasource added that the Federals had to be sent to Chalons in
order to make this insurrection impossible. Isnard proposed the decree of accusation against Robespierre and Antoine
in order, he said, to cut off the heads of the hydra... Ruamps and Nioud tore up their cards and went out saying that they
no longer wanted to be members of the Réunion against the people.

At the Jacobins on August 1 , Desfieux reported the story, stating that Brissot had joined forces with Isnard to make
"the sacred commitment" to denounce "Robespierre and a few others" before the National Assembly so that it decrees
their arrest and imprisonment in Orleans.
The violence of the reaction seems all the more revealing since the incriminated speeches were in no way
insurrectionary. The Orleanist Antoine demanded the forfeiture of the King, his family and elections where all citizens
would be electors, except "priests, emigrants, civil servants". And Robespierre was taking a parallel path. His speech did
not advocate revolution. He considered the dismissal or suspension of Louis XVI to be a secondary question. As far as
the executive power was concerned, the matter was quickly settled: "It will only be a question," he declared, "of
diminishing the immense means of corruption," that is to say, the secret funds. On the other hand, he insisted a great
deal on the reform of the legislature: The source of all our evils is the absolute independence in which the representatives
have placed themselves with
regard to the nation. They recognized the sovereignty of the nation, and they destroyed it. They were by their very
admission only the agents of the people and they made themselves sovereign, that is to say despots: for despotism is
nothing other than the usurpation of sovereign power... As it is in the nature of things that men prefer their personal
interest to the public interest when they can do so with impunity, it follows that the people are oppressed whenever their
agents are absolutely independent of them: If the nation does not has not reaped the fruits of the revolution, if intriguers
have replaced other intriguers, if a legal tyranny seems to have succeeded the old despotism, do not look for the cause
elsewhere than in the privilege that the representatives of the people, to play with impunity with the rights of those they
basely caressed during the elections.
We understand the fury of parliamentarians. Especially since – as long as it is – our quotation only relates a
fragment of the variations on this theme by the animator of Les Jacobins. After these criticisms, the measures he
suggested hit the deputies hard, prohibiting outgoing members from being members of the next Assembly and new
deputies from combining the functions of minister and representative of the people. Finally, not only did Robespierre
want all citizens (without reservations, in his country) to be electors and eligible, but he intended that "the primary
assemblies could pass their judgment on the conduct of their representatives, or that they could at least revoke,
according to rules which will be established, those who have abused their trust”.
Today, such rules would seem to parliamentarians still very audacious and rather unpleasant. Moreover, this
dismissal process almost, a few months later, was applied by the Convention and turned against its instigator: when
delegates from the sections came to ask for the dismissal of twenty-two Girondin deputies, it was one of their
friends , Fonfrède, who suggested consulting the primary assemblies. As the Montagnards did not prevail on this
ground, Robespierre and his friends kept an embarrassed silence... This is often the case in politics: one wishes to
meet the people, when one expects to enjoy their favours, but never otherwise.
In this session of the Jacobins, on August 1 , where people were indignant against Reunion, after Desfieux, an
unknown person
added: Some members of the left side... are entirely against the forfeiture of the King; they would like partial
measures, such as a simple suspension of the executive power as long as the dangers to the country lasted; they
would like that during this time the exercise of this power be placed in the hands of the commission of twenty-one,
which would then appoint the ministers, would have the management of the public treasury, would choose the
18 .
generals, finally would exercise all the functions attributed in executive power
It was the combination of Brissot, Roland and others. Robespierre did not speak of Reunion.
President of the session, he confined himself to the dissolution of the Legislature and the election of the Convention.
Curiously, he himself withdrew from the new Assembly, specifying that the elected "could not be chosen from among
those of the Constituent Assembly, nor of the first legislature." No doubt he considered that his position would be
stronger outside the Assembly, and that, if one observed his principles, to be a minister one should not be a deputy.
6. AUGUST 1792.
With hindsight, memoirs and writings often tend to represent major historical events as the product of a well-
planned plan, of action, of the foresight of a few men, or as the result of an irresistible pressure of masses. But, as
soon as we look more closely, we are struck by the divergences and the heterogeneity of the active forces. Their
meeting, their amalgamation is never without misunderstanding, without missteps and without anxiety.
Thus, what emerges from the fortnight preceding August 10 are less the decisions firmly
stopped only by the hesitations, the most glaring, and even the pessimism of the great actors.
The three women who hold important sons – one could say the three Fates of the regime: Marie-Antoinette,
Madame Roland and Madame de Sillery-Genlis – no longer know what plots to indulge in.
The Queen hesitated to transmit to the enemy the national defense plans adopted by the Council of Ministers.
Madame Roland, disappointed by the Jacobins who were becoming more vulgar, breaking with one of her
adorers, Lanthenas, wrote to him: "I know the world too well to set great store by living in the midst of it...
Everything hangs together, nothing no longer surprise me. »
As for Madame de Sillery, on a trip to Burg, with her two daughters and Mademoiselle d'Orléans, she wrote
her husband a somber letter but thoughtful enough for one of her daughters to pass on, in the name of the
"four Jacobin emigrants », the copy to the son of Égalité, the Duke of Chartres.
Of course, no change in ideology: “The plan of ideas and principles is generally excellent”; but, where
nothing goes any more, it is on "the plan of conduct", in short on what one would call, today, more vulgarly,
the tactics. For the prince's inspiration, joining the Convention is "the most egregious stupidity that we have
yet done". And, to warn her husband: If you take the ridiculous part of wanting to make another constitution,
you will have civil war, and foreign enemies will subjugate you, proscribe you, and restore despotism by open
force. For her, there is only one serious alternative: “Either remain unshakeably attached to the Constitution,
or enter into negotiations with the enemies. »
In the end, this promiscuous Cassandra remained a prudent hostess. She invited her husband to prepare
for his departure abroad and to make "arrangements" for his lands, in order to save them from the dreaded
confiscations.
In front of these three fates, the male leaders did not seem much prouder. A Marat, arrested since May 3,
remained in the shadows. He planned to go live in Marseille, disguised as a jockey...
Each of the clans feared that the other would prevail by force. We were talking about military defeats.
They feared the invasion of Paris by La Fayette and foreign troops. Both the escape and the massacre of
Louis XVI were feared. At the Jacobins, Robespierre, always on the sidelines, sounded the alarm. For him,
two necessities imposed the surveillance of the Tuileries: one to prevent the King from leaving, the other to
ensure that no harm happened to him or to any individual in his family. The King appeared as an indispensable
asset. But, it was a question of who would have it in their cards. In the meantime, what he brought back was
abundantly used at the Tuileries to buy off politicians and armed men.
The famous Marseillais federates had arrived on July 10. By welcoming them to Charenton, Barbaroux
had drawn up, with the agitator Fournier, known as the American, Marat's friend Héron and the animator of
the National Guard, Santerre, a plan for a great armed demonstration. We intended to force the hand of Louis
XVI by surrounding the Tuileries and occupying the Hôtel de Ville where we would hold
Mayor Petion. After which, one would promulgate "the suspension or the forfeiture of the King according
to what one would have judged the most suitable". Thus, Roland and his friends could find their wallet...
But, the great demonstration ended like the previous ones, with a lamentable failure.
Barbaroux is surprised by this in his Memoirs. According to him, Santerre had promised to bring troops
many of the suburbs and had not kept its commitments.
But Santerre could hardly commit himself in this direction. A beer merchant, who became head of the
National Guard and professional agitator, he was the brother-in-law of the flexible Panis and received
money from Orleans. He strutted about, "dirty, sweaty, scruffy," on a black horse to distinguish himself
from La Fayette and his white mounts. But if he moved a lot, his action was less disorderly than it seemed.
The occupation of the Hôtel de Ville, provided for in Barbaroux's plan, could not suit a man paid by
d'Orléans, who had to base his hopes on the Commune. The latter, on the very day of the failed riot,
pronounced, in a decree 19 , in favor of the dissolution of the National Guard and its staff, and the
constitution, by a Parisian section, of a well-established battalion. armed.
The Orléanist clan had not said its last word. On August 3, Pétion, in his capacity as mayor, came to
read a solemn petition before the Legislative Assembly: By
a remnant of indulgence, we would have liked to be able to ask you for the suspension of Louis XVI as
long as the danger to the fatherland exists. ; but the Constitution opposes it. Louis XVI constantly invokes
the Constitution; we invoke it in our turn, and we demand forfeiture.
This great measure once taken, as it is very doubtful that the nation can have confidence in the present
dynasty, we ask that ministers jointly responsible, appointed from outside its midst, (...) exercise
provisionally the executive power, pending that the will of the people, our sovereign and yours, should
also be pronounced in a National Convention as soon as the security of the State can permit it.
Obviously, the one Robespierre had to call "the cricket of the revolution", evoking his "face blooming
with eternal laughter", wanted to play on several fronts. Childhood friend of Brissot, linked to Orleans,
having his entries almost everywhere, he tried to reconcile the theses in presence to win without too
many risks. However, the question posed still seemed too thorny to the Assembly.
Also, like all parliaments in this case, the Legislative voted for the referral to committee (here called
"committee of the extraordinary").
Already the day before, a delegation of Marseille federated had come to demand the forfeiture of the
King and the formation of a guard of the Assembly, composed of three hundred men from each
department. It expressed Roland's ideas and took up Minister Servan's project. And the Assembly had
voted to print the petition, but refused to send it to the departments. We intended to intimidate the King,
but not to trigger a national movement.
Everyone worked hard these Marseillais to absorb them. According to Carra, a "central committee of federated
people" met clandestinely in the correspondence room of the Jacobins club. And, more than ever, Robespierre with
his extra-parliamentary ascendancy, his art of committing himself without getting wet in a determined clan, appeared
as an element which it is advisable to have with oneself or to neutralize.
The d'Orleans' friend, Antoine, lived with the Duplays, a room next to Robespierre's bedroom. But if their positions
agreed at the Jacobins, out of the club they hardly saw each other. According to Carra, it was in Antoine's room that
the conspirators went to discuss, with Santerre, Desmoulins, Fournier the American, after a dinner at the Cadran.
"Robespierre's hostess," adds Carra, "was so frightened by this confabulation that she came, at eleven o'clock in the
evening, to ask Antoine if he wanted to have Robespierre cut his throat: if someone must have his throat cut," said
Antoine , it will probably be us. It's not about Robespierre, he just has to hide 20
.»
However, the friend of the Orléans had to contribute to this meeting with Barbaroux, of whom the latter will speak
so much.
The location of the Marseilles troops constituted the pretext for the interview. Also, Robespierre first requested
protective forces for the Cordeliers. After which, adds Barbaroux in his Memoirs: Speaking of the Revolution, (he)
boasted a lot of having accelerated it, but he maintained that it would stop if some man did not declare himself its
leader and did not print a new movement.
I don't want a dictator any more than a king, answered Rebecquy; and the conversation was broken off.
As we left, Punis shook our hands. You misunderstood the thing, he tells us, it was only a
momentary authority, and Robespierre is indeed the man who would be suited to be at the head of the people.
– Don't insist any longer, I replied , the people of Marseilles will not lower their eyes before a .
dictator . , in a pamphlet against Marat, dated October 1 and countersigned by deputies who would then join the
Mountain. Basically, Robespierre posed above all the question of government, a question which the Rolandists could
not and did not want to answer. Finally, it was not the first time that Robespierre, by refusing to take part in
combinations, attracted the epithet of dictator.
The opposition between the extra-parliamentary forces and the Assembly was all the more accentuated since the
Duke of Brunswick had just launched his appeal for collaboration. In all the clans, there was a fear of being possessed.
As the Swiss Etienne Dumont writes in his Souvenirs: All together worked to destroy
the Monarchy through a feeling of fear, to free themselves from a kind of ghost that frightened them... If jealousy
gives reality to the smallest appearances and finds proofs in all suspicions, party spirit has the same influence on the
soul, and does not cease to create sinister visions, as a fever which inflames the brain produces there livid specters
and deformed monsters
22 .
Fear, partisanship, intrigue drove politicians to engage in ways that would weigh on the Convention. To
engage without dominating the situation, often overwhelmed, misled by the action of others.
On August 4, the section of Mauconseil (located near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil) proclaimed in a
poster that if the forfeiture was not pronounced, on August 9 at midnight it would sound the tocsin of
insurrection. Vergniaud immediately blamed the text and had it condemned by the Legislative. And Pétion
exerted himself in the same direction, going first to find Robespierre.
The latter recounted the conversation in a letter to his constituents : “You told me that resistance to
oppression had to be postponed... I believed you up to a certain point. Two days later, on August 9, Pétion
summoned Chabot, who had alerted the Faubourg Saint Antoine, to the general security committee. As
the mayor asked him to wait for the vote of the Assembly, he replied that he no longer believed in intriguers
who changed their minds: hadn't they left La Fayette unpunished?
One could hesitate, but it was too late to stop: the movement had begun.
This bloody day of August 10 does not live in the street, everyone knows, none of the great leaders.
Not only did Robespierre, Danton and Marat not appear, but Barbaroux made no secret of having followed
the operations behind the scenes. Better still, anxious not to compromise or not to lose his troops, he
recommended to their leader, Bourdon, "to march only with the Parisian columns, and not to put
themselves at the head in the parades of the streets, and especially at the castle, the avenues of which
he did not know”! We heard pressure being put on Santerre to unleash the troops of the Faubourg Saint-
Antoine on the Carrousel. However, "his first act, claims Barbaroux, was to ask the Marseillais for their
two pieces of cannon for the town hall", which is not unlikely, because, for the Jacobins and the men of
Orléans, the Hôtel de City was a key position.
In the surrounded castle, the syndic attorney general of Paris, Roederer, played an important role, in
connivance, it seems, with the Roland clan. Negotiating for two hours with Louis XVI, he invited the King
to appear before the National Assembly.
According to Chabot, it was Merlin who intervened in a decisive way by telling Roederer that: the people
wanted the head of the King!
Roederer then unwittingly betrays the secret of the faction. It doesn't matter, he replied, he will remain
the Prince Royal. No, replied Merlin, all royal heads will fall, and even yours, if you do not retire quickly.
Already thought was being given to sending the royal family to the Assembly, and the King was to remain
in the chateau; but the fear that Merlin inspired in Roederer changed their plans. .
23 Indeed, still according to Chabot, the Rolandist faction had decided to sacrifice the head of the
tyrant; then she would have proclaimed King the prince royal, appointing him Pétion as governor and
naming Roland regent.
The project does not seem to have been challenged by the Girondins before the court and, moreover,
the decree that Vergniaux voted on that evening, in his capacity as rapporteur of the extraordinary
commission, went in the same direction. At the same time as it decreed the formation of a Convention
and the change of the ministry, it stipulated the appointment by the Assembly of a “governor to the prince
royal”.
Pétion and the Girondins could believe that they held strong power, since Roland, Clavière and Servan
(all scandal suppressed) found their portfolios with, to strengthen their parliamentary majority and the
support of popular societies, a man from the Orléanist left: Danton.
The Assembly voted in favor of the trio by acclamation, while it elected Danton minister by 222 votes
out of 248 voters.
As before, Roland's first concerns were not with the government of France, but with protecting himself
through propaganda and armed force. On August 18, he got himself granted by the Assembly a credit of
one hundred thousand pounds to set up a propaganda service BUREAU DE L'ESPRIT PUBLIC. Indeed,
appointed as Madame Roland has written, thanks to this budget, her husband took advantage of the public
papers then in credit and had them sent free of charge to popular societies, priests and zealous individuals.
Thus, the Minister of the Interior was able, on the one hand, to subsidize the newspapers of his friends
(Brissot, Condorcet, Dulaure, Louvet, etc.) and, on the other hand, to have tracts and propaganda letters
made. In addition, the Hôtel de Ville suppressed certain Parisian newspapers, considered to be too
royalist in tendency. Finally, taking the position with regard to the clergy which had provoked the
ministerial crisis of June, the government passed measures to keep the priests under their obedience.
However, the Assembly did not absorb all the forces.
7. THE NEW MUNICIPALITY.
Alongside the municipal council sat a new general council of the Commune, bringing together
delegates from all sections and led by Orléanist agents.
This new Commune had immediately acquired significant material and military resources. The day of
August 10 left her valuable goods and she requisitioned others on the following days. As for the army, it
had condemned, allowed or had its Mandat general assassinated, and voted to regroup all the Parisian
troops under the command of Santerre.
The thousand victims of August 10 leaving public opinion quite feverish, the Commune found there a
pretext to shake up the Assembly. Santerre came to tell parliament that he would no longer answer to
order if the Swiss of the Tuileries were not quickly judged. A few days later, a new delegation from the
Commune demanded the constitution of this special tribunal whose judges and jurors would be elected
by the sections. Finally, on August 17, tired of waiting for the support of the Assembly, the Commune
formed a revolutionary tribunal. In the latter, we found Robespierre and the comrade of Saint-Just: Daubigny.
The latter corresponds well to the Orléanist and Freemason color of the Commune. Friend of Danton, linked
with Brissot, hosting Marat, he owed his career to Santerre's brother-in-law: Panis.
As much later as he would disown Saint-Just, he would salute "the good sensitive Panis 24 ". (It is true that he
will write this while the first is dead, while the other survives: didn't Panis discreetly go through all the regimes
to slowly die out, in 1827, armed with a pension from the Duke of Orleans?)
However, even when he found himself promoted to judge, Daubigny was denounced by a man of his
section, Restout, - friend of Roland and appointed by him to the direction of the storage unit, - as having stolen,
on August 10 from the Tuileries , a cassette containing ten thousand books. Also, Danton took off his accused
friend, charging him with a mission in the North. Nevertheless, when he returned to Paris, he was arrested and
imprisoned at La Force. As a result, the next day, August 29, the revolutionary tribunal was suspended by the
Commune.
As for Robespierre (whom Daubigny claims to have met on August 10), the campaign resumed. A poster,
probably paid for by the Minister of the Interior Roland, denounced him as "jealous of Pétion" and wanting a
dictatorship.
The silent struggle grew bitter. The big question became: with or against Paris. The rulers and the
parliamentary majority on which they relied were less than ever at peace in the capital. On August 27, the
mountain dweller Albotte denounced to the Assembly a circular (from Roland, no doubt) inviting the departments
to consult together to obtain that the parliament should meet elsewhere than in Paris. It was neither the first
nor the last time that such an intention was to manifest itself. Under the Convention, the Girondins will still take
out this parachute, without ever being able to use it.
Of course, Danton remained attached to the Commune. He went there on August 29, "as if to seal his
alliance more closely."
On the other hand, the following day, Roland, having exhausted all the possibilities of agreement, passed
openly to the counter-offensive. Playing on the theme of refueling, from the podium of the Legislative Assembly,
he strongly attacked the Commune, and his friend Guadet had the decree voted without debate ordering the
immediate renewal of the municipal body.
In the name of the Commune, Tallien came to demand the annulment of the decree. But the Assembly
turned a deaf ear to him. At the Hôtel de Ville, Robespierre intervened twice, suggesting a collective resignation,
accompanied by a request to the sections to ratify their first vote. But he was not followed. A certain
Darnauderie and especially the syndic prosecutor, Manuel, prevailed against him. The Orléanists did not want
an arrangement. To support them, Marat joined the surveillance committee of the Commune.
8. THE ELECTION OF SAINT-JUST.
Cracked with defeats that oozed betrayal, heads bobbed in the wind of fear and indignation. Bursts
of fury among the sectionnaires who demanded revenge for the thousand of their fallen under the firing
of the Swiss. Hesitations of the Assembly which, not daring to come out clearly for the forfeiture of the
King, preferred to dissolve, leaving to a new assembly, the Convention, the care of deciding the
question of regime and constitution.
The hoped-for chance presented itself to Saint-Just. But in what excitement! Panic among many
Freemasons, who saw the Duke of Brunswick, Grand Master of Scottish Masonry, at the head of the
Prussian troops. Carra had he not written, on July 21, that the first step of the "greatest politician in
Europe", if he arrived in Paris, would be "to come to the Jacobins, and to put on the red cap »? We no
longer recognized ourselves there. And nothing perhaps better reflects the disarray of people's minds
at the end of August 1792 than the execution of Collenot d'Angremont, decided by the extraordinary
tribunal of the Commune. He was the first royalist condemned as such. On the night of the 21st, when
the executioner wanted to raise his head from the guillotine to show it to the people, under the dancing
flames of the torches, he collapsed backwards, died of a
heart stop...
Even if the Parisian effervescence only reverberated in Picardy in diminished echoes, it is quite
obvious that never legislative elections took place in such a stormy atmosphere.
Although there was not strictly speaking an electoral campaign, if we are to believe Édouard Fleury 25 ,
Saint-Just was supported in his candidacy by the “Société des Frères Lais”.
Who were these “Brothers Lais”? Fleury says: electoral agents in the service of Robespierre and the
Jacobins. It may be, but we would like to know more. Where did the biographer get his information:
from an oral tradition or from local archives? This, unfortunately, is what we still do not know. However,
it will be noted that, up to now, the rare documents that we have on the elections to the Convention do
not testify to a thorough organization of the campaign by the Jacobins. Out of 895 deputies having sat
in the Convention, only 163 are definitely affiliated with a club. Moreover, the title of "Brothers Lais",
borrowed from the vocabulary, does not fit well with the function of the Traveling Society of which
26
monastic Fleury speaks. Or he
was a popular society which had borrowed its title from the premises it occupied, like the Jacobins; or
else, these “Brothers Lais” had an origin other than that attributed to them by Fleury.
Should we seek a relationship between these "Brothers Lais" and the "clers of late observance" of
Masonry? Once again, we come up against the gray area that covers certain aspects of Saint-Just's
life.
No matter, on September 2, 1792, the conventional candidate sat in the office of the Assembly of
electors of Aisne, meeting in the church of Saint-Gervais in Soissons. First a secretary, he soon had
the honor of presiding over the meeting. When the election results were announced on September 5, he left
fifth in the list with 349 votes out of 600 voters. He had been twenty-five years old for a
week.
9. SEPTEMBER 2 , 1792.
During this time, in Paris, the conflict between the municipal power and the parliamentary power
had expressed itself brutally on the dreadful day of September 2. This, like all great insurrectionary
movements, was neither absolutely directed nor truly spontaneous. Everything suggests that some
set fire to the powder, in order to change the reigning family by a new Saint-Barthélémy.
Yes, everything seems to indicate that the Orleanist and English agents were the great instigators
of this massacre in the prisons. Among the men who played an important role, alongside a Panis, a
Billaud-Varenne, a Méhée, two hold particular attention: Santerre and Maillard.
Both were accused by Senar who, in his memoirs, claims to have had a damning file.
Maillard, known as the leader of the Tape-Dur, draws up a curious personality. A tall man, neatly
dressed in a blue frock coat, he put on, Mehee tells us, a "noble, martial air" countenance. At La
Force and at the Abbey, he pronounced many capital sentences, but he also saved, not without
difficulty, certain prisoners, including Salamon. In short, he will carry out his action very calmly,
without hesitation, like someone who knows where he is going. It is true that, young as he is, he
does not lack experience. He has already distinguished himself in all the major events for three
years. He is a condottiere who takes care of the low works.
At the trial of the Girondins, Fabre d'Églantine may be surprised at the benevolence enjoyed by
the strange executioner: "When the faction decreed that the perpetrators of the massacres of
September 2 would be prosecuted, it is good to point out to you that Maillard, one of the main
perpetrators, was not even arrested. »
27
This accusation will earn him to be prosecuted and even imprisoned . But, undermined by
tuberculosis, benefiting from testimony in his favor from a prisoner of September 2, threatening to
exhibit an embarrassing piece for a Panis or a Tallien, Maillard could die, poor but quietly, in his bed.
As for Santerre, Madame Roland accuses her of not having obeyed her husband's instructions. In
fact, the action of the new head of the National Guard, as the minutes of the Commune suggest it,
that day, seems rather strange. First, he does nothing to stop the massacre: the officers of the Abbey
and of the Force declare that they have received no orders from him. Then, at four o'clock, the
general commander announces that he will send an armed force to the Temple. In end of
day, the Commune returns to the question and stipulates that Santerre is authorized to mass numerous
detachments around the Temple and the prisons. If official authorization became necessary, it was no
doubt because Santerre was encountering difficulties. But was it to protect Louis XVI and his family (as
an asset to keep) or to cover their extermination?
According to Sénar's memoirs, the second hypothesis would be the correct one. "Why," he asks,
"those who wrote about the September massacres, omitted an essential fact: that a mob led and formed
by a man named Gardembas dit Helmet, wanted to cut the throats of the Bourbon family?" »
According to the former agent of the General Security Committee, this silence was due to the fact that
the man in question and a section were charged by "the Orleans faction" with suppressing the Bourbons.
But Sénar does not explain why the killers he accuses have failed.
Moreover, Sénar is not the only one to think so. All the memoirs hostile to d'Orléans go so far as to
attribute to him the decision to have his sister-in-law, the Princess of Lamballe, killed to get rid of an
annuity he would have owed her. But we disputed the obligations in question...
Finally, the manner in which Minister Danton and the Mayor of Paris, Pétion, witnessed this murderous
surge without doing anything to contain it, does not seem to be due to fear. Danton's famous conversation
with Orléans' son, the young Duke of Chartres – whom the latter, having become King Louis-Philippe,
would make known – gives a glimpse of the spirit that animated the day.
Whether in the version of Taine, in that of the Marquis de Flers or Denys Cochin, Danton always says
to the son of Philippe Égalité: “Do you know who carried out the September massacres? It's me. The
minister's explanation, as reported by Louis-Philippe, is hardly convincing. “I wanted all the youth to
arrive in Champagne, covered in blood that would assure me of their fidelity; I wanted to put between
28 ...
them and the emigrants a river of blood” Admittedly, we find the same theme in what Arthur would have
said, according to Lombard de Langres. But this ulterior motive does not appear to be the only one,
since Danton declares to the Duke of Chartres: “Lock yourself up in your trade as a soldier, without
worrying about our actions or getting involved in politics. This is essential for you, for yours, even for us
and especially for your father. Finally, according to the version of the Marquis de Flers, Danton went so
far as to say to his visitor: "You have a good chance of reigning." »
In truth, for d'Orléans and Danton, this massacre could serve not as a river, but as a curtain of blood:
the organized Apocalypse would have made it possible to seize Louis XVI and his family in the Temple,
an operation impossible in normal times.
Moreover, the operation was directed against the parliament. A few weeks after the days of
September, Brissot will not go against the likelihood by writing:
I cannot help believing that this tragedy was divided into two very different acts: that the massacre of
the prisoners was only an accessory to a grand plan; that he covered and was to bring about the
execution of a conspiracy formed against the National Assembly... Such is the most natural key to this
29 .
inexplicable atrocity
Brissot was all the better able to write this as he had almost ended the day in a prison.
Denounced by Robespierre, at the Commune, as an agent of Brunswick, a section had come to his home
to arrest him, while other delegations, inspired by Marat, went to apprehend Roland and a few deputies.
An intervention by Minister Danton had saved them, just in time. Obviously, the questioning in blood of
the state
of the collective forces was accompanied by personal matters. By denouncing Brissot, Robespierre
wanted to put an end – in a way that is not to his credit, said Mr Gérard Walter – with the man he had
been fighting for months as a schemer who had thrown France into war without preparation. . But, Brissot,
for his part, had he not sworn publicly, with Ismard at Reunion, to have his arrest decreed? Was
Robespierre yielding to a fit of temper or defence? To what extent was he spurred on by his ambition
rather than his fears? It cannot be distinguished.
During a conversation at Danton's (reported by Prudhomme), the day after the capture of Verdun,
before the Minister of War, Servan, prostrate, Pétion, Desmoulins, Fabre d'Églantine, Manuel, Lacroix
and Robespierre, - arriving horrified by the massacres, Mandar declared that only a dictatorship could
restore order. And, as he intended to go and ask it of the Assembly, Robespierre interrupted him:
"Beware, Brissot would be a dictator." »
The Incorruptible's concern may not have been inspired by a beautiful sentiment, but it was not without
foundation. Enjoying many connections, good relations with important circles, Brissot could establish
himself. And his levity justified all fears... Will he not, under the Convention, go so far as to quote the
speech in which he said: "I have only one fear, which is that we let's not be betrayed. We need betrayal.
Our salvation is there; for there are still strong doses of poison in the bosom of France, and strong
explosions are needed to expel it”?
His friend Roland, faced with the invasion of France, thought more than ever of retirement and
separatism. He was to express his point of view to Danton, during a meeting that Fabre d'Églantine will
recount at the trial of the Girondins:
I found myself one day at the Minister of Foreign Affairs where Roland, Servan, Clavière, Lebrun,
Danton and Pétion were assembled. At the end of the garden a kind of council was held. Roland spoke
and said: The news is very alarming, we must leave.
Danton asked him where he intended to go. To Blois, resumed Roland, and we must take the treasure
and the King with us. Clavière supported Roland's proposal. Servan said that there was no other course
to take, and Kersaint, who had just arrived from Sedan, added: it is absolutely necessary to leave; for it is
as impossible that in a fortnight Brunswick will not be in Paris, as it is impossible that the wedge will not
enter the log when someone knocks on it. Danton strongly opposed this proposal, and it was agreed not
to make any determination until more positive news had been received.
Everyone knows it: Danton's refusal was not essentially inspired by patriotic sentiment: at the same
time, he was keeping in touch with the Marquis de La Rouerie who was organizing the uprising.
of Brittany, and he procured for Talon, distributor of the funds of the civil list, a passport to escape to
England.
Danton bet on several tables. The game not being over, no one knew who would win. The great
slaughter did not leave the advantage to any clan. There was talk of the Robespierrists and the
Brissotins, but the Duc d'Orléans remained big-jeans as before. Admittedly, thanks to the unrest,
several prisoners – such as Daubigny, the subject of an approach by Marat and his section – had
regained their freedom. We were to gossip about them – about Saint-Just's friend in particular, shortly
after – when the jewels were stolen from the storage unit. In his capacity as Minister of the Interior,
Roland denounced Daubigny, on September 18, in the Legislative Assembly, taking advantage of the
occasion to again demand “an armed force” in order to ensure the security of the Assembly. His
accusation being unsupported by any evidence, the case remained pending. As in most political
scandals, the truth will never come out. On the Roland side, we will come back to the negligence of
the commander of the guard who, despite “repeated injunctions from the Minister of the Interior”, did
nothing “to have the furniture storage station filled”. But, on the other hand, Thuriot will remind Roland
that he came to the building on the very day of the theft; Robespierre , Daubigny's whistleblower,
will accuse Restout 30 appointed by Roland head of the storage. Finally, at the trial of the Girondins,
the public prosecutor, Amar, will say: The thieves of the storage unit escaped from the prisons on
August 10th. I sent fifteen arrest warrants to the Minister of the Interior, to have them reinstated in the
prisons; these arrest warrants remained unexecuted. The question remains disturbing, because let us
not forget that, alongside the greed of thieves, the needs of the electoral campaign could come into play.
If the days of September left to the Commune and to the sections their authority, their armed force,
they did not diminish the Assembly. The majority of outgoing deputies remained attached to the
Bourbons; some, who entered as opponents, had learned the way to the Tuileries. And, the spectacle
of these killers walking through the cabarets covered in blood, shredding the corpses (one of them will
fix an ear on his Phrygian cap to replace the cockade), none of this was likely to seduce opinion.
No one will boast of their participation in the massacre. The Jacobins, whose prestige is dwindling,
will defend the day in a circular to the provincial affiliated societies, because their authority and that of
the capital were compromised. But they will quickly deny this bad claim to fame.
Basically, all these great operations to seize power for the benefit of a particular tendency have
failed. The Rolandists and their parliamentary leaders retain important credits, but they have lost the
Parisian armed force. Tirelessly and awkwardly, they will strive to acquire it. None of their government
projects were accepted. Whether it is a question of the suspension or forfeiture of the King, of the
regency of Louis XVII, of a wartime government with the parliament being placed in vacation or
withdrawn to the provinces, of the domination of the municipal council, of the sections and of the
Jacobins, or, finally, , the ousting of dangerous politicians, such as
Robespierre and Marat, all their plans have been met with nothing but gossip, backroom intrigues and vain
agitation.
The polarization between Montagnards and Girondins will manifest itself under the spark of the same
questions. It will be less a question of doctrinal difference, left or right, than of a different situation. The
Girondins are already established in the state; their first concern will be less about how to govern it than
about how to preserve it. They will come up against opponents who scare them. These, the Montagnards,
form a rather heterogeneous parliamentary minority, but with very popular Parisian leaders. More advanced
in parliament, some Girondins will have more group discipline. They will meet, says Gensonné 31 at
Vergniaud's, still in Reunion, three times a week, just before the opening of the sessions, of the Convention,
to discuss the subject of the debate. On the other hand, the Montagnards will find themselves above all
united by their brutal rejection in the opposition.
1. Minutes of the meetings of the administration of the Aisne (1st session ), Laon, 1790.
2. In his study on the question, M. Dommanget identifies four acquisitions of national property by Saint-Just: June 20, July 24 and 25, August 6, 1792, and October
23, 1793. The first were concluded by the intermediary of Cordon, "fisherman in Pontoise" and the others by that of Bontems, "ploughmen in Cuts". In total, about
eight hectares.
3. Friend of the People,No. DXLVII .
4. Marquis DE FERRIÈRES, Memoirs.

5. The School of rebels of peoples and kings or supplement to the history of the conspiracies of Louis-Philippe Joseph of Orléans and
Maximilien Robespierre, by an eyewitness, Paris, 1800.
6. See BUCHEZ and ROUX, vol. XV, p. 9.

7. In No. III of the Defender of the Constitution.
8. LAUTARD, Marseilles from 1789 to 1815, t. II, p. 41.
9. Memoirs of BARBAROUX, pp. 123-124.

10. Bulletin des Marseillais, issue of November 15, 1792.
11. ROEDERER, Chronicle of the fifty days, p. 65.
12. ROEDERER, Chronicle of the fifty days, p. 79.
13. Quoted by A. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC in the History of the Girondins and the September massacres, Paris, 1860, p. 412.
14. Bellesort.
15. BARBAROUX, ibid., p. 128.
16. Correspondence from Orleans, p. 201.
17. See Girondins and Montagnards.
18. BUCHEZ and Roux, vol. XXX, p. 300.
19. See BUCHEZ and ROUX, vol. XIV, p. 253.
20. Historical and very exact summary on the origin and the true authors of the famous insurrection of August 10, cf. BUCHEZ and ROUX, vol. XIV, p. 270-271.
21. Memoirs of BARBAROUX.
22. Souvenirs sur Mirabeau and the first two Legislative Assemblies, new edition, Paris, 1950.
23. Testimony at the trials of the Girondins, cf. BUCHEZ and ROUX, vol. XIV.
24. In its supporting summary. 25.
Édouard Fleury (1815-1883), born in Laon, was above all a local historian. The first, he devoted a work, moreover hostile, to the personality of Saint-Just (Saint-
Just and the Terror, Paris, 1851). Despite their partisan nature, Fleury's books are based on a
examination of the departmental archives which makes them not insignificant.

26. The expression, which today seems to have been abandoned, was thus defined in DIDEROT 's Encyclopedia : "The same thing as the lay
brothers and who are also called lay brothers, or simply brothers, are subordinate religious, not engaged in orders, but who make monastic vows.
»
27. The prisoners then having the right to have posters printed and pasted on the walls of Paris, for their defence, one will notice one by
Maillard, in December 1793, beginning thus: “Tap-ass, tape-dur and tape- dru, call me what you want, I don't care..." (See Paris during the Terror,
reports of secret agents published by M. PIERRE CARON, t. II, Paris, 1914.)
28. Denys-Cochin version, cf. MATHIEZ, Around Danton.
29. Letter to all the Republicans of France, October 29, 1892.
30. The Restout-Daubigny duel will last a long time yet. It is finally Daubigny who will have the last word (not very nice) in
arresting Restout.
31. Testimony at the trial of the Girondins.

CHAPTER VIII
THE HEAD OF A KING
(September 1792-January 1793.)
1. THE FACE OF PARIS AND THE CONVENTION.
Verdun had fallen into enemy hands, the French troops were falling back on Châlons, when
the newly elected member of the Convention boarded the diligence for Paris.
Two days of travel, at least, kept him on the road. To his reverie, Picardy delivered the perfumes
of the damp earth, the trees stirred by the wind, under the sharp sky and the cold light of autumn.
Why wouldn't he have yielded to the romantic platitude? At the same time, a whole part of France
was falling apart in the squall...
Entering the capital on September 18, he found a city transformed: before him, Death had
conquered it with great pomp. The head of the unfortunate Princess de Lamballe carried around on
the end of a pike, the massacre of the prisons, the enlistment of volunteers to save "the fatherland
in danger", had transformed the capital of pleasures into the capital of Terror.
It was not one of those seasonal changes that Paris excels in endorsing. It had been a sight
change, surprisingly quick and brutal. Until the last moment the aristocracy had held firm, not in
politics but in balls, opera, country parties and whist. "Never had we been more amused," Baron
de Frémilly was to write in his recollections. Then, suddenly, everything was extinguished: we had
to flee the dungeons and the guillotine.
On September 17, a foreign diplomat, who had not yet returned, wrote to his master the Duke of
Parma: "Poor Paris, there is no longer any pleasure in living there, everyone dresses like the most
vile populace, everyone seeks to resemble the sans-culottes 1 ”. And to mourn the disappearance
of “superb carriages”, of “splendid liveries”, and, also, of “beautiful manners”.
Theaters were closed. Going up the outer boulevards from the Porte Saint Antoine to the Porte
Saint-Honoré, along the fortifications, Saint-Just found nothing of what once made their charms:
tightrope walkers, mimes and beautiful walkers. The whole city seemed doomed to war.
“You only hear the sound of drums and trumpets. The cries of "live free or die"
resound on all sides, ”growled the bailiff of Virieu again.
The Tuileries, the Luxembourg, the Champs-Élysées had ceased to be places of rendezvous for
little mistresses and little masters, to become military training camps, where adolescents were
instructed in the use of arms. Everything that represented the sweetness of life was erased by the
terrible alternative: "Freedom or death." »
However, the Convention would never know the exaltation of a unanimous opinion. A few days
after its opening, anxiety and distrust of the powers it held had caused the apprentice sovereign
Assembly to tear itself apart. It was not parties that clashed, but people. Many members of the
Convention were re-elected: 194 had belonged to the Legislative Assembly and 89 to the Constituent
Assembly. But, however well-educated they were, most of these deputies thought little of
parliamentary group discipline. Some found themselves in fashionable salons, others at the Jacobins
or at Reunion, but many provincials, disoriented, skirted the walls. On the latter, Camille Desmoulins
was to write: “In those early days, when they did not know each other well, we dared not admit to
ourselves that we were royalists; but to take language, we raged against Paris, and the agitating,
disorganizing words were like the slang terms with which all the aristocrats recognized themselves,
invited themselves to dinner at Roland's or at Venua's.
2. »
Yes, the agitation of the center of the Jacobins, the sections of the capital, the Commune, all this
tended to separate, within the Assembly, the elected Parisians from those from the provinces. But
the divergence did not constitute a parliamentary majority. And, one is in trouble when one tries to
quantify and characterize the different tendencies. First, except to vote for the fate of Louis XVI, the
Assembly will not have many presents. On 749 members that it counts, it joins together only 460
from October 4, 1792; and, three days after the death of Louis XVI, on January 24, 1793, it will group
no more than 355 deputies. Despite all efforts, three months later, on April 12, there will be 360; May
2: 293; June 13: 241. And until Thermidor 9, the figure will vary between 200 and 260, that is to say
one-third of the elect.
In there, there are about fifty "leaders" with diverse and often changing tendencies, but none holds
the reins of a group. A Malouet could write in his Memoirs: "What can truly be called a leader
executing a combined plan, either by himself or by his faction, I do not know of such a thing in the
course of the Revolution until the day of 18 brumaire 3 .»
According to Desmoulins "more than 250 members are honored to be from the Mountain". But, on
April 12, the impeachment of Marat will be voted by 226 votes against 93 and 47 abstentions. Even
taking for Maratist Montagnards the 86 deputies sent on March 9 as commissioners to the armies,
we are far from the mark. No doubt, on the high banks of the Mountain, we put up with Marat,
respecting him and fearing him, but we love him little. For many, it will be the devil's share, useful
but dangerous. As Garat says in his Memoirs, the deputies "had a horror of Marat but they did not
have a horror of using him... like the head of Medusa 4 ". In truth the ascendancy of the leaders will
not only depend on their eloquence or their authority, but on their points of support
extra parliamentary: armed forces, press, popular societies. Many will change clans according to the
state of forces, so we are wasting our time when we pride ourselves on defining groups ideologically as
if they were not changing their social name.
It is typical that a Girondin, like Louvet de Couvray, distinguishes in his memoirs four parties within
the Convention: that of the Feuillants (according to him, led by Lafayette and the Austrians); that of the
Cordeliers (where he places Philippe d'Orléans, Danton and Robespierre and Marat); that of the
Jacobins (with Condorcet, Roland, Brissot and the Girondins); and, finally, the court party.
For the author of Faublas, the Mountain absorbed only a "hundred individuals" who should not be
classified as Jacobins, that is to say "on the left", one would say today, but far right. Indeed, speaking of
the Girondin manifesto, Louvet presents it as that of the republicans armed for the National Convention
against its oppressors, against the royalist authors of May 31, and who held these nocturnal meetings
in Charenton, where it was a question of raising the throne on the corpses of the 22, of the 73, of the
appellants, and of three large quarters of the Assembly; against the royalists who instructed their
commissioners to go and tell us that if we persisted in our resistance, they would throw little Capet at
5
our legs. .
We shall see later what one can think of the intrigue denounced.
Moreover, certain Girondins appearing before the court declared themselves to be mountain dwellers.
Thus, as they were not distributed over a hemicycle, but over a rectangle, Vigée went so far as to say
6
that, if he sat on the right, it was because he was deaf in his left ear. .
Finally, the assembly of the Convention seemed so shapeless that after 9 Thermidor, an intelligence
agent like Mallet du Pan would find there 50 Jacobins (mountain dwellers), 150 moderates (dantonists),
230 federalists (Girondins and royalists) and 200 intermediaries (or “chameleons”). This is a free
estimate, you will say, but let's not forget that on October 5, 1792, that is to say two weeks after its
opening, the Convention officially had only 113 registered deputies. among the Jacobins; and still it is
necessary to include in the number all the Brissotins. In short, whether it was at the opening of this
legislature or at its closing, the majority largely fell to the undecided, to those of the "swamp", who were
not sure which pilot to embark with. From the first to the last day, it is a question of parliamentary support
and governmental authority that arises, much more than a struggle between parties.
Mathiez went to great lengths to show what distinguished the Girondins from the Montagnards. After
admitting that it was not a question of a party, the somewhat Marxist historian wanted to take “social
concerns” as a criterion, but he hardly managed to answer them. Because, he must recognize that the
Montagnards “were no more socialist than the Girondins”. So what to refer to? The opposition between
free thought and respect for religious tradition? But Albert Mathiez quite honestly recalls that the
Girondins claimed to be more anticlerical than the friends of Robespierre. Won't they denounce the
Christmas masses celebrated in Paris in 1792 as a "maritime-religious" riot? As for separatism, Brissot,
in his journal, will first present
the Vendeans as the “secret emissaries of the Montagnards, agents of Pitt” (issue of March 19).
In short, all the active elements of the Convention will want to impose themselves as ultra-republicans, as men of
the left.
As parliamentary groups are not homogeneous or closed, human relations will often have been very cordial.
And the one who was to deliver an indictment against the Girondins, Saint-Just, had not only never argued with
them but had benefited from their praise. After his speech on economic policy, Brissot wrote in Le Patriote of
November 29: Saint-Just treats the question thoroughly, and in all political and moral respects; he displays wit,
warmth and philosophy, and honors his talent by defending freedom. Better, six months later, Vergniaud in his
speech on the Constitution, distinguishing "the organic part of the government and the moral institutions which
make government loved" will deplore that in all the projects, except that of Saint-Just , one is limited to the first part,
which for him is equivalent to taking "men for automatons", and believing "to be able to govern them with the laws
of mechanics".
However, appointed to the Committee of Public Safety, Saint-Just will speak out against his two laudators.
In its search for a majority, the Convention will never know euphoria, but immediately the quarrel of people and
clans. The parliamentary atmosphere, “this part of the history of the sessions that is not found in the Moniteur and
the “logotachigraphe”, Camille Desmoulins evoked it quite brutally:
Are they not facts that, from the first days of the Convention, by dint of tactics, by forcing us, by continual attacks,
to think of our own defence, by expelling us from the tribune, we had studied each other to paralyze the republicans,
and to make it impossible for us to do anything for the people ? Isn't it a fact that, especially during the first four
months, the presidents, who were all devoted to the faction, never allowed us to speak; and that the men who
twenty times complained that they were not free, that they were constantly interrupted and demanded that the
minutes be sent to the departments to prove that they were dominated by the tribunes, are the same ones who
more than once indulged in the most unworthy violence, even raising sticks, drawing sabers and coming to swoop
down on the Mountain, and who always seated in a triple row, on the benches around the rostrum, do not did not
allow us to approach them without being assailed by their interruptions, their vociferations, to the point that it took a
chest of stentor to cover only their insults.
Barely entered the Assembly, Saint-Just had been able to measure to what extent a Parliament can provoke
and undergo a movement that goes beyond it: on September 22, he had seen introduced in the greatest disorder,
and as if by breaking and entering, the one that we hardly dared to hope: the Republic.
Unforgettable, this session where more than half of the deputies were missing! The siege was about to be lifted
when Collot d'Herbois rushed to the tribune:
“One moment, there is one thing you cannot put off, it is the abolition of royalty. »
General stupor. Some deputies ask for a serious deliberation, many head for the exit, persuaded that Collot's
intervention will have no effect. But they reckoned without Bishop Grégoire who comes to bring his fiery support.
“Certainly, none of you will propose to preserve in France the disastrous institution of kings. I
request therefore that by a solemn law, you consecrate, on the spot, the abolition. »
About fifty deputies rose to support the proposal. But around Saint-Just, neither Robespierre nor Danton, none
of the "old men of the Mountain" as they were called, moved. It hadn't been that long since Robespierre had been
sneering: “The Republic? The monarchy ? I only know the social question. And then, all these disciples of
Rousseau, and Saint-Just like the others, thought that the Republic only suited small countries, that in France it
would not last.
However, when we talked about organizing a debate, Grégoire jumped up:
“Hey, what is there to discuss? Kings are in moral order, what monsters
are in the physical order, and the history of kings is only the martyrology of nations. »
How to go against? No one flinched publicly. But Camille Desmoulins will affirm in his last writing: “There are
witnesses that the great Republican Saint-Just said at the beginning of the Convention: Ah ! they want the Republic,
it will cost them 7 .»
And that is how, in this Assembly where the quorum was not reached, in two minutes, the
Republic was proclaimed by sitting and standing.
2. FEAR AND ARMED FORCE.
Moreover, embarrassed, the Montagnards advanced only on tiptoe. They were feared by considering them as
the instigators of the September 2 massacres. When it came to electing the first president of the Assembly,
Robespierre received only 6 votes, while 235 voted in favor of Pétion. And not a single Montagnard found a place
in the office of the Parliament.
They were also feared for what they could do tomorrow, relying on the Hôtel de Ville and the armed forces of
the capital, even on Philippe d'Orléans. And, on the side of the Mountain, it was feared that the Rolandists,
Brissotins and Girondins, by tirelessly pushing for the development of international war, would use it against the
elected Parisians and their friends.
In short, both sides of the Assembly suffered from the lack of solid points of support. And
anguish, the obsession with holes to be filled were to be the bad advisers of the Convention.
We knew better what we condemned than what we wanted.
The position of Roland and his friends, however, was not to be bad at the start of the legislature. Not only had
Pache taken the portfolio of Servan, Garat that of Danton, who had opted for the function of deputy, while Roland
retained the leadership of the government,
but soon Dr. Chavabon, a friend of Brissot, replaced Pétion at the Hôtel de Ville. Holding all the major levers
of control, they could assert themselves through a specific policy. Nevertheless, before the big problems of
the hour, they will make pass the opposition. Suddenly, instead of reassuring the undecided center, they will
worry them.
For six months, the Convention will wonder whether to surround the Assembly with an armed guard
particular, without ever being able to get along.
At the opening of Parliament, Roland returns to this theme which is dear to him, first in the gallery, then in
a letter to the deputies. Clumsily, he writes, or has his wife write: "Paris must be reduced to the eighty-third
portion of influence." »
As early as September 24, Buzot, with Vergniaud and Lanjuinais, launched the offensive. The lawyer from
Évreux is only thirty-two years old, but he is already an old politician. Deputy of the Third Estate to the
Constituent Assembly, leader of the Legislative Assembly, Buzot has a sharp verb and displays advanced ideas.
His anticlericalism goes as far as anti-Christianity. Not only did he write to the King for his confessor, but he
reproached Robespierre, among the Jacobins, for using expressions that were too "deistic".
At the end of the year (December 3), before the fate of Louis XVI was determined, he had a decree voted
punishing with death “anyone who would attempt to restore royalty”.
A friend of Madame Roland, he resumed the old idea of his clan, by filing a plan for the guard of the
Convention, whose men would be taken from all the departments. Brutally, he apostrophizes the assembly:
“Do they think we are being made slaves of certain deputies from Paris? But, the next day, Danton, recalling
that "France must be an indivisible whole", rises against the ideas which he qualifies as "absurd". To save
his project, Buzot had recourse to the old process: he asked for it to be sent back to committee.
On behalf of the latter, his project emerged fifteen days later (October 8). Nevertheless, prudent, the
Assembly does not take a decision. On the 19th, Buzot and Barbaroux went back on the attack so that the
debate could take place, but in vain. The strong reactions of the Parisians worry the deputies. The project
was not only criticized by Robespierre in the letter to his constituents, and by the moderate Prudhomme, in
his great newspaper Les Révolutions à Paris, but, on the 20th, by forty-eight Parisian sections.
It was there that the young member of the Convention, Saint-Just, made his debut with the Jacobins.
Sentencingly, but with courtesy, on October 22, he apostrophized Buzot about his report: “The principle is
common to us; our consequences differ. Cleverly, he invokes the opportunity: You have to let the crime ripen
and I'm waiting for it. If he agrees with Buzot to consider useful a “moral bond” between the Parliament and
the nation, on the other hand he thinks that the force is not a good means. Do you believe in frightening the
agitators ? On the contrary, you will provide them with new pretexts for agitation. To use force is to imply that
anarchy is not in the people but in those who reign or dispute authority. To force, he opposes energy which
he defines as a
“constant, pure and impregnable wisdom in its designs”, imprinting “of itself on the wicked a character of deformity
which the people grasps”.
Inexperienced, sincere, Saint-Just wishes – as on the verge of his death – a social state where the good
and evil are easily distinguished.
Making contact with the political world is not, for him, without disgust. Fifteen days later, on November 4, going
back to the tribune of the Jacobins, he affirms: The cause of our misfortunes is in our political situation; when
governments are dissolved, they fill with rogues, like the corpses of rodent worms.
The Rolandists and the Girondins, unable to find a parliamentary majority to vote for their
armed forces project, come back to a few ideas, which they have also been dragging around for a few months.
The first is the retreat to the provinces of the Assembly. Barbaroux deposits a text of decree stipulating that
"when the national representation will have been degraded in the city where the legislative body holds its meetings,
this city will lose the right to possess the legislative body and all the establishments which depend on it".
Exhibiting such an intention was hardly adroit. Because, this kind of operation can succeed in the conspiracy
(the 18 Brumaire, for example) or in the war, to escape the invader, but one cannot, in a nation like France, rise
against the capital for partisan reasons.
However, the Girondins will often repeat this refrain.
Their other idea is to bring up autonomous provincial troops, like the Marseillais, by endeavoring to get their
hands on them. However, increasing the anarchy of the armed forces is hardly defensible. Also, on November 10,
a deputy from the center, who had many Girondin friends, Letourneur, came, in the name of the War Committee,
to present a decree which placed the National and Federal Guards at the disposal of the Minister of War. This
minister, Pache, elected by the Assembly on October 3, comes from the offices of Roland but he leans towards
the left. Also, the ultra-Girondins, Buzot and Barbaroux, fight the project, which finally is not voted.
Four months later, the question will be asked again, in particularly serious circumstances, by Choudieu the
moderate Montagnard. The latter may be surprised at the arrival in Paris of volunteers from Loire-Inférieure,
“whose minister does not even know where they are”. But, the same Buzot and Barbaroux will oppose the
Minister's right of inspection and control.
Finally, the Convention will adopt a white negro text, proposed by the Girondin Boyer Fonfrède, which decrees
that the troops will return to their department of origin, but without setting the deadline.
Some Girondins perhaps considered this operation as a last chance.
3. PERSONAL DISPUTES.
At the same time as they had vainly shaken the Convention to try to wrest from it a protective force, the
rulers had tried, no less clumsily, to bring down the leaders of the left. While the latter stood fairly quiet,
anxious to throw a light veil over the blood of September 2, the Girondins, always the same, provoked the
leaders of the Mountain. As early as September 25, Merlin-Lasource, Rebecquy and Barbaroux denounced
Robespierre as a “dictator” by evoking the conversation we know. A month later, Louvet, the author of Les
Amours de Faublas, director of Roland's newspaper, pronounced a great indictment against the man from
Arras, on the same theme as his friend Barbaroux. But the orator, with his well-balanced movement,
seduced rather than convinced. A witness like Lacretelle assures us that Robespierre smiled when he
saw ascending to the tribune, as accuser, a man who owed his celebrity to frivolous and licentious works.
Throughout this last week of October and the beginning of November, Paris was in turmoil. And Saint
Just was not the only one to worry. According to Legendre, federates marched in the streets singing:
The head of Marat, Robespierre and Danton

Ey of all those who will defend them
O gué!
For his part, Tallien speaks of a demonstration to the cries of Vive Roland !
It was in this stormy atmosphere that, on November 4, the debate on the denunciation brought by
Louvet against Robespierre opened. As much as he could be surly in improvisation, he knew how to be
an Olympian in his prepared interventions. His speech was a generous plea for calm. Let's bury these
despicable maneuvers (...) I wanted to delete the offensive part of my justification (...) I renounce just
revenge. And, to conclude: May I, at the expense of my life and my very reputation, contribute with you to
the glory and happiness of our common fatherland.
Saint-Just was listed as a speaker to intervene in favor of Robespierre. But he could not mount the
rostrum, because Barbaroux and Louvet came to disturb and stop the debate. The Girondins won nothing.
Faced with the relentlessness of Barbaroux and Louvet, Parliament was asked whether they should be
given the floor before those who were registered. By a very large majority the Convention replied: no.
Suddenly, Barbaroux descended from the platform to speak at the bar reserved for delegations from
outside. We laughed, we asked for a motion of censure. And finally, in the hubbub, the session was
adjourned, leaving the last word to Robespierre, while his opponents left ridiculed.
All the major press agree on this point. Not only does Prudhomme record Robespierre's victory, but
Brissot's and Condorcet's newspaper, Le Patriote français, believes that making Robespierre "the reproach
of dictatorship was awkwardness, and the proposal of ostracism a
nonsense”. It was, adds the optimistic editor, "the club of Hercules to crush a flea which will disappear
before winter."
In the meantime, it was rather the prestige of those in power that remained affected, from this month
of November. In the letter to his constituents, Robespierre could say of Roland: This minister has made
more libels than acts of government, he has spent on slanderous posters treasures which would have
been enough to feed a hundred thousand needy families. Its reports to the Convention, its proclamations
are only defamatory pamphlets.
And then, as Camille Desmoulins notes in his diary, "a third party was formed at the Convention",
which brought together the "phlegmatics" like Pétion, Barère, Rabaud, Condorcet, Lacroix and
Vergniaud. For the pamphleteer “all these citizens are real agitators who placed themselves between
Brissot and Robespierre, between Danton and Roland, like the Abbé d'Espagnac between the rise and
the fall 8 ”. Along the same lines, Anacharsis Clootz publishes his pamphlet with the significant title: Ni
Marat, ni Roland.
These noisy personal quarrels, this permanent crisis of the government annoyed the popular societies
of the provinces. In a motion, the "Friends of the Republic of Auxerre" apostrophized the deputies:
9. »
"Take care, legislators, much less of you and much more of us
One question remained: the fate of Louis XVI.
4. THE FATE OF LOUIS XVI.
On November 13, Saint-Just slowly climbed the few steps leading to the tribune.
For the first time he was going to address the Convention, break the silence. For three months he had
collected his strength, observing the parliamentary ferment, listening to the cries of Paris, informing
himself of the turmoil of national life. Now the time to dive had come.
Saint-Just remained perhaps a few moments without saying a word, his throat a little constricted
under his high tie. So many men had succeeded each other on this platform! The waves of so many
words had battered these walls so much that their stones should have seemed corroded and oozing
with humidity. In this same room of the Manege, the Constituents and the deputies of the Legislative
had poured out their anger, their hopes: and then, floodgates had fallen, oblivious for some, murderous
for others. One of the constituents with the most stunts, the most applauded, Barnave, today languished
in the depths of a prison, awaiting death. On the other hand, other parliamentarians from previous
assemblies had returned to sit on the same benches. These were familiar with the poor acoustics of the
Manège (the vaults muffled the speaker's voice but amplified the murmurs of the audience) they knew
the pitfalls concealed by the dimensions of the room: too long and not wide enough, preventing
distribution the benches in a semicircle, leaving places out of sight of the president.
Saint-Just had to overcome the conditions of the place, with a vocal organ that some considered "veiled" and
deafened by the passion contained.
He also had to master the circumstances of the moment. At the club, his speech too rich in incidents and
questions raised, had earned him, assures the Journal des Jacobins, "less than deserved applause", that is to say
a success of esteem but not of efficiency.
This time, it was necessary to stand out, to hit the center of the target.
He attacked, without oratorical preamble, slicing to the heart a debate that dragged on rather painfully.
I undertake, Citizens, to prove that the King can be judged; that Morrisson's opinion, which retains inviolability,
and that of the committee, which wants him to be judged as a citizen, are equally false, and that the King must be
judged according to principles which are neither one nor the same. other.
There was no lack of impertinence in this young man of twenty-five who started by sending back to back – and
with what height! – the two opinions which had divided the Assembly until then.
But the unusualness of such a claim had a primary virtue: it commanded attention.
Oh, it was not a rhetorical device such as one finds in so many parliamentary speeches which, after a brilliant
opening, unravel into vague, almost conciliatory ones.
Matured for weeks, tense to the extreme, the speech took Louis XVI in a tight, implacable logic which unrolled
and rolled up like the black rings of a gigantic snake slowly choking its prey to the point of making it invisible.
Under the argument of Saint-Just, the man that was Louis XVI disappeared, there remained only the King, the
royalties: skeletons, abstractions.
One cannot reign innocently. If the formula was going to prove powerful, if, the next day, it was going to run
Paris, it is because, striking illegitimacy any monarchy, it went beyond the dilemma in which public opinion was
floundering. Cromwell was no more a usurper than Charles I. Yes, any monarch whatsoever was to be considered
a usurper with regard to the true sovereign, the people. Any monarch, by virtue of personal power, placed himself
outside the law, outside the social contract and could not be judged as a simple citizen. Therefore, only one choice
remained possible: to recognize the principles of royalty and, consequently, to respect the inviolability of the
Monarch, or to refuse these principles and to consider their representative as a “foreign barbarian”, an enemy.
Coldly, he dropped: For me, I see no middle ground: this man must reign or die.
In all this, no disgorgement of hatred. He had neither the tone nor the manners. Unlike a Marat who had always
harbored a violent and almost feminine antipathy towards the very person of Louis XVI, he, a year earlier, had
neither so misunderstood nor so badly judged him. In the Spirit of the Revolution, he had written: Louis reigned as
a private man; hard and frugal
for himself alone, abrupt and weak with others, because he thought the good, he thought he was doing it. He
showed heroism in little things, softness in big ones; expelled M. de Montbarey from the ministry for having secretly
given a sumptuous meal, saw blood-
cold his whole court plundering the finances, or rather saw nothing, for his sobriety had only made hypocrites;
sooner or later, however, he knew everything, but he did not like to pass for an observer more than to act as a
king.
This was not the portrait of a great criminal, but of a poor man unfit for the office of power, drawn in clawed
arabesques, according to the style of the memoirists of the great century. Now such art was out of season. From
the elegances of Fragonard, we passed to the brutalities of David. From the beautiful spirit to the Roman virilities.
In the new universe, Louis XVI no longer had a place. You had to forget him, erase from yourself the image of this
prisoner with a gray complexion, puffy cheeks, aged eyes. All sentimentality had to be resisted, despised.
Big setbacks and big culprits interest little souls, he had thrown, scornfully, at the Jacobins. And, today: We
seek to stir up pity: we will soon buy tears: we will do everything to interest us, to corrupt us.
That he had changed his opinion of the King since 1791, after Varennes, after August 10, mattered little. What
counted for him, what had essentially changed in France, was the regime.
The spell was cast, Destiny fixed. We had to draw the consequences. One world was dead, another was about
to be born. Henceforth, living Louis XVI represented only a ghost, the still formidable symbol, the statue of the
Commander whom pity and adoration could revive.
So, no pity, especially no religious feelings.
One day, perhaps, men, as far removed from our prejudices as we are from those of the Vandals, will be
astonished at the barbarism of a century when it was something religious to judge a tyrant... We will one day be
surprised that in the eighteenth century we were less advanced than in the time of Caesar: there the tyrant was
immolated in the middle of the Senate, with no other formalities than twenty-five dagger strokes and no other law
than the freedom of Rome.
But – was he aware of it? – just as immoralism constitutes a morality, this irreligiosity remained very religious.
It removed the judgment of Louis XVI from civil law only to make it a ritual sacrifice, a generative sacrifice...
Twenty-five stabs...
Quite a number of those who listened to him had known, on certain evenings, the room where two characters
were received, dressed in black, wearing an embroidered skull on their breastplate. They brandished a dagger on
which was engraved: "Conquer or die." It was hot and, in an oppressive silence, the midshipman advanced
blindfolded, his hands covered with bloody gloves. They threatened to pierce his heart, they terrorized him and
finally they granted him life only if he avenged the father of the masons by killing his assassin. In a sort of cave, a
voice cried out: "Strike everything that will resist you, enter, defend yourself and avenge your master: it is at this
price that you will be elected." And the aspirant struck a motionless body in the darkness, and the blood flowed,
and a head rolled at his feet. He could grab her by the hair to show her to his brothers: he was worthy of receiving
the "grade of vengeance" of Freemasonry. He was "chosen".
Undoubtedly, only a mannequin had been sacrificed surrounded by intestines filled with blood, but
it was a symbol. And like all symbols, this one had several meanings. The father of the Freemasons
who had to be avenged was both Hiram, mythical architect of the Temple of Solomon, and Jacques
Molay, master of the Templars, burned alive by Philippe le Bel... And, how not to think about it? , while
Louis XVI found himself locked up in the Temple, a bastion of the order that his ancestor had
exterminated?...
Twenty-five stabs...
Yes, once proclaimed, to be strong, the Republic had to dare to bring down the old gods, and
act quickly to deprive them of any possibility of resuscitating hearts.
Unceremoniously, he had already warned the Jacobins of what awaited
them: Do not let yourself go too far in this return to justice and nature, which follows the fall of
tyrants, in these projections which soon die out: virtue marries crime in times of anarchy, and that's
where corruption pauses, amazed at its own results. Have the courage to hear these things: they are
less fatal than your sleep.
Today, like yesterday, like tomorrow, he fought against the "sleepers", he tore up the pillows of
blind optimism, he seized with his bare hands, without worrying about soiling them with blood and
mud, everything that hindered the company.
Straightening up, he addressed his colleagues in the Convention directly:
The same men who are going to judge Louis have a republic to found: those who attach any
importance to the just punishment of a king will never found a republic. Among you, the subtlety of
minds and characters is a great obstacle to freedom : we embellish all errors, and, most often, the
truth is only a seduction of our taste.
Sweeping away in this way the precepts of Justice, the laws of Nature, after having celebrated
them so much, pushing towards death a being who one knows to be incapable rather than criminal,
showing oneself to be pitiless after having written quivering pages of emotion against the death
penalty, all this could pass for the sign of an unbridled ambition, ready for all the outbiddings of
opportunism. (Especially since Saint-Just claimed not to be lacking in ambition.) However, the desire
to achieve would not have inspired such frankness. We are here beyond cynicism. Because, cynicism
consists, commonly, in admitting the use of means condemned by morality. While here, it consisted
above all in rejecting individual appeals: finesse of mind and character, concern to be fair, to conform to the apparent t
It was an invitation to no longer listen to yourself, to break all the ties woven by prejudice and the
“seductions of taste”. A renunciation of all individuality.
Virtue espouses crime in times of anarchy.
And, deep down, he thought that the sacrificer must be confused with the sacrificed. Their faces
had to disappear, depersonalized, carried away by something higher, burned in the black sun of death.
In the end, the absolute of the Terror was not without analogy with that of the inquisition.
In either case, the removal of a human life loses all value. “No more meaning,” says Hegel, than cutting
off a head of cabbage. In the name of the Lord here; in the name of historical becoming there, this body
loaded with dreams and blood, with pain and hopes, it must be abolished, thrown out of the condition of
men; that he is neither a fellow man nor a brother, in order to be able to proclaim: Nothing in common
between this being and me 10 .
For the minds of this end of the century, taking such a distance with regard to man, and particularly the
King, imposed a path with a very sharp bend. All these "active citizens" had been lulled by the affections
of Greuze, the complaints of Rousseau; they must have woken up, after having dreamed of the gentle
savages. Undoubtedly, Roman humanism counterpointed these delicacies. Besides, these generosities
had been too well worn, too fashionable not to fade into artifice.
But if the factitious side of a fashion – especially intellectual – becomes apparent when it begins to fade,
it does not disappear without leaving traces like a make-up that is difficult to remove as it has impregnated
the skin.
Collective feelings are easily reversed, but not without throwing temporary trouble into souls. Thus, the
first session of the revolutionary tribunal – it was the judgment of poor Cazotte – was punctuated by the
tears of the audience and the sobs of the jurors. The judge, reading to the old author of the Diable lame
his death warrant, pitifully invited him "to pity the fate" of those who had decided on his expedition to
another world.
However, it will not take long for the eyes to remain dry, and for any exchange of pity to be banished.
But what will strangle these hearts, already desiccated by an abuse of conventional outpourings, will be
fear.
It was not yet on the agenda in these last months of 1792. And the head of a man, especially haloed
by royal prestige, weighed heavily in the hands of those who were to determine his fate.
Saint-Just must have experienced this while writing his speeches in his room at the Hotel des Etats-
Unis, Place Gaillon. All around, the rooms and corridors rustled with the frivolous chirping of the wives of
MM. the deputies of the Gironde. Material wealth, notoriety of the husbands, everything would combine to
make life appear serene to them. Idle and curious, they spied on this elegant and well-bred young man.
They were disappointed, it is said, but no less bewildered perhaps, when they learned that the stranger
was sitting on the benches of the Mountain. In any case, the landlady, for her part, took enough pleasure
in contemplating her boarder, to draw a very suitable pastel of him, visible today at the Carnavalet Museum.
This easy life, darkened neither by worries nor responsibilities, called for happiness: it invited people to
enjoy life, without worrying about the fate of others, except to show them this indulgence, based on
indifference or of skepticism, which is found among the Epicureans. But, for the young conventional, it
would have been another existence... And, already, he found himself on the stage for a tragedy.
Leaving, Saint-Just hardly had to walk to visit Robespierre at the Duplays, any more than to go to
the Convention. But his habit of long walks through the countryside pushed him haphazardly onto the
poor cobblestones of the capital.
The streets exposed to him, if need be, the wounds, the perils of the moment. He felt there beating
the pulse of the nation and of this fragile Republic. When I walk in the middle of this great city, he will
soon declare, I moan about the evils that await him, and that await all cities, if we do not prevent the
11.
total ruin of our finances It was his
obsession major: the precariousness of the present state. There was enough to be seized with
anguish: apart from the first victories of the republican armies, astonishment of Europe, one saw
everywhere only anarchy, misery and robbery. How to straighten this?
The authority of a State is indivisible. This conviction anchored Saint-Just in intransigence. The
nascent Republic seemed to him too uncertain in its existence to be able to come to terms with what
was opposed to it. It was all or nothing.
5. THE INVIOLABILITY OF THE PARLIAMENTARY.
But the presence of Philippe d'Orléans on the benches of the Mountain gave meaning to the
question of regime and to the judgment of Louis XVI. Some deputies of the government majority,
fearing Philippe-Égalité, considered the Mountain to be clandestine Orléanist property. Others, without
believing it so much, thought that there was a good pretext for disarming this Jacobin opposition.
The latter being supported by the popular masses, an effort was made to put it in a situation which
gave it a reactionary face.
Again, it was Madame Roland's friend, the fiery Buzot, who led the operation.
As early as December 4, he proposed to the Convention to decree the death penalty for anyone
who attempted to restore royalty “under any denomination whatsoever”. And, as the Assembly is
agitated before such a proposal, he asks for a roll-call vote, so that everyone can recognize his own.
But, Philippeaux and Bazire, hostile to the project, to turn it suggest that the Convention devotes itself
first "without stopping" to the judgment of the King. On the mountain left, the deputies are not all of
the same opinion. Un Chabot approves of Buzot's proposal, while Lejeune denounces it as a "motion
of anarchy". For a Girondin like Guadet, these reservations, this hostility provide a key; they reveal
the intention "to substitute one despotism for another."
The reference to the voters being able to play in both directions, five days later, Guadet tries to use
it against Marat (still denounced as a servant of Philippe d'Orléans). Supporting a motion from the
Bouches-du-Rhône called for the recall of Marat, on December 9, the deputy suggested a decree
stipulating that "the primary assemblies will meet to decide on the recall of the
members who have betrayed the country". In a first movement, most of the deputies rose to show their
approval. But there are reservations. The Orléanist Manuel draws attention, not without effectiveness, to
the disorder that the continual renewal of the Convention would cause. And, once again, the session ends
in confusion.
On December 15, Buzot finds a new bias, with the draft decree on the organization of civil servants in
conquered countries. He proposes an amendment excluding those of former administrations and "all
individuals ci-devant noble". Suddenly, Danton's friends are agitated.
Camille Desmoulins does not hesitate to shout: It was the nobles who made the revolution of the Belgians
and you would like to exclude them! As the Montagnard Bazire wants to intervene against, and as he fails
to make himself heard, Barbaroux launches ironically: I ask that Bazire be heard, because he will be
curious to see how he will defend the nobility and the clergy.
Finally, in the tumult, Buzot takes the piece. Mountain men dare not
act as protectors of the aristocracy.
Also, the next day, excited by success, Buzot plays ball in the head: "I ask, he says, that Philippe and
his sons go and carry elsewhere than in the Republic the misfortune of being born near the throne. »
As many deputies asked for the adjournment of this delicate question, Louvet, in favor of immediate
discussion, went up to the rostrum to read a speech based on a long quotation from Brutus against the
Tarquins. For the erotic writer, it is necessary to keep Louis XVI, wife, sister and children, but to expel the
rest of the family from France. A Montagnard, Breard, asks that the King be judged before deciding on his
parents, but Lanjuinais shouts: How were the popular elections in Paris made, the last deputy of which
happens to be Equality ? Under the popular axe, by the orders of those who were to share the protectorate
destined for him.
Chabot protests. He recalls that Robespierre, far from having d'Orléans elected, opposed him at the
time of the elections. And, not only does it seem to him inappropriate to take such a decision, but, in his
opinion, a question of principle arises: It is necessary to know if you can reject from your midst a
representative of the people.
While the Assembly remained divided between supporters of immediate discussion and supporters of
adjournment, Thuriot de Larosière, a lawyer from Maine, who leaned more towards Robespierre, intervened
so that Saint-Just could be heard: "He told me announced that he had new ideas. »
The intervention of the young deputy is brief. It is an improvised response to Louvet de Couvray's
speech:
Brutus drove out the Tarquins to ensure the freedom of Rome; but here, I don't know if the Bourbons are
not being driven out to make room for other Tarquins. Rome had laws; Rome had Brutus, I don't see
anything here... At this moment they affect to bind d'Orléans to the judgment of the King, to save him, or
palliate his judgment. I ask that the Constitution Committee present, between now and the judgment of the
King, the rights of man and the constitutional act of the Republic, and that the Orleans family withdraw the next day.
Coming later, Moreau considers Saint-Just's opinion to be ill-founded: “He fears, he says, that the Tarquins will be
expelled only to make room for others; I don't see that as a reason to keep them all. »
This mediocre response does not deprive Saint-Just's intervention of its effects. It is the direction of the state, the
composition of the government that is in question. From the dynastic crisis, we pass to the ministerial crisis.
Merlin (de Thionville) continues by asking for an organization of the executive power, because, he says, “the
executive power becomes a stumbling block for us. A minister is favored by one party, a minister is favored by the
other”.
And Dunem, more brutally: The main cause of the divisions is Roland. I ask right now
let him come out of the ministry.
Then, Albite: Since you launch ostracism against the Orleans family, I also ask for ostracism
against Roland.
Dunem: Roland is a party leader.

So, a man from the centre, from the marshes, Barère, who was a great Orléanist, intervened very curiously to
propose a disjunction: that the mode of renewal of the ministry be sent back for study to the Constitution Committee,
but that we decide immediately against d'Orléans.
Desmoulins tries to lift, as a butcher, an amendment stipulating that Philippe-Égalité should not leave France until
the Convention has found him a country “where he can retire in safety”.
As the Assembly did not decide, Thuriot resumed Saint-Just's theme, but with the proper names of the moment; It
could happen that Roland and Pache return to the ministry. It takes a measure to prevent them.
Thereupon the disagreement soured. We argue to get on the platform. We vote on the adjournment, which is
rejected.
Barère insists against Orléans: Saying that we can reject another individual in the same way
clothed with the same representation, that is what I deny.
This denial seems unconvincing to many. Choudieu, after declaring that he was not a member of the Orleans party,
adds: The Assembly has no right to drive out from its midst a member vested with national sovereignty.
Finally, the conclusion of the debate is postponed for forty-eight hours.

Buzot missed his case and led Parliament down the wrong path.
On the other hand, for Saint-Just, it is rather a success.
That evening, at the Jacobins, Robespierre dealt with the question with his usual suppleness. After approving
Louvet's motion and declaring that he would have voted for it if he had been present in the Assembly, he affirmed
that, in his opinion, the patriots hostile to the decree had never had any connection with the house of 'Orléans, while
many of those who had voted against - such as Pétion - were known
for their good relationship with Philippe-Égalité. It is, he concludes, that it was a matter of a carefully prepared
maneuver with the Louvets and others (had they not read written speeches?): the purpose of this motion was "to
drive out of the Convention the best patriots”. After the dismissal of Orleans, it would be "easy for them to have the
true friends of the people dismissed." Of course, after him, Marat pronounced in the same direction.
On December 19, the debate resumed in the Convention. And, this time, Robespierre intervenes. Rising against
this manner "of enervating national sovereignty", he said: We had pushed the fear of kings so far as to oppose the
election of a representative of the people whom principles force us to defend today. .
On both sides of the Assembly, voices were heard in favor of adjournment: Thuriot, Lequinot, Sillery, Pétion,
Kersaint, so different in tendency, agreed on this point. A Lanjuinais in vain insisted on the necessity of excluding
d'Orléans, the adjournment was voted "almost unanimously".
However, at the office of the Convention, there was no hesitation in burying the minutes and acting as if a
decree banishing the Bourbons had been voted. The process, a little big, did not go unnoticed. The next day,
Thuriot denounced the rigging and demanded that Louvet, office secretary, be censured. Another young member
of the office was compromised in the affair: Saint Just penholders were too numerous for him to "have time to
12.
He asked to explain himself: if he had signed the decree, it was because the official papers submitted to his
collate them."
Eventually, the Orleans case was dropped. But, as Michelet said, taking up the thesis of the revocability of
deputies, the Girondins had signed their death. Rulers who sing of violence without being able to exercise it always
unleash it against them.
The idea of revocability had taken shape so well that, as early as December 25, an intriguing agitator
as Chabot invoked against Marat:
You have decreed the death penalty against anyone who would dare to propose the restoration of kingship or
call a ruler over the nation; well, I've come to denounce a journalist who calls this leader: it's Marat.
But the accuser found himself a week later – on January 6 – denounced as another Marat in an address in
Finistère. For the Breton department: The Marats, the Robespierres, the Dantons, the Chabots, the Bazires, the
Merlins and their accomplices: these are the anarchists, these are the real counter-revolutionaries.
As this invocation of the Revolution against the Mountain recalled all the noisy interventions of Buzot, Barbaroux
and others, Marat asked for the address to be referred "to its source: Madame Roland 's boudoir ".
They uttered howls, they came to insults; Barbaroux said it was a

"revolt against the majority of the Convention", and Robespierre could not speak...
6. THE END OF THE MONARCHY.
On December 27, 1792, Saint-Just returned to the rostrum to emphasize the alternative: "If Louis XVI
is innocent, the people are guilty” and he recalled the stake:
This day will decide the Republic, it is dead, and it is all over, if the tyrant remains unpunished. The
enemies of the public good reappear, they talk to each other, they meet, they hope: tyranny picks up its
debris, as a reptile picks up its stumps.
This pitiless rigor Saint-Just did not exercise without effort. In his first speech, he made a point of
excluding the very personality of Louis XVI to consider only the monarchical principle. But, since then,
the prisoner of the Temple had come to defend himself at the bar of the Convention, without arrogance,
but not without nobility, like someone who preserves in a hopeless decline, something of the majesty to
which the supreme honors lend themselves. have accustomed. The haughty, courteous but sad tone of
his replies brought out the misfortune which overwhelmed him better than if the words had been vigorous
and incisive. Many hesitated. Some out of interest, others out of sensitivity. Leading to death a man
already without strength, expressing neither hatred nor resentment, victim of his birth like others of their
temperament, the job was hardly pleasant.
This debate of conscience, Saint-Just did not conceal it: Everything that was said to save the
guilty, there is no one who has not said so to himself here in a spirit of uprightness and probity.
He seemed to speak as much to convince himself as to convince his audience. This effort to control
the reflexes of sensitivity, he had already made it a month earlier, but he was starting it again, with an
increased relentlessness now that he came up against a man present, pitiful to see and to listen to. To
remove him was to distinguish him from what he appeared to be, to convince oneself of his duplicity: in
appearance a man, in truth a tyrant, that is to say an inhuman monster.
This sweetness of the monarch, he tore it like a wolf of pink silk: One did
not defy the people formerly: one does not defy you either: one oppressed with modesty; we defend
ourselves in the same way; this conduct makes you feel a compassion which involuntarily corrupts your
energy, rather than a feeling of persuasion. What is this art, or what is this prestige of great events which
makes the great culprits respected ?
But if Saint-Just drew up a severe catalog of the acts of the Monarchy contradicting the words of
"gentleness and kindness" of Louis XVI, he sprinkled his remarks with incidents, perhaps showing
hesitation but showing more surely that, for him, the real question did not lie on this ground. At one point
he declares: I do not dispute the means that Louis employed to oppress the people and bring about what
he calls good; nor do I dispute the name of master to him, although in the system of our monarchy, and
by the very admission of his grandfather, kings do not reign by law... And then, examining the conduct of
the King in the time of the Constituent Assembly, he concedes: This conduct, it must be admitted, had no
positive judge then... And, further still: I would forgive the habit of
to reign, to uncertainty, to the terror of the first storms, the dissimulation employed to preserve frightful rights,
etc.
But we touch on what most surely lost Louis XVI in the eyes of Saint-Just, when the latter declared that
the King wavered between the people and his pride, and wanted public prosperity, without wanting what
constitutes it.
Between the lines of this implacable indictment, constructed to convince, shines through the deep and
sincere feelings of the author. Saint-Just would no doubt have forgiven, in conscience, Louis XVI for reigning,
if he had governed, if he had had a policy, at the behest of intrigues, dodges, swings. We have not found in
the King's papers wise maxims to govern the rights of man even, and nothing that would allow the boldest
sophist to maintain that he had ever loved liberty.
Thus, therefore, Louis XVI was not the victim of the fatality of his birth and of his function, since he had not
fought it seriously as a statesman 13 in the direction of the revolution; he was nothing, he merged with this
fatality, he embodied it.
He embodied it, or rather he survived a principle already condemned; because, added Saint-Just, when
the bonds of trust which unite the citizens to the prince are broken and when the secret resentment of all
individuals swells the storm and produces universal commotion, the prince is already no longer: the sovereign
took over the reins.
But, why death and not simple banishment as many proposed?
Beyond the memory of Brutus evoked in his first speech, beyond even the rites of "revenge" of
Freemasonry, there was a real reason of state. Around the living person of Louis XVI crystallized forces,
hopes, which besieged the Republic on all sides. Most of the emigrants were eager to restore Louis XVI to
his throne. The volunteers of Condé's army still imagined that the Austro-Prussian coalition had no other
concern than the maintenance of the Bourbons (soon they would become disillusioned). In short, almost
everywhere in Europe, the revolutionaries were considered only happy adventurers, highwaymen whose
success could only be ephemeral. And, on the very benches of the Convention, there was no shortage of
deputies who – in the very ranks of the Mountain – hardly believed in the duration of the Republic. As always
in major political conflicts, the debate not only pitted two causes against each other – here the Monarchy and
the Republic or the King and the people – but also, more secretly, two modes of action, two temperaments.
Alongside the "hardliners" who intended to risk everything for everything, evolved politicians concerned about
their careers, careful never to alienate the strongest, always ready to sell themselves, to maneuver by playing
on two fronts that time. This last category (which reappears in all parliaments) was then to find its prototype
and its best illustration in the person of Danton.
For Saint-Just, intransigence was imposed precisely by circumstances, by the weakness of the present
state, by this invasion of France. In the midst of a united, watchful Europe, the penalty which would be
imposed on Louis XVI would necessarily take on a symbolic character. Or else she
would constitute a half-confession of weakness, of doubt about the rights and the strength of the Republic, or else it
would consecrate the new regime and its will to resist.
Also, to those who inclined towards clemency, the orator cried: Say to Europe, called in testimony: serve your kings
against us; we were rebels, have the courage to speak the truth. For him, who appealed to Europe, to posterity, the
revolution was not over, it was beginning. “Tyranny, he had thrown out, is a reed that the wind bends and which gets
up again. He asked that we not give in to any weakness. It is not without difficulty that one obtains freedom: but in the
position where we are, it is not a question of fearing, and we will know how to triumph !
Thus he concluded, in the name of collective destiny, inviting the head of a king to be thrown in defiance of Europe.
Perhaps, he did not measure all the risks nor all the consequences of this act, but certainly, he knew the meaning and
the scope of it.
All regimes have sacrificed – especially at their establishment – the men on whom an irreducible and dangerous
opposition was polarized. This remains as deplorable and devoid of any real relationship to the law as war. But history
has nothing to do here with morality. It must judge the meaning given to the capital sentence and the effect produced.
The execution of Louis XVI is at the confluence of two currents. On the one hand, it is the first time that political
purges have been given the character of public solemnity in a semi-legal setting, the first time that they have called
into question, with so much pageantry, a legitimacy accepted, long held sacred; on the other hand, with the guillotine,
it is the beginning of the mechanization of the killing (generally inspired by a humanitarian concern) which will remove
from it its ritual aspect. From a religious sacrifice, capital punishment becomes a legal, that is to say secular, sanction.
But, the day of January 21, when the voice of Louis XVI will fight against the drums of Santerre, will participate in both
spirits.
Let us remember the executions of the old regime and their cruelty. When he had been hit by Damiens' knife, Louis
XV had asked that his assailant not be killed.
Now, as we know, this assailant was executed, who was clearly mentally pathological, after having subjected him to
atrocious tortures: burns with a hot iron, pinching, sprinkling of boiling oil, pitch, sulfur and melted resin. Similarly,
under Louis XIII, Marshal de Marillac, sentenced to death for fraudulent contracts in the construction of the fortifications
of Verdun, had to wait nine o'clock for the fatal moment. The ceremony had been lengthened to pleasure, alternating
confessions, psalms, canticles, taken up in chorus by the crowd massed on the Place de Grève, confessions,
testament and toilet. It was thought that the convict would end up yelling, "Let's get it over with!" But, despite the
executioner who amused himself by repeating subtly: "He's in a hurry," the Marshal held on. He only had this
admirable word: "This death is only a steel wind, but we must reflect on the ignominy that accompanies it with all the
breaths of anguish, Cardinal de Richelieu had used to all means and, finally, of a
14
. Indeed, to humble him and pass over his soul
supreme refinement. The funeral ballet had been going on for eight hours, when a knight from the watch
came to announce to Marillac that the King had granted him his pardon: the pardon not to go to execution
in a cart. And the unfortunate marshal had to, on the scaffold, thank the sovereign for the kindness he
showed him...
Let's leave aside any sadism that could slip into such ceremonies. In the end, they were above all
haloed by the ancient prestige of human sacrifice, with all the superstitions that cling to it. The movement
which had prompted the Parisian population to fight over the spoils of the Brinvilliers is the same which,
on January 21, led the Federals to dip the point of their saber or their spear in the blood with which the
executioner had just sprinkled the boards of the scaffold. It is still a savage delirium that haunted the
individual, of whom a witness tells us that he "ran through the streets, returning from the execution...
cheeks stained with blood, with the same care that women put on their rouge. , a day of finery. His white
cravat was covered with it; he was doing it
notice to passers-by, who recoiled in disgust 15 ...”.
But, alongside this belief in the regenerating virtue of sacrificial blood – as old as the world – the death
of Louis XVI was also the subject of a parliamentary vote. And there, it was less the personality of the
King which counted than the position taken with regard to public opinion. The astonishing report left by
Sébastien Mercier, in his New Paris, vividly evokes the seventy-two hour session when the Convention
voted to condemn Louis XVI. We remember
the atmosphere:
The back of the room was transformed into a box, where ladies, in the most charming negligee, ate ice
cream, oranges, drank liqueurs; we went to greet them, we came back. The ushers, on the side of the
Mountain, played the role of opera house ushers; they could be seen at every moment opening the doors
of the reserve stands and gallantly leading there the mistresses of the d'Orléans-Égalité, caparisoned with
tricolor ribbons.
Although any sign of approval or disapproval had been forbidden, nevertheless, on the side of the
Mountain, the mother-duchess, the amazon of the Jacobist gangs, was making long “ ha ! ha! when she
didn't hear the word death ringing loudly in her ears.
The high stands intended for the people, during the days which preceded this famous judgment, were
not empty of strangers and people of all ranks: they drank wine and brandy there as if in the middle of a
tobacconist's shop. Bets were off in all the nearby cafes.
However well-known this text may be, it deserves to be quoted at greater length as it is significant.
With hindsight, Mercier compares this vote to the sound of cannon that “the wind carries in the distance”,
but which, up close, we hear less. In fact, the slow mechanism of what would today be called a “vote from
the gallery, in the first-past-the-post” engendered boredom, fatigue and backroom negotiations, which
crushed the very object of individual decision-making.
The steely wind, at first shimmering like a scythe waved in the light by the speakers, whistled mournfully
through the darkness of the Convention hall, before being accompanied by the rolling of the
drums of Santerre, which resounded like a roar in the sky at the approach of a storm.
1. Vicomte DE GROUCHY and ANTOINE GUILLOIS, The French Revolution told by a foreign diplomat (correspondence of
Bailli de Virieu, Minister Plenipotentiary of Parma), Paris, 1904.
2. CAMILLE DESMOULINS, History of the Brissotins.
3. Memoirs, t. I, p. 293.
4. GARAT, Memoirs, p. 115.
5. LOUVET DE COUVRAY, Memoirs, Paris, 1823, p. 8.
6. Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal, no . 51, p. 226.
7. Notes on the Saint-Just report.

8. Revolutions in France and Brabant.
9. Moniteur of November 23, 1792.
10. Dumas fils, who was neither a terrorist nor a politician, wrote after the extermination of the Communards: “We will say nothing of their
females, out of respect for the women they resemble when they are dead. An odious but significant phrase! One strikes out one's adversaries from
the human species, the better to condemn them. And one thinks, at the other end of the political horizon, of the letter from the carpenter Trinchard,
the day after the trial of Marie-Antoinette: "I tell you, my brother, that I was one of the jurors who judged the fierce beast that devoured a large part
of the Republic and that was called ci deven de raine. »
11. Discourse on subsistence.
12. He had been appointed secretary of the office of the Assembly when it was renewed on November 30, that is to say after his first speech.
13. Let us quote this sentence again: “The King did not govern; he was inviolable in the administration, was he in the refusal to govern? »
14. See the minutes reported by Mr. Pierre de Vaissière.

15. Letters from M. DE BERNARD, in the Lettres d'aristocrates.
CHAPTER IX
THE UNFOUND GOVERNMENT
1. PLOTS OF THE PALAIS-ROYAL.
Forty-eight hours after the death sentence of Louis XVI, an event came to shake the whole Assembly.
A notable deputy, Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, who had voted for the death of the King, had been
assassinated while dining in a restaurant in the Palais-Royal.
Immediately, those of the opposition, that is to say the Montagnards, exploit the fact (which, according
to them, shows the negligence of the ministries) by brutally questioning the parliamentary majority and
the composition of the government. Thuriot voted for the abolition of the "office of public spirit", that is
to say of propaganda, established by Roland, and Fabre d'Églantine snatched the renewal of the
committee of general security. Notable Montagnards, such as Bazire, Chabot, Legendre and Tallien will
find a place in the new committee.
1
In an interesting study on the question, Mr. Arnaud de Lestapis has established very well: on
the one hand, how Pâris, the murderer of Lepelletier, had carried out his operation in liaison, even under
the direction of the men of a singular animator of a monarchist resistance, the Baron de Batz; on the
other hand, how, far from having committed suicide at Forges-les-Eaux, Paris had been able to find in
this port, whose municipality belonged to the Batz network, a means of leaving France. On the other
hand, when M. de Lestapis inclines to see in the operation a collusion of the two extremes – royalist
and Montagnard agents – against the Girondins, he neglects a little too much, in my view, the Orléanist
factor.
Indeed, if the men of Batz wanted to immolate Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, it is because this one
appeared, with a symbolic value, like a great animator of the operation against the States the Bourbons.
former President and Advocate General of the Parliament of Paris, elected from the nobility to the The
generals, friend of Hérault de Séchelles, and sitting like him, in the Convention, on the benches of the
Mountain, now distinguished himself as a very active agent of Philippe from Orleans. Having attended,
in a gallery, the debates on Louis XVI, a former colleague of the court, Chancellor Pasquier wrote in his
Memoirs: Having seen with my own eyes the unworthy maneuvers of M. de Saint-Fargeau, I have
2.
acquired the certainty that he had contributed more than anyone to the death of the King
Also the execution of Lepelletier was to constitute, for the agents of Batz, a warning issued to the
partisans of Philippe-Égalité, on the eve of a final effort to tear Louis XVI from the scaffold.
However, they did not believe that they provided a springboard for the Montagnards.
Because, that Tallien presented to the Assembly the death of Paris as certain, does not prove that
there was connivance, complicity between the Montagnards and the agents of Batz. Only, apart from the
fact that Tallien and his friends could believe in the authenticity of the note and of Paris' suicide, they had
strong reasons for not wishing to pursue the investigation.
A blackmailer, swindler and police informant, Poupart-Beaubourg, held in prison by Roland, - who had
visited him a few days before the attack, - came in a long letter to implicate those who haunted the Palace-
Royal. He spoke openly only of Paris and certain friends of Batz. But an investigation could cast an
unfortunate light on the Orléanists and the Montagnards – in particular Bazire, Chabot, and Julien de
Toulouse, who often met there in the same salons. In this way, the interests of the royalist agents joined
those of the leftist group. Both wanted a veil to be thrown promptly over the secrets of the Palais-Royal.
However, we continued to maneuver on it, in the shadows, for several weeks.

A secret informant of Lebrun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, indicates in his letters
confidential how much an Orléanist intrigue remains dreaded.
In his post of February 27, referring to the last sessions of the Jacobins, the intelligence agent fears “a
3
repetition of the holy day of September”. He announces that it is “Poupart-Beaubourg, saved from
execution by Mr. Philippe-Égalité, who is the secretary clerk of the new company Miczinsky, Chabot et
compagnie”. The said Miczinsky, a Polish general, was employed on various tasks by Dumouriez. As for
Poupart-Beaubourg, he knew too much: it was better for the Orleanists, by ransoming him, to assure
themselves of his silence and his action. And then, according to the same agent: La Vittonière, former
guard of
Artois, director of the gambling dens of the Marquis de Genlis said, last night:
“ Leave it alone and you will soon see all that rabble beside the martyrs of royalty. »
Political strategists – like Choderlos de Laclos – could think, rotting the
Mountain, better hold and put the group better in the game of Philippe d'Orléans.
In his letter the next day, Lebrun's informant, who must have been a wheeler-dealer if not a deputy,
of the Agreement 4
, hoped that the Minister of War, Beurnonville, would not copy "Dumouriez in his habit
of preferring scoundrels to all those whose probity equals talent”. More than ever, he worries about behind-
the-scenes intrigues. According to him, the Miczinskys have hatched a new parliamentary maneuver to
allow Chabot to take over the Ministry of the Interior and send General Westermann as a delegate to
Holland (in order, no doubt, to receive financial aid there).
Finally, a fortnight later, while Paris was shaken by a new insurrectionary intrigue, the informant noted:
My host and his brother, after having for several days extolled Marat as the best of citizens (...) no longer
hesitate to say that M. d'Orléans is the only one who can pull us out of the anarchy in which we find ourselves.
To this I add that it has just been affirmed to me that Poupart-Beaubourg, whom I believed to be arrested, is
giving himself a great deal of movement and that he shows himself to be a man who has nothing to fear.
Thus, hoping to have provoked a new arrest of Poupart-Beaubourg, the maintenance in
Lebrun's agent could be very worried about his freedom.
One fact is certain: the assassination of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, by allowing Montagnards,
rather orléanists and rather rotten, to reach the power, left the Girondins weakened.
2. IN THE MAZE OF THE ECONOMY.
Prices were rising, and queues outside bakeries and grocery stores were less resigned than they are today.
After so many great disappointed hopes, the people were still in high spirits and lively discontent. He resented
the shortage of bread and was indignant to see basic necessities slipping away from him, more and more every
day. But, against the scarcity, the rise in prices and the impotence of the government, the townspeople did not
rise up alone: in the most diverse corners of the province, sometimes in the richest departments, people rioted
claiming the taxation of prices, by multiplying the petitions to the Convention.
The latter which, in its majority, remained impregnated with the liberal optimism of the physiocrats and the
economists, tried to resist the popular pressure. Especially since the responsible minister, Roland, a stubborn
and narrow-minded disciple of Turgot, remained convinced that laissez-faire would be enough to fix everything.
Undoubtedly, the Legislature, seized by panic, had adopted on September 9 and 16, 1792, laws which restored
the right of requisition and part of the regulations of the old regime.
But this half-measure satisfied no one: neither the minister who denounced it as pernicious nor the people who
found it insufficient. And the Convention dabbled in endless debates, not really knowing what to do, or in which
direction to move forward.
On November 29, a delegation from Paris, after many others, had come to the bar of the Assembly to
expose the misery of Paris and to demand the taxation of essential foodstuffs. Until then Saint Just – like most
of the Jacobins – had not intervened in the controversies over the economy. But, having the feeling that this
question would be decisive for the Republic, he had followed all the sessions attentively, and that day he went
up to the rostrum to read a speech which he had carefully prepared:
I don't agree with the Committee, he began, I don't like violent trade laws.
The Girondins applauded. This condemnation of taxation led them to think that the young Montagnard was, like
them, an orthodox liberal. In fact, Saint-Just's position was to prove more complex, more nuanced.
Admittedly, a year earlier, the author of the Spirit of the Revolution, like all his contemporaries, considered
it necessary to bring no obstacle to production. He even protested against natural equality, that is to say
against the claim to establish an economic equality, because, he wrote, natural equality would confuse
society; there would be neither power nor obedience, the people would flee into the deserts.
It was the moment when the liberal school seemed avenged for the failures of the experiments of Turgot
in 1763 and 1774. Thanks to abundant harvests, one could have believed, in 1790 and 1791, that the time
of general prosperity had come. But, from the winter, the prices had undergone a brutal rise, and the
shortage of certain foodstuffs (sugar and bread in particular) had caused unrest. However, these unfortunate
events did not affect the serenity of the economists. Condorcet, like many others, had to testify that he had
forgotten nothing and learned nothing from the Encyclopedia.
A mathematician, he drew from the calculation of probabilities, the assurance that the universe was moving
towards its happiness, provided that we did not thwart its steps. Preparing his famous Table of the Progress
of the Human Spirit, which the guillotine would prevent him from completing, the last encyclopedist wrote: It
is easy to prove that fortunes tend naturally to equality and that their excessive disproportion or cannot exist
or must promptly cease, if the civil laws do not establish artificial means of perpetuating and reuniting them;
if freedom of trade makes disappear the advantage that any prohibitive law, any tax right, gives to acquired
wealth...
In other words, once the privileges that maintain acquired fortunes and feudal rights were abolished, it
was expected that the game of competition alone would reduce, as much as possible and desirable, "natural
inequalities" by continuously improving the standard of living. of each one.
According to Turgot, the mechanism of economic liberation was to be as follows: the abandonment of price
controls would undoubtedly first cause a rise in prices, but this would in turn lead to a rise in wages, i.e. say
a "general enrichment". This reasoning, so simplistic in its conclusion that no liberal would dare to hold it
today, was considered very scientific at the time. Economists and physiocrats forgot, in their conjectures,
three important factors and
interdependent: the psychological, the financial and the international character of the economic world.
Of these three elements, Saint-Just had to show that he had become aware, with more than
penetration, it seems, than any Conventional.
From the outset, he regarded purely technical measures as illusory. We are asking for a law on
subsistence. A positive law on this will never be wise. And, further: Scarcity can come from a thousand
causes: and if the scarcity of grain had come in France from a particular cause, and that we wanted to apply
a remedy to it, good in itself, but unrelated to the evil , it would happen that the remedy would be at least
null, if not pernicious.
And finally, even more clearly: I dare say that there cannot be a good treatise on practical economics.
Every government has its abuses; and the diseases of the social body are no less incalculable than those
of the human body.
There was a truth rarely expressed by politicians. Indeed, in the social field, one cannot remedy the "evil" if one attributes
it to a "particular cause". Any affection, even localized, quickly generalizes. To treat it, then, a set of measures is needed;
and, the more a situation becomes revolutionary, the more it imposes revolutionary remedies, that is to say affecting social
life in its structures or, better, in its totality.
In this respect, Saint-Just's diagnosis was not lacking in accuracy or courage: In the dreadful state
of anarchy in which we find ourselves, man who has once again become a savage no longer recognizes any legitimate
restraint; independence armed against independence no longer has a law, no longer a judge; and all ideas of justice give
birth to violence and crime, through the lack of guarantees...
It is in the nature of things that our economic affairs become more and more confused, until the established Republic
embraces all relations, all interests, all rights, all duties and gives a common appearance to all parts of the state.
A people who are not happy have no country; he loves nothing; and if you want to found a
republic, you must concern yourself with drawing the people out of a state of uncertainty and misery which corrupts them.
Also, although Saint-Just remained attached to freedom and hostile to taxation, he nevertheless clearly disapproved of
“indefinite freedom”, and recalled that freedom without law cannot govern a State. Obsessed with the anarchy in which
France was plunged, he summed up his anguish in this cutting phrase: Liberty makes war on morality, so to speak, and
wants to reign in spite of it.
Liberalism had easily seduced the salons, on the eve of the Revolution, only because it relied essentially on the
producers. Seeing in the economy only a relationship between the resources of the country and their exploitation or, more
exactly, their marketing, he excluded from his calculations the relations with foreign countries and especially the intervention
of the State, neglecting that that -it controls the credit and the currency. Because, basically, there have never been
absolutely private affairs.
On this again, Saint-Just showed himself to be very clear-sighted: Our subsistence has disappeared as our freedom has
extended, because we are only attached to the principles of freedom, and have neglected those of government. . And the
young Montagnard to attack at length the policy of inflation of Cambon, the “unregulated emission of the sign”. He criticized
the assignat as not representing the living wealth of the nation, which rested, according to him, in commercial income, and
not in its "metallic and territorial wealth". With that lucid pessimism which henceforth distinguishes him, he exclaimed: There
are no more metals or luxuries left for industry: here is the sign doubled by half, and commerce halved. If this continues,
the sign will finally be without value, our exchange will be upset, our industry dried up, our resources exhausted; there will
be nothing left for us but the earth to share and devour. Also, he wanted people to be “stingy” with regard to the issue of
the assignat and to reduce circulation.

But if Saint-Just rightly thought that he was thereby reaching one of the roots of the evil, he had no doubt
that the latter had others.
In fact, the Convention had to face the heavy deficit, bequeathed by the Monarchy and the imprudences
of the Constituent Assembly. It had been thought to make up for the budget deficit and to revive industry by
making the printing press work. But the instability of the regime and its leaders, the maneuvers of its
adversaries, the ever flourishing speculation in troubled times, had rapidly caused the assignats to lose
their value. Especially since, in foreign markets, distrust of the new French currency was often accompanied
by frank hostility towards the Revolution. In Antwerp, Amsterdam, London, merchants and bankers hastened
to get rid of these new notes. There is no doubt that the Girondins, as Mathiez has pointed out, hoped to
stop the collapse of exchange rates and the slump in the French economy through war. Terrified at first by
the first defeats, the Liberals had regained confidence since Valmy. Seeing the armies of Dumouriez
preparing to enter Belgium, they felt the time had come for a return to the principles of "laissez-faire, laissez-
passer".
It was Roland's one-eyed view. He distinguished only one aspect of the question, fascinated by what
distorted this game of competition, he did not see that liberalism and regulation combined their
disadvantages. Liberalism had favored the blossoming of new fortunes which fructified through trafficking
and speculation. The regulations had been reinstated sporadically by certain municipalities, which bought
and resold basic necessities at a loss, in an attempt to stem the rise in prices. The subsidies, as always,
ended up being very costly for the State. On the other hand, the nationalization of the war proliferated the
mass of suppliers to the armies who enriched themselves at the expense of the Treasury. All this contributed
to ruin both the moral credit and the financial credit of the State. Obviously, it was this anarchy that Saint-
Just had in mind when he declared: “Abundance is the fruit of good administration: ours is bad. Or, more
harshly still: "Economists have perfected the evil, the government has tampered with." »
His conclusion on this chapter is as

follows: I know of almost no temporary remedies for the misfortunes which arise from anarchy and bad
administration; an excellent constitution is needed which binds all the interests... There are no measures
which can remedy the abuses, when a people does not have a prosperous government: it is a delicate body
for which all the food is bad. Are we protecting the freedom of trade in grain ?
One monopolizes by virtue of freedom. Do you constrain landlords, drive out postmen ? Terror is the
merchants' excuse. Finally, you lack that social harmony that you will only obtain through laws.
The importance attached by Saint-Just to the organs of the State will never be denied. He will always
expect institutions capable of establishing "relations of justice between citizens", of their
to give "a fatherland" that they really love and venerate, and capable, finally, of redressing political mores.
However, if the institutions provide national life with its frameworks and safeguards, it is still necessary
to know in which direction to direct them and on what to support them (every institution must take into
account the possibilities offered to it by the conditions of the moment). Although not having, in this debate
on food supplies, to deal with the constitutional problem, Saint-Just did not evade the social aspect of the
question.
Faithful in this to his first views on the impossibility of avoiding a certain economic inequality, he
boldly supported the necessity of luxury. Not without anguish or hesitation, however.
There is a secret vulture in Paris. What are so many men doing now who lived by the habits of the
rich ? Misery gave birth to the Revolution; misery can destroy it. It is a question of knowing if a multitude
which lived, a little time ago, on superfluities, on luxury, on the vices of another class, can live on the
simple correlation of its particular needs.
This situation is very dangerous: for if one can only earn for its needs, the commercial class cannot
earn for its commitments; or commerce being finally reduced to the measure of its modest needs, must
soon perish by the exchange. This ruinous system will be established throughout the empire.
What will we do with our ships ? The commerce of economy has taken its place in the universe: we
will not take it away from the Dutch, the English, or other peoples. Besides, having no more commodities
to export, no more respectable sign abroad, we would finally be reduced to renouncing all trade.
We haven't asked ourselves what our goal is, and what trading system we want to play with. I don't
believe your intention is to live like the Scythians and Indians. Our climates and moods are neither
suitable for laziness nor for pastoral life; and yet we walk, without realizing it, towards such a life.
This, it will be said, is a defense of the luxury trade, hard hit by the disappearance of the aristocracy.
In fact, the old fortunes which had not emigrated went into hiding, and the recent fortunes, not yet
established, took the same path, or took refuge in speculation. The result was terrible slump and
unemployment. (Thus, the collapse of the silk industry in Lyons had thrown 30,000 canuts out of
business.) But, then, from what class should we expect sufficient purchasing power and sufficiently
demanding needs to infuse commerce with a new blood?
Saint-Just did not answer the question directly, but there is no doubt that he had asked it. Regarding
the retention of agricultural products, he paradoxically regretted that he no longer saw peasants hoarding,
and he added:
Someone here complained about the luxuries of the plowmen. I do not decide whether luxury is good
in itself: but if we were happy enough for the plowman to love luxury, he would have to sell his wheat to
buy the superfluities...
... It will take luxury in your Republic or violent laws against the plowman, which will ruin the Republic.
There are many reflections to be made about our situation; we don't do enough. Everybody want
of the Republic ; no one wants poverty or virtue.

The passage is very characteristic of the manner of Saint-Just. After pushing back the Republic of
poverty, he seemed to reclaim it. After declaring that he did not want to judge luxury, he underlined
the need for it. However, this sway reflected something quite different from rhetoric or political
flexibility, it expressed the anguish of a man torn between his ideal and the reality he comes up
against. The alternative, violence or luxury, which haunted him, he formulated in the same discourse,
keeping very significant distances. You will decide whether the French people should be conquerors
or traders; that is what I am not examining here.
Admittedly, one can criticize Saint-Just, like the economists of his time, for recognizing as social
categories only the merchants and the peasants, omitting these producers who are the workers, the
manufacturers, the industrialists, the entrepreneurs. His clinical examination, with such a penetrating
intuition, still left many questions unanswered. He had enough of this feeling to announce, at the
conclusion of his speech, that he would soon propose a popular law placing freedom of commerce
under the safeguard of the people themselves, according to the genius of the Republic. But this bill,
Saint-Just never presented it.
For the time being, the practical measures suggested by the speaker were as follows: to set aside
violent laws of taxation; organize the free movement of grain, but prohibit any export under penalty of
death; reduce the circulation of money, by reducing the charges on the public treasury, either by
giving land (the property of emigrants) to creditors, or by selling it to them by annuities converted into
contracts; reform taxation so that “property tax is paid in kind, and paid into public granaries”; finally
to establish the institutions, because if the bases of the Republic are not immediately posed, in six
months freedom will be no more.
It was with this last sentence that Saint-Just ended his speech. The revolutionary Apocalypse was
coming...
In the final analysis, he had tried to overcome this conflict between liberalism and the dirigisme of
the time. But, deep down, he suspected that these measures which he recommended, even strictly
applied, would not suffice, that they would take time. “There are times, he will say one day, when it is
impossible to do good. »
Among the suggestions submitted by him to the Assembly, there was one which had neither been
defended nor even announced in the body of the speech. And for good reason ! It consisted in re-
establishing an institution of the old regime – modified, it is true – that which was formerly called “the
King's granaries”. Undoubtedly, this kind of regulating organism which allows the State to stockpile
an essential commodity and throw it on the market when it is scarce and its price rises, is found under
almost all regimes. The novelty here was to link it to a land tax paid in kind.
Nevertheless, this provision implied a return to the regulated economy in favor of the consumer who
formed the spirit of the monarchical economy.
It is regrettable that Saint-Just left no comment on the latter, whose failure bore lessons. In
fact, the royal economy had suffered from its anachronistic character.
In a century when trade was becoming universal, an old-fashioned, annoying provincialism, by
multiplying tolls and controls, had contributed to slowing down production. On the other hand, it
had not been encouraged by the difficulties of transport, which were slow, difficult and expensive:
not very navigable rivers, non-existent and badly maintained road network. Finally, our agriculture
astonished foreigners like Arthur Young by the antiquated character of its methods and its tools.
Despite its resources, France had a national income well below its means. The royal power had
tried to go up this current, by creating "societies of Agriculture" having for object to teach new
methods and new cultures, like the potato and the alfalfa. But, as only large landowners
frequented these societies, they never succeeded in exerting any serious influence. Moreover,
the renewal of equipment is a costly operation, and few farmers possessed sufficient capital or
cared to invest it in such a way. Finally, even though royalty exempted from property taxes those
who cleared land, nothing helped, the fallow lands remained. Confidence was lacking; the big
landowners wanted to enjoy their property without doing anything to make it more fruitful.
Since the death of Louis XIV, which had left France poor and financiallyState in a situation
disastrous, the country had known all the excitements and all the ruinous crises of inflation. With
Law's system, we had witnessed astonishing reversals of fortune.
The uncertainty of the times, the incapacity of the regime in the face of privileges and its
cumbersome bureaucracy, had pushed the citizens to gambling on the stock market, to
speculation. That a million families presented themselves to obtain visas for their papers from
law firms (shares, contracts, or paper money), after the bankruptcy of these, shows enough how
much speculation reached the masses. And if we remember that Duverney's operation claimed
to constitute a kind of inventory of French fortune, that this exchange of notes was most often
made for the benefit of the nobility, while the bourgeois were transformed into rentiers of the
State, with its miserable income, one will understand how power found some profit in it, but did
not gain any credit. Especially since this inventory, which boasted of detecting thieves and
speculators, carefully diverted the investigation from powerful men linked to power.
Since then, we have seen the same expedient employed, with the same effects.
Law's adventure, with its scandals, had only pitted the cities of London and Amsterdam, which
had become major banking places, against stock market games. Not only did it divide France,
as Boissy-d'Anglas noted, 5
, but it had sterilized its economy. And it is curious that the
French savers retained, after the disappointments of the "Compagnie des Indes", an inclination
to invest their money in foreign securities or in income from the State, but not in domestic
production.
The whirlwind of ideas and fortunes, in a time of transition like the 18th century, invariably
ends in that moral and material confusion which makes revolutions both difficult and inevitable.
Indeed, just as Turgot's failures had not altered the faith of the liberals, so Law's bankruptcy
had not prevented people from believing, like him, in the beneficence of the indefinite issue of
paper. -cash. And there must have been Conventional Girondins who thought, like Michelet
later, that the shrewd banker had made a kind of revolution and founded a "republic of banking"
and a "republic of commerce."
Especially since Law had had as enemies Duverney, Argenson, the Company of Farmers
General, in short all the supporters of feudal rights. In the face of these great reactionaries, one
could take the adventurer of finance for a great philanthropic innovator.
In truth, France had arrived in 1789 completely disarmed economically. The liquidation of the
privileges, the night of August 4, had only consecrated the disappearance of an already
moribund, already outmoded order. It did not open a new era. The economic structures of the
nation had been destroyed but not replaced, and the obstinacy of the liberals to consider only
the political problem had left the country sliding into anarchy and misery.
A week after Saint-Just's speech and the Commune's petition, the Girondins and Roland
thought they had won a great victory by obtaining (December 8, 1792) the repeal by the
Assembly of the September regulations. But the people did not share the faith of the unrepentant
liberals, and many municipalities continued to practice requisitions: in the district of Chaumont
they were henceforth called "invitations" to cause less trouble to the minister. In entire
departments – such as Haute-Marne – the decision of the Convention remained a dead letter.
Result: on January 9, 1793, Roland was to note that the price of wheat varied, according to
the departments, from twenty-seven to ninety-eight pounds. In truth, the compartmentalized
provincialism of the old regime had been abolished only to fall into a departmentalism which the
fear of famine inclined towards autarky, although the last harvests had been fairly good . .
This new failure of liberalism and the continued rise in prices reinvigorated the position of
these suburban agitators: the “Enrages”. They demanded taxation and a return to regulation.
On February 12, 1793, two petitions to this effect, drafted in a threatening tone, were presented
to the bar of the Convention: one emanating from the forty-eight sections of Paris, the other
from a mysterious committee of the "Reunited Defenders of the eighty departments. As the
latter's spokesman was no less unknown than the committee he represented, the deputies
avenged themselves on him for the obligation in which they had found themselves to listen to
the petition of the sections of Paris without saying a word. Girondins and Montagnards, for once
in agreement, shouted in chorus at the obscure citizen Heudelet. As Marat and Mazuyer
immediately demanded that he be imprisoned, some pointed out that it might be right to
interrogate him first. (We didn't let him say a word!)
Sheepishly, poor Heudelet advanced, by way of apology, that before presenting his petition he had
conferred with several deputies and that one of them had advised him to ask for a general law on
subsistence. We summon him to deliver the name immediately. “They told me his name is Saint Just,
but I don't know him,” replied Heudelet.
Implicated Saint-Just explained that, that very morning, a leaflet had been distributed in the streets of
Paris and at the Porte de la Convention in which he was personally attacked. And he read a few
sentences from the printed matter: "When the people know that in the popular assemblies the orators
who harangue and deliver the most beautiful speeches and the best lessons sup well every day..., and
of this number is the citizen Saint Just. Raise high the odious mask with which he covers himself. »
If we are to believe the memoirs of the time, Saint-Just rarely frequented restaurants. But he sometimes
dined there with colleagues like Robespierre and Lebas. So he was affected by these attacks.
He went to the petitioners in the conference room and asked them what he had done wrong in their
minds. One of them, by way of reply, handed him the buckwheat that had been unloaded that morning
at Port Saint-Nicolas. And the young member of the Convention replied: “Calm down and ask for a
general law. If the Convention adjourns your proposal, then I will ask for the floor and I will follow the
thread of the views that I have already presented. »
As it was Saint-Just himself, who reported his morning remarks, we cannot doubt the authenticity of
the words, but we may be surprised. What considerations could have led Saint-Just to come out in favor
of a “general law”, whereas two months earlier, he considered that a “positive law on this would never be
wise”? Perhaps he was thinking of that trade law he had promised on November 29? In any case, given
the turn taken by the debate, he refrained from intervening on the substance of the question and from
renewing the “thread of the views” already presented.
In truth, in spite of the notoriety which he had acquired, in spite of his nomination, on December 24, to
the presidency of the Jacobins, he had just experienced how much popular support he lacked.
Adding to his perplexity, his hesitations, the feeling of the restricted circle of his authority inclined him to
prudence, to laconicism.
Moreover, all the mountain leaders came up against the same difficulty: the masses moved away from
them, seduced by the demagoguery of the "Enrages". Even a Marat, who was also hostile to taxation
and the assignat, saw the vehement sentences he wrote on this chapter fade away without echo.
What could the Jacobins undertake, wedged between the liberal softness of the Girondins and the
popular push led by the Jacques Roux, the Varlet? Denouncing the violence of the latter, they brought
grist to the mill of this majority that they disapproved of. Also, as each time the links between leaders
and public opinion are sheared by the angry bites of a people hit by an epidemic of misery, we saw the
cobwebs of factions less relentless in regaining their footing in reality than to capture public opinion.
In the aftermath of the riot of the laundresses and the looting of grocery stores (February 24 and 25),
the members of the Convention first agreed to blame the disturbances on the "counter-
revolutionaries” (in disguise of course). On this occasion, the Girondin Dubois de Crancé invective the
“Enrages” as agents of England: “The movement had been prepared. I have known for a fortnight that
the people must have been in agitation, and I learned of it from the public papers; Lord Grenville himself
announced it to the English parliament. »
There was not a shred of evidence in this indictment, but it had an effect. However, as a novel, even
dark, needs characters, we quickly came to names, that is to say direct but rather low blows. Without
hesitation, Marat, then Collot d'Herbois claimed that the former Minister of the Interior, Roland, was the
secret instigator of the riots. The Girondins soon retaliated by trying to assign the same responsibility to
Marat. But, on one side as on the other, the accusations lacked too much evidence to carry seriously.
More circumspect, Robespierre stuck to anonymous counter-revolutionaries.
All of this remained porridge for the cats.
3. THE NEW ARMY.
Saint-Just had seen quite closely, in his province, the difficulties encountered in the formation of the
new army. Also, he intervened on January 28, 1793, in the discussion of the report drawn up by Sieyès
in his capacity as a member of the general defense committee constituted on January 1 .
The man submitted three draft decrees to the Assembly: the first proposed the creation of a national
commissary, the second concerned the organization of the Ministry of War and the third the service of
the armies during the war. Like all of Sieyès' rantings, these projects had a twisted aspect which made
them unattractive, even in the eyes of the committee members.
Finally, for everyone, a personal question dominated the affair: that of the minister and his entourage.
Pache, a former Rolandist who rallied to the Montagne, did not appeal to the deputies. To counter Pache
and increase the power of General Dumouriez, Sieyès suggested, in his project – very simple on this
point – a reinforcement of the Council of Ministers, responsible for collectively setting the direction of
operations and open for this to two officers, one under the purse, the other with that of the strategy.
It wasn't very straightforward or very satisfying. And Saint-Just's reply was hardly more so.
With a certain perfidy, he first asserted that the proposed reorganization seemed to him, in the mouth of
the rapporteur, "a tacit proof" that the minister was "personally irreproachable" and that the disorder was
due to the inadequacy of the laws. He, in any case, took this position. Avoiding passing judgment on
Pache, he devoted most of his speech to the mess of the military department.
To emphasize the minister's isolation and lack of power, he insisted on the lack of administration and
its anarchic aspect, showing how the markets for clothing,
cavalry and food could be concluded in the localities, without control of the capital. The law, he
launched, charges the minister with all the crimes of others, and denies him the necessary harmony in
his administration to penetrate into it the deaf malevolence. And, more broadly: The present order is
disorder put into law. With regard to the bursar, he could therefore only support the project of the first
decree of Sieyès which unified and centralized the services. "It's the way," he declared, "to put
economy, responsibility, supervision into handling." But, as regards the powers of the minister, it was
otherwise. How to organize the government in such a way that the minister “is not null or all-powerful
” ? According to the speaker, the Sieyes project had the disadvantage of abolishing the Ministry of War
and dangerously strengthening the executive power by bringing in officers. For him, it was appropriate
to detach the Minister of War and to tighten his links with the Assembly.
I ask that the attribution given by Sieyes to the council, that is to say to all the ministers collectively,
over the general operations of war, you take it yourselves; let the minister answer to you for the
execution of the laws: thereby you will protect the people from the abuse of military power.
Responsibility is not compromised, for you do not govern; but the minister answers to you immediately
for the execution of the laws; it is not hindered; and all the rings of the military chain leading to you, the
generals can no longer stir up intrigues in a council, and the council cannot usurp anything.
In wanting to make super-Montesquieu, Saint-Just did not arouse the passion of the Assembly.
Besides, it must be admitted that his project hardly stood up. Finally, the support he gave to the
contribution of a commissary did not prevent the latter from being sharply criticized by Salle, supported
by Robespierre. In the end, the Assembly stuck to the question of no one. Without waiting for the
conclusions of the commission appointed to judge Pache's conduct, it voted, on Barère's proposal, for
a change of minister. On February 4, she elected Beurnonville as successor to Pache 7
.
For some time past the War Department had been changing ministers frequently. Beurnonville was
the eighth for nine months. Moreover, the Convention did not wait for the appointment of the latter, to
declare in the name of France, on February 1 , hostilities against the King of England and the
Stadtholder of Holland.
The reorganization of the army remained to be undertaken. In the name of the military committee,
Dubois de Crancé presented a report, the discussion of which enabled Saint-Just to express himself
again on the question and to speak of it a little better, on February 12. He came out forcefully in favor
of amalgamation and military elections, supporting his position with two arguments: I know only one
way to resist Europe: it is to oppose to it the genius of freedom. The second, of a ministerial order: The
ministers' antechamber must cease to be a counter for public employments, and there must be nothing
more great among us than our country.
He did not dispute the difficulties raised by the proposed transactions, but he responded to them with a
chin movement:
You must first defeat the army, if you want it to win in turn; if the legislator manages the difficulties, the
difficulties carry him along; if he attacks them, he triumphs over them at the same time. And then: You
don't make revolutions by halves. Moreover, he set two limits to the election of officers: the appointment
of generals was to be reserved for the representatives of the people, that is to say the Convention, and
all electoral practices suspended "in armies too close to the 'enemy ". These amendments were
reasonable. And all the historians consider that Saint-Just brought, by his speech, a decisive support to
the project of Dubois de Crancé.
The combination of line regiments and volunteer battalions was necessary, because it was important
to put an end to the rivalry between them, to strengthen the army, which had grown from 400,000 men
(on 1 December) to 228,000 ( on 1 February ). We know that the methods of advancement were relaxed:
one third had to be promoted by seniority and two thirds appointed by co-option of those in a grade lower
than the one in which a post was vacant. With regard to mobilization, the levy of 300,000 men was
decreed, but leaving each locality to manage to provide the number of soldiers requested. This did not
facilitate mobilization. Moreover, the great intriguing generals, of the Dumouriez or Custine type,
welcomed with fury these measures which tightened the control of the state over them.
The difficulties of the operation and the opposition caused a postponement of the measures
of voted amalgam. Efforts were made to recruit 300,000 new soldiers.
4. THE IDES OF MARCH 1793.
In March, the defeat of Liège, Aix-la-Chapelle, the betrayal of Dumouriez, and the rise in prices were
to brutally call into question the form of government. For both sides of the Assembly the future looked
bleak.
The military troops passing through Paris always eluded the Minister of National Defense, and the
Minister of the Interior had no more police (it was the Commune which was to ensure this). Moreover, in
the two clans, it was thought that certain competitors maintained – in the clubs and the sections – relations
with royalist agitators or British agents. In fact, those who wanted to diminish France or bring down the
regime had agitators here and there, to influence power or provoke disorder through riots. Each group
had difficulty recognizing its own.
As early as March 5, Choudieu had alluded to a "set up" to demand the strengthening of the powers of
the Minister of National Defense. But, as we have seen, the Girondins were opposed to such a measure,
preferring to keep the provincial troops in reserve.
On the 8th, the worried assembly dispatched a certain number of its members to each of the
sections of Paris. That of Luxembourg was to receive Fabre d'Églantine and Saint-Just.
The next day, a Saturday, they feared a great insurrection. The governors, with Brissot, met at Garat,
the Minister of the Interior. One heard "resounding in the streets a confused tumult of songs of ferocious
joy and cries of threatening fury." But with night came a downpour, and Garat, who had gone on a tour of
inspection, saw through the window of his car only deserted roads. Only, from time to time, attenuated the
emptiness, found the silence a few patrols walking slowly...
However, rioters penetrating into the printing presses of the government press, did damage there and,
on Sunday, known agitators, the Auvergnat Fournier known as the American, Defieux, Lazouski, Martin
and especially Varlet circulated in the clubs a text flamboyant, presenting it as voted by the Cordeliers.
They claimed the right to dismiss the deputies “traitors to the cause of the people” and denounced “the
odious intrigues of Roland, Brissot, Gensonné, Guadet, Pétion, Barbaroux, Louvet, etc. »
On the other hand, the Poissonnière section received to demonstrate a royalist flag with fleur-de-lis.
And, in the evening, after gathering on the terrace of the Cordeliers club, a demonstration took place on
the Champs-Élysées. We were talking about going to surround the Convention...
Presumably, it was thought, abroad, to be able to take advantage of the anxiety of the opposition, the
setbacks of the armies, the excited revolutionaries, to blow up the French state. Because, on the same
day, in the provinces, great uprisings set the peasants in motion against the Revolution, particularly in
Vendée, in the Rhône and in Brittany. At Machecoul a tribunal was set up which, in one month, was to
bring down more than five hundred heads judged to be republicans.
But even before all these insurrections were known, the situation was announced to be bad enough in
Paris for governmental measures to be taken.
Now, what did the Convention do during these two days? After Danton's speech, she decreed the
dispatch of eighty-two deputies as army commissioners. But nothing to strengthen the executive power. It
discussed it in vain in its sessions of March 10. In vain did Robespierre say: "All the evil comes from the
fact that we do not have a sufficiently active government" and, advocating the necessary union and
concentration, he was able to ask for "a government in which all the parties are brought together". the
leaders didn't want to hear anything. Un Buzot shouted to his colleagues: “One must have – like me – the
courage to oppose the ideas by which they want to lead us to a despotism more terrible than anarchy. So,
finally, in spite of a vibrant intervention from Danton, the organization of the government was adjourned.
Undeniably, however, the threatening situation could allow a serious agreement. It is very significant
that a Marat said, on March 12, to the Jacobins: “I would have covered the representatives of the people
with my body (...), I transported myself to the society of the Cordeliers; I preached peace there, and I
confounded those orators bribed by the aristocracy...”
But a mixture of narrow selfishness and fear of others led the Girondins to refuse a unity government.
It was not a question of them, as is too often believed, of sentimental liberalism, of hostility to the use of
force. In his speech on the events of March 10, Vergniaud did not hesitate: “Your weakness or your
carelessness almost ruined you. For him, justice had not been severe enough, there had been too much
"impunity", too many "amnesties". But if he claimed to be a strong supporter of the revolutionary tribunal,
the form of which was to be discussed, on the other hand he was hostile to the constitution of a
government with parliamentarians: They flattered themselves that it would be
easy to persuade the Convention that the ministers were guilty of the rout of Aix-la-Chapelle, and of
obtaining at least their dismissal, that it would not be impossible to induce him to choose new ones from
his own bosom; that there would be members corrupted enough by ambition to want to combine
executive and legislative functions over their heads, and that, through intrigue and terror, they would
succeed in getting them elected...
But he opposed this confusion of powers.
This argument of republican orthodoxy would seem inadmissible to contemporary parliamentarians.
He was already coming badly in an invaded France, devoid of a constitution and seriously divided.
However, his attachment to principles earned Vergniaud the approval of the majority of Convention
members.
Only a few Girondins, like Louvet, found that their friend Vergniaud had not been violent enough. For
Louvet, who was to publish his intervention in a pamphlet, the insurrection of March 10 was a failed plot
by "the Orleans faction." For him, the Convention had not attached enough importance to the fact that
"two or three seditious had gone through the groups to demand that d'Orléans should be king, and his
son generalissimo." And then, we had to agree on the nature of the instigators of the failed coup.
Vergniaud, not wishing to cite a name, had presented the conspiracy as royalist; to which Louvet added:
It was the royalism and aristocracy of the Cordeliers and some Jacobin leaders. Finally, in his eyes, the
suggestions of Robespierre and Danton lifted a veil over the intentions of the instigators of March 10:
This reorganization of the ministry, already announced so many times,
was finally asked of you. Danton believed he could discover more of his plan. For France to be able
to work, there was no question, according to him, but of taking ministers from the very heart of the
Convention (...) Almost the entire Assembly opened its eyes: the most confident saw the abyss and the
most timid were indignant and found their courage: together they rose, moved by an anger that we have
called holy. Then some discouragement seized the hearts of the conspirators (...) Danton himself felt his
audacity weaken. He protested that it was not a motion he had made; but only an opinion he had
expressed 8 .
Obviously, with the author of Faublas, imagination prevailed over political discernment. THE
novelist easily conceived intrigues and adventures, but found it hard to see the appropriate remedies.
Besides, the dread of this Philippe-Égalité, who still sat silently on the high benches of the Mountain,
did not trouble only the Girondins. To the surprise of his colleagues,
On March 27, Robespierre was to take up the motion of his declared enemy, Louvet, to decree the expulsion
from the territory of all members of the royal family (of Orleans included). But the Montagnards not following
him, no majority was affirmed in the vote. What did he want? Really succeed or lift an embarrassing mortgage,
giving pledges of anti-Orleanism?
Finally, those who refused a governmental agreement with the men of the Mountain had to, from March
15 to April 15, forge dangerous instruments for them. Admittedly, they did not always agree on this.
Nevertheless, during this spring month, the cases under the death penalty were widely extended; communal
monitoring committees were created; the powers of the revolutionary tribunal were increased; the inviolability
of deputies was suspended and the first Committee of Public Safety was formed.
In order to compensate for the vagueness of the provisions voted for the army and the absence of an
administrative body charged with the recruitment of the three hundred thousand new soldiers, the Convention
had dispatched some of its members to all corners of the territory. It was thus that Saint-Just had been sent,
with Deville, to supervise the mobilization and the military corps in the Aisne and the Ardennes.
In Paris, Montagnards and Girondins neutralized each other by balancing within the new committee of
general defense. The latter holding a meeting on March 26 with the members of the executive committee, the
Minister of War, Beurnonville, relying on the wishes expressed by Dumouriez in a letter, proposed outright to
withdraw all the armies from the borders and to leave. henceforth stick to defensive warfare. Protests were
answered and Dumouriez was sharply taken to task. Asked about the general, Danton declared with
embarrassment that he could not be judged on "the foolishness" he had recently committed. And Robespierre,
stupefied by such moderation, replied by demanding the immediate dismissal of Dumouriez. But he was not
followed. Three days later, Beurnonville communicated to the committee another letter in which Dumouriez
unmasked himself by expressing his contempt for the Convention. She responded by summoning him for an
explanation.
But, for Dumouriez the game was done. Declared a traitor to the fatherland, on April 3, it will be he who will
arrest the four commissioners who came to his headquarters to apprehend him.
Returning on March 31, Saint-Just went to ask for an audience with the committee of general defense, and, in the evening, he
explained nervously in front of the Jacobins.

I announce to society that Beurnonville is a traitor. Citizens, I did not find a single good man in the
government, I only found the people.
It is not yet time to unmask Beurnonville. You have to crush the mask on your face, without lifting it.
In the towns I visited, I did not find sufficient weapons or ammunition. Tired of writing to Beurnonville and
receiving no response, I returned to Paris to present the picture of our situation; if I cannot make myself heard
at the committee of general defense and make it adopt vigorous measures and in conformity with the critical
circumstances in which we find ourselves, I will resume my mission, and I will take charge myself of the
execution of the measures which the danger to our position.
He pronounced this indictment without seeking to support it. For the fact that the ministry left the
commissioners' letters unanswered attested to negligence but not treason. Moreover, Beurnonville could not
be held responsible for the lack of arms, when he had held his post for two months. But, obviously, Saint-Just
had in mind other accusations, more specific no doubt, which he was keeping for the time being when the
"mask" was lifted. His friend Robespierre must have told him about the discussions of the general defense
committee and how suspicious the relations between Dumouriez and this minister, former general and count,
had appeared there.
However, Saint-Just went no further. Because Beurnonville, sent to the North to catch up
Dumouriez could not believe it, the Austrians having taken him prisoner.
5. THE IMPOSSIBLE PARLIAMENT AND THE CONSTITUTION.
The Convention was in no hurry to justify its name – of American origin – by devoting itself to the revision
of the regime.
First, at the end of 1792, many Girondins were waiting for the judgment of Louis XVI before deciding. And
then, playing on this reserve and on the cosmopolitan spirit, Barère had voted for an address inviting foreigners
to communicate their plans and suggestions. Result: more than three hundred briefs had encumbered the
work of the commission.
Next, the rapporteur's personality did not facilitate parliamentary understanding. The ties attributed to
Condorcet, added to the length and subtle rationalism of his text, submitted on February 15, 1793, inspired
distrust and bored many of his readers.
Finally, the parliamentarians turned away all the more squarely from the constitutional ground that the
rising prices and the serious setbacks of the army aroused much more popular passion.
The Gironde majority and the mountain opposition were trying to blame each other.
Doctrine and program took second place.
Personal quarrels become more and more bitter and violent.
On April 1 , the Girondin Lasource, convinced and passionate, rushes brutally against Danton.
Like Louvet, Salles and the others, he believed in an intrigue led by Philippe d'Orléans, Dumouriez and
Danton. On them and their "conspiracy plot to restore royalty", he calls for an investigation.
Danton, unable to deny his good relations with Dumouriez, nor with the Prince of Orléans, let out a cry but
remained touched.
Four days later, so that the Montagnards would not die hit by the blow, Robespierre counter-attacked by
accusing Vergniaud, Gensonné, Brissot and Guadet of plotting against the Republic. Doesn't Brissot's journal
praise Dumouriez the traitor?
But the Assembly still sticks to speckled foil shots. Having left Danton in peace,
she does not touch Brissot or his accomplices. It's an exchange of blows for nothing.
However, as a scapegoat is needed, we agree to sacrifice Philippe-Égalité, whose

name is too striking and the action of his friends too disturbing.
Not wanting to use his strength for trial runs, Robespierre refused to participate in the real government
of the time, whether that of the general defense committee or its successor, the Public Safety Committee.
And the same reasons that held him back should make him look favorably on Danton's entry into the
last committee. Thus, the mountain group seems to sacrifice one of its members to national unity, while
it gets rid of a compromised member.
Anxious to agree with the man in the street, Robespierre bet on the opposition. On April 10, he
returned to the charge against the Orléanist Girondins accomplices of Dumouriez.
In his reply, Vergniaud suggests that the Girondins could have raised the country by denouncing
Danton, after the massacres of September. “We have, by our silence, well deserved of the fatherland. »
But the invitation to silence comes too late. Even among the Girondins, many feel they have to prove
their authority by force. They base their hope on their quality of parliamentary majority and their provincial
support. To win the game, they think it is enough to block the Parisian agitators. Taking advantage of
the election of Marat as president of the Jacobins, they resume their campaign against the man and the
society they denounced as Orleanists.
On April 5 and 11, Barbaroux suddenly rushes in this direction. On the 10th, Robespierre pronounces
an indictment against Roland, Servan and the Girondins. Among the latter, Guadet replies first in his
own name, then, on the 12th, the Bordelais Gensonné presents a decree of accusation against Marat.
He speaks, of course, of "conspiracy". According to him: ... The purpose of this conspiracy is to
restore the Constitution of 89, to give France a king or a regent (...) by making the people consider that
the present system of government does not brings only robbery and anarchy.
In short, once again, Marat is being attacked as a dangerous reactionary. Also the embarrassed,
worried Assembly, after a night of discussion, voted the arrest of Marat by 220 votes against 92 (48
having abstained and 7 pronounced in favor of the adjournment).
The Mountain group could no longer find its own.
Remained for these, the society of the Jacobins. As of April 5, it issued a directive to affiliated
companies to call back the members of the Convention "who have betrayed their duty". And, the same
day, Robespierre's younger brother asked the sections of Paris to increase their interventions. Without
having the ulterior motives attributed to them by Gensonné, the words of condemnation pronounced by
Augustin Robespierre are severe:
The Convention is not capable of governing. We must attack the leaders of the Convention (...). It is
necessary that all the good citizens meet in their sections (...) and that they come to the bar of the
Convention to force us to put in a state of arrest the infidel deputies.
On the 15th, a delegation of forty-eight sections, accompanied by Mayor Pache, came to ask
the proscription of twenty-two Girondin deputies.
Besides, not all the delegates harbored the same ulterior motive. The presenter of the petition is a
friend of Danton, Count Rousselin de Corbeau de Saint-Albin, who will only be called Rousselin under
the Revolution and Saint-Albin under the Restoration, but will always remain a journalist and politician.
Those who took part in the offensive against the twenty-two leaders could, some think of the re-
establishment of the Monarchy, and others only think of forming a solid majority in the Convention. In its
declaration, the Commune invokes the inalienable right which belongs to the people to revoke “the
infidel agents”. Also, she asks the Assembly to send the list of accused representatives to the provinces,
so that the will of the departments can decide on their disqualification.
But the arrow of the Montagnards was nearly turned against them.
Because, not without malignity, the Girondin Fonfrède replies: “What do they mean by this word: the
departments? If they were aristocrats, they would understand by that such administrations, such
societies of the departments, but they are republicans, they understand the primary assemblies, they
know that there and there alone, resides sovereignty... I convert this petition into a motion, I ask that the
Assembly adopt it. »
The Montagnards, this time, kept a silence that was all the more embarrassed because, for the past
month, many of their own, sent to the provinces as project managers, had informed them of the hostility
of provincial opinion. This referendum risks being unfavorable to them.
But they are lucky with them. It is the great Girondin Vergniaud who, gripped by anguish, heroically
intervenes in the path of the arrow. “The fire is going to ignite, he growls... The convocation of the
primary assemblies will be the explosion... It is a disastrous measure. She may lose the Convention,
the Republic and liberty... Citizens, do not hesitate between a few men and public affairs... Throw
yourselves into the abyss and save the country. »
The Montagnards can breathe a sigh of relief: the Gironde has just saved them.
And, as if to emphasize the advantage, four days later, Marat, acquitted, returned
triumphantly at the Convention.
It was during the same session, devoted to the Constitution, that Saint-Just spoke for the first time on
the question. For this April 24, "he came to drag, writes Michelet, a long dark speech that no one
listened to".
The historian's judgment is excessively harsh. (But not surprisingly: Michelet admits, a little later, that
the constitutional texts have always "penetrated him with boredom and sadness".) Admittedly, the
speech seems one of the least attractive that Saint-Just delivered , but it sins less by the length than by
the embarrassed gait of the author. Obviously the political conjuncture bothered him.
He had not only worked on the Constitution in the chamber. Since November 1792, he had been part
of a commission for the Constitution at the Jacobins. What, in his eyes, imposed the Constitution as an
urgent necessity, was the questioning of France. Gone are the days of the quest abroad, it was now
necessary to assert oneself in Europe. The Constitution should resonate
as a "response", "a manifesto on earth", and to make "the glory" of the Assembly. With an optimism rare in
him, Saint-Just declared to his colleagues: Europe will ask you for peace, the day that you will have given a
constitution to the French people. On the same day the divisions will cease; the overwhelmed factions will
bend under the yoke of freedom... For, the nation and the State, then, will have taken shape.
The development of new institutions fascinated him like a philosopher's stone to be discovered.
All the arts have produced their wonders; the art of governing has only produced monsters. This is a great
reason to dedicate yourself to its research...
To raise this art, we had a very old instrument: the law. But how to arrange it, how to handle it? For several
years, Saint-Just had been asking himself the question. In the Spirit of the Revolution, he wrote: "The laws
hold the rank of God...they must bend everything to morality and bend to it themselves." But he had to give
up. It was necessary to ensure the connection between heaven and earth. And, in his first speech to the
Convention, he had corrected: One must not always decide for what, being good in itself, ceases to be so
relatively. Let's dare to see and hear everything to judge things soundly. However, this part given to the
opportunity, the legislator should, in his eyes, "like the gods, reign by wisdom" and be for the people a true
"oracle".
Such a pretension had, then, nothing personal, or astonishing. Already Jean-Jacques Rousseau estimated
that, to establish the legislation well, "we would need gods". And, before him, Bossuet declared to kings: "You
are gods, that is to say you have in your authority, you bear on your forehead a divine character." However
Montesquieu, who prided himself on being the only engender of the Spirit of the Laws (Prolem sine matre
creatam bore his book as an epigraph) had not been able to entirely satisfy his desire. His monographs
presented themselves as pretty turntables above which appeared a British spirit not completely free from the
mists of History and the English Channel. Finally, Rousseau himself had confessed privately, in a letter to the
Marquis de Mirabeau in 1767, that "finding a form of government that puts the law above man" fell within the
"squaring of the circle" .
What had the deputy of the Convention discovered? He must have felt less enlightened, less godlike than
when he started out. Always seeking the law as a sacred dogma and a therapy, finding the means to ensure
both extra-temporal salvation and immediate health, this posed a difficult problem to solve.
For what is the law to be based on?
On nature? He had believed him. I thought that social order was in the very nature of things... and borrowed
from the human mind only the care of putting the various elements in their place... So I imagined that if the
man was given laws according to nature and his heart, he would cease to be unhappy and . But, if he speaks
corrupted 9 in the past tense, it means that he has changed his mind. He has to go up high
History, to the "old Franks", to the "old Germans", to find "the social state" where the people are "prince and
sovereign". Now he declares it bluntly: We must not think of natural politics, and that is not my idea.
So, should the law be based on great principles, on clearly defined human, national and state rights?
Robespierre, on April 15, had replied in the affirmative, rising up against Buzot, who suggested to the
Assembly to discuss governmental institutions before the rights of the citizen. In the eyes of the Incorruptible,
"however pure the soul of the legislator, however freed it may be from all passions, from all party spirit and
from ambitious views", he needs well-defined principles. He hailed the 1789 dues as "an everlasting service,"
but he wanted to see them reviewed and increased.
Saint-Just did not follow his friend on this path. Legislation in precepts is not durable. Rights, he said, gave
“isolated lessons” without guarantee or sanction. After all, the "principles of liberty allow excess of power, for
lack of laws and enforcement." Also, we should focus on human relationships that depend on institutions,
customs and education. After all: Human rights were in Solon's head; he did not write them down, but
consecrated them and made them practical.
For him, it was necessary to live, to embody the good precepts rather than to sing them. Always suspicious
of the individual, he considered his time "full of illusion" and was deeply worried. A tyrant may arise and even
arm himself with these rights against the people; and the most oppressed of all peoples will be the one who...
would be oppressed in the name of his own rights... Crime... would set himself up in a kind of religion, and the
rogues would be in the sacred ark.
There remained the popular will. But still it was necessary not to ask too much of him. For Saint-Just,
Condorcet was mistaken in considering the general will solely "under its intellectual relation", as purely
speculative, resulting rather from the views of the mind than from the interest of the social body. It was
"depraving" popular opinion to make it "an expression of taste" and of imagination. Because, in the imagination,
everything loses its natural forms as the eyes create figures in the clouds. Consequently, it was necessary to
bring back “the general will to its true principle”, so that it asserts itself purely “material” and consecrates the
active interest of the greatest number and not its passive interest.
In short, everything depended on the practical arrangements and the rulers: Corruption among a people is
the fruit of laziness and power; the principle of morals is that everyone works for the benefit of all, and that no
one is enslaved or idle. It was necessary to change the education of the citizens and to impose frugality on
the leaders... In short, the new institutions were to have as their object to transform men as much as to insure
them against civic misfortunes.
But, one could not hope to find in the Constitution a fixed base, a philosopher's stone. Nature's time had
passed. The rationalist claim to immobilize rights and duties turned against itself. The art of governing had
only one key: the possible. But still it had to be measured with probity, clairvoyance and rigor of spirit.
6. INSTITUTIONS AND PRINCIPLES (APRIL, MAY, JUNE 1793).
Of course, in these debates on the institutions, the mode of expression of the general will – what
we would call, today, the electoral law – was what fascinated and troubled the Convention the most,
like all parliaments.
It is impossible to avoid this delicate point. According to Saint-Just, Condorcet's project included
too many "movements". Indeed, according to the great philosopher-mathematician, the general will
was to be manifested by way of referendum and through numerous elections: that of municipal
officers, administrators of departments, judges, deputies, ministers, members of the national jury ,
auditors, etc.
For the Assembly, Condorcet proposed an electoral system very different from that of the
Constituent Assembly and the Legislative Assembly. He advocated direct universal suffrage and not
two-tier suffrage like his predecessors. According to him, all French people should be electors,
instead of the latter being themselves elected only by “active citizens”, that is to say those paying
taxes and having the right to property.
Moreover, universal suffrage applied not only to the Legislative Assembly but also to the
government. In both cases it was an election with two rounds separated by an interval of several
weeks.
For the Assembly, the first round, called "preparatory", used to identify a list of candidates, each
voter would write or have written the list of candidates he wants. And each departmental
administration, by adding up the wishes expressed, would draw up a list of candidates whose
number was to be three times that of the places to be filled.
The second round, called "election", would ensure a selection of the desired third from the first
list. Each elector would receive a ballot bearing two columns divided into as many boxes as there
are subjects to be named, the first called the election column, the other an additional column. At the
count, this second column would be taken into account in cases where an absolute majority was not
obtained on the first.
For the government, each department would release, in a first ballot, a list of 91 names (13 per
ministerial post to be filled). The legislative body collecting all the departmental wishes would draw
the list of the 91 names having obtained the most votes. The latter would be subject to the entire
country so that, sifting through the names, the choice of the national majority would stop the seven
ministers sought.
The Montagnards had received the project very badly. At the Jacobins on February 17, Antoine
had judged it "a masterpiece of ridicule, not to say perfidy", while Collot d'Herbois saw in it "the
mistrust of the people".
Of course, Saint-Just also spoke out against the electoral project. But he did not stop at the
denunciation. His discovery was to suggest a reversal of the steam, that is to say the election of
the Legislative Assembly at the national level and that of the government on the basis of a
departmental ballot. He did not thus appear to reduce this great game of popular will, nor to be
less democratic than Condorcet.
Undoubtedly, the reversal advocated was not inspired solely by a concern for parliamentary
tactics. One could look there for the attachment of the Montagnards to the assembly system. But
that wasn't it either.
What critical arguments was he advancing? First he blamed Condorcet for favoring the
establishment of a new patriciate: “Famous men and their families would come to the ministry.
Government and public liberty would find themselves abandoned "to fortune like a naked child
and its cradle on the waves."
Already, let us not forget, notoriety often played, then, in the elections, without being asked to
decide. If you wanted to be elected, it was better not to present yourself too openly. After the
good results, we even feigned surprise. “I did not want this honour, writes Buzot, I was happy,
calm, honored at home. “Or again:” I was not prepared for this appointment, assures Thibaudeau,
I had not thought of it. Moreover, hadn't more than twenty men (including Bernardin de Saint-
Pierre) refused, in 1792, to respond to the will of the voters? On the other hand, the mediocre
Girondin Carra was spoiled for choice.
His reputable journalist's pen had earned him the election of seven electoral colleges (Bouches
du Rhône, Charente, Eure, Loir-et-Cher, Orne, Somme, Saône-et-Loire). Nevertheless, many had
succeeded thanks to local support and action.
Next, in Saint-Just's eyes, the electoral procedures suggested by Condorcet had the serious
drawback of diminishing the authority of the Legislative Assembly and making it “federative”. By
strengthening the ties between the electoral district and its deputy, they could favor local agitators
and their enterprises of dissidence, even of separatism.
But, in speaking of federalism, Saint-Just was not thinking only of provincial uprisings. There
was also a doctrinal question for him. Not only did he think, like most of his colleagues, that the
representative of the people should be freed from all local ties, but he did not want the land to be
taken as a basis, nor for the organization of the state. than for elections. Twice, on March 15 and
24, he spoke at the rostrum against provincialism, the survival of the monarchy. For him, “if the
division is attached to the territory, the people are divided”.
Also, as always anxious about the future, the division of the United States worried him. "One day,
see the divisions, he says (and may this time the State will arm itself against the other, we will
be distant), one representatives..." The Civil War, seventy years later, will bring a echo his words.
Against provincialism, he advocated communalist decentralization. He declared it bluntly: "The
sovereignty of the nation resides in the communes", which must bring together "six to eight
hundred voters", and no more. As for the departments, their population must be divided into three
arrondissements.
This escape over provincial lands meant a lot to him. We will find it advocated in his notes after his
death: The homeland is not the soil, it is the community of affections.
And if such a feeling was spurred on by the political conjuncture - the Vendée intrigues - one can think
that it also reflected the personality of Saint-Just, his age and his anxieties: too young to be retained
by the charm or the memories attached to a landscape, too much in search of the absolute to want to
be stopped by the flowers of a season.
Practically, how did he conceive of the institutions to be given to the country? He proposed a
Legislative Assembly with only 341 deputies, while the Convention, theoretically, had 749.
10
. This Assembly should be elected by a uninominal ballot and in a single round.
Each inhabitant of a commune designating his candidate, a "minister of votes" would add up all the
results transmitted by the "directories" of the district. The 341 citizens who would obtain the most
votes would be “proclaimed representatives of the people”. In doubtful cases, the oldest would be
"preferred".
Limited in number, this assembly would also be limited in powers. It would not intervene in the
appointment and composition of the government. It could "in no case be divided into committees",
grounds too favorable to party intrigues and the game of factions. For let us not forget that the
accusation of belonging to a party was considered a serious insult.
Danton, Lanjuinais, Fonfrède defended themselves against it at the Convention, and Barère, Brissot,
Carnot, Meillan, in their memoirs. "We were so reluctant to form a party," writes Meillan, "that the mere
thought of a combined approach revolted us." Each of us wanted to be independent and conduct
ourselves in our own way. We were circumspect, timorous... and above all we wanted to avoid the
reproach of forming a party." 11
But. if the article of the Constitution of Saint-Just was based on a well-
established feeling, it was also committees – against a strong current in which the rapporteur himself
would soon find himself drawn. The casting did not date from the day before.
Already, on the governmental level, the Constituents had created a committee of twelve members,
called the “research committee”; then, the Legislature had had the "surveillance committee", which
could issue decrees of accusation for crimes against the nation and have the accused brought before
the High Court; finally, the Convention, shortly after its beginnings, had set up the “General Security
Committee”, extending that of the previous Assembly, but with increased functions and powers. On
the other hand, at the legislative level, parliamentary committees were more numerous. The
Constituent Assembly, after having founded the first four, on June 19, 1789, had soon counted forty!
The Legislative Assembly, after having discussed at length their maintenance and their organization,
had adopted 22 of them. And the Convention, preserving their number and their assignment, had put them back to wo
Installed in different hotels in Paris, they never lacked work but often regular members. However, a
Mallet du Pan, who did not like the Convention much, wrote: “The administration, entrusted to the
committees, progressed by jolts, but did not stop; it was variable but firm.
Its activity, its work, the energy of its means knew no bounds when it came to two objects particularly
interesting to all, namely external defense and vigilance within .
. All these committees had contributed to bringing the ministerial function into disrepute.
Saint-Just's condemnation of the committees was all the more unequivocal in that it was accompanied
by that of the commissions: "The National Assembly - decreed article 15 of chapter VI of its bill - cannot
to appoint special commissions taken from its midst, if not to give it a particular account; it cannot
delegate functions, create attributions, nor violate existing ones. Saint-Just intended not only to oppose
Condorcet, who suggested dividing the Assembly into two "sections", but to establish a real separation
of powers. For him, the Assembly should above all control the leaders – civilian or military, set monetary
–, the
and fiscal policy. Responsible for awarding pensions, but not empowered to “change the laws of
Republic”, she had to read “three times on three different days” the decrees before voting them. Finally,
to be promulgated, these had to have had 251 voters. As we can see, Saint Just was above all
concerned with circumscribing and disciplining the legislative power.
As for the Executive, it attached it to a second and small assembly, entitled "Council of the Republic".
This would have 84 members, that is to say one per department. The election would be at the second
degree. The nation being divided into communal constituencies of 200 voters, each would appoint a
grand elector. Then the latter would meet in each departmental capital to elect a councilor of the
Republic.
This council would play a vital role. "Alone in charge of the general administration", elector, by an
absolute majority, of the nine ministers of the government, he would direct foreign and internal policy,
and command war operations.
Thus reinvigorated, freed from the great assembly, the government, estimated Saint-Just, could
respond to the necessities of the
hour: Whether you make peace or whether you make war, you need a vigorous government: a weak
government and disordered who makes war resembles the man who commits some excess with a weak
temperament: because in this state of delicacy in which we are, if I may say so, the French people have
less energy against the violence of foreign despotism ; the laws are languishing and the jealousy of
freedom has broken the weapons.
He who was to enter the Committee of Public Safety asked his audience to distinguish between
international relations and human relations. In his eyes, only the former, that is to say foreign affairs,
came under "politics", while the latter constituted "the social". He had been discriminating for a long
time. This formed one of the themes of the work, On Nature, Civil Status, the City or the Rules of
Government Stewardship, which he had begun to write long before the Convention 13 . Like many of
his colleagues, Saint-Just sincerely dreamed of social institutions which would establish ne varietur
happiness in justice and freedom.

But, on this, his draft constitution added almost nothing. While his friend Robespierre distinguished himself,
on April 24, by delivering a great speech to justify the limitation of the right of property (his definition of the
principle of this will, as everyone knows, be taken up many times by the Socialists, until 1848, and then,
warmly commented on by Jaurès), Saint-Just only posed a "social" principle, defined by article 3 of chapter III
of his Constitution: The law does not recognize a master between citizens ; it recognizes no domesticity. It
recognizes an equal and sacred commitment of care between the man who works and the one who pays. Just
as he dismissed provincialism's attachments to the land, he wanted to overcome the attachments to the goods
of property, and consider only individual relationships. In these lay the keystone that needed to be changed
and improved.
It was not only, in his eyes, a matter of institutions but a question of civic morality and lifestyle. However,
for this, like many of his colleagues, he sought his inspiration in ancient Rome and Greece. His age, his recent
studies made their sources particularly vivid for him. Also, it is not surprising that he reserved, in his project, a
place of choice for the elderly.
Didn't Plato entrust his “Council of the Dawn” to the ten oldest guardians of the law? Didn't the old Spartans
dominate the Philities? Didn't Xenophon approve of Lycurgus for having "given more honor to old age than to
the strength of young men", by attributing to old men the right to judge capital trials?
Also Saint-Just granted to the oldest the presidency of the judicial courts, and entrusted them with a major
role in communal life. In each locality, according to its constitution, six old men would be elected for two years.
Their mission would be to stop the troubles thanks to their spiritual authority.
In the event of a fight, they would appear "decorated with a tricolor scarf and a white plume", and would
arbitrate the dispute, without ever resorting to force. Those who insulted old people would be "reputed to be
wicked" and "stripped of their status as citizens." Finally, if one of these old men were to die in the exercise of
his duties, the whole nation would mourn him and suspend his work for a day.
There is something touching and somewhat ridiculous about such a cult and such use of old age. The
young deputy of the Convention, who kept a Télémaque in his little library in Paris, was still looking for a
Mentor... Equality, laid down in principle, did not extend to age.
But the Convention got bogged down in the division of the territory, which called into question local action
and future elections. For Saint-Just, it meant creating “the frame before the painting...”.
The painting dragging on, on the date of May 29, only the Declaration of the Rights of Man and a few
articles on the conservation of the departments, districts and cantons were voted. However, the wind was
turning. The Parisian insurrection was going to upset the Girondins, take away the government from them.
On the eve of the fateful day, May 30, Saint-Just was deputy to the Committee of Public Safety, in the company
of Hérault de Séchelles, Ramel, Couthon and Mathieu, with the mission of rapidly drawing up a new draft
14
Constitution .
Ramel and Mathieu, two provincial lawyers, did not play a role, according to Hérault de Séchelles, but they
did not hinder the work that was accomplished. On June 10, Hérault de Séchelles presented the new project.
For the Declaration of Rights, we had reviewed and corrected the articles already voted. Saint-Just included
his article on domesticity. The whole, – whatever one thinks, had a moderate character. Not only was the
and property Supreme Being established as a general principle, but freedom of worship, of the press
rights were guaranteed.
Moreover, the contribution of Saint-Just was important. His central idea on the electoral process prevailed.
Camille Desmoulins, wanting to weave wreaths in Hérault de Séchelles, attributed this one to him in a beautiful
eulogy: "Honor to the member of the former Committee of Public Safety who imagined having the people
appoint his representatives immediately and mediately all the rest of the public officials by the electoral bodies.
This one had a very happy idea and which removed all the “However, if the Convention borrowed from Saint-
venom of the Condorcet plan . Just a few large ones, it had to follow him less concerning certain modalities
15 principles and the idea of articulation ,
16 practices. Indeed, the election of parliamentarians on the national level was abandoned to adopt the district
ballot, in two rounds, in the event of a tie (the latter being introduced, for the first time, in the elections). And,
to find one's way, the number of parliamentarians was increased: Saint-Just provided for 341 and the
Constitution laid down 675.
Finally, what is more serious, no attention was paid to the separation of powers. The government, named
“Executive Council” instead of being the delegation of a second chamber, would be elected by the Assembly.
However, the latter would only elect the twenty-four ministers at the second level. A list of possible ministers
would have been formed, with one elected by department. It was a first step towards the assembly government
which was going to prevail and become a rule in France, for a long time.
Among the articles proposed by Saint-Just and adopted without correction, one of them – by the spirit that
inspires it and the date on which it was voted on – particularly resonates today.
It is article 121, laying down in principle that the French people do not make peace with an enemy
which occupies its territory.
And it was on June 18, 1793 that, coming under discussion, the article provoked various movements within
the Assembly. A Girondin deputy, Sébastien Mercier, the author of the Tableau de Paris, called for its rejection:
“Such articles, he declared, are written or erased at the point of the sword. One can, on its territory, make
advantageous treaties. Do you flatter yourself that you are always victorious? Did you make a treaty with
victory? »
The will to fight, somewhat abandoned by the Girondins, but taken up by the Montagnards, triumphed that
day, thanks to the intervention of Robespierre... But when this Constitution was submitted to the popular will
(which did not approve of it that by 1,801,918 yes against 11,610 no and more than 4,300,000 abstentions),
this principle of resistance was one that many voters publicly disapproved of.
This entered into the "reservations" of the Gironde far right, which demanded the release of its arrested
leaders, the immediate convocation of a new assembly, the repeal of the maximum grain limit, the removal
of the article from the declaration of rights which legitimizes the insurrection, etc.
At the opposite extreme, there were also serious reservations. Jacques Roux, the father of the “Enrages”,
intervened brutally at the Cordeliers and appeared before the Convention with a motion. Robespierre asked
not to be allowed to speak. But the agitator returned to the charge two days later. “Have you banned
speculation? - No. Have you pronounced the death penalty against the hoarders? - No. Have you
determined what freedom of trade consists of? - No. Have you prohibited the sale of minted silver? - No.
Well ! he concluded, we declare to you that you have not done everything for the happiness of the people.
»
In short, the Constitution was criticized, on the one hand, for being too coercive politically and,
the other, of not being so economically enough.
What could Saint-Just think of such a welcome, he who, in his personal project, wanted to make the
mandatory voting? Ah! the task of representing the people was flattering but thankless.
1. In the Revue des Deux Mondes, February 1 , 1953.
2. Memoirs of Chancellor PASQUIER, Paris, 1893, I, p. 84.

3. These quotations from Lebrun's agent are taken from the France 322 file of the Archives du Quai d'Orsay.
4. Abandoning the service, because "sent on a mission", he says he is linked with Ysabeau.
5. He wrote in his notebook: “The System was one of the distant but powerful causes of the Revolution of 1789, it displaced fortunes and thereby
separated the power of wealth from movable and priestly power, and c It is this power of wealth which fought against the other and which sacrificed it
by making the Revolution. »
6. We read in M. OCTAVE FESTY 's book on Agriculture during the French Revolution: "Creuzé-Latouche eliminated the natural cause when he
wrote, at the end of 1792, that, the last harvests having been quite good, " we were "rather surprised in each of the intervals, not to enjoy the abundance
and the "facilities that we had had to promise ourselves." But, he continued, the laws on the free movement of grain have never been properly applied;
there are constant alarms which determine each department or district to believe that it can ensure its own existence only by absolutely opposing any
transport of grain. Ultimately, the market is very tight as a result of multiple retentions, and the result is a rise in the price level. »
7. On February 15, Pache is named mayor of Paris.
8. Memoirs of LOUVET DE COUVRAY, Paris, 1823, p. 378.

9. This must be seen as an allusion to his unfinished essay, De la Nature... (Cf. appendix II).
10. In fact, as we have seen, it had far fewer members present.
11. MEILLAN, Memoirs, p. 100.
12. Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 40.
13. See appendix II.
14. According to the report of the Moniteur (t. XVII, p. 515), it was Couthon who announced to the Assembly that by virtue of a decree voted the day
before, the Committee of Public Safety had chosen these five deputies to draw up a new draft constitution. But, as Aulard remarked, this decree did not
leave a trace. And we do not see the name of Saint-Just carried on the registers of the Committee until June 9th. Moreover, this appointment by
cooptation, before the coup of May 31, rather shows that he was not considered a dangerous ultra mountaineer.
15. Letter to General Dillon.

16. In his great speech against the Dantonists, Saint-Just will say: "We remember that Hérault was with disgust the witness
silent on the work of those who drew up the plan of constitution, of which he skillfully made himself the shameless reporter. »
CHAPTER X
THE CONDEMNATION OF THE GIRONDINS
1. THE PARLIAMENTARY IMPASSE.
We have abandoned the controversies of parliamentary clans to follow the elaboration of the Constitution. We have
to go back a little to see on what facts and under what conditions Saint-Just will deliver his report on the Girondins.
Again, excited, with divergent ulterior motives, the mass is annoyed by the quarrels
partisans who occupy the Convention.
On April 22, in the name of the three sections of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Gonchon came to tell the deputies:
Two
parties, citizens, seem to be dividing the National Convention. More ardent in destroying themselves... than in
crushing the aristocracy... We see them occupied in attributing to themselves the evils which desolate the aristocracy,
the complicity of all conspiracies and the project of dominating.
Finally, on the 28th, the society of Aurillac proclaimed in a motion: We
know neither right side, nor left side, neither Mountain, nor valley, nor any of these denominations as ridiculous as
they are insignificant, if they were not dangerous. .. Here all the patriots are united to defend their freedom.
There was some truth, some justice in the criticisms addressed to each other by the extremes of the Assembly, but
the mistake for the supporters of the government was to get lost in it.
Having nothing in Paris and unable to acquire an armed force or public opinion there, the Girondins were still
thinking of transferring the Convention to the provinces. The stubborn Guadet returned to this theme on April 30 and
May 18, asking for his evacuation to Versailles or to Bourges with the dissolution of the municipality of Paris; but in
vain.
Basically, the Girondins no longer even firmly held the majority of the Assembly. More than ever, they were fighting
to prevent frequent recourse to roll-call voting. Indeed, with a friend president of the Parliament, they could tilt in their
direction, the doubtful votes with show of hands; while the roll call was the tally.
On May 17, they try to prevent the discussion, scheduled on the agenda, of the modalities of the roll call.
Many Montagnards cry out that this kind of vote is necessary when fifty deputies ask for it. The Girondins do not
see it that way; according to the official account, "nearly two hours pass in the tumult". Also Vergniaud asks for the
adjournment of the session. But Couthon manages to gain the platform and proposes that the vote be nominal when
a hundred deputies want it. The discussion went on for a long time and finally, the next day, the Committee on
Legislation to which the matter had been referred proposed that, for constitutional questions, a vote be taken by roll
call, when one hundred members so wished and, for the others questions, when one hundred and fifty deputies so
require. The second article, fought by the Montagnards Thuriot and Charlier, was finally sent back to committee. The
next day, the Montagnards want the debate to resume, but the heckling begins again, and the president covers himself
to interrupt the session.
The rule of the parliamentary vote will never be fixed. On May 27, Robespierre being unable to speak, the
left will claim a roll call in the fight. The votes will be more and more contested...
The Girondins will try to free themselves from the parliamentary and municipal opposition by forming a new
commission. It was Barère who proposed the formation of a commission of twelve members in order to “examine the
decrees of the Commune for a month”. But its members, appointed on May 21, extend its jurisdiction to all Parisian
affairs. These mediocre, well-meaning men will take brutal and clumsy decisions, because like all ministers, they have
no armed force with them. They will try to obtain one by proposing, on May 24, a decree instituting a guard of the
Convention. But if the decree will be voted, it will never come into force. At the same time, the commission of the
Twelve decreed the arrest of Hébert, the man of Father Duchesne and of the Commune. But, it will be for Hébert as
for Marat: the sections demonstrating in his favor, he will have to be released four days later.
It will then no longer be known exactly whether the commission of the Twelve is continuing or not. Because, the
day before, May 27, at the end of the session Lacroix had a decree voted breaking the commission and releasing Hébert.
But, the next day, this vote was contested by the Girondins. Finally, we decided on a roll-call vote to find out whether
the decree overturning the commission should, yes or no, be reported: out of 527 voters, 279 answered yes and 238
no.
However, the debate and the vote took place in such confusion that not everyone came to the same conclusion. At
the session of May 30, Bourdon de l'Oise intervened to "denounce the infamous commission of the Twelve, which the
people believed had been destroyed." He demanded the arrest of its president, Mallevaux, and of its secretary Martin,
who had given the order "to invest the Hôtel de Breteuil with sufficient force to maintain the security of its papers".
Bourdon de l'Oise finds this inadmissible after "the decree issued... which saved freedom" and after "the resignation
of several members of this
commission ".
For several weeks, any government had proved impossible, people had been lost in suspicions and intrigues. As
much as their adversaries, the Girondins marked, in the month, how much the assembly system seemed doomed. On
May 18, Guadet affirmed: A national representation
debased no longer exists ! Any palliative to save his dignity is cowardice. And on May 24, the day when
Isnard, President of the Assembly, launched his famous and clumsy sentence - "If by always resurgent
insurrections, it happened that one harmed the national representation, I declare it to you at the name
of the whole of France, Paris would be annihilated, and soon people would search in vain on the banks
of the Seine to see if it ever existed. – Hébert had just been arrested because his newspaper had the
title: La grande denunciation du Père Duchesne... about the conspiracies formed by the Brissotins,
the Girondins, the Rolandins, the Buzotins, the Pétionistes and all the damn sequel accomplices of
Capet and Dumouriez, to have the brave Montagnards, the Jacobins, the Commune of Paris massacred,
in order to give the coup de grace to liberty and to restore royalty.
Of course, the article did not provide much detail on this long title. But in this atmosphere
stormy, one sensed the lightning flashes of a plot.
The Jacobins being a little burnt, the Commune too marked, secret meetings, clandestine committees
absorbed the great tacticians, men thirsty for brutal action, and intelligence agents. For several weeks,
there has been a lot of talk about the bishopric committee. As in previous enterprises of this order,
people, sometimes dubious, with various, even opposing, ulterior motives had slipped in.
Everyone was waiting, fearing or desiring them, for the great insurrection and the coup d'etat.
2. THE COUP IS NOT ALWAYS SAFE.
What contemporaries call “the revolution of May 31” – where the Girondins will be put out of action –
is not the affair of a day (nor of three, as many historians seem to believe). Throughout June, the
outcome of the conflict remained uncertain. Moreover, the acts, the events are accompanied here by
hidden intentions, often missed maneuvers, which blur the pieces, and make their interpretation delicate.
However, if we want to understand and judge the report on the Girondins that Saint-Just will present on
July 7, we must try to open the file we have. Let's talk about the night of May 30 to 31; it is the comedy
of the Commune. The Bishop's
Committee, which has transformed itself into a "revolutionary general assembly", has set up a
Committee of Nine, which, during the night, suspends the Parisian municipality, to immediately restore
it "in the fullness of its functions". that is, to allow him to act freely, "despite the law which punishes with
death anyone who causes the alarm to be sounded or fired without a decree of the Convention
1 ”.
In the morning, Parisians are awakened by the tocsin and alarm bells. Some Girondins, such as
Louvet who tells it, have stayed out for the fiftieth time. When they wake up, seeing nothing, after the
tocsin sounds, they return, against all odds, to the Convention. Illa suprema dies, said Rabaut de Saint-
Etienne, rising. Some no longer have much hope.
However, in spite of the bells, nothing bursting in the morning, the afternoon knows the relaxation.
The newspaper, Chronique de Paris,
will say: The day was superb and, as around noon there had been no sinister event, everyone was walking,
laughing freely; all the women sat quietly at their doors to watch the insurrection pass by; no disorder has
been committed; there was only one ass whipped in the stands of the Convention.
In the evening, Paris is illuminated, we even resume work in the workshops.

At the Convention, the eminent Girondin Valazé asked for the report of the commission of Twelve, but
Montagnards and delegations from the sections came back, speaking of a plot, to demand its abolition. And,
when it comes to the tocsin, young Robespierre
intervenes:
You want to know who sounded the tocsin, I'll tell you ? these are the betrayals of our generals (...), these
are the conspirators from within, many of whom are within the bosom of the Convention. A part of the
assembly approving it by shouting Yes! Yes ! he takes up his last affirmation and adds: It is the commission
of the Twelve, where there are only counter-revolutionaries.
Playing, as always, on two tables, Barère wanted, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, to have
a decree voted establishing an armed force for the Convention and suppressing the Committee of Twelve.
The public prosecutor of the Commune, Lhuillier comes with a delegation to ask for a decree of accusation
against the members of the commission of the Twelve and the Girondin leaders, Brissot, Gensonné, Buzot,
Barbaroux, Roland, Clavière and Isnard. But nothing is decided.
At the Commune, we are worried. Despite Robespierre's opposition, the Convention decided to take control
of the Parisian military force. According to a witness, the mayor looked “gloomy and dejected”. Some
considering the blow missed, Pache replies to them: “That's what it is, each time you put a Varlet at your
head, the same will happen. »
However, Mrs. Roland is arrested . As Roland was able to escape, a newspaper will say "we
let the body escape, and the spirit was taken”.
In the evening, the tocsin and the rehearsal still shake the atmosphere. And Hassenfratz comes, in the
name of the sections and of the Commune, to ask for the accusation of the Twelve and, this time, of twenty-
seven Girondins, including Pétion, Guadet, Gensonné, Vergniaud, Buzot, Brissot, Barbaroux, Chambon,
Biroteau, Rabaut , Gorsas, Fonfrède, Lanthenas, Grangeneuve, Lehardi, Lesage, etc.
Marat intervenes so that Dussault is crossed out on the list. And Barère gets a motion passed decreeing
that the Committee of Public Safety will be required to present measures within three days to save public
affairs and that it will report on the petition presented by the constituted authorities of Paris. In addition, the
municipality and the citizens of Paris must provide the Committee of Public Safety with all the documents
they have on the incriminated deputies.
But the 2 is a Sunday. The armed force of the sections, mandated by the committee of the Bishopric,
commanded by Hanriot identifies the Convention. Lanjuinais goes up to the podium to propose the
cassation "of all the revolutionary authorities of Paris" and the outlawing of "all those who would like to arrogate to
themselves a new authority and against the law". Always a man of transaction, Barère, in the name of the Committee
of Public Safety, proposed that the denounced be simply suspended from their functions. Isnard and Fauchet accept,
but Lanjuinais and Barbaroux refuse, declaring that they want to die at their post.
Finally, the majority with Hérault de Séchelles, who chairs the Assembly, decides to go out to harangue the armed
men. But, their commander, Hanriot, refuses and, in front of the guns which are drawn up in front of them, the
deputies must return to the Parliament.
2
Only Robespierre and a dozen of his friends had not left their bench. The Assembly including Saint-Just.
decrees that it places under arrest in their homes: Gensonné, Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, Gorsas, Pétion, Salles,
Chambon, Barbaroux, Buzot, Biroteau, Rabaut, Lasource, Lanjuinais, Grangeneuve, Lesage, Louvet, Valazé, Doulat,
Lidon, Lehardi, and all the members of the commission of the Twelve, Dussault, Fonfrède and Saint-Martin excepted,
and the ministers Clavière and Lebrun.
They are therefore, ultimately, thirty-two accused, but subjected to a mild regime, since they are only consigned
to their homes. They return to their homes freely, without gendarmes to accompany them.
On that Sunday, some who had dined in the country, such as Pétion and Guadet, were arrested that evening on
the boulevards. It's hard to say whether it was desperation or recklessness that led them to leave the capital on the
day their fate was at stake...
Moreover, even after this decree, the game did not seem over. We had indeed seen a Marat, a Hébert return
triumphant, after having been condemned in Parliament! And then, many of the accused held strong positions in the
provinces. We had to be careful. At the time when Lyon, Marseilles, Bordeaux rose up, it was not appropriate to
provide them with standards with these beautiful heads. Finally, the consigned Girondins retained friends and allies
in the Convention. The latter did not see in the affair a sudden change of majority, but a questioning of Parliament
itself. It was necessary to expedite the affair with as much prudence as energy.
On June 3, the flexible Cambacérès had a decree voted for the renewal of all the committees, except that of Public
Safety. We are impatiently awaiting the report that it is to establish. As they say in the corridors of the Assembly that
the report will be favorable to the accused and will propose their amnesty, one of the Girondin leaders, Valazé, at
whose group meetings were held, sends the Convention a letter to disdainfully refuse this amnesty. Not without
common sense, the industrious Buchez and Roux, in reproducing this letter, add: "Sacrificing everything to party
spirit, when it was necessary to sacrifice everything for the safety of France, the Girondins thought only of their duel
against the Jacobins: they wanted to clear their honor. Vergniaud, too, sent a letter to the Convention demanding the
report, which was long overdue, and the heads of Lhuillier and Hassenfratz which he
denounced as agitators. Such repartee did not lack style but certainly skill.
The same day (June 6), Barère presents a first report which eludes the case of the Girondins to violently
attack the General Council of the Commune. And, forty-eight hours later, Barère withdrew his project, which
was strongly criticized by Robespierre.
Once again, we are bogged down. And, as the new majority with the Mountain intends to complete the
Constitution promptly (Saint-Just has been added to the Committee of Public Safety, since May 30, for this
work), in order to show constructive activity and (at least for some) dismiss the embarrassing question, the
friends of the Girondins let out howls: the report first, then the Constitution.
On June 10, Deswars and Camboulas rose up because the letters for the province were unsealed and
the newspapers censored by the revolutionary central committee of the Commune. It is true that finding
themselves deprived of their great means of communication and expression, the Girondins lost their last
weapons. But, on the other hand, in accordance with the decree, and under the instigation of Chaumette,
the sections must work to constitute the file of the accused.
The same day, Brissot on the run, with a false passport, was arrested at Moulins.
On the 13th, the deputies of Vernon present to the Assembly a decree from the local administration
enjoining the raising in the department of an army of four thousand men to march on Paris and free the
Convention from its rebels 3 . The text had,they said, been drawn up by "Buzot and several of his
accomplices currently in Évreux". Moreover, a letter from Félix Wimpfen announced the arrest by the
administration of Calvados of two deputies sent on a mission to the region.
The charges were clear. The Montagnards ask for a decree striking Buzot and his friends Gorsas,
Lasource, Salles and Larivière, no less guilty than him. But the majority only accepted to decide against
Buzot. And even ! it was not without a murmur or commotion.
Certain deputies of the right cried out to demand a decree of accusation against Hanriot, commander of the
Parisian armed forces...
Finally, we learned, in Paris, of the victories of the Vendeans. Robespierre expressed his weariness, his
discouragement among the Jacobins, June 12:
... As for the presence of the Mountain at the Convention, I say that this means is good; but it is insufficient.
It is in vain that one goes to the Mountain every day if one does not have a plan followed. If we were united,
if we had an agreement of principles, each patriot would have a confidence, an energy which he does not
have. As for me, I declare that I recognize my inadequacy. I no longer have the vigor necessary to fight the
intrigues of the aristocracy... and I declare that I will resign 4 .
Danton, who was violently criticized at the Jacobins, by Varlet, also suffered from
depression. This May 31 did not give what they expected.
As for Saint-Just, he thinks of fighting against the insurgents. On June 17, the committee appoints him by
decree to go to the Eure and the Somme as a delegation with Lindet, Lejeune and Duroy. But a
deputation from Eure coming to swear fidelity to the Convention, the decree is revoked. Because if the province, in
certain points, rises against Paris, in others, it brings its assistance to him. On the 15th, Berlier issued a decree of
accusation against Duchatel, a letter of which had been found in the pocket of a prisoner in Vendée. On the 17th, Thuriot
obtains the same measure against Barbaroux, following the complaints of the Marseillais.
In Paris, the accused, who must keep their homes, have a sweet and easy life. They say, in the Assembly, that
Vergniaud is leaving his house with his guard and that they are going to drink together. There is also talk of bribery
attempts. The police administration having investigated Kervelegan reports in its report:
... Which deputy told us that he did not need a gendarme and the proof that he could do without was that the one
given to him on June 2 was not at home and that he had not seen him since last Thursday; that, moreover, one or two
gendarmes could not impose on a man like him, and showed us a damask in the form of a saber hanging from the
fireplace and a pair of pistols which could make him pass Pétion was going to dinner, with his gendarme , at his
5.
colleague
Masuyer. On July 7, it will be noted that Valazé continued to receive “many visits” at his home. The month ends with
new escapes; on June 24, they are Pétion and Lanjuinais, on the 29, Kervelegan.
In total, about twenty defendants "took off". It is not the obscure members of the Twelve, but above all the talkative
parliamentarians. If Roland wanders a little, Buzot, Barbaroux and Gorsas won Caen; Guadet and Louvet are at Evreux;
with Pétion, Bergoing, Lesage, Cussy, Kervelegan and Lanjuinais, they will form in Normandy an "Assembly of the
united departments" and organize the offensive against Paris. Biroteau and Chasset circulate in the Lyon region.
Grangeneuve, in charge of mission by Vergniaud, Fonfrède and Ducos, operates in Bordeaux; Rabaut Saint-Etienne in
Nimes.
Finally Duchatel and Meillan move clandestinely.
Alone of all the breakaways, Brissot was caught.
If the leaders of the Convention did not take any serious measure to prevent these prisoners from escaping, on the
other hand, there is one who worried them a lot: the one who will be called Louis XVII.
On July 3, we will separate Marie-Antoinette from her son to place it on a different floor of the Temple by entrusting it to
the shoemaker Simon, designated as teacher. And, as there is much talk of escape in the street, on July 7, a commission
of inquiry of the Assembly will note the presence of the dolphin.
The restoration announcement came, as we saw with the proclamation of Louvet, of the Girondins
in Normandy.
It was under these circumstances that Saint-Just came to the rostrum on July 8 to read the report he had written in
the name of the Committee of Public Safety.
3. SAINT-JUST ADVOCATE GENERAL.
What strikes first when we repeat this speech (and what touched the listeners) is the moderation.
Obviously, the speaker intends to remain above the groups and their conflicts within the Assembly:
The enemies of the Republic are in its entrails, it is not audacity that you have to overcome, but hypocrisy.
He evokes this one by speaking of the two tendencies of the assembly, of the "two parties which appeared without
cease in his bosom. For him :
... the majority of the National Convention, wise and measured, fluctuated ceaselessly between two minorities [the
Mountain and the Gironde], one ardent for the Republic and your glory, sometimes neglecting the government to
defend the rights of the people, the other ostensibly eager for liberty and order on trivial occasions, pitting liberty
against liberty with great dexterity, artfully tackling the rise of deliberation, confusing inertia with order and peace, the
republican spirit with anarchy, successfully imprinting a character of deformity on all that hindered its designs,
marching with the people and liberty to direct it towards its ends, and bringing minds back to monarchy by the disgust
and terror of the present times.
This picture painted in the manner of Tacitus – tight contrasts, elegantly balanced – is quite welcome and accurate.
From the outset, in order to invite the Assembly to "definitively decide", he laid down, as an obligation, the indulgence
that we owe to a few who are sooner imprudent than guilty.
Having laid down a great principle:

The Republic takes no account of weaknesses and sterile outbursts; everyone is
guilty when the fatherland is unhappy...
He declares that it is not a question of condemning men for their opinion, whose freedom must be
respected. Then he adds:
Not all prisoners are guilty; the greatest number were only misled, but as in a conspiracy the salvation of the
fatherland is the supreme law, you had to confuse, for a moment, misguidance and crime, and wisely sacrifice the
freedom of a few to the salvation of all; the prisoners, like the court, had waged war against the laws by the laws;
nothing resembles virtue like a great crime...
It is not the first time that he speaks of the resemblance between virtue and the great crime. Making a career in a
world where everything is called into question, the discernment of good and evil is not without anguish or a matter of
conscience. In political and social matters, opting for what one considers should be good is often a disinterested bet.
The paragraph that we have just quoted is, without doubt, one of those in which Saint-Just discovers himself the most.
But let's continue. The one who will become one of the theoreticians of the Terror then presents it as a
past policy. He condemns the violence of the Girondins, the brutality of September 2. For him, after August
10: Two measures
were taken equally calculated to neutralize the republican party; one was to delay the judgment of the
tyrant, under the pretext of giving him more solemnity; the other measure was that system of terror by which
they first sowed distrust and finally hatred against Paris.
Evoking the uprisings of the North, of the Vendée, he asks the question: Is
France happier since men who claimed to be sympathetic started the civil war, carried the sword of
September all over France, and returned the conquest of this empire easier ?
After analyzing the actions of the main defendants, Saint-Just, in his long conclusion, tells the
Conventional:
You must put some difference between the prisoners; the greatest number were deceived, and who
among us can flatter himself never to be? the real culprits are those who have fled and you no longer owe
them anything, since they desolate their country. It is the fire of freedom that has purified us as the bubbling
of metals chases impure foam from the crucible.
And then, a little further on:
Be that as it may, freedom will not be terrible towards those whom it has disarmed, and who have
submitted to the laws; proscribe those who have fled from us to take up arms; their escape attests to the
lack of rigor of their detention. Proscribe them, not for what they said, but for what they did; judge others,
and forgive the greatest number. Error should not be confused with crime, and you do not like to be severe;
it is time for the people to finally hope for happy days, and for liberty to be something other than party fury;
you have not come to trouble the earth, but to console it for the long misfortunes of slavery; restore inner
peace. Authority shattered in the center causes its debris to weigh everywhere; restore everywhere justice
and the energy of government; rally the French around their Constitution; may it not share the hatred
conceived against its authors ?
The last feature deserves to be remembered. The rapporteur was also the main author of the Constitution.
Not only did a theorist on the subject, Condorcet, a friend of the Girondins, publish a pamphlet against the
one that was voted on, but at the opposite extreme, the leader of the "Enrages", Roux, came to criticize it
violently before the Assembly. .
Such a moderate indictment is not likely to win over the excited people of the suburbs. Especially since
the men of the bishopric committee and of the sections had sent Saint-Just a file containing the indictments
against the Girondins. On June 24, the section of the Faubourg Montmartre filed with the Commune
documents from which it drew two hundred counts! And on July 11, the departmental committee had asked
Saint-Just to return the documents communicated to it. Saint-Just's answer is unknown. But if some of
these pieces have been found, they do not seem to be those invoked by Saint-Just in his speech 7
.
The absence of these documents prevents us from judging certain accusations made by Saint-Just, such as, for
example, the one relating to the fact "that there had been formed in the councils of Valazé, where the detainees went,
the plan to have the assassination part of the Agreement”.
On the whole, Saint-Just's thesis boils down to this: to re-establish the monarchy, the Girondins worked to prevent
government by dividing opinion and territory, in particular by a "conspiracy" in the "administrative bodies Corsica,
Bouches-du-Rhône, Eure, Calvados".
Contrary to what is generally believed, Saint-Just does not play on the theme of “federalism”; Unless I'm mistaken, he
doesn't even use the word. Moreover, the thesis of a deliberately bad policy to promote restoration hardly holds. As for
local uprisings, a Roland and a Barbaroux had considered them, as we have seen, a year earlier, and many Girondins
joined them or started them after being charged. Undeniably Saint-Just would have been a little embarrassed if he had
had to write his report with Girondins who observed the instructions in their homes. Admittedly, the main defendants
worked, in April and May, to provoke in their electoral constituency – so to speak – movements of opinion with arms. But,
it was about exhibition rather than conspiracy or separatism. They wanted to make imposing demonstrations in the
provinces, just as the Jacobins wanted to show off in Paris. In his Memoirs, Thibaudeau was able to write with good
reason: "If the Girondins were not federalists in principle, they were so out of self-esteem, and out of necessity, because
they felt that Paris would be their tomb 8 " For his part, the Girondin Louvet speaks of a “holy coalition” in the provinces
and, to explain May 31, writes coldly: “Lyon took up arms and drove out its counter-revolutionary (Jacobin) municipality.
At this latest news the Mountain felt that there was no salvation for her except in a fit of despair; she seizes the strings of
. establish a logical sequence in the history of France since August 10 and demonstrate that the Girondins
the tocsin To
have remained attached to royalist projects, Saint-Just goes to great lengths.
9. »
No doubt he can easily pin Brissot down by saying that he wanted to play a Monk and that if he “had finesse, he had
no courage”. He can say that on August 10, "according to all appearances, we had hoped to achieve the forfeiture of the
King, without compromising the monarchy" and that, then, we wanted "a revolution in the dynasty rather than in the form
of government" . He can also reproach Pétion and Manuel for not having intervened to prevent the massacres of
September 2.
But the moral conclusion that he draws from this inaction seems audacious to say the least: When self-interest has
closed the hearts of the magistrates of the people and depraved them to the point of pretending to preserve their
popularity by sparing crime, we must conclude that they were plotting a crime themselves. He can attack Buzot and
stigmatize his violent interventions. From which he draws principles, valid in themselves, but not as psychological
interpretation. Very nice to say: “We were filled with inertia with impetuosity. Very just to proclaim: "the need for rest
makes slavery bearable".
Often true, finally, to affirm: “One calms anarchy by the wisdom of the government; it is irritated by clamours which are
always fruitless. From there to conclude that a Buzot was busy, making a lot of noise, to prevent the progress of the
government is frankly abusive. There was in Buzot as in Barbaroux (of whom Saint-Just speaks at the same time) a
question of sanguine temperament.
The accuser has, in the end, great difficulty in uniting the accused. To paint a complete picture, he makes room for
Dumouriez who, he says, "had only his own person in view", but finally became friends with the d'Orleans. As the Duc
d'Orléans is in prison at Marseilles, he can say that with the prince "there were many pretensions which dared not show
themselves." Then, he makes room for Roland , recalling the propaganda he carried out for himself, with the help of
Barbaroux he declares to be the author of a Parisian poster, signed Hanington, inviting the soldiers to stand up against .
the clubs of the Convention. He also alludes to a circular letter, signed Valazé, dated May 22, calling "in arms his
companions". In short, all the facts put forward, all the acts evoked are hardly revealing or demonstrative.
In what did the agreement and the conspiracy consist?

On the first point, Saint-Just got away with it by saying that the Girondins "went rather together than they walked by
intelligence", or, if you prefer, "rather by conformity of views and ambition than the concert ".
As for the plot, he finds it by implicating General Dillon and a few others, arrested the day before his speech. None
of these are on the list of thirty-two, the subject of his report.
But the sensational and picturesque nature of the story advantageously compensates for the mediocrity of its record on
the Girondins. Cleverly, from his first words, he takes out the case which he does not take up again, to expose it in
detail, until towards the end of his long report.
The precision of this passage is quite surprising, when one knows the judicial follow-up that will be given to it.
... Dillon was asked to lead a gathering; the people were agitated more and more for
have a pretext for an uprising.
The project was led by several leaders (they are arrested).
These leaders had under them twelve generals, each of whom was responsible for capturing the minds of four
sections.
These generals had two or four principal supporters in subordinate order: the project was communicated to a single
person, with an invitation to communicate it only to five others, five of whom were to follow the same course, always
dividing one by five. ..
We were to seize, at the same time, the alarm cannon and spike it, and seize by force, those of the common house
and the Temple, those of all the sections which were to be delivered, either by an attack, or by league helpers.
The son of the late king, Louis XVII, and his mother were to be proclaimed regent.
This last sentence was, according to the Monitor, greeted with "murmurs on the right". Couthon intervened to
say that the accusation was based on denunciations filed with the Committee of Public Safety. Continuing, Saint-
Just is applauded, when he announces: The denunciation of these facts and the supporting documents will be
delivered to the printing.
The promise is certainly sincere. But the parts, compromising for some, will not be
never printed. They will even disappear completely.
According to Saint-
Just: The project being carried out, the individuals composing this league were to call themselves, by right,
bodyguards, and those who would have distinguished themselves in this action, would have been decorated with
a white moiré ribbon, to which would hang a medal, representing an eagle overthrowing anarchy.
As we see, there is no question in this plot of relations with the accused Girondins.
For the latter, as conspirators, Saint-Just will have to let it be understood that he has no proof, but compensating
for this admission with a line the color of blood: “The conspirators left few traces. A few days more, they would
have stained them with blood. This kind of jerk – quite common at Saint-Just – is sometimes unpleasant.
Belief in the Gironde conspiracy must have been so weak in Saint-Just that, in
conclusion, to justify the convictions, he will recall the brutal measures voted:
The prisoners were the first to set an example of severity towards the representatives of the people; that they
submit to the law they have made for others; they are tyrants if they claim to be above it; that they choose between
the name of conspirators and that of tyrants.
The decree of indictment he proposes retains only 14 names out of the 32. It is true that two (Brissot and
Roland) had already been charged. Of the 14, 9 are in Eure, Calvados and Rhône 11 . Judged "in a state of
rebellion... with the intention of re-establishing royalty", they were declared to be "warned of complicity with those
12,
“traitors to the fatherland”. As for the 5 who remained in who
Paris, they fled. And the Convention “recalls to its bosom the other detainees, who are more deceived than guilty”.
Two names that Saint-Just often cited, Dillon and Valazé, do not appear on the list of the condemned.
For the first, the omission is justified: General Dillon was not among those on whom the delegate of the
Committee of Public Safety was to present a report. It is Cambon who, three days later, will ask the Assembly to
decide on his case and his business.
For Valazé, we explain less. The one whose major receptions were still noted by the police, the day before
Saint-Just's speech, will only be charged with a fortnight later – on July 28. Did he enjoy strong protections within
the Committee of Public Safety?
In any case, there was no immediate reaction in Parliament. Saint-Just's speech astonished the right side itself
by its moderation; he was listened to in profound silence. At the request of
Fonfrède, it was decreed that the discussion would be opened three days after the printing of the report.
Chabot then ascended the rostrum to denounce, in the name of the Committee of General Security, Condorcet's
pamphlet on the Constitution. The encyclopaedist considered the voted institutions reactionary and even
royalist! For him, not assigning an indemnity to the deputies showed that it had been proposed to call only the
rich to the Legislative Assembly. Finally, the new form of the executive council contained in his eyes the seeds
of royalty.
The Convention ordered the arrest of Condorcet and that of Déverite, a member of the right side,
accused of sending the offending brochure to the departments. The decree further provided that Condorcet
would appear at the bar "to confess or disavow the writing which was imputed to him."
He was given one last chance.
On July 14, two Girondins, Duperret and the Abbé Fauchet, were ordered to be arrested, about
of the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday.
Thus, once again, on both sides of the Assembly, they lent royalist ulterior motives.
The arguments used to support the accusation remained weak, sometimes even ridiculous, and yet certain
Montagnards like certain Girondins seem to have really thought of a
restoration.
First, the May 31 affair remains equivocal. Saint-Just confines himself to saying that, that day, "the intrigue
was drowned in the outburst of the people."
The Girondins, and their friends who will write about it, will affirm that the Montagnards had received
money from England to carry out the operation and restore the monarchy.
For Pitt's grant, we will mention statements by Chaumette, acknowledging, before his death, the English
funds received. On the other hand, according to Louvet, a Bordelais taken prisoner at Nerwinde then freed by
an exchange, would have told Guadet that an officer of the imperial army had told him that "the staff of Cobourg
flattered themselves that before few 22 heads would roll at the Convention”.
A Dulaure, and many other survivors, will quote a paragraph from Lanjuinais which reports the remarks of one
of his friends, who would have seen the letter of an emigrant announcing a great operation on May 31, against
the Convention.
None of this information, as we can see, is from a direct source. None, however, can be dismissed as
implausible. The process evokes that of the assassination of Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau: a meeting of the
two oppositions. Without wanting to help the Montagnards, the English might think that a blow against the
rulers, that is to say the Girondins, would be fatal for the revolutionary regime.
But there is more disturbing. The Girondin Bergoing immediately published in Normandy parts of the
committee of twenty-one. These are testimonies collected during the month of May. According to one,
according to a man from the Temple section, as early as May 20 the Commune was preparing a plan providing
for the suppression of 32 members of the Convention (the "Septembriers", as they called it).
According to others, the Jacobins were worried about having only 3,000 or 4,000 armed men, whereas they
wanted 12,000. Moreover, they regretted that they could only supply them with 2,000 daggers.
Finally, they would have liked to recover, for the command of the insurgents, Santerre, who had
gone to campaign against the Vendeans. It was to replace Santerre that the bishopric committee
appointed Hanriot. Finally, a witness will speak of a meeting, on May 23, in Charenton where about
sixty people, including Robespierre, Danton and Pache, would have discussed the plan of the plot.
After 9 Thermidor, Cambon alluded to it again, adding that, according to what he had been told, a
restoration of the monarchy had been envisaged there, for Louis XVII, with all the leaders of the armed forces.
It is not impossible that the fear of losing everything led to the consideration of a project of this
order. The dolphin remained a final asset. We know that Danton was not afraid of bends. But didn't
he rather feel he was at the d'Orleans? As for Robespierre, by system, he went to all the clans or
salons that opened their doors to him, without ever getting involved dangerously.
In his Memoirs, the former secretary of the general security committee, Sénar, also speaks of a
mountain conspiracy for May 31, claiming to have held documentary evidence. But, from what he
writes, there is rather a disagreement among the conspirators. For some, according to him, it was a
"military government (...) entrusted to a court presided over by a great judge", with the suppression
of the assembly. Others advocated a dictatorship, but, says Sénar, "the votes were divided between
d'Orléans, Danton, Robespierre." Others, finally, wanted a triumvirate, Robespierre, Marat and
Danton. But the Incorruptible, it seems, did not accept 13 .
Once again, that the Parliament revealed itself powerless, the opposition considered a dictatorial
transitional government, that is conceivable. In these pages, Sénar also mentions the Dantonist and
Robespierrist intrigues which collided and, finally, neutralized each other at the bishopric committee.
In the end, everything suggests that the two extremes drawing up plans of attack, the agitators,
paid by England, by setting fire to the amassed powders, surprised everyone.
The Spaniard Cusman, nicknamed Don Tocsinos, a member of the Committee of Nine, would later
tell Mercier, a prisoner like himself at La Force, that the insurrection of May 31 was directed against
the entire Convention, that they wanted to wipe out all " the Jacobin chiefs, Robespierre, Marat and
the Girondins 14 ”. In this kind of explosion, those in power are always the first to be affected. We
have seen it: the depressed mountain opposition (Robespierre's speech to the Jacobins and Danton's
remarks bear witness to this) could wonder, for several weeks, if they were on the right track.
Recently, a historian, M. Sainte-Claire Deville, to demonstrate that the insurrection of May 31

reflected a well-defined mountain plan, quoted a note by Robespierre, published by Courtois with his
report. The idea is ingenious, but audacious. For if Robespierre thinks of the government measures
to be taken, of the public on which he must rely, it is because he is no longer in the opposition. He
could not write: the bourgeois “triumphed in Marseilles, in Bordeaux, in Lyons”, whereas the Lyons
“triumph” was not known, in Paris, until June 3. Robespierre's note is
certainly the month of June, but after the explosion, when one wonders how to maintain the seriously affected
building.
The story of the Dillon plot, which Saint-Just had introduced to illustrate the monarchist character –
unprovable and untrue – of the Gironde action, was to, forty-eight hours later, on returning before the
Convention, arouse a division, no not on the right, but on the left, among the Montagnards! It was as difficult
to recognize his adversaries as his friends!
And the reaction did not come from an unknown Conventional, but from a star: Camille Desmoulins.
First, on July 10, as it was about the renewal of the Committee of Public Safety, the journalist criticized it
and made it responsible for the setbacks of the armies. Breard replies by declaring that if he speaks thus, it
is because he wanted the army of the North to be placed under the command of General Dillon and that the
Committee did not satisfy his recommendation.
Desmoulins does not deny. In his answer, he is indignant because, according to him, a member of the
Committee of Public Safety ordered a campaign plan from Dillon, in order to then attribute it to himself.
We seem to have completely forgotten the plot of which Saint-Just spoke. But, the next day, Cambon
made a new statement on the affair in the name of the Committee of Public Safety. He does not provide
additional information, except that the coup was scheduled for July 15, that Dillon arrested had confirmed the
denunciations, except the project to crown Louis XVII. And yet to add that measures had been taken "to put
the young Capet in safety".
Camille Desmoulins brutally interrupts Cambon by shouting: "There is nothing absurd like
the fable we have just told. »
Cambon speaks again to bring the Convention to ratify by decree the arrest of General Dillon and his
accomplices, E.-B. from Castellane. E. Boucher dit l'Épinay, Rameau and L.
Lifter...
As Desmoulins tries to intervene again in favor of Dillon, Billaud-Varenne interrupts him: “I ask that Camille
not be allowed to dishonor herself. And Legendre adds: "If Desmoulins wants to become Dillon's unofficial
defender, let him go to the revolutionary tribunal." The meeting moves on to the agenda.
Desmoulins will go and write under the title Answer of Camille Desmoulins to Arthur Dillon, a pamphlet
pamphlet in which he scratches his comrades of the Mountain.
In these few pages, he does not hesitate to question Robespierre, who made him "remove" a passage
from his Histoire des Brissotins - which he considers to be the manifesto of May 31 - a passage where he
spoke of the "inadequacy" of the Committee of Public Safety, relying on "demonstrations" of Dillon. He does
not criticize the report of Saint-Just, but, in note, makes the bad portrait which one knows. After saying that
Legendre, with whom he quarreled, "has only the slight defect of believing himself after dinner to be the
greatest personage of the Republic", a little further on, he writes: "After Legendre, the member of the
Convention who has the greatest idea of himself is Saint-Just. We see in his gait and bearing that he regards
his head as the cornerstone
of the Republic, and that he carries it on his shoulders with respect and as a holy sacrament". For Desmoulins,
the vanity of Saint-Just was wounded by the silence into which his poem Organt...
With regard to General Dillon, Desmoulins declares that he did not intervene to protest against his arrest,
but against his detention for so long incommunicado. Praising the general, he makes a point of saying that
his weakness towards him does not come from the fact that he is deceived by him, in his household – as
many think – “as well as the Republic”. He adds that other Montagnards share his opinion and admiration for
Dillon. And to quote Drouet, Chabot, Bazire, Thionville, Merlin de Douai, Merlin de Thionville, Delmas.
In less than a year, the principals of this list will pass with him and Danton on the scaffold. They
will be executed the same month as their friend, General Dillon.
If this one, warned of conspiracy, remained unaffected, until April 94, it is that he profited from powerful
supports among the Mountain people. Imprudent as he was, Camille Desmoulins would not have written this
brochure to express a strictly personal opinion. Just as he had submitted the manuscript of his Histoire des
Brissotins to Robespierre before giving it to the printer, he had had to show his public "letter" to some friends.
And, no doubt, first to Danton.
In short, ironically, the Dillon affair, grafted onto that of the Girondins, will lead to a split among the
Montagnards. Better, while time will not bring documents proving the royalist intentions of the Girondins, on
the other hand, documents taken from prisoners will prove the connection with the finances and the British
agents of General Dillon, so warmly protected by certain ultra-republicans .
On the Girondin side, Louvet will respond to Saint-Just, in a brochure, by apostrophizing him with his first
name: “Monsieur le Chevalier de Saint-Just. He will set out to demonstrate that the "ingenious knight"
committed "an absurdity by imagining the crimes of federalism and royalism".
Should he be condemned for his indictment, the main argument of which lacked evidence to support it?
Psychologically, no resentment, no jealousy could falsify his feelings towards the accused. Had he not, as
we have seen, benefited from the praises of those above? But - although, unfortunately, his drafts were not
preserved - he had not had to write his report alone.
15 As for the speech he will make against Danton, Robespierre had to prompt him
with things to say and correct the first draft. The passages on August 10, Brissot and September 2 (when
Saint-Just was not yet Parisian) bear the mark of the Jacobin leader.
On the other hand, the incidentals, the repentances in the sentence – which are very personal to him – seem
to indicate a limited faith in the thesis defended.
All the more reason, it will be said, for him not to accept the sad task of accuser. Two concerns may have
pushed him towards this role. The ambition: the report confirms his place and his authority within the
Committee of Public Safety. Then, limit the damage and the injustice: the case is too
committed so that we can go up the current of opinion; it is necessary to make allowance for the fire, trying
that too many do not perish in the fire.
Could he play on clemency? Probably not. Already his moderation astonished the audience. It is
significant that, two days after his speech, the Convention having to elect the Committee of Public Safety,
Saint-Just received only 126 votes, while the more advanced Montagnards, Jean-Bon-Saint André,
Couthon, had, the one 192 votes, and the other 176, Danton being eliminated.
If the Girondins were numerous to perish in the year, it is because some, in despair, will kill themselves
(Barbaroux, Pétion, Buzot, Condorcet and Roland), others will be decreed of accusation during the summer.
In October, it is a sad and mediocre rally of the Mountain, Amar, who will present and make pass the
decrees (which supplement that of July 28) striking more than one hundred deputies of accusation or arrest.
By their pathetic end, the Girondins will know a new glory. But the historians who will be most favorable
to them will not defend them as rulers. Lamartine will write: “Everything perished in the hands of these
men of words. It was necessary either to resign oneself to perish with them, or to strengthen the
government. And Michelet: “Girondian politics, in the first months of 93, was impotent, blind; it would have
lost France (...) We would have voted against them. »
Saint-Just must have experienced feelings of this order. And two facts show that it was not a question
of his appetite for parliamentary power. In his Memoirs, Garat, who is not particularly favorable to him,
recounts that when he heard of the uprising in Calvados, with the Girondins, he expressed the desire to
go and fight against them there, even, reports Garat, " lead men with a hair”. Finally, even before the
Convention had definitively decided on the conclusions of its report, on July 18, he left on a mission to the
armies of Aisne, Oise and Somme.
He was in a hurry, perhaps, to get out of the shouting and intrigues of the Convention, to take part in the
battles of a national war, under the sky of his childhood.
Moreover, he had been, since his election to the Committee of Public Safety, a member of the
government. There, especially in charge of "general correspondence" and national defence, he formed a
"military bureau." But he was also thinking of the institutions which were to complete the constitution and
give a solid basis to the new regime.
1. See PAUL SAINTE-CLAIRE DEVILLE, The Commune of Year II, Paris, 1945.
2. It was at the session of 7 Germinal Year III (Moniteur, XXIV, 82) that an anonymous deputy evoking this story, of which he was the
Witness, give this figure.
3. BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXVIII, pp. 150 and 200.
4. BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXVIII, p. 199.
5. Arch. nat. BB3 74; see CALVET, An Instrument of Terror in Paris.
6. Shouldn't it read "desert"?
7. Note of Arch. parliament, t. 68, p. 42: “We have not been able to find the supporting documents referred to in the report of
Saint Just. See HENRI CALVET. An Instrument of Terror in Paris, pp. 144-147.
8. A.-C. THIBAUDEAU, Memoirs, Paris, 1824, p. 38.
9. LOUVET DE COUVRAY, Memoirs, Paris, 1823, p. 88.
10. According to the first version of the speech given by the Moniteur, he also says with good reason: “Brissot, who dominated the
council, influenced the appointment of envoys to foreign powers; he had the ambassador appointed to Philadelphia at the same time his
friends were preparing civil war against the engineer of the Republic: Barbaroux, on June 14, invited a battalion of Marseillais to go to the
Convention. »
11. Buzot, Barbaroux, Gorsas, Lanjuinais, Salles, Louvet, Bergoing, Biroteau and Pétion.
12. Gensonne, Guadet, Vergniaud, Mollevault, Guardian.
13. See SENAR, Memoirs, Paris 1824, pp. 82-85.
14. MERCIER, New Paris, t. 1, No. XXVI .
15. Officially Cambon had been assigned to him for this task.
SECOND PART
PLOTS, THE COMMITTEE, DEATH

We must rule by iron those who cannot be ruled by justice.
Those who have made half revolutions have only dug their graves.
Decide between fame, which is the sound of tongues, and glory, which is esteem.
SAINT-JUST.
After his mission in the Aisne, Saint-Just resumed, on July 30, his place on the Committee of Public
Safety. On July 26, an old acquaintance, Robespierre, came to join him there as a replacement for
Gasparin, who had resigned for health reasons.
Moreover, the Committee was not yet recognized as a government. He only formed a superior
commission opposite the licensed ministers. To whom was to return the direction of the State? The
question arose. After the vote of the constitution, was it not appropriate to put an end to the Convention
and to found the mode according to the electoral methods envisaged? Or, at least – as Hébert was going
to claim – to elect the Executive Council, that is to say the government according to the rules set by the
constitutional text.
Rising prices, eminent and cumbersome prisoners imposed heavy responsibilities to bear, delicate
measures to take. The tragic imbroglio made the decision hazardous.
Torn by fierce warfare, the nation had an uncertain future. To send the young Republic onto the electoral
fields was to question its existence.
To govern, to ensure the defense of France, the Committee would have to overcome parliamentary
movements, secret intrigues, demonstrations in the streets, often inspired or supported by foreign powers.
On such a troubled time, the acts, the declarations and the memoirs provide insufficient documents if
one intends to go back to the sources, to identify the nature and the direction of the currents which
intermingle. To complete the public information, it is necessary to resort to police notes, to the sheets of
the secret intelligence network established by the curious Count d'Antraigues, in liaison first with Spain,
then with the great English chief of espionage, Francis Drake. Of course, news of this order must be
taken with caution and cross-checked as much as possible, but it is very useful, because official
declarations are also not without error or error.
lies That 1.
said, let's first look at the facade, that is to say the Committee facing Parliament.
1. For this, we used not only The manuscripts of JB Fortescue esq. preserved Dropmore (vol. II, London, 1894), but the
Bourbon background of the Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay where we find certain letters from d'Antraigues' informants, letters
written in sympathetic ink – unfortunately too faded to be entirely legible. The value of this information having been
discussed by historians, we explain ourselves about it at the end of the volume (appendix III).
FIRST CHAPTER
THE COMMITTEE AND THE

ASSEMBLY (July-December 1793)
1. CONCERNS AND SUPPLY.
In this summer, we no longer knew who or what to devote ourselves to. According to d'Antraigues'
informants – Abbé Brottier, Chevalier Despomelle and Pierre Joseph Lemaître – “the finest Montagnards”
were losing hope:
All have passports in their pockets and agree that they are betrayed everywhere. Hence the parties
1.
despair they take and which produce no kind of fear of themselves nor zeal for them
With the same source of information, the Spanish ambassador in Venice, in his letter, speaks of a
2
July 31 of meeting of the Committee of Public Safety, at Bagatelle, where the latter would have considered
the parliamentary vacation, in order to exercise power alone with the Commune. But the reluctance on
this side would have led him to abandon his project.
Neither Saint-Just nor Robespierre could be present at this conference. But there was great agitation
in the capital. On July 24, the Journal de la Montagne spoke of a coup d'etat before August 10. A few
days later, a friend of Roland, Chauchois, began to stir up the sections to launch a major campaign
against rising prices. On August 6, Jacques Roux launched in his newspaper a veritable call for
insurrection. On the 9th, worried, the general security committee sent a note to the constituted authorities
so that the prisons would not experience a massacre like that of September 2nd.
A few months earlier, in their opposition to the Girondins, to strengthen the authority of the state and
also benefit from popular support, the Montagnards had adopted the program of Jacques Roux, leader of
the “Enrages”. On April 11, the Convention had adopted the compulsory circulation of the assignat, after
a report by Cambon, Minister of Finance. And, on May 4, after long debates, it had decreed a first
"maximum" for the price of grain, without enthusiasm, but not without illusion.
The disappointment was not long in coming.
The state did not have sufficient authority to enforce this half measure. Soon the troubles began again.
And the Montagnards, after having eliminated the Girondins, turned against the "Enrages", their former
allies. At the Jacobins, Robespierre finished spraying under the
sarcasm Jacques Roux, who had lost his best support in Marat. But that did not prevent taxation from
getting bogged down in new disorders.
Saint-Just did not meddle in this knot of intrigue. He did not intervene until August 9, 1793, by
proposing to the Convention to supply the armies with the help of the requisition. All growers would be
required to pay into the national stores part of their crop at the price of the maximum. As we see, it was
less a measure of general economy than a disposition for war.
The Assembly, however, adjourned it, for it believed it could soon get rid of the maximum. The law,
which it had just adopted, on "granaries of plenty", seemed to him a first step in this direction.
In truth, it was only an additional half measure. The law provided for filling the granaries not with the
help of a tax paid in kind, as Saint-Just had suggested in November, nor by requisition, as proposed by
Léonard Bourbon, but by simple purchases of the State, for which an extraordinary credit of one
hundred millions was opened. In other words, to escape the dilemma liberalism-dirigisme, one had
recourse to the well-known expedients; subsidies and priority purchases.
The illusion did not last long. Five days later, the war forced the Committee of Public Safety to decree
a levy en masse, and on August 17, the Convention returned to Saint-Just's project by voting for the
general requisition. Finally, on August 23, the organization of the national mobilization corrected the law
on the “granaries of abundance” by stipulating that the latter would be fed by a tax in kind. Although this
decree is signed with the names of Barère and Carnot alone, it is not forbidden to think that their new
colleague on the Committee of Public Safety was no stranger to the adoption of a measure which he
had been suggesting for seven month. Because if Saint-Just is a specialist in institutions, he is also in
economics and finance. In the letter to his fellow citizens, on August 13, Couthon announced that Saint-
3 ".
Just had been asked to make a report on the currency, which he "would not be long in presenting
In fact, this work will never see the light of day, at least in this form. Because, for Saint-Just, it is not
a question of pure technique. The value of the currency, the provisioning depend on the authority of the
State, the rigor of its general policy and its relations with foreign countries. We must first put an end to
the anarchy, to the disorder. On August 14, Saint-Just had the Committee of Public Safety adopt three
decrees, written by him, ordering the authorities of Chartres, Gonesse and Montfort-l'Amaury to let grain
and flour wagons circulate towards Paris. which were intercepted in the localities. We must put an end
to the isolationism of the provinces, which was particularly serious with the Vendée and Girondin
uprisings.
Basically, despite its upheavals, its disorderly votes, the Convention was sinking into an increasingly
severe dirigisme. She braked as much as she could. But there are cases where the state, by showing
too much restraint in its interventions, ends up being forced to demonstrate a much more serious
authoritarianism than it wanted to avoid. We know the famous sentence that Thucydides lends to
Alcibiades: “We are not free to moderate our will to command as we please”.
2. DANTON AND THE PARLIAMENT.
The feeling of weakness was expressed at the Convention by a great deal of distrust and fear: each leader
sought points of support or of attack with quite variable support and opposition.
As early as August 1 , Danton posed the governmental question, prompting, for the first time, the Committee to
respond to it. Several reasons prompted him to desire a vigorous and friendly government.
Unpleasant rumors circulated about his intentions. The secret Spanish letter announced that he and Lacroix, who
had become Girondins, had had conferences with Marie Antoinette. Hébert had attacked him, in connection with
Custine, at the Jacobins, on July 21. And, questioned, on August 5 at the Jacobins, Robespierre had defended him,
but he could not have any illusions: Hébertists, “Enrages” were rising up against him.
There remained three trumps which each clan feared to see its adversaries take advantage of: d'Orléans, Marie
Antoinette and Louis XVII. The card of the first, Philippe-Égalité, was a little downcast: for three months the duke
had remained locked up in Fort Saint-Jean in Marseilles. When Michelet writes that in July "mountain dweller was
synonymous with Orléanist", he is exaggerating, because many had abandoned Philippe-Égalité after his failure.
However, on August 11, Lacroix – whom the Spanish letter assures Girondin and whom Robespierre, in his
notes, classifies as an Orléanist – had a decree voted for a “prior inquiry into the electoral population”: a discreet
way of reminding the Convention to its END. And Carnot and Prior of the Côte d'Or had been appointed to the
Committee of Public Safety.
In the evening, Robespierre expressed his despair at the Jacobins. Again he threatened to
give one's resignation.
Called against my inclination to the Committee of Public Safety, I saw things there that I would not have dared to
suspect. Traitors are plotting within the very heart of the Committee against the interests of the people... I will
separate myself from the Committee... I will not stagnate, useless member of an assembly which is about to
disappear... Nothing can save the Republic, if the We adopt this proposal to dissolve the Convention... We want to
have the purified Convention succeed the envoys of Pitt and Cobourg.
The secret letters and bulletins do not shed much light on what Robespierre is alluding to. Doubtless, d'Antraigues'
informants, in their letter of August 26, believe that Danton's party will4do
, its best to save Marie-Antoinette. But there
are fears that he will lose his popularity. For the time being, he is considered “at the head of the agitators” working
to raise prices, in order “to cause an uprising against the Jacobins and the Convention. By that, he would arrogate
to himself the main influence, he would treat with Cobourg, deliver 83 [Marie-Antoinette] and the rest”. But it is
believed that the plot will not succeed.
In a note left by Robespierre we find some themes of his intervention with the Jacobins with more details: If the
deputies are dismissed, the Republic is lost; they will continue
to mislead the departments, while their substitutes will be no better.

It's necessary to choose :
Foreign war is a mortal disease... while the body politic is sick with revolution and the division of
wills... There must be a ONE will... It must be republican or royalist... internal dangers come from the
bourgeois; To defeat the bourgeois, you have to rally the people...
To influence opinion, there are speeches and publications. Robespierre is particularly afraid of
journalists. Without hesitation, he notes that if we want to liberate the people from mercenary and
impudent writers..., we must proscribe writers as the most dangerous enemies of the fatherland. 5 .
In this respect, he made a point by having the journal des "Enrages", Roux, Leclerc, Varlet
banned, using as a pretext the title they had adopted: l'Ombre de Marat. For this, he brings and
speak, at the Jacobins, the widow of Marat. The men of the Gravillers section make a united
approach to the Commune in favor of their friend Roux, who has been arrested. But the one who
receives them, Hébert, being also a newspaper editor, gently and firmly rejects them. Added to the
death of Marat, this ban is good business for Father Duchesne: they are competitors who are
disappearing. Its circulation will soon be six hundred thousand.
Everyone having their own ulterior motive, their plan, no one wants to rush events. On August 17,
the same Lacroix and Hérault de Séchelles had the Convention decree the maintenance without
change, for one month, of the Committee of Public Safety.
With the Girondins eliminated, there is no longer a solid majority in Parliament. Also all eyes
turn to external forces.
3. HÉBERT AND MARIE-ANTOINETTE.
At Hébert, ambition is not limited to the newspaper. He would also like a minister's portfolio.
When Garat, on August 15, resigned from the Interior, he applied for it. But the majority of the
Convention came out in favor of Paré, a man of Danton. So Father Duchesne, furious, resumed his
opposition campaign with violence. He castigates the “Sleepers” the “Indulgents”
(Danton and his friends), claims the judgment of the Girondins and the head of the one he calls "the
archtigress of Austria".
Why does this neat little man, neatly dressed, young Hébert, show this thirst for blood? Social
hatred? He had won fortune and glory at the age of thirty. From a noble mother and a respectable
father, fond of good food and small salons, he frequented (and we would remind him of it) aristocrats
like the Comtesse de Rochechouart or bankers like Kock. Vice ? Nothing indicates it. He was a
young married man, a good father, but who must have been frozen with fear during his trial. Unbridled
demagoguery? Certainly for a very large part, because one would look in vain for doctrinal convictions
in his journal.
Not believing in much, out of power, having to make noise to impose himself, perhaps he secretly played
on several fronts, like many others, compensating for vociferations in broad daylight with occult intrigues in
reverse.
It is significant that a royalist informant relates a story, perhaps false, but kind to Father Duchesne. Dining
with "papa Pache" as he was called, Hébert is said to have said: I saw the little child in the tower. It is as
beautiful as day, interesting as possible; he asked me the day before yesterday if the people were still
unhappy. " It's a pity," he replied, after I had told him that
6 yes .
And the Marie-Antoinette affair leaves one wondering. Hébert pushes for him to be removed from the
Temple to be locked up in the Conciergerie on August 2. However, the member of the Commune,
administrator of the latter, Michonis, maintained good relations with the famous Baron de Batz. The head of
the prison also knows a young man, the Chevalier de Rougeville, who will remain famous with his carnation,
his missed shot at the Conciergerie. Both enter Marie-Antoinette's dungeon on Wednesday, August 28, and
the knight informs her of his project. He returned – it was he who affirmed this in his libel – two days later to
give the Queen fifty louis d'or to buy her guardians.
Now, in his issue of August 29, Father Duchesne, celebrating with satisfaction the execution of General
Custine, asked that the case of Marie-Antoinette be settled more promptly. For him, if his trial is not expedited
quickly, "we will still see the bread disappear in order to force the people to ask for a king again". And he
concludes: If it is not judged and shortened within twenty-four hours, I will say, damn it, that we are not free,
that we are not worthy of being. After which he defends himself from being a drinker of blood, and posits in
principle: There is no greater enemy of humanity than the one who wants to spare traitors and who seeks to
7.
open the back door to them to save them
But isn't he thinking of the front door, like Michonis and the Chevalier de Rougeville?
For four days, he no longer writes anything.
On the night of September 2 to 3, Michonis and Rougeville come to look for the former Queen.
The administrator tells the counters that Marie-Antoinette is going to be transferred to the Temple.
Unfortunately, at the last door, if we believe Rougeville, one of the guards (who had been given fifty louis
d'or) opposes the exit with threats.
The case is missed. The guardian Gilbert immediately informed his boss, Colonel du Mesnil, who alerted
the general security committee. And, in his name, Amar and Sevestre will come immediately to question
Marie-Antoinette. But, either by levity, or by complacency, all the witnesses and accused will be questioned
in the same room, which will allow them to better adjust their answers.
The same day, Hébert and his family curiously adjourned the demonstration they were to lead at the
Convention. The day before, the director of Père Duchesne had had the Jacobins vote on a petition and it
was agreed that we would meet on the 3rd at nine o'clock in the morning, at the club, to form the
delegation. “What happened next? Why was this decision not carried out? Why was the address adjourned yet again?
The documents do not allow me to answer”, writes Albert Mathiez 8 . But if the documents are lacking to the scholar,
the comparison of the facts may provide an indication. Indeed, if it was a question of diverting attention or of sowing
disorder in Paris, while the Queen fled, the operation lost its meaning. Because, curiously enough, the address presented
by Hébert to the Jacobins on the 2nd, after several days of silence, protested against the slowness of justice, demanded
the death penalty for "Brissot and others", that is- that is to say, the Girondins, but without a word about Marie-Antoinette.
Also, the demonstrations of September 4 and 5 did not correspond to that envisaged by Hébert and Chaumette.
Obviously very surprised, they got busy to catch up and direct in their direction a mass which escaped them. On the 4th,
after the invasion of the municipal body by a crowd shouting Du pain! Bread ! Chaumette ran to tell the Convention that
"all these various movements" seemed to him "to have no other aim than to bring about delays and prevent the departure
of the citizens placed in requisition." The Convention gave him the law of the maximum, but when he reported it to the
Hôtel de Ville, the demonstrators expressed no satisfaction. Then, Hébert and Chaumette resumed their main themes:
encouraging the arrival of flour and organizing the revolutionary army. And, this time in enthusiasm, it was decided to
send a strong delegation to the assembly the next day to express these demands.
But, let us return to the ulterior motives of the Hébertists.

Historians have reproduced the first secret bulletin of Drake-d'Antraigues which calls for reservations or rather
corrections, being, like most intelligence notes, a mixture of errors and truths.
According to the bulletin sent to London, the Committee would have met, on September 2, at eleven o'clock in the
evening at Pache's and would have discussed with the mayor of Paris, Hébert and Hanriot the fate of Marie-Antoinette
and the insurrection of the 4 and 5.
This conference outside the Tuileries, with Parisian leaders, is certainly not an official meeting of the Committee.
Especially since Cambon is presented as a member of it, when he ceased to be since July 10. It was one of those
unofficial meetings, held in variable places, of which Courtois, in his report on 9 Thermidor, and even Cambon, in his
intervention of October 1794, spoke to the Convention. The Committee would have counted as members present only
Robespierre, Hérault de Séchelles and Jean-Bon-Saint-André the essential. For the former Queen, Cambon having
9. Let's stop at
noticed that it was better to wait in order to conduct diplomatic negotiations with Brussels and
Vienna, Hébert, Hérault de Séchelles, Barère would have risen up furiously against this suggestion.
Hérault's opposition is somewhat surprising, because when, thanks to his cousin de Polignac, he had
10 And,
been appointed King's Advocate, Marie-Antoinette, it is said, had made a point of embroidering her own scarf
if memory and gratitude did not count for the cynical aristocrat with "advanced" ideas, on the other hand, he was to
remain until his end attached to secret diplomacy and very active in this domain.
Moreover, the day, the hour and the subject of the debate are even more disturbing when one thinks that Michonis
and the Chevalier de Rougeville entered the Conciergerie while we were chatting at Pache's. Wasn't it because they
knew it that some, in order to give pledges, to have an alibi in case of failure, came out violently against the woman
whose escape was brewing at the same time?
During the tragic trial, Hébert will not talk about the carnation plot; in spite of his taste as a journalist for sensational
affairs, he will only launch ridiculous stories of religious images found in the Temple and the ignoble accusation of
incest with little Louis XVII. Also the Queen's advocate, Chauveau-Lagarde, will be able to tell her that all the
ridiculous calumnies of these witnesses are destroyed by their very coarseness. – In that case, replied Marie-
Antoinette, I only fear Manuel. (The said Manuel being the mountain deputy of the Convention who had tried to save
the head of Louis XVI by praising the Queen.)
We then thought so much about the procedure which consists in being attacked excessively in order to better
defend ourselves, that Saint-Just wrote on a piece of paper: Custine was accused by a journalist of grossly false
things and had the newspaper spread in his army: the soldier was indignant, burned the . Courtois recognizes that,
newspaper and adored the general11indeed, "we have seen Custine sometimes laugh at the impudent lies with which
the sheets were swarming". Now, who led the most violent campaign against General Custine, while benefiting from
a large subsidy from the Ministry of War and dissemination in the armies, if not Hébert?
Finally, let us not forget that Napoleon, at Saint Helena, expressed an opinion similar to O'Meara. For him, the
violent accusation against Marie-Antoinette was part of "a Machiavellian plan": it was a question of provoking an
uprising in favor of this princess by arousing her interest. Hébert's remarks, reported in Drake's newsletter, suggest
the double game.
First Hébert would have declared that if the death of Louis XVI had strengthened the Convention, that of Marie-
Antoinette would serve Paris and the revolutionary army (very clumsy argument if it was a question of convincing the
Committee of Public Safety). Then he would have said:
I promised Antoinette's head, I'll go and cut it off myself if they delay giving it to me. I promised it on your behalf to
the sans-culottes who ask for it and without whom you will cease to be. (...) I don't know if you still have any hope of
the Republic, of the constitution, of the salvation of your people; but I know that if you have any left, you are greatly
mistaken. You will all perish, it is impossible otherwise. (...) All your generals will betray you, me very first, if being
designated, and that I was your general, I saw a good treaty to be made which preserved my life; but be sure that
Pache and I, and all the King's judges, cannot keep it; this could only be done by changing the face of Europe.
The words attributed to Hébert are desperately cynical. He had to feel a little at home to dare to say that he would
betray "all the first" if, being appointed, he saw "a good treaty to be made" which
saved his life. Wasn't this justifying – at the same time as he claimed Marie Antoinette's head – a plot to
save her?
Also, how to admit that one decided, during this meeting, the demonstration of September 4, by advancing
five hundred thousand francs to Pache to pay the provocateurs, in the presence of Robespierre? When the
latter learns the news suddenly, in the evening at the Jacobins, he will be so surprised that he will alert his
audience. At this moment, he will say, Pache is besieged, not by the people but by a few intriguers who
insult him, insult him, threaten him. To speak thus, it was necessary not to be informed of the operation. On
the contrary, everything is explained if the demonstration discussed at Pache's was the one stopped a few
hours earlier, at the Jacobins club, for September 3.
Because, on the 4th, at the Hôtel de Ville, Hébert and Chaumette will be, as we have seen, overwhelmed.
They will only take the demonstrators in hand by placing themselves on the anti-parliamentary ground and
by evoking the great days of August 10, September 2 and May 31. As spokesman for the delegation to the
Convention, Chaumette will call for the powerful being whose terrible cry will awaken the dozing or rather
paralyzed justice, stunned by the clamor of the parties, in short, he will seem to come out in favor of the
dictatorship. , of a great judge as we will say, during the trial of the Hébertists, or of a regent of Louis XVII...
The plot planned for the night of the 2nd or 3rd was not the enterprise of a few isolated little adventurers.
This had found so much resonance among the emigrants that the future Charles X, then Count of Artois,
wanted to get involved!
Here is what the Spanish Minister Las Casas tells his friend from Antraigues in his letter
September 5: M.
le Comte d'Artois had left Hamburg believing, as the rumor had spread in Germany, that he was going to
Cobourg he Paris to free the royal family and that the Duke of York was leading the vanguard; whereas
wanted to be part of it, and whether we liked it or not, unless he was chained up, he wanted to contribute to
the deliverance of the Queen and her King, when he was only a simple soldier . In Dusseldorf, he learned
.
that there was nothing to do with all this and he decided to turn back 13
The missed shot, its craftsmen had to keep friends fairly well placed. Because, for three months, we
worked to evade the case and save the lives of Michonis and others. Obviously
this must have irritated some spectators. On September 8, a policeman came to the Jacobins to protest
against the gentle treatment enjoyed by Michonis, locked up in the Conciergerie in the concierge's room.
But, during the trial of Marie-Antoinette, Fouquier-Tinville will say, in his speech, that the story of the
carnation "is only a prison intrigue, which cannot figure in an accusation of such great interest ".
14
Better: a fortnight later, Fouquier-Tinville writes on the general security committee as
spokesperson for “several sections” who wanted to know the reasons for the arrest of Michonis, Jobert,
Vincent, Leboeuf, etc., and asked why they were kept secret. The committee responds by transferring the
prisoners to the Conciergerie. And, on November 19 (29 brumaire), a first judgment
court acquits Fontaine, where Rougeville and Michonis met and prepared the big operation; as for Michonis
– although his guilt is certain – he is only sentenced to “detention until the peace”. Nevertheless, in Prairial
(May 1794), he will leave his head under the guillotine where his great protectors will have preceded him.
It is at the beginning of the fatal year that the truth shines through, not in the eyes of the general public
but in those of the committees. Implicated in the scandal of the Compagnie des Indes, Chabot reports a
confidence from his beautiful friend, the Comtesse de Rochechouart 15 . She told him that she had heard
Hébert, after the failure of the carnation conspiracy, declare that Marie-Antoinette had to be reinstated in the
Temple to enable her to escape more easily.
Indeed, on October 2, Father Duchesne 's man suggested to the Jacobins that the Queen be returned to
the Temple. And to justify this transfer, he put forward an argument of rare absurdity: the black veil, he said,
which covers the faces of prisoners sentenced to death can make it possible to substitute people who look
like them (the black veil not being, unless I am mistaken, affixed according to the prison, Temple or
Conciergerie, the place would not change anything).
In the middle of January, the Committee had to consider bringing the matter to light and taking violent
measures. On 16 (27 Nivôse) the intelligence agent Rollin noted in his report to the Minister of the Interior:
We are assured that there was a terrible plot to kidnap the ci-devant Queen, that the Château de Vanves
was the rallying point where meetings were held, that many young people from Vanves were involved in this
infamous plot, that 'Hébert, Chaumette, Basire, Chabot, Fabre d'Églantine, etc., were more or less in the
secret of these abominations 16 .
Better, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, like Couthon, well placed to know the end of the 17th
of the story, in the letter to his fellow citizens the arrest of Puy-de-Dôme, on January 17th, considers word
and the judgment of Hébert as decided. According to him, Fabre d'Églantine, Hérault de Séchelles "will join
the Revolutionary Tribunal today the Chabots, the Héberts and other scoundrels of this kind". And, as a
postscript, he returns to the charge: “The partisans of Hébert, Ronsin, Vincent and other models of Pitt, have
indeed sought to work the minds for them, but uselessly; opinion is strongly pronounced against these
traitors, and the people demand that they be tried and punished promptly. »
Such a letter is curious, because if Ronsin and Vincent were in prison, it was not the same for Hérault de
Séchelles nor Hébert who were still agitated in the open air. Couthon's letter shows that, on the 16th and
17th, the committees considered a decision, which, in the end, was postponed.
Also, the next day, Couthon, more cautious, avoids quoting names, but gives the key to the story: He has
recently discovered an infamous project, the purpose of which had been, in time, to to cut the throats of
the mountain deputies, to deliver Antoinette, who was then at the Conciergerie, and to immediately proclaim
little Capet king of France. Already twenty of the authors of this plot have suffered the penalty due to their crimes,
but it is asserted that the number of accomplices is immense, and that nearly four thousand individuals have already been
arrested.
As we can see, the words of Chabot, Couthon and Rollin overlap.
Finally, the Moniteur of 18 germinal year III, so one year after Hébert's death, published a letter from Basel saying:
There was a plan to kidnap the Queen. The plot was between the ci-devant Comtesse de Rochechouart and the famous
Hébert, called Father Duchesne. The coalition had paid. Hébert had demanded two millions; he had touched one, and he
was to receive the other after the execution of the project, but fear seized him, and he became an informer... These details
are certain. They could, like many others, shed great light on the relations that have remained between the Pache
municipality and the coalition.
In short, everything suggests that Hébert's complicity is likely. His arrest and trial, as we shall see, provide other reasons
for believing in the activity, as a royalist agent, of the man who claimed to be ultra-revolutionary.
4. THE SEPTEMBER GOVERNMENT CRISIS.
Incidentally, September 1993 was a month of governmental crisis for the Committee of Public Safety, whose authority –
not yet clearly recognized – was weakened by the loss of Toulon and the military setbacks.
The Hébertists, occupying a large place among the Jacobins (whose purges they again demanded), holding the major
press, the Hôtel de Ville and the Ministry of War, seemed particularly formidable.
Also, those in power and deputies who felt threatened worked to neutralize the Hébertists by making spectacular double-
edged concessions.
Danton set the example on September 5. As Chaumette had just expressed the wishes of the delegation he was leading,
Billaud-Varenne and Léonard Bourbon went one better by asking for the arrest of all the suspects and a traveling court with
the armies. In the name of the Committee of Public Safety, Jean-Bon-Saint-André asked the parliament to adjourn the
debate. But, after a speech from the tribune, Danton decreed on the spot, and with enthusiasm, the formation of a
revolutionary army in Paris.
This was a serious concession to the Hebertists.
Doubtless this allowed Danton to decree at the same time an indemnity for soldiers going to public meetings, it being
understood that the sections henceforth would hold meetings only two days a week, Thursday and Sunday. In short, in
exchange for arms and a few pennies, Danton somewhat shut the mouths of those who were campaigning against him.
For the Committee of Public Safety, it was a worrying failure. He lost the majority of the Convention. What
could he do? First, he had recourse to the most classic process in such cases: he offered places to the leaders
of the parliamentary opposition. If Danton refused, Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois eagerly agreed to join
the Committee.
As the latter were reputed to be rather Hébertists, the friends of Father Duchesne scored a point. Doubtless
they must have protested against the reduction of the meetings of the sections, but they worked actively to set
up the army placed under the dependence of the municipality.
On September 9, Carnot was to specify the organization in a decree stipulating that the recruitment of these
new soldiers would be done by the committees of the sections.
Entrusting a military role to the extra-parliamentary opposition so that it plays less on public opinion, in the
name of the Committee of Public Safety, Merlin de Douai presented the “law of suspects” which subjected the
desired repression to a new rule: the quorum of votes needed in the sections to vote for an arrest. On the other
hand, the Committee of General Security, violently criticized for several months, was renewed, but reduced to
nine members appointed by the Committee of Public Safety.
However, the Hébertists, with the Ministry of War and the Parisian army (which Ronsin was to present to the
Convention on October 20), thought they could impose themselves as the only masters in this field. The
deputies in charge of missions to the soldiers irritated them. Clumsily, on September 18, Vincent presented a
motion voted by the club of Cordeliers against "the representatives of the people near the armies". The blow
was, this time, a little too unparliamentary.
The whole Assembly pronounced itself so clearly against the petitioners that the Cordeliers had to withdraw
their text by disavowing it.
But, a week later, the defeats of the North having led the Committee of Public Safety to change several
generals, as these counted friends on all the benches, the direction of the military operations posed much more
seriously for the government.
These are the famous sessions of September 24 and 25.
The one who chairs the Assembly, the Dantonist Thuriot, has just left the Committee, slamming the doors.
He opens the debate by proclaiming: We are dethroning royalism and we are introducing rascalism.
Immediately afterwards, the conduct of the armies was strongly criticized for the North and the command in
Vendée of Hébertiste Ronsin.
Very skilfully and not without firmness, Robespierre responds by asking what we would call, today, the
question of trust. Rising against those who want to “debase” the Convention, evading the case of the
incriminated Hébertists, he declares: It is not a question here of individuals, it is a question of the fatherland
and of principles. Above all, it is important for the government to gain consistency. For that, according to him,
the Assembly must show “unlimited confidence”.
In order not to seem to want to force the hand and to test the majority of the Convention, he plays the
renunciation: I ask that the Committee of Public Safety be renewed. Like no, no, no
rise in the entire congregation (official record), he knows he can have the last word. Also, when certain
parliamentarians, seeing that the opposition offensive had failed, wanted to move on to the agenda, he rose
up against it and went back to the podium: He said bluntly that the National Convention proclaims that she
retains all her confidence in the Committee of Public Safety.
The last word remains to him. This is the Committee's first recognition as a government.
In the evening, at the Jacobins, the Hébertists attempted a new maneuver, recalling the motion of Hébert
and Vincent, which advocated the organization of powers as provided for in the new constitution. And
Robespierre replies again: To organize the powers constitutionally is nothing other than (...) driving out the
Convention itself. How to envisage elections in a country torn by war?
Basically, Robespierre had the Committee recognized as an arbiter who sends back to their corner the
boxers whom the clinch encourages to low blows. He becomes the man of the center, endowed with
authority, in front of the Dantonists, apostles of reactionary relaxation, and the Hébertists, supporters of
declared ultra-revolutionary agitation.
It imposes itself on an assembly which will show itself dominated by fear. In his Memoirs,
Thibaudeau describes the atmosphere well:
Pusillanimous characters did not set foot anywhere, and during the session often changed places,
believing thus to deceive the spy and, by giving themselves a mixed color, not to get in trouble with anyone...
The most prudent did even better; in fear of soiling themselves and above all of compromising themselves,
they never sat down, they remained outside the benches at the foot of the tribune, and on prominent
occasions when they were reluctant to vote (...), they sneaked out of room 18 To .
consecrate the supremacy of the Committee of Public Safety, at a time when committees were
proliferating and confusing the action of the State, the Convention voted, on a report by Barère, the decree
reserving the exclusivity of the title "de Salut public" to the Committee of. the Assembly 19
However, the Hebertists intimidated the deputies with their military forces all the more because, after the
law of the maximum, the shortage of foodstuffs caused disorder in the capital. Also, a few days later, on
October 3, Amar was to, in the name of the Committee of General Security, wrest a new condemnation
from the Girondins, brought this time to the number of sixty-one. And it took all the courageous poise of
Robespierre to rise up against Osselin, a friend of Danton who, to the voted list of Girondins, proposed to
add the seventy-three who had protested against the day of June 2. The Assembly was about to vote the
death motion, when Robespierre rose to oppose it. His first words were met with murmurs, but he had the
last word. And one of his adversaries at the Convention, Durand de Maillane, was to recognize in his
Memoirs that Robespierre "had always preserved the right side of what was threatened from the Mountain".
5. “ RULE BY IRON ” (10 OCTOBER-19 VENDEMIAIRE).
It was under these conditions that Saint-Just read his famous report asking the Convention to
recognize the Committee of Public Safety as a revolutionary government until peace.
The speech casts a light devoid of tenderness, accusing the shadows of the governmental world. First the
administration: Everyone plundered the state. For him (and he is not wrong) the services of the ministries
traffic. Without hesitation, he declares: All the enemies are in the government; and then: A people has only
one dangerous enemy, its government... This government... is a hierarchy of errors and outrages. Finally:
This government is the insurance fund for all robbery and all crimes.
To stigmatize the hypocrisy of the holders of power, he evokes the Roman example of the consuls Papius
and Poppeus who, both celibate, made laws against celibacy. Do we not do the same in the name of France?
Dismissively, he warns against “patriotism (which) is a trade of lips, each sacrifices all the others and
sacrifices nothing of his interest. »
Saint-Just touches the Dantonists but, by criticizing the civil servants who form the majority of the
Cordeliers, he touches the Hébertists.
To remedy this administrative rot what can be done, if not burst the abscess? Also, he does not hesitate:
You have nothing more to spare against the new order of things. To cleanse the state of the conspiracies
that plague it... You have to punish anyone who is passive. And to conclude sadly: We must govern by iron
those who cannot be governed by justice.
This last feature translates a pessimism and a refusal to bow before the debasement of morals. He
intends to stay upright, face fate face to face and "sleep only in the tomb". She will often come back – like an
obsession – in her next speeches, this expression of the will to watch until death. As if, sensing the fatality of
the latter approaching, he would have liked not to lose an hour of his life, not to die without having, in
conscience, tried everything.
The sincerity of the speech is striking. Demagogy finds no place there. What he advocates when he
speaks of revolutionary government is first of all unity of action, concentration. It is impossible, he says, for
revolutionary laws to be executed if the government is not revolutionary. The latter must weigh on itself.
How ? First of all, by consecrating the Committee of Public Safety as the supreme body, having
its supervision "the Provisional Executive Council, the ministers, the generals, the constituted bodies".
Because he throws a dark, contemptuous look on the direction of the French army. Without detours, he
affirms: Certain generals made war on their army. And then: There is perhaps no military commander who
does not secretly base his fortune on treason in favor of kings.
It is with a line of vigorous darkness that he evokes the army of the moment: An
unhappy soldier is more unhappy than other men, because, why does he fight, if he has nothing to defend
but a government that abandons it ? And the character of the chiefs is little fitted to make him
endure his pains. There are few great souls at the head of armies to intoxicate them, to inspire them with love
of glory, national pride, and respect for the discipline that leads to victory.
Until now there have only been fools and rogues at the head of your armies. Your Committee of Public Safety
has purified the staffs; but all the officers can still be reproached for their lack of application to service; they
study little the art of winning; they indulge in debauchery; they absent themselves from the corps during hours
of exercise and combat; they command with haughtiness, and consequently with weakness. The veteran laughs
under arms at the foolishness of his commander, and this is how we experience reverses!
For the administration of the armies, it is the same: Full of brigands, they steal the rations of the horses; the
battalions lack guns or horses to drag them; there is no subordination there, because everyone steals and
despises each other.
Alluding to the scandals of the army suppliers which, without all being revealed, had already imposed the
arrest of a Minister of War, Servan, of a wheeler-dealer, d'Espagnac, and of a deputy, Perrin, of Dawn, he says:
The government must not only be revolutionary against the aristocracy; it must be against those who rob the
soldier, who deprave the army by their insolence, and who, by the dissipation of public funds, would reduce the
people to slavery and the Empire to its dissolution by misfortune. So many evils have their source in the
corruption of some and in levity. others !
Everything being, for him, called into question, he raises the debate not foolishly by demanding a change of
military art: The military art of
the monarchy is no longer appropriate; they are other men, other enemies : the power of peoples, their
conquests, their military splendor depend on a single point, on a single strong institution. Thus, the Greeks owe
their military glory to the phalanx; the Romans to the legion, which defeated the phalanx. It should not be
thought that the phalanx and the legion are simple denominations of bodies composed of a certain number of
men; they designate a certain order to fight, a military constitution.
Our nation already has character; its military system must be different from that of its enemies: now, if the
French nation is terrible in its ardour, its address, and if its enemies are heavy, cold and belated, its military
system must be impetuous.
It will be said that this vigorous reasoning does not lead to a "constructive" proposal. This is true. But this
concern to adapt the army corps to the conditions of the moment, this intuition of the advantage that tactical
speed can provide, all this is not so bad or so frequent, and deserves to be saluted.
As for economic and financial policy, on the merits, his thinking has not changed. Once of
more, worried by inflation, he repeats: Our principle must be to reduce the mass of the assignats.
At most, he recognizes the new taxes, imposed by the general maximum decreed a few weeks earlier, as
"necessary because of the circumstances". But, immediately afterwards, he demonstrates how they can make
everything worse if inflation cannot be curbed.
You will have taxed the products: the arms that produce will be taken away from you. And if the products
are rarer, the rich will know how to get them, and the scarcity can reach its peak. Faithful to his principle on
the ineffectiveness of strictly economic laws, after a year of experience, he concludes: Our enemies have
taken advantage of our very laws and turned them in their favor.
It's not just the traffickers in the private sector, but the administrative regime. About the “first agents of the
government”, Saint-Just dismantles a mechanism that we have seen reconstituted and complicated later:
It is a cause of our misfortunes that the bad choice of the accountants: one buys places, and it is not the
good man who buys them; the intriguers are perpetuated there: a scoundrel is expelled from one administration,
he enters another.
It is because, in fact, like any government which must satisfy heavy needs (here, the equipment and the
food of a numerous army) and compensate for the internal shortage by purchases abroad, the conventional
government finds itself compromise with suppliers and project managers of all kinds.
Most of the men declared suspects have stakes in supplies. The government is the insurance fund for all
robbery and all crimes.
Everything is held together in the government: evil, in each part, influences the whole. The dissipation of
The public treasury has contributed to the increase in the cost of foodstuffs and the success of conspiracies; here's how.
Three billion, stolen by suppliers and by agents of all kinds, are today in competition with the State in its
acquisitions, with the people in the markets and on the counters of the merchants, with the soldiers in the
garrisons, with trade abroad. These three billion are fermenting in the Republic...
And, finally, this final verdict: You

passed laws against hoarders; those who should uphold the laws monopolize.
But how do you go against such a current? You pursue hoarders: you cannot pursue those who ostensibly
buy for armies. There is only one possibility: "to divide the authority", that is to say, it seems, to leave the
system of assembly, in order to "tighten all the knots of responsibility".
You cannot hope for prosperity if you do not establish a government which, gentle and moderate towards
the people, will be terrible towards itself by the energy of its relations: this government must weigh on itself
and not on the people... It is necessary to specify the duties there, to place everywhere there the sword beside
the abuse so that all is free in the Republic, except those who conspire against it and who govern badly.
One of these swords must be a new tribunal whose jurisdiction would be limited to finance.
According to article 14 of the decree proposed by Saint-
Just: A tribunal and an accounting juror will be created. This tribunal and this juror will be appointed by the
National Convention. He will be responsible for prosecuting all those who have handled public funds since the
Revolution, and ask them to account for their fortune. The organization of this tribunal is referred to the Legislation
Committee.
Unfortunately, the organization thus sent back was to get lost in the boxes of the Committee and never come
out. The monetary circulation does not undergo any reduction. Few assignats were burned, and no profiteer was
put on the spot in a hot room.
Moreover, for Saint-Just, the solution cannot be strictly legalistic. It is also necessary to change mores, the style
of government:
There are few men at the head of our establishments whose views are grand and in good faith: service
public, as it is done, is not a virtue, it is a profession.
Once again, against the paperwork in which the state is bogged down, he evokes antiquity. You can read these
lines. They have not aged:
The ministry is a world of paper. I don't know how Rome and Egypt governed themselves without this resource:
they thought a lot, they wrote little. The prolixity of the correspondence and of the orders of the government is a
mark of its inertia; it is impossible to govern without laconicism. The representatives of the people, the generals,
the administrators, are surrounded by offices like the old men of the palace; nothing is done, and yet the expense
is enormous. Offices have replaced monarchism; the demon of writing makes war on us and we do not govern.
And then the problem is not limited to Paris, nor to the administration. The province, which evades the laws in
force, remains worrying. Reminding his audience of recent developments, Saint-Just said:
When you carried the law of the maximum, the enemies of the people richer than him, bought at the
above the maximum.
Markets ceased to be supplied by the avarice of those who sold; commodity prices had fallen; but the commodity
was scarce.
The brokers of a large number of communes bought in competition; and as uneasiness feeds and propagates
itself, everyone wanted to have stores, and prepare for famine to protect themselves from it.
It is true that, in many districts, the administrators do not hesitate to move the markets, stop the supply of Paris,
and ignore the decisions of the Convention. Representatives on mission, such as Robespierre young in Nice, are
sometimes the first to decide not to apply the law on the maximum.
With what forces could one compensate for so many weaknesses and disorders? Magistrates and police proved
insecure, subject as they were to intrigues and swings of opinion, not to mention corruption.
Saint-Just had no illusions.

Your Committee of Public Safety, placed at the center of all the results, has calculated the causes of public
misfortunes: it has found them in the weakness with which your decrees are executed, in the lack of economy of
administration, in the instability of the views of the State, in the vicissitude of the passions which influence the
government.
Moreover, this speech and the decree voted were not without effect.
In the following weeks, laws will determine some of the practicalities. Thus on December 4 (14 Frimaire) a
decree will specify that the administration of the Parisian districts (which corresponds to the arrondissements)
will be attached to the safety committee; finally, “congresses or local meetings” (like those of the bishopric
committee) will be prohibited. As a result, the Commune and the committees, which remained in the hands
of the Hébertists and agitators, lost their means of action. Of course, those concerned will work to circumvent
the law...
The preface written by Saint-Just is clear enough for the opposition to understand what awaits them.
Danton leaves for his estate in Arcis-sur-Aube to relax with his new wife. And the Hébertists, to have a less
politically marked springboard, will try to play on anticlericalism.
As for Saint-Just, after having returned to the rostrum, on October 16, to present the law against the
English, he left Paris and went to lead the campaign in Alsace and Lorraine.
Before his departure, if we believe the testimony of Joachim Vilate, he dined at the restaurant Verrua,
invited with Robespierre by Barère. It was the evening of Marie-Antoinette's judgment. Coming from the trial,
Vilate having recounted Hébert's testimony, Robespierre allegedly got so carried away that he broke his
plate, shouting: That imbecile Hébert! make it an Agrippina ! After a moment of awkward silence, Saint-Just
is said to have said: Morals will gain by this act of national justice. And Barère adds: The guillotine has here
cut a powerful knot in the diplomacy of the courts of Europe.
20
.
Saint-Just's austerity, his cutting gesture made the young Vilate shudder. According to him, the words
revolved around death like butterflies around a lamp. Admittedly, writing the day after 9 Thermidor, so as not
to be judged as a Robespierrist, Vilate seeks to harm the leaders of the Committee of Public Safety by
presenting them as bloodthirsty. None of the quoted lines can be held to be certainly true, but the obsession
with death and the fears of failure are not implausible. As, according to Vilate, Robespierre expressed the
concern inspired in him by the "large number of enemies of the Revolution", Saint-Just would have exposed
"the bases of his speech on the confiscation of the property of suspects". And, Barère replying that the ship
could only arrive at the port on a sea reddened with waves of blood, Saint-Just would have added: A nation
is regenerated only on heaps of corpses.
Yes, for him – however exaggerated the bloody color of the words evoked – the apocalyptic perspective
had its raison d'être. The unpublished papers, of which Vilate was unaware when he wrote, were to bring him
correction and confirmation. In conscience, Saint-Just came up against a dilemma: A government has virtue
as its principle; if not terror. What do those who want neither virtue nor terror want ? Might makes neither
reason nor right; but it is perhaps impossible to do without it in order to enforce the law and reason...
His choice was dictated as much by a claim to efficiency, to realism, as by the feeling of a vocation or,
more exactly, of a personal destiny: God, protector of innocence and truth, since you you drove among some
perverts, it was probably to unmask them!...
Terror imposed itself on him like a fatality. He tried to answer them without cheating or bending the
back or close your eyes.
He was only entering his twenty-sixth year, but he had already learned how difficult it is in troubled times
to find truth and to do justice. The Committee of Public Safety held almost all the powers but not all the vital
forces. If he could impose his authority only by inspiring fear, he had to use this means without hesitation, but
not without precaution.
Otherwise, he risked upsetting public opinion and inciting opponents to revolt. It was necessary both to make
a firm decision and to be conciliatory. There were dubious men who could hardly be cracked down on, as
some had important connections.
Before his departure for Alsace, Saint-Just had seen General Dillon and Castellane released, presented
as plotters in his speech on the Girondins. They had been released because they were protected by Camille
Desmoulins and Danton, like the wheeler-dealers Proli and Desfieux had been two days earlier (October 12),
because they were linked with the Hébertists.
Thus, the committee remained on a ground, here moving, there bombarded, which made the constructions
quite difficult.
1. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 85 (August 26).
2. The one quoted by COURTOIS in his Report, p. 186-187.
3. Correspondence from Couthon, Paris, 1872, p. 263.

4. Fr. 628, fol. 85.
5. Courtois Report, p. 181 6. Fr.
628, fol. 78 (Mathiez quoted him in the Conspiracy under the Terror).
7. Father Duchesne, no . 278.
8. The Expensive Life and the social movement under the Terror, p. 319.
9. It should be noted that the registers of the Committee do not show Saint-Just present at the meetings from August 23 to September 18. We will see at
chapter VII what he was doing then.
10. "The King's wife," writes Desmoulins, "offered the black belt to the young and handsome Sechelles." »
11. Quoted by COURTOIS in his Report of 16 Nivôse, year III. (Arch.nat., F7 4436, fol. 132.)
12. The Marshal of Saxe-Cobourg.
13. Arch. of the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 632, fol. 118.
14. See TUETEY, Directory, t. X.
15. In December, in Le Vieux Cordelier, Desmoulins reproaches Hébert for his relations with Madame de Rochechouart, according to him “agent of emigrants”.
Hébert will respond by stating that he kicked her out of his house several times. But the strange countess will not be arrested and sentenced to death until Floréal
(end of April), that is to say one month after Hébert's arrest.

16. Arch. Nat., F7 3688 3 ; see Reports of secret agents, by PIERRE CARON, Paris, 1914, t. II, pp. 401-402.
17. See Correspondence of Georges Couthon, Paris, 1872.
18. THIBAUDEAU, Memoirs, p. 48.
19. Minutes of the Convention, t. XXI, p. 240.
20. Secret causes of the Revolution from 9 to 11 Thermidor, by VILATE, Paris, 1795.
CHAPTER II
VICTORY OR DEATH
1. EUROPE, A NEW IDEA OF THE CENTURY.
Western writers, wheeler-dealers and adventurers, traveling in all directions across the continent, had
discovered it. Once it was Christendom, and now Europe, the cornerstone of civilization on which one
could rely with confidence and even pride.
Like those travelers who know of the cities they pass through only the grand hotels and the station
platforms, the wandering philosophers, the nomadic lovers of the 18th century only opened their eyes
before the marble of palaces, the lawns of gardens , trinkets from salons and showcases from natural
history cabinets. What a reassuring unity! However long the journeys were, the scenery hardly changed.
We always found ourselves in front of familiar objects and already experienced perspectives. Besides
the religions practiced, the cult of Love was celebrated in all the parks in identical temples, and people
met under the same artificial grottoes. The English gardens had crossed the Channel, and the Trianon,
accommodated to the beady eye of Frederick II, had been reflected in the Sans-Souci of Potsdam.
By dint of receiving each other, exchanging fashions, recipes, addresses of suppliers for decoration
and architecture, we thought we were close relatives. Because it was talkative, Europe considered itself
united. But this union was due to the fragile Internationale des salonards. In the intimacy of boudoirs as
in lavish receptions, we left the fatherlands in the cloakroom. The Prince de Ligne had thought, one day,
of not wearing one any more and, on the benches of the Convention, we were going to find Anacharsis
Clootz, the first “citizen of the world”. However, what this Europe was based on should, rather than
cement it, excite its particularisms. Calling into question the relationship of man with the world and
nature, the thought of the century provoked individual reactions. The secular arts only thrive in diversity
– just as any long-lasting conversation needs the spice of controversy – so begins a subtle game of
balance.
On the one hand, confident reason responds to skeptical and mystical currents. On the other hand,
the Anglomania, so lively around Montesquieu, Madame du Deffant and Voltaire, gave rise to an
Anglophobia which ensured, from 1765, the success of the Siege of Calais, de Belloy's mediocre
tragedy. In Germany, Francophilia was reversed: Lessing and Goethe were opposed to Voltaire and Corneille.
Curiously enough, the trumpets of these nascent or resurgent nationalisms are not
1.
military but playwrights, critics and poets
They are jealous men, who stand up to their full height in front of the reclining beauties. Indeed, all
these new knights who have gone in search of the truth need ladies. For these men of letters, freed
from thrones, altars and institutions, women presented themselves as the best accomplices. But these
stubbornly intend to remain cosmopolitan. They are inclined to follow their stateless heroines ( wasn't
Manon 's father a Frenchman from London and that of the Nouvelle Héloïse a Parisian from Geneva?)
They become attached to international connections.
Also, it is to women that we owe the best French export of the moment: language.
Sharp, relaxed, light and fast, the French language was perfectly suited to the rhythm and lifestyle
of the time. Usable as a Venetian mask, flattering and dissimulating, such a language allowed many
things. She turned out to be as becoming in a boudoir as in an embassy study, that is to say wherever
one likes to seduce without the risk of compromising oneself in the event of failure.
“Jesuit and eunuch style,” said Valéry. It's quite true, and, as a result, this style afforded women
great conveniences: a skilful and unobtrusive intermediary. With him, we spent the night in the
gardens, from the lesson in astronomy to the lesson in love, very easily. It was the universal teaching
without tears. A gently truant high school, with a moral climate and a well-tempered harpsichord.
One could believe, for a moment, that the continent would be taken away by France as Europe,
daughter of Agenor, was taken by Jupiter disguised as a bull. But France was very little bullfighting.
Having many children – more than competing nations – did not prevent the country from slowly
weakening its position. There were several reasons for this. First of all, having a large family has never
been enough to confer a first place in society. (Even if we add to that a lot of brilliance in the
conversation.) Then, the French destiny was placed under the sign of contradiction. As much as the
nation took liberties, with heart and mind, in the order of literary expression, so much it remained
entangled in an outdated rhetoric, in the political order. In this respect, it represented – in the world –
the values of a company in decline: dynastic imperialism. She lived on her capital and as if struck by
a kind of hemiplegia which made her official steps circumvented and painful, whereas her words
dazzled by her agility.
Indeed, she continued to adjust her foreign policy to matters of marriage and successions, in short
to family pretexts, putting on a habit which had often covered desires for power, but which was
beginning to be out of season. For the imperialism of the century was renewing its wardrobe.
That of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons was worn out. The Treaty of Westphalia had torn the first
and the Treaty of Utrecht stopped the second. Undoubtedly, the disintegration of the Bourbons
remained barely perceptible. In appearance, they retained a formidable power. In fact, they got tired as soon as
that they wanted to venture outside. All the great military leaders of the house - a Marshal de
Noailles, a Maurice de Saxe, a Dupleix, a Saint-Germain, a Marshal de Belle-Isle, etc. -
complained of the indiscipline of the troops, too quick to loot or run away. Moreover, senior
officers sometimes preceded them on this road, planting their troops there to look elsewhere.
On the other hand, the diplomacy tied up at Versailles claimed to continue its game with the
countries of which it had acquired the secular habit, without worrying about the real state of
health and fortunes. Most often routine, she eyed Turkey, Sweden and Spain, without noticing
their anemia or their decadence. It misjudged the British expansion which drew the Nordic states
into its orbit and imposed itself on the seas; she did not see that Prussia, whose birth she had
favored, was going to turn against her. Finally, she thought of Russia what Diderot was to say of
it one day: "Fruit rotten before it is ripe." »
Yet these countries of such different ages were playmakers throughout the century. From the
first years, they scored points. England, in 1713, in Utrecht which opened up to him the domination
of the seas. Prussia and Russia, in 1721, at Nystadt which reinforced them and led them towards
Poland, Turkey and the Baltic Sea. From this moment the two great parts of the century were
engaged.
Neither in the West nor in the East was there any concern to wrap the desire for expansion in
family finery. Britain presented itself in the rich garb of the great exporters, while Russia claimed
to hold the crown of Byzantium. But whether they were animated by mercantilism or messianism,
these countries met again by employing means whose realism was not encumbered with dynastic
conventions. Knowing very well how to play alliances like pawns, to interfere in the internal affairs
of coveted countries, thanks to parties bought by them, they shifted the terrain of diplomacy.
In this world where nationalisms bristled, excited by culture, trade or arms, France was losing
this magnetic force by which a country imposes, not necessarily its will, but its presence and its
rules of action. Confused, out of breath, knowing which way to turn, France had to swing between
the ocean and the continent, recording serious failures on both sides. Unable to get along
seriously with England, unable to retain its maritime expansion, it separated from the latter, in
1740, for a century. On the Continent, his interventions, inspired by the old dynastic reflex,
evoked the hated specter of Louis XIV and displayed his weakness. Never, perhaps, had a nation
been seen to combine so much prestige in the order of ideas with so much mediocrity in the
material order.
Certainly, it must be recognized that the dying monarchy knew how to pull itself together. Not
only did it modernize the organization and tactics of its armies, but it provided them with artillery
whose excellence the Revolution and the Empire were to prove. Finally, resuming the initiative
abroad, through its intervention in the American War of Independence, it very fortunately
accorded, for the first time, the spirit and approach of France.
However, this recovery was, for the regime, like a temporary betterment on the verge of death. Despite
everything, France remained outside the hinges of Europe. And the people, to whom royalty bequeathed
such fine cannons, advanced along the path of the universe, passing through the Bastille and the Tuileries,
without really knowing where they were going.
No one serious had envisaged a destiny for Europe. Those who had celebrated the continent (Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.) believed in it only to the extent that they no longer believed in nations (which
seemed to them reduced to the rank of "provinces" of a great state or an empire). They based their hopes
on culture and, sometimes (this is the case of Montesquieu), on what we would call today the economic
interdependence of countries.
However, they did not entertain excessive illusions concerning relations between peoples. The appeals of
the Physiocrats to universal fraternity, the international relations of Masonic sects, the cosmopolitan aspect
of intellectual life, raised questions rather than provided answers. People were not proud of having found a
new way of arranging continental civilization to make peace and harmony reign. The dreamed harmony rang
in the ears like the distant echoes of a past of innocence and love that future times would perhaps see
resuscitated.
But, in the immediate future, little hope. The economy of salvation, exalting nature instead of the soul, kept
the social domain under the seal of fatalities. The most European of writers, Voltaire made fun of those who
claimed to disarm the continent by imposing on it a right of nations. Rousseau did not omit to specify in his
pages in favor of peace, that there was a "madness in wanting to be wise among the mad".
Self-esteem and awareness of imperialism meant that no one wanted to appear the dupe of utopia, nor
venture to conceive of a peaceful organization of the continent. Deprived of the support and union that
Christianity brought a few centuries earlier, one could hardly attach oneself to "grand designs" such as those
of Henry IV, Elizabeth of England and Sully. . The most striking project, that (in twelve articles) of this poor
Abbé de Saint-Pierre, had received only smiles and sneers. Men like Frederick II and Leibniz had opposed
living Europe to him. We know the philosopher's repartee, it is significant: to speak of "perpetual peace" is to
imitate the inscriptions in cemeteries which announce an "eternal peace", but if "the dead do not quarrel, the
living are of one another mood...".
At the end of the road, the revolutionaries encountered the continent where they least expected it.
Opponents of conquest and arms, they brought France back to Europe through the gates of war. Heralds of
the fraternity of peoples, convinced of the obsolescence of nations, they established nationalism, by
tightening the hold of the State on the nation, by nationalizing the army, by fixing with precision the borders
(not legally established until to the Estates General of 1789). Liberals, supporters of free trade, they were
forced to move in the opposite direction.
These ironies of fate are frequent in the course of time. Man does not make history, he inscribes himself in it. We
can discuss the responsibilities of the conflict. Many - especially among the Girondins - believed that the economic and
financial crisis would find its solution in the war.
Some believed that this would provide a means of “consolidating the Revolution” (Couthon), others a means of
“consuming” it (Isnard). Finally, the man in the street and the libelists seeing foreign policy above all through the events
of the past, the behavior and the person of the leaders, we showed ourselves to be very sensitive, because of Marie-
Antoinette, to the attack of the Austria and the Habsburgs. The Franco-Austrian alliance of 1756 was referred to as a
“major fault”. And Custine stated bluntly: "To be free, Austria must be destroyed." »
In other words, until the last moment, the real relation of forces was very badly measured and people were mistaken
about the fatalities of the moment. But at the same time that the Revolution compelled us to renounce the possibilities
that we believed acquired, it revealed others that we dared not hope for. This country impoverished by the finances of
the old regime, by the technical backwardness of its agriculture and its industry, this country which Burke believed –
under the Constituent Assembly – erased from the map of Europe, suddenly reappearing, jostling the continent,
echoed throughout the world. Of course, it is very exaggerated to claim, like Michelet carried away by lyricism, that
“our songs brought down the walls” and that “the world gave itself up to France”. Like all military occupations, those of
the troops of the Revolution aroused passionate resistance. But before the princes and the diplomats, the French
adventure set in motion a new element: the popular will.
Patriotism had been heating up for a year and the war had been raging for six months when the Convention opened
its doors. The latter had not finished setting up when the "little, black, ragged" Valmy volunteers (Goethe) astounded
Europe with their water hammer against the dolled-up armies of the King of Prussia. With the morale thus comforted
and the experience gained, the French troops advanced blazing, a few weeks later, on the plains of Belgium...
In their old age, certain actors or simple spectators of this victorious ardor were moved by recalling the first months
of this taking up of arms of the country. However, big and simple as always, the strokes and. colors of the legend
should not make us forget what obstacles, what confusion had to be overcome.
2. THE SANS-CULOTTES OF ALSACE (OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1793).
What preoccupation haunted Saint-Just in the car which took him to Saverne, with his companion Le Bas? For
nearly two months, he had been waiting for this departure. “I believe I am going to go to the armies these days,” he
announced in a letter to his friend Thuillier at the beginning of September.
But the very seriousness of the situation had blocked him at the Committee of Public Safety.
Obsessed by the memory of Dumouriez, anguished by the defeats, the Committee had harshly purged
the generals and officers by condemning them to death or to prison, when a reverse could be imputed to
them. After the general staff of the Army of the North, the commanders of the armies of the Rhine and the
Moselle had just been dismissed: General Landremont, for having, on September 12, written that he would
find it difficult to defend the lines of Wissembourg and, consequently, Strasbourg; General Schaunebourg,
for having been beaten, September 14, at Pirmassens, leaving to the enemy twenty guns and two thousand
prisoners. But in the parliamentary debate sparked by the sabering of senior officers, the advantage
remained with the Committee. As a result, he had been able to appoint new men: Jourdan to the Army of
the North, Pichegru to the Army of the Rhine and Hoche to the Army of the Moselle.
However, generals – however great their qualities – do not make an army. They need had expressed
2
well-equipped, well-supervised troops. In this regard, Saint-Just his concern in
speech.
Having lost Mainz, beaten at Wissembourg (October 13) and at Lauterbourg, besieged at Landau since
April, the French army, deprived and dislocated, found itself seriously threatened. The enemy was seated
a few places from Strasburg. To restore the situation, it was necessary, before the military and civilian
executives of the region, to benefit from an authority based on the esteem of the soldiers and men in the street.
Not convenient. Especially in a corner that ignored the nation and ignored the French language. The name
of Saint-Just, known to a rather restricted circle, did not clack like a banner.
And then he was young. To hide his twenty-five years, he had decided, when leaving Paris, to leave
grow his mustache. But he had to quickly give up this make-up.
The powers entrusted to him by the Committee of Public Safety were vast, but in no way defined in
such a way as to impose respect on the established authorities. The decision of October 17 only established
that Saint-Just and Le Bas would go "immediately to the army to learn of the events that took place in
Wissembourg and Lauterbourg", and that they were effect, of the powers necessary to take the measures
of public safety "deemed appropriate". Emphasis had been placed on the informative nature of its mission.
In the end, only membership of the Committee of Public Safety and a rigorously conducted action could
give Saint-Just the useful ascendancy.
3
as support , as an entourage, he would have two reliable men: Le Bas and Gateau. The first had
experience of military missions. Moreover, a devotee of Robespierre, he had just tied himself to his house
– so to speak – by marrying one of the daughters of the “carpenter” Duplay. According to the notes written
by his wife, many years later: "Robespierre, who had great confidence in Le Bas because he was well
aware of his prudent and wise character, had chosen him to accompany Saint-Just, whom his burning love
of country sometimes led to too much severity, and whose character erred by "passion". and passionate"
4.
of Saint-Just, we will have the opportunity to examine it more closely. For his part, the delegate of the
Committee had approved Robespierre's idea and
supported the appointment of Le Bas, because the man must have seemed to him serious enough in his
work and not very brilliant enough in politics not to be a cumbersome but a secondary asset. At the start,
they found themselves bound by good relations, but not by any camaraderie that might make Saint-Just
fear excessive familiarity in their new relationship. On the other hand, Gateau was a memory of
Blérancourt, a true childhood friend to whom he had obtained a position, by having him appointed agent
of the Provisional Executive Council with the Army of the Rhine: he could count on his devotion and his
information.
As for the style of life that should be had to impose on the armies, Saint-Just had to recall his tirade
of 19 Vendémiaire: It is not useless that the duties of the representatives of the people to the armies
should be severely recommended to them : they must be there the fathers and the friends of the soldier;
they must sleep in the tent; they must be present at military exercises; they should be unfamiliar with the
generals, so that the soldier will have more confidence in their justice and their impartiality when he
approaches them; the soldier must find them day and night ready to hear him; the representatives must
eat alone; they must be frugal, and remember that they answer for the public safety, and that the eternal
downfall of kings is preferable to temporary softness.
Those who make revolutions in the world, those who want to do good, should sleep only in the tomb.
The representatives of the people in the camps must live there like Hannibal before arriving at Capua
and, like Mithridates, they must know, if I may so speak, the names of all the soldiers; they must
prosecute all injustice, all abuse, for great vices have been introduced into the discipline of our armies:
we have seen battalions of the Army of the Rhine asking for alms in the markets: a free people is
humiliated by these indignities.
Oh ! the ride was easy to chart on paper, but harder to actually hold.
When they arrived in Saverne on October 22, Le Bas and Saint-Just did not go to sleep in the tent but
in a cozy hotel room.
Let's be fair... The missionaries were not sent to a camp; they were to watch over the whole of Alsace.
However, in Strasbourg, where they settled two days later, they were not slept on the straw, nor even in
a modest room, but in the grand hotel of the city, that of the Provostship. To hell with Mithridates and
Hannibal! “It needed a bit of space to impress the local civil authorities,” Saint-Just might have replied.
Because, let's not forget, at that time, famous men did not hesitate to show themselves royally at the
early morning. Voltaire, Robespierre, Talleyrand had awakenings which have remained famous. Also,
Saint-Just will not hesitate to receive, in bed, important Jacobins from Strasbourg, the "Marat" of the city,
Schneider, and the mayor, Monet, whose claims he will oppose.
Moreover, if he placed himself above campism, he pulled the officers back towards this way of life. A
week after their installation, the representatives of the people gave the written order to Pichegru to oblige
“the general officers” to sleep and eat under the tent.
No memory evokes the meals of Saint-Just in Strasbourg. But we can think that they were,
as in Paris, thin and fast, because considerable is the work accomplished
5 .
With regard to relations with the soldier, the rules defined on 13 Vendémiaire will be better observed, but not
without corrective measures being taken. If Saint-Just does not seem to have simulated – which Napoleon was to
succeed so well – the knowledge of the name of each good soldier, on the other hand, he envisaged “changing
all the names of the villages and towns of Alsace and giving them the names of the soldiers of the army”. This is
what we can read in one of his handwritten notes from the Archives 6 . The same paper bears, a little further on:
“One cannot govern without friends. This last sentence sheds light on the concern that inspired the project. A
concern for self-propaganda, so to speak. To make his world work, Saint-Just alternated severity and caresses.
As soon as they arrived in Strasbourg on 24 October (3 Brumaire) the representatives of the people launched
two proclamations in which dry, snapping firmness prevailed over paternal tenderness.
To cure the combatants of a depression which predisposed them to retreat and disorder, they were invited to
disciplined contempt: Soldiers,
of the Army of the Rhine, despise the enemy you have before you. He has not overcome you; he betrayed you.
False deserters have stretched out their arms to you; you kissed them; we don't embrace tyrants, we kill them. So
be on your guard. Love the discipline that leads to victory. Practice the handling of weapons, stay in your camps
and prepare to win in your turn.
There, the soldiers were pushed to settle their own accounts. In the other proclamation, they are
promised the intervention of the representatives of the people. This complement was not superfluous:
We arrive and we swear, in the name of the army, that the enemy will be defeated. If there are traitors and
indifferent here, even to the cause of the people, we bring the sword which must strike them. Soldiers, we come to
avenge you and give you leaders to lead you to victory. We resolved to seek, reward, merit, and prosecute all
crimes, regardless of who committed them.
Courage, brave Army of the Rhine, from now on you will be happy and triumphant with freedom.
It is ordered to all the chiefs and officers and any agents of the government to satisfy in three days the just
complaints of the soldiers. After this delay, we ourselves will hear these complaints and we will give examples of
justice and severity which the army has not yet seen.
As we can see, the man who considered the representative of the people in Paris to be a “father and a friend”
of the soldier, considered it necessary in Strasbourg to maintain these family and friendly relations, but with a
certain distance.
To better support his proclamations and judge their effect, Saint-Just went the next day to receive the baptism
of fire, visiting the outposts, accompanied by Le Bas. At Reicstett, the representatives of the people were nearly
taken prisoner. This unfortunate day, when the French troops had to beat a retreat, proved favorable for him. For,
having seen him among them, questioning them, venturing into the fray, the soldiers felt for the delegate of the
Committee more sympathy and
respect.
Examining the situation with General Carley at headquarters, Saint-Just and Le Bas were led to this
simple conclusion: "The failure of Wissembourg is due to the lack of order, of discipline, which allowed the
enemy to surprise army 7 .»
To restore discipline, the head of mission rains severe measures and exemplary sanctions. On 5
Brumaire, he drafted a decree for the punishment of evildoers and traitors. On the 8th, he made public the
dismissal of Adjutant General Perdieu, arrested three days earlier at the Comedie de Strasbourg where he
was lounging while the vanguard was under attack. The decree considers that "discipline, which prohibits
leaving the camp, is equal for the soldiers and for the leaders that the latter especially owe the former a
good example, and that the men cowardly enough to go to the theaters when the army bivouacked and
when the enemy is at the gates, are unworthy of commanding the French”.
The same day, another decree decreed the arrest until the peace of an unfortunate horseman, named
Jacques Merigues, "who represented that the care of his fortune, which he evolves at 40,000 pounds,
called him to Poitiers ; why he asked to leave the Army of the Rhine, to go home with stages both for him
and for his horse".
These last recitals, by their content and by their form, seem a bit quirky. The culprit is like an innocent
peasant who is taking his first steps in the army. And, however inopportune this request for what today
would be called leave, it could not be identified with running away or an attempt to desert. Nevertheless,
Saint-Just and Le Bas, taking Constable Merigues for a "coward who prefers his private interest to the
interest of his country in danger", decreed his imprisonment and his degradation in the public square. We
were less severe on senior officers who left their frontline camp to go and have fun at the theater...
This inequality in the disciplinary measures, Saint-Just would no doubt have justified by saying that he
could not, lacking executives, immobilize the officers in the prisons and that, moreover, multiplying the
severe and spectacular measures against the superiors risked to take away their authority. To have well-
disciplined fighters, the authority of the command must be based on the confidence of the troops. A month
later when the frameworks will have been modified, he will decide to impose two years in prison on all the
officers absent from their post, a day of combat 8 But, make no mistake about it. The exemplary severity .
shown by Saint-Just is not the manifestation of a cold and surly temperament, as has been too often
believed. If he punished minor offenses so harshly, it was with a precise intention that he was to explain to
Robespierre, a month later, in a few lines in the margin of a letter from Le Bas: You only punish salient
crimes , hypocritical crimes go unpunished. Have a slight abuse punished in each part, it is the way to
frighten the wicked, and to make them see that the government has an eye on everything.
9.
We still think of Bonaparte who will give so well the feeling of having “an eye on everything”.
Saint-Just, moreover, does not only focus his attention – as far as the troops are concerned – on
discipline. He makes a great effort to improve their material conditions. It has often been cited
his famous decree of 25 brumaire (15 November) in which the representatives of the people
say to the municipality: Ten thousand men are barefoot in the army, you must take off all the
aristocrats of Strasbourg, and that tomorrow, at ten o'clock in the morning, the ten thousand
pairs of shoes march to headquarters.
This step of the shoes is still reminiscent of Courteline. We first say that the imperious tone
here is a little adolescent. But the decree only takes on its true meaning when brought closer to
the others. It is not a question of a sudden illumination of awakening, but of the end of a long
fruitless effort. In fifteen days, he had already taken two measures to ensure shoes for the troops.
On 10 Brumaire (October 31), he had instructed the municipality, by a decree, to "request within
eight days from the citizens of Strasbourg five thousand pairs of shoes." The rule was simple:
“Any citizen who refused his contingent would be considered an enemy of his country and fined
300 pounds. On the other hand, those who would submit to the requisition would be paid "out
of the army fund", according to an assessment fixed by the municipality. As the requisition was
not to be carried out smoothly, a week later, on 17 Brumaire, he wrote to the mayor of
Strasbourg, ordering him to excite "the zeal of all the citizens, to have the army supplied with
shoes, clothes and hats", and asking him to report the next day "in writing on the measures he
has taken and their effects".
Putting on and clothing bare feet is a task all the more arduous, as they often prefer to warm
up with drink, food and pleasures. Also, deprived of money, they do not hesitate to sell their
shoes – especially since the requisition cannot provide all sizes. Also, on the same 17 Brumaire,
Saint-Just and Le Bas “arrest that the property of those who have purchased the effects of a
soldier will be confiscated for the benefit of the Republic”.
We understand that this uphill and arduous road, trampled on for two weeks, inspired them,
in desperation, the baring of ten thousand rich men.
For clothing, supplies, transport, it is the same. The representatives of the people take
measure to measure. On 15 Brumaire, they decreed that "the storekeeper of Strasbourg will
immediately send to the general-in-chief of the army 1,000 greatcoats to be distributed to the
bivouacking troops." But this turns out to be insufficient; twelve days later, they decide that "all
the coats of the citizens of the city of Strasbourg are in requisition". For refueling, even hardening
in evolution. Upon their arrival, on 3 Brumaire, the project managers “ordered the administrators
of Haut and Bas-Rhin, Mont Terrible, Meurthe, Vosges, Haute Saône, Haute-Marne, and Côte-
d'Or, to supply within twelve days for any delay, in the military stores of Strasbourg and other
places which have been indicated to them, the quantities of wheat, rye, barley, oats and hay" in
accordance with the decrees of their predecessors. But, ten days later, they are obliged to warn
the same departments that they must "obey the requisitions of straw which will be made to them
by the administrators of subsistence (...) under pain of being judged as enemies of the homeland
". And, the next day, in a new decree on fodder, they estimate that the
directorates of the districts fall under the blow of the law, if they “refuse the requests which are made to
them”.
This is not the first time that Le Bas and Saint-Just have shaken up district directorates. Four days
earlier, they had already summoned them to satisfy “on the hour” all requests for the requisition “of
horses and carriages which could be made to them by the agents of the Republic near the Army of the
Rhine”. And, bluntly: Administrators guilty of negligence will be arrested until the peace. Those who are
guilty of ill will will be judged militarily by the army tribunal as guilty of treason. However, a few weeks
later, those in charge of the mission had to “reiterate their orders, with the decree of 2 Frimaire (22
November) stipulating “the requisitioning of all horses and carriages for the transport of the wounded”.
All these questions, which are now the responsibility of the administration, impose measures on them
by means of decrees or instructions, the requirements and severity of which increase with the weeks.
They do not throw themselves into extreme severity when they arrive, as is often believed: they are led
there by the persistence of difficulties. They must intervene for everything, even to provide the troops
with the empty bags they need (decree of 24
brumaire). Obviously, the obstacles they come up against in these matters are due as much to the
financial situation as to the administrative disorder of the army and the departments.
Saint-Just showed too well – in his speeches to the Convention – the gravity of the monetary situation
not to worry about it in Alsace. Against a particularly harmful black market on the front, he stopped
repressive measures, three days after his arrival. Saint-Just's thought is clearly found in the recitals
where those in charge of missions declare themselves convinced that bad administration, impunity for
thefts and the enemy's intelligence with bad citizens were one of the causes of the disasters. of the
Army of the Rhine. Also, it is decided that the prevaricating agents of the various administrations of the
Army of the Rhine and the partisan agents of the enemy will be shot in the presence of the army.
Two days later, on 7 Brumaire, Saint-Just and Le Bas reinforced their initial provisions against
prevaricators with a new decree based on respect for the law of the maximum. "Administrative bodies,
municipalities and surveillance committees" are summoned to enforce this law in the purchases of oxen,
cows and sheep on behalf of the Republic, and warned that they are held responsible, on their heads,
not only for the slightest impediment they would bring to the said purchases, but even of their negligence
in favoring them when they are required to do so. On the other hand, the agents of military subsistence
"must denounce to the representatives of the people the constituted bodies which would have hindered
their purchases". The members of the said corps "will be brought before the revolutionary tribunal as
guilty of high treason." Finally, on December 23 (3 Nivôse) Saint-Just and Le Bas will decide that any
Strasbourgeois convicted of speculation, of disrespect for the law of the maximum, will lose his house,
which will be razed.
However, however energetic it may be, legal repression cannot, on its own, improve the economic
and financial situation. Black markets are growing as some
citizens have a purchasing power capable of supporting very high prices above the norm. So Saint-
Just decides to use the most classic way to reduce large fortunes: the tax authorities. "We are
taxing the rich to lower food," he said on 24 brumaire (14 November) in a public letter to the popular
society of Strasbourg.
Moreover, for Saint-Just, it was as much a question of cleaning up the market as of procuring
financial means for the civil administration and the army. For this, on 10 brumaire, we launched a loan.
In their appeal for subscription, the people's representatives said they were "informed of the good
will of the citizens of Bas-Rhin for their country" and "touched by the sensitivity with which the
wealthy citizens of Strasbourg had expressed the hatred of the enemies of France and the desire
to help subjugate them. According to Saint-Just and Le Bas, the rich had "offered to repair" the
misfortunes of the army by taking out a loan, not without asking, for the benefit of wealthy people,
"measures of severity against those who would refuse to imitate them”.
The absence of class spirit here borders on trickery. Because, it is a compulsory loan which will
be raised, say Saint-Just and Le Bas, "on the citizens of Strasbourg whose list is attached". We
play on both sides by striving to move patriotism and taking the precaution of using fiscal constraint.
But the threat is muted. It is said that the loan will provide nine millions, of which two will be
employed to help the needy of the city, one to "fortify the place", and six "poured into the army
coffers", but they do not say what penalties will overwhelm the wealthy on the list, who will shirk.
We put on gloves to borrow, but not without reinforcing our hands with a hidden weapon. We
uses menacing gentleness.
Either that the loan had delivered its first sums, or that one wanted to maintain its publicity (or
probably, for both reasons), five days after the launch, Saint-Just and Le Bas decreed that "one
hundred thousand pounds coming from the loan from the rich” would be divided “among the
sections of the said city, to be employed in relieving the indigent patriots, the widows and orphan
children of soldiers who died in the cause of freedom”.
Obviously, with ten thousand pounds, we were still quite far from the two million planned. But
distributing them was a delicate way of sounding the reminder of latecomers.
The next day, Saint-Just and Le Bas came closer to the truth, confessing their displeasure.
In a decree, they made it known that the loan could not be subscribed in "demonetized assignats",
and that, consequently, those who had thus paid had to withdraw their paper and "pay, in the day,
their quota in current currency ".
The day passed without the loan coffers filling up.
Also, the representatives of the people took off their gloves. They decreed that the richest
individual taxed for the loan of nine millions, who has not satisfied his tax within twenty-four hours,
will be exposed tomorrow, the 18th of the second month, from ten o'clock in the morning until an
hour, on the scaffold of the guillotine. And others must understand this unflattering exposition: "Those who
will not have paid their taxes tomorrow, will suffer one month in prison for each day of delay, awaiting the
imperative salvation of the country. »
This display of the big rich and this threat for the others, brought incomes of money, but not yet fully
satisfactory, since the persons in charge of mission demanded, on the 21st brumaire, that one keep "register
of the species in which the taxpayers have made or will make their payments".
However, the results obtained made it possible to transmit 50,000 pounds to the municipality "to be employed
on the spot for the relief of the destitute families of Strasbourg". Finally, the next day, 500,000 pounds received
the same allocation.
The loan will no longer be much talked about. However, on December 29, 600,000 pounds will still be drawn
from the loan to be allocated to schools. That is to say that the only public receipts - those for the indigents and
the schools - will have given in the end 1,200,000 books.
Admittedly, the indigent only receive 650,000 pounds whereas the project provided for 2 million for this chapter.
But, according to Saint-Just, the results and the measures taken to impose the law of the maximum have put
10 .
gold and paper on a par
By cleaning up the currency, by providing the army and the city with significant resources,
the loan will have been a successful measure.
To ensure the equipment and the armament of the army, Saint-Just and Le Bas were not satisfied with a
local action. Alongside so many Strasbourg decrees, they addressed urgent letters to the rulers of Paris.
Send sabers, pistols, carbines to the cavalry depots, and that in twelve days two thousand cavalry men be
returned to Strasbourg, they imperiously demand of the Committee of Public Safety, on October 24 . Four days
later, they do it again, impatiently. You haven't answered us. Hasten to reinforce this army, and convince
yourself that you must be at Landau within a fortnight. Return our mail to us immediately with your reply. But
Paris' reply could not be satisfactory: basically, she was to invite them to fend for 11.
themselves. On December 14, however, Saint-Just returned to the charge: worrying about the future, he
invited Robespierre, in the letter already quoted, to have measures taken to find out whether all the
manufactories and factories in France were in operation, and to favor them, because our troops in a year would
find themselves without clothes; the manufacturers are not patriots, they do not want to work, they must be
compelled to do so, and not let down any useful establishment.
However, let no one imagine Saint-Just's worries being limited to authority and military means. First, once
the fortnight provided for by the proclamation of 3 Brumaire had passed, he received soldiers in his office every
day. We have, he will say, listened day and night to the soldiers and the citizens; we supported the weak
12 .
against the strong Finally, he will strive to improve the
health of the troops, intervening so that the wounded are well treated. Having observed on November 14
(24 Brumaire), the uncleanliness of the hospitals, he instructed the municipality to keep "two thousand beds
ready in twenty-four hours among the rich of Strasbourg,
to be delivered to the soldiers", and to find "horses for the surgeons to make their visits".
A month later, he will extend this hospitalization in private homes by inviting "all the well-to-do
citizens of Strasbourg, Saverne, Haguenau, Landau, Wissembourg and the cantons of Bas-Rhin" to
receive mutilated soldiers in their homes during the winter. during the campaign.
The condition of the soldiers was changed. But the local politicians still had to be taken into
account, the fifth column removed and the high command coordinated, if the country was to be won
back.
3. AGAINST POLITICIANS AND AGENTS OF THE ENEMY.
This maze in which the counter-revolution and the revolution walk pell-mell. In deploring the
imbroglio, in his letter of December 14 to Robespierre, Saint-Just knew what he was talking about.
To the enemy troops were added melee with civilian politicians and foreign agents.
The latter were all the more difficult to spot as the town hardly spoke French, so they could move
around easily.
On October 30 (9 Brumaire), the representatives were already coldly complaining – in a public
proclamation – of finding no whistleblower in Strasbourg.
For several days, citizens, we have recommended that you seek out and arrest suspicious people.
(...) There are thousands of them, and yet you have yet to provide us with the first name on this list.
(...) We want to know, during the day, the names of all the suspects in Strasbourg.
The pressing invitation to inform Saint-Just and Le Bas did not, however, seem a sufficient card.
The same day, they instructed the surveillance committee, supported by armed men, to make "home
visits throughout the city" and to arrest suspicious persons, but "without disturbing the public peace".
The final recommendation reveals a concern: disorderly and noisy brutality would harm the
propaganda of the nation and the regime. And then, the accusations based on this kind of
denunciation and search are not safe. Rivalries and personal quarrels often skew them.
We do not know how many they stopped in this way, but the next day they spread a new net by
deciding that the soldiers or civilians caught at the entrance to the city, hidden "in the caissons,
vans, cars" or otherwise, would be shot the same day. And, a month later, they forbade civilians "to
walk in the military fortifications and on the ramparts of Strasbourg" under penalty of three months in
13
prison, which is . This last measure, in time of war, seems very commonplace today. This
surprising, because it took civilian delegates of the state to take it.
But their task was as unlimited as their powers. The people in charge of the mission had to not
only unmask the spies, but also get rid of the politicians who excited or profited from the local
anarchy. And first, the Girondins. Saint-Just had seen them, at the Convention, rise up against
the military reforms of February, against the mode of recruitment adopted in May, and against the full powers
conferred on the representatives on mission. In many places these had been hampered by local administrations
peppered with Girondins. The envoys of the Convention in Metz, in the month of March, had strongly complained
about it in a letter. Moreover, Saint-Just, having drawn up an indictment against the Girondins, might have
particularly feared them. Also, fifteen days after his arrival, on November 6 (16 Brumaire), he arrested “all the
presidents and secretaries of the sections on May 31, and all those who had shown any collusion with the
federalists”.
Obviously, the most formidable adversaries from within – foreign agents, sowers of disorder – were holders of
official positions. In order to no longer submit to them, Saint-Just first displayed a desire to keep his distance,
then practiced a purge that would intimidate profiteers and intriguers.
By setting up a “special and revolutionary commission” on his arrival, Saint-Just had greatly worried the mayor
of Strasbourg, Monet. The latter had rushed to the Jacobins club so that an emissary could be dispatched to the
person in charge of the mission, to ask him for an explanation. So think! the "prevaricators of the various
administrations" and "the agents or partisans of the enemy" were to be shot immediately!
The emissary soon returned with this disturbing reply: We are here, not to
fraternize with the authorities, but judge them.
The judgment, Saint-Just did not make him wait long. On November 2 (12 Brumaire), he broke the municipality
of Strasbourg and the administration of Bas-Rhin. Four days later, he had the members of the municipality of
Neubrisach arrested. And, on November 12, he broke the administrators of the Meurthe.
The reasons given for these dismissals and arrests were not the same everywhere. Those of Neubrisach
found themselves accused of having “held back convoys of fodder” intended for the army, those of Meurthe of
having opposed “the requisitions of grain and fodder demanded”. Both were to be brought before the Convention's
Committee of General Security.
But the accusation against the men of Strasbourg and Bas-Rhin was even more serious.
All the members of the municipality, except the mayor Monet, were to be arrested and taken to Châlons; and the
administrators of Bas-Rhin, except five, imprisoned in Metz. For what ? Because the representatives of the
people had been informed that the enemy held "intelligence in Strasbourg among the constituted authorities".
Upset, indignant, the municipal councilors and the Jacobins sent two of their own, who had remained free, the
mayor Monet and the bitter Schneider, to Saint-Just. Neither enjoyed the confidence of the special delegate. He
received them in his room, still in bed.
He listened silently to their pleading, then, after a silence, dropped: You may be right for some, but there is
great danger and we do not know where to knock; well, a blind man looking for a pin in a pile of dust grabs the
pile of dust.
However, taking up the list of those arrested, he inquired minutely about each of them.
and, during the night, signed the order to release twelve of them.
In the morning, the last prisoners, assembled in the square, addressed a new petition to Saint-
Just. By way of reply, the messenger brought back a short note addressed to Dieche: “General, it is
eight o'clock. »
General Dieche complied and ordered the departure of the convoy of prisoners. For a week the
Jacobins remained excited. The Popular Society protesting loudly, Saint-Just replied to it in this
letter, a few sentences of which we have already quoted. After having painted a quick picture of the
lamentable situation in which the city and the army found themselves on his arrival, the head of the
mission came to the question under discussion:
What were the constituted authorities doing ? The account they have to render to the French
people is terrible: they neglected the requisitions of grain, those of carts, firewood; they made candle
deals at seven francs a pound; the soldiers of freedom rotted in the hospitals; they so neglected
their duties that it is impossible to procure evidence of any act of surveillance and patriotic energy
on their part...
However, we find letters announcing the intelligence of the enemy; and this enemy is at the gates!
We banish, in the name of public safety, the constituted authorities. (...) The military court has several
conspirators shot on whom we find white cockades (...); one finds in the gatehouses of the ramparts
crowns imprinted on the fabrics; emigrants, scoundrels, partisans of federalism were arrested in the
town, who had hitherto lived there in the greatest security.
And, after having mentioned the improvements made, he asked: Why had this good not been
done ? Of what public men can one say that they are innocent of the misfortune of the people ? And
then, it is not the return of your indifferent magistrates that you must concern yourself with, but the
expulsion of an enemy who is devouring your countryside. (...) The pity for the crime is made for its
accomplices and not for you. Time may unravel the truth; we examine everything with composure
and we have acquired the right to be suspicious. Our duty is to be inflexible in principles. We owe
you friendship; we owe you no weakness. We owe everything to our country; we persist, until after
the danger, in our order.
What strikes first in this plea with the beautiful draped movements, it is that the accusation is
based on the deficiency of the administrative management and slips on the indictment of treason.
“Perhaps time will unravel the truth. " Certainly. Time has revealed that the exhibit, the letter signed
Marquis de Saint-Hilaire, implicating municipalities, was the work of a surly pastor named Metz.
Had Saint-Just ever believed in the authenticity of the play? It is not certain. He had taken it as a
pretext. Moreover, he hastened to send directives to the prisons so that the prisoners were treated
with the greatest possible consideration. But, in the end, it was him
who kept the advantage. The Jacobins of popular society bowed before the man from the Committee of Public
Safety.
These thrusts were not without risk. They could provoke opposition in the revolutionary camp. And then, if it was
easy to break up the departmental administrations and the municipalities, it was difficult to find many new men to
assume the management.
In a field as vast as his, Saint-Just had to beware of pushing vacuum cleaning too far. He had to make allowances
for the fire by coming to terms – at least temporarily – with the existing elements.
One does not govern in solitude.

Certainly, at his side, he had Le Bas, a silent and dedicated worker. On arrival, the young groom had felt quite
alone in Strasbourg: laconic Saint-Just did not favor sentimental outpourings.
“I have no one here with whom I can talk about you,” Le Bas wrote to his14wife, depressed by the distance. But a
few days later, accustomed to work, comforted by the first letters received, he had discovered his companion: “I am
very happy with Saint-Just; he has talents that I admire and excellent qualities. »
Time had inflamed conjugal love by estrangement, and admiring friendship by proximity. We would have liked to
reconcile everything in a speedy return: Saint-Just is almost as eager as I to
see Paris again. I promised him dinner from your hand. I am ; he is an excellent man; I love him and I respect
15
glad you don't blame him every day. him more and more
The Republic has no more ardent, more intelligent defender. The most perfect agreement, the most constant
harmony reigned among us. What makes him even dearer to me is that he often talks to me about you and consoles
me as much as he can. He attaches great importance, it seems to me, to our friendship, and he says things to me
from time to time with a very good heart.
The "as it seems to me" reflected a certain perplexity in the face of a Saint-Just, all the more
endearing than impenetrable, and with a kindness that is all the more precious for being distilled in severity.
But it is doubtful that this influence was the effect of a fixed calculation. Because, Saint-Just is less successful
easily impose itself on the other delegates of the Convention.
It is true that he rather sought to get rid of it. He had known them in Paris, and the situation in Alsace on his
arrival did not testify in their favour. In a letter, he had first asked the committee to take these men back, to place
them elsewhere or to offer them “an honorable retirement within the bosom of the Convention”. Result: the recalled
no longer saw it with a good eye. And those who remained, either, because their attributions were reduced.
Nevertheless, if the elimination of the undesirables facilitated the work, it did not simplify it. Also,
Saint-Just wrote to the Committee of Public Safety:
The extraordinary mission you have given us makes our presence everywhere necessary, which requires that,
when recalling my colleagues, you immediately send two representatives who would be at
Strasbourg 16 .
But he quickly changed his mind: Two active representatives are enough for this army. (...) According to
the nature of our mission, we felt we had to act in isolation.
We understand this balance. Solitary work weighed heavily on the shoulders, but the political
collaborators provided hindrances rather than help.
Also, the two extraordinary envoys had a movement of temper, when they saw disembarking, one fine
November day, the most suspicious member of the Committee of Public Safety: Hérault de Séchelles. Le
Bas immediately wrote Robespierre a furious letter 17 . Hérault has just announced to us, my dear
Robespierre, that he has been sent to the department of Haut-Rhin. He offers us a correspondence; our
surprise is extreme. Besides, this is not the only thing that seems extraordinary to us. Why are those who
were here when the Weissembourg lines were forced not replaced, and why leave here representatives
forced by the nature of their mission to isolate themselves from their colleagues.
As usual, Saint-Just added a few personal lines to his colleague's missive.

This time, bitter: Trust is priceless, when shared with corrupt men; then one does one's duty out of love of
one's country alone, and this sentiment is the purest.
In other words, when you stop believing in the state, there is only one reason for fighting: the nation.
But with Saint-Just, this detachment reflected a serious blow to revolutionary faith. It is also, perhaps, that
Robespierre, for the first time, disappointed him.
However, people from Strasbourg will be able to distinguish the delegates of the Convention. In 1837,
Monet will evoke, for Buchez and Roux, his old memories of former mayor of Strasbourg. Of Hérault de
Séchelles, he will say that his actions in the Haut-Rhin "were limited to a walk without aim and without
result", but rich in amorous intrigues. The one that made the most noise in Alsace, because it was
scandalous, was his affair with the sister of an Austrian general. 18 Bas . On the other hand, Saint-Just and Le
will be respectfully greeted. “Their always serious welcome, their way of going straight to the point without
useless words, their sense of justice, and the firmness that responded to it, were so impressive that no
one dared approach them without trembling. It is there, added Buchez and Roux, what M. Monet, mayor
of Strasbourg, declares to have seen experienced by others and to have experienced himself "..
Another inhabitant of Strasbourg will write, much later, his memories on Saint-Just. This is Charles
Nodier. Coming from a not very serious writer, the testimony of the memoirist must be welcomed with all
the more reserve since he was twelve years old when he met the envoy of the Committee of Public Safety.
All the books on Saint-Just have reproduced the account of the audience granted to the schoolboy, whose
Greek teacher was the ex-Capuchin agitator Euloge Schneider, and who was arrested because Franc
Comtois and living in a suspicious hotel. But, apart from this evocation of the kindness of Saint Just, who
chatted with the adolescent and ensured his freedom, Nodier narrated, in his Souvenirs de la Révolution
et de l'Empire, how the person in charge of the mission behaved in front of the crowd. Let's hear it.
A faint rumor, which soon spread far and wide, announced that Saint-Just was about to appear on the
balcony. There was a sort of solemn brusqueness in his walk; he did not seek the reception of the
people, he repressed it, on the contrary, with a dry and absolute gesture. Her thick, snow-powdered hair
over her black, barred eyebrows, her head perpendicular to her high, ample cravat, the dignity of her
small figure, the elegance of her simple dress, never failed to affect the multitude. He made a sign for us
to stop, and we stopped.
This severe behavior, this way – a little haughty – of keeping one's distance from the crowd, seems
to have impressed all the witnesses. And, historians agree in thinking that the other delegates from Paris
– even a Baudot, a Hérault de Séchelles, who hardly liked Saint Just – adopted his tone and practiced
laconic gargles.
Unquestionably, however, always distant, Saint-Just was never inactive or indifferent. To better marry
Alsace to France, he first invited women "to leave German fashions". And then, shortly before leaving
Alsace, on December 29, he drew from the loan fund six hundred thousand pounds so that "in each
commune or canton of the department of Bas-Rhin a free French-language school would be formed."
To carry out this local policy, the freedom of the delegate of the Committee was however not total.
It had to fit within the margin left between them by the line of the Convention and the ultra-Jacobins of
the region. Not following the Paris assembly was to provide arguments against oneself to local politicians
and especially to those in charge of mission, annoyed – as we have said – to see their powers reduced.
In this respect, Saint-Just did not lack address and firmness. However, the situation was
20 ,
thorny. The Convention rose up against religion. November 16 (6 Brumaire)
Convention invited the communes to abolish their parishes. And, four days later, Chaumette led the
Parisian population to Notre-Dame to celebrate the feast of Reason. Aggressive atheism could only be
detrimental to the Revolution, especially in a region like Alsace.
But a government delegate could not openly go against it. Also, Saint-Just silently let his colleagues stir
and wrap themselves in anticlericalism.
On November 8 (17 Brumaire) it was Milhaud and Guyardin, representatives of the people in the
Army of the Rhine, who suppressed “the scandalous gold and silver ornaments” in the churches. And,
three days later, it was the Strasbourg club which celebrated "the destruction of the priesthood" in a
party in bad taste. Another Convention envoy, Baudot, expressed his satisfaction in a triumphant report.
“The Protestant priests were backward,” he says, “but yesterday, disciples of Jesus Christ, of Calvin and
of Luther, all abjured their errors in the bosom of the Popular Society. »
These abjurations of religion, this vulgar fair of anticlericalism seem to have sickened Saint Just.
Obliged, by his duties, to attend an anti-Christian demonstration at the Jacobins, he wept there, we are
told, in front of the stupefied Strasbourgeois. Tears caused, no doubt, as much by the unpleasant and
clumsy side of the show, as by his personal belief in life beyond the grave.
21 ,
As he could not go against the tide, he promulgated a decree with Le Bas, instructing “the
municipality to have all the stone statues of the cathedral demolished. But he was careful not to watch
over the application of the text.
We understand better what such behavior was daring, by bringing it closer to the actions of Hérault
de Séchelles. In the Haut-Rhin, the one who did not look like an ultra-Jacobin, multiplied measures and
irreligious festivals. First, on November 23, he invited his commissioners to strictly monitor the Jews and
the Catholic priests. Better, he gave the order to the persons in charge to celebrate in each chief town
of his department a festival of Reason. He presided over one, himself, on 16 Frimaire (December 6) in
the cathedral of Colmar. Of course, these ceremonies were accompanied by balls where Hérault de
Séchelles lifted the petticoats.
Saint-Just and his companion were no longer in Alsace. They had returned to Paris. For the delegate
of the Committee, there was no shortage of questions to be settled, whether it was a question of the
conduct of the war or of politics. In private conversations, he must have easily agreed with Robespierre,
who had intervened, very courageously, on November 21 (1st Frimaire), in favor of freedom of religion
and against atheism, which, the same day, had pronounced the eulogy of Saint-Just and Le Bas. They
certainly also agreed on the need to purify the Jacobins, to precisely reject the rowdy ultras. On Frimaire
9 (November 29), on the proposal of Robespierre, the Paris club had stripped its bad members. And it
is quite symptomatic that one of the first to be struck was Anacharsis Cloots, who had just distinguished
herself in the anti-religious demonstrations.
It is understandable that this new orientation of Robespierre – to which were added provisions for the
army which we will discuss later – satisfied Saint-Just. As a result, he agreed to take the women on
board: the wife and sister of his friend Le Bas. But not without condition if we are to believe Elisabeth
The bottom :
He made us promise not to see anyone from the town we were going to, not to receive anyone, not to
have any social relations with the inhabitants, and told us that if we did not scrupulously conform to his
recommendation, he would be forced to send us back to Paris immediately.
Saint-Just and my husband, who felt the full importance of their mission, feared that we would be
approached to try to influence them and disturb them in their duties.
22 ,
Saint-Just we saw it behaved, during the trip, as a "tender brother" and teaser, reader of
Rabelais and singer of bel canto. The young women were installed in an apartment in the headquarters
hotel in Saverne, and the project managers returned to Strasbourg to fight the last battles there.
Their first gesture was to arrest the ultra-Jacobin Schneider. For a long time this agitator had irritated
and embarrassed them. Now that, under the courageous impulse of Robespierre, the anti-religious
action had been stopped, and the doubtful foreigners excluded from the Jacobins, they could press on.
The day after their return, December 14 (24 Frimaire), they informed Robespierre of their decision, in
a new epistolary duet. "We are sending to the Committee of Public Safety," wrote Le
Low, the accuser near the revolutionary tribunal of Strasbourg. He is a ci-devant priest, born a subject of the
Emperor. It will be exposed before its departure on the scaffold of the guillotine. This punishment, which he
brought upon himself by his insolent conduct, was also commanded by the necessity of suppressing
strangers. Do not believe the cosmopolitan charlatans, and trust only ourselves. »
For his part, Saint-Just took the question high by inviting the Committee of Public Safety, via Robespierre,
to make fewer laws and more examples, punishing "hypocritical crimes" and minor abuses. It's the only way
to frighten the wicked, and to make them see that the government has an eye on everything. No sooner do
we turn our backs than the aristocracy rises in the tone of the day, and does evil under the colors of liberty. It
was necessary to illuminate "this maze" by stopping, through intimidation, the enemies of France and of the
revolution.
This explains why the envoy of the Committee of Public Safety, contrary to what Michelet and Hamel
claimed, signed civil executions. Their number is ninety-three. It was about scaring people with examples.
And Korngold is right to liken this attitude to that of Napoleon, writing to one of his generals in Lisbon: "Shoot
me, let's say seventy-two of the most notable citizens." On a battlefield, one cannot burden oneself with
humanitarian concerns, one has to resort to expeditious means, if one wants to protect the soldiers and lead
them to victory.
When Saint-Just and Le Bas had left Alsace, it was infested by those who were then called "propaganda",
who had come to establish the cult of Reason. They all presented themselves, it is said, as braggarts:
provided with long mop of hair and mustaches, draped in large and dark cloaks, dragging their cavalry sabers
along the pavement. And, going to the end in the melodic style, they alternated reviews of troops and hearty
banquets washed down with exquisite wines, coldly requisitioned.
For the serious delegates of the Convention, these bad caricatures were not funny. They were expensive,
risked creating havoc among the troops and constituted real counter-propaganda. One of the achievements
of the trip to Paris had been to obtain, on December 6, a decree 23 ordering the bullies of neo-paganismto
return to their homes.
But Schneider did not fall into this category. He was a product of the Bavarian region, a former Franciscan,
professor of theology at the faculty of Bonn, vicar general of the bishopric of Strasbourg, he had abjured the
priesthood and swapped his frock for the Jacobin costume. Promoted to public accuser at the revolutionary
tribunal, he had made it itinerant, traversing the province with a portable guillotine. According to the archives,
he only sentenced to death about thirty people.
But did he record all the executions? Because he left for a long time, in the region, the memory of his bloody
barbarism. Moreover, it is agreed that his victims were almost all poor people on whom weak accusations
were made. The rich, it is thought, escaped the accusations of the provincial Marat by laying down large
sums of money. “According to Saint-Just,” writes Mühlenbeck 24
, Schneider guillotined too much and too little. He spared those whom the commissioners had
wanted to strike and struck, on the contrary, those whom they would willingly have spared, old men and
farmers. »
Nevertheless, odious as Schneider was, he had fanatical supporters. Some gave him as an example.
Another German of origin and renegade priest, Muller, civil commissioner of the Bas-Rhin, presented him
as a model to Hérault de Séchelles: “Remember (sic) Euloge Schneider who made the Revolution in the
Bas-Rhin, who has always acted with uprightness and firmness, whose enemies are speculators, aristocrats
. Saint-Just's absence. He had forced a rich girl to
25 » Finally, Schneider's following had developed during
marry him. And the young couple had returned to Strasbourg in a gilded carriage, drawn by six horses and
surrounded by riders who shone their sabers.
This vulgar histrionics provided Saint-Just and Le Bas with a pretext. They decided that Schneider would
be "exposed the next day from ten o'clock in the morning to two o'clock in the afternoon, on the scaffold of
the guillotine, in full view of the people, to expiate the insult done to the mores of the nascent Republic. »,
and that he would « then be taken from brigade to brigade to the Committee of 26 ”.
Public Safety Pulled from his marital bed and arrested during the night, Schneider could not defend
himself. Before the astonished eyes of the population, the crude accuser exhibited himself in a pitiful way
the next morning, tied to the upright of the guillotine, bearing above his head the inscription: For having
dishonored the Republic .
Schneider's supporters gritted their teeth, but dared not budge.
France and the Republic saved their honor and their prestige, but the war remained...
4. VICTORY OVER THE RHINE AND MOSELLE.
For the conduct of military operations, Saint-Just had to adapt the Committee's plans to local possibilities
and the wishes of the generals: a thankless role as a hyphen, difficult to fulfill, so long were the liaisons and
the ill-defined responsibilities. The letters taking four or five days to reach their addressee, the dialogue
between Strasbourg and Paris – very close during the three weeks which preceded the launching of the
offensive – was often a dialogue of the deaf. And, if we want to measure Saint-Just's share in the command
exactly, it is important to compare the letters taking into account their dates.
First, for the reinforcement and organization of available troops. As soon as he arrived in Alsace, the
delegate had declared to the Committee of Public Safety: Twelve more battalions are needed at Saverne.
Two thousand cavalry must be promptly returned to Strasbourg . And, that 27 .
28
Forty-eight hours later, he came back to the charge day, the French troops having been
attacked precisely at Saverne, Le Bas had shaken Robespierre in a personal letter:
seize the gorges; we were right. You therefore feel how necessary it is for you to put us in a position, by prompt
aid, to maintain ourselves there. »
After four days spent waiting for an answer, Saint-Just had renewed his claim: We asked for twelve battalions
to reinforce the gorges, and two thousand men drawn from the cavalry depots. You haven't answered us. Hasten
to reinforce this army, and convince yourself that you must be at Landau within a fortnight. Answers finally arrived
from Paris: but how changing from one 29 .
day to the next! In the first, Saint-Just was informed that the Minister of War was going to "send him a
reinforcement of twelve battalions, drawn from the departments of Doubs, Vosges, Meuse and Bas-Rhin . " But
in the second, five days later, slightly rectifying the maps of the levy, the Committee announced that it could
hardly take the twelve battalions except in the Doubs and the Haute-Saône; and he added: "The Army of the
Rhine being of more than a hundred thousand men, it must suffice with the part available to repel the enemies.
31 . »
The next day, Saint-Just who, obviously, had not yet received the last missive, answered it”; Also,
32
in advance, declaring that he "noticed that all the bodies were very incomplete", he maintained his
request. Fortunately the Scottish shower falling from Paris had not given its last straw. After four days of reflection,
the Committee of Public Safety decided to satisfy Saint Just; Carnot wrote to him:
The dangers which you point out to us have determined us to make an extraordinary effort, and, in order to
save the Army of the Rhine, we have renounced the later successes which the victory won before Maubeuge by
the Army of the North made us hope for. This one will stay on the defensive. The Committee of Public Safety has
just decreed that twenty thousand men will be detached from it to unite with the forces which must gather towards
33
Sarre-Albe, Phalsbourg and Sarreguemines . In other words, changing its mind, the Committee had
completely abandoned the raising of soldiers in the aforementioned departments and recognized the insufficiency
of the Army of the Rhine.
For the agglomeration of the existing forces, same false step of the Committee. In its letter of October 24, the
Executive Council of Paris gave the order to the generals of the Rhine and the Moselle to withdraw three quarters
of the garrisons placed at the front to replace them by citizens “requisitioned”. Obviously, Paris intended to
reserve the old experienced soldiers. But the same day, Saint-Just and Le Bas wrote why they had come out in
the opposite direction.
“We are convinced that the young people of the first requisition can be usefully employed only by means of
incorporation into the current corps, were it necessary to increase these corps to a greater number; We must
disorient these poor people of the first requisition, and especially those of the departments of Haut and Bas-Rhin,
whom we must be careful not to employ entirely in the army of the Rhine. »
Thus Saint-Just practically realized the “amalgam” the principle of which he had supported at the tribune of the
Convention. The results of the measurement were, a month later, to lead the assembly to
impose it by decree.
34 ,
On the other hand, the coordination of the armies proved to be a more difficult task. There too, on
arriving Saint-Just had laid down the principle that the movements of the two armies from the Moselle and
the Rhine would drive out the invaders "shortly". But still they had to be brought together. Clear as the
Parisian instructions were, the personalities of the generals appointed and the hierarchy decided upon by
the Committee did not favor the operation.
First of all, Saint-Just himself had to come to terms with those senior generals whose nomination by the
Committee of Public Safety had been ratified by the Convention: that of Pichegru for the Army of the Rhine,
on September 28, and that of de Hoche for the Army of the Moselle, on October 22. It was necessary to
get on well with them and to ensure that they supported each other effectively. Thorny work, because, in
these troubled times, the hierarchy, often revised, lost its force.
On October 26, the people in charge of the mission made contact with Pichegru, whom they were waiting
for impatiently. They judged "the resolute man", but in none of their letters did they express the sympathy
or the esteem that most historians attribute to them. Besides, seduction was not Pichegru's forte. The son
of a modest and pious family in the Jura, he had first thought of donning the cassock, then, as a tutor at
Brienne College, he had had Napoleon Bonaparte as a pupil. In the early days of the Revolution, a sergeant
in an artillery regiment, he wavered between Condé's army and that of the country. Having opted for the
latter, he had acquired rank and notoriety.
Those who knew him and those who studied him agree in estimating him: "finassier, a little sly and
indolent 35 ". This general held his authority not with a convincing word, but with a disturbing silence, even
gently insolent. In a word, he imposed himself as a serious gentleman who has an idea behind his head
which one should be wary of.
With Hoche, the relationship was even more uncomfortable. Arrived on November 2 in Sarrebruck, the
young general endeavored to reconstitute his army of the Meuse. He was in no hurry to go to Strasbourg,
having at his side two delegates of the Convention, Lacoste and Baudot, whom the powers conferred on
Saint-Just and Le Bas did not expressly place in a secondary rank. And this imprecision, added to Lacoste's
jealousy, tangled up the direction of the campaign.
Especially since Hoche must not have looked kindly on Pichegru, designated as his superior by the
leaders of Paris. For the biographers of Saint-Just are mistaken when they attribute to him a lack of
clairvoyance in favor of Brienne's tutor. Mme Leneru goes so far as to write: “Pichegru remains, through
history, the fault of Saint-Just's youth, the testimony that the precocious imperator did not know about men.
This is a judgment quickly rendered. In truth, Saint-Just had nothing to do with the powers assigned to
generals. On the very day of 1936 when, writing to the Committee, he wanted a "bold leader to inflame the
troops", the Minister of War signed a letter, drawn up by Carnot, announcing the appointment of Hoche for
the Moselle and adding that the general-in-chief remained Pichegru, Hoche being only general of division.
Better still, the next day, the provisional executive committee, in instructions sent to the two military leaders,
specified how the
subordination of the army of the Moselle had to play strategically. To the latter, little more than a role of cover and
37
intelligence service was attributed. .
Obviously, this should not satisfy Hoche. As for Saint-Just, he did not discuss – he never did – the military decisions
taken in Paris. “Count on our activity to carry out what you prescribe to us,” he would say in one of his letters 38 , clicking
his pen like others' heels.
However, it was important to direct the movements of the troops on the Rhine and the Moselle, to
to overcome the character of the generals, the slowness of the liaisons.
In Paris, on October 23, the Committee had decided on the main lines of the strategic plan: assembly at Bouquenam
and Saawarden of all the available forces of the armies of the Rhine and the Moselle, provided with the "necessary supplies
in order to move without delay to Bitche and in the squares of Bas-Rhin”. For his part, Saint-Just, without being aware of
the Parisian plan, had expressed his

39 views:
The most difficult operation that remains for us to finish the campaign gloriously, is to regain the ground up to Landau.
Do not spare any means of sending reinforcements to Sarrebruck and Saverne.
The intention of the enemy is to fortify themselves in the gorges where they would dominate Lorraine and Alsace. The two
armies of the Moselle must drive them out shortly.
Not having yet met the great generals, nor made contact with all the dispersed forces, the delegates hoped, by
introducing new battalions, to easily compensate for the weakness of the local troops. Two days later, optimistic (still not
having seen Pichegru), they declared that they had visited the outposts and found the army "good", which, in their to have
eyes, only "needed an enterprising leader ". They had written, they said, to their colleagues in the Moselle in order to
"combine" the movements of the two armies. We asked them for six battalions to carry them to the gorges of Saverne, an
important post which will decide the fate of the Rhine campaign. If we keep it and the army of Moselle can advance, the
enemy will soon flee, otherwise it will be necessary to take up winter quarters.
In other words, the Strasbourg delegates: firstly, tried to find reinforcements for their army both locally and in Paris;
secondly, they intended – contrary to Paris – that the offensive be entrusted to the army of the Moselle, that of the Rhine
rather providing cover.
Confidence was combined in them with great prudence.
In Paris, they still stuck to the regrouping of the armies at Bouquenam and Saarwarden. Carnot again demanded it, in
his letter of October 27, adding only, three days later, that it was necessary to attack "not in front, but on the flanks and the
rear", and, first, to unblock Landau . But, the same day, Saint-Just answered him in advance, once more: You have ordered
us to assemble at Bouquenam and Saarwarden, made up of detachments from the Army of the Moselle and that of the
Rhine. We told you that the latter was very weak. Basically, he was in a hurry to launch an attack, but not according to the
conditions laid down by the Committee of Public Safety.
Contact and small fights in the forest – in Reichstett, around Saverne – had somewhat altered Saint-Just's first hope. –,
The army turned out to be less "good" than it

at first believed him. He said he took care relentlessly of the purification of the officers, finding the number
41
of patriots "very small among them ". And, three days later, not only did he estimate that "all
the corps were very incomplete", but he declared brutally: We had the stupidity to disperse ourselves in the
garrisons. .our forces are nil.
Besides, he did not make the recommended regrouping his business: he sent the ball back to Paris by
saying : 42 "Hurry up and form your assembly at Bouquenam, get it to march on Bitche and Wissembourg."
For the Army of the Rhine, he proposed the following:

While you take the enemy on the back towards Bitche, we will take him in the flank at Saverne, and as
soon as he is repulsed we can, if you deem it necessary, throw seven thousand men into Brisgrau by Kehl
during his flight. Then we will march on all sides at the same time like thunder, without letting ourselves be
stopped, without letting the enemy breathe, we will fortify ourselves with the garrisons of Bitche, La Pierre-
Petite, Ligtemberg, Fort-Vauban, Landau, we will devour the Palatinate. Then we will have found our
hundred thousand men who are useless now by the baseness of those who have governed our affairs.
As we can see, there was still great hope, based on the intention of using speed – waging a “blitzkrieg”
as we would say today: Saint-Just remained attached to what he had the Convention, in its speech of 19
Vendémiaire.
Was it not the slowness of the enemy which had just preserved eastern France? Fighting on the side of
the Austrians and the Prussians, an émigré, Vitrolles, was later to adopt this opinion in his memoirs. In the
aftermath of Wissembourg, "if the Austrian general, he wrote, abandoning the habits of slowness which
paralyzed the movements of his army, had pursued his victory, he would have easily occupied the whole of
Alsace". But, fortunately, the enemy of France retained a soft spot for war in lace. Also – still according to
Vitrolles – “General Wurmser had stopped for three whole days at Brumath, where the Duke of Brunswick
had come to join him and congratulate him on his victory”. The victorious chiefs had celebrated their meeting
"with feasts, feasts, accompanied by noisy salvoes of artillery."
Obviously, Carnot – as everyone knows – advocated speed as much as Saint-Just. And once again, at
the very moment when one, in Strasbourg, was expounding his strategic views, the other, in Paris, was
judging the matter. "To help Landau," Carnot had written on November 2, "you must either pass over the
body of the enemy army which is in front of Strasbourg, or leave from another point." »
Carnot maintained as objectives the assembly at Bouquenam, the lifting of the blockade of Bitche, the
defense of Phalsbourg and the gorges of Saverne. “After clearing Bitche, he concluded, we would find
ourselves in a position to help Landau and put the enemy in front of Strasbourg between two fires. This is
the plan of campaign which seemed to us the most suitable for the prompt evacuation of the territory of the
Republic. »
Robespierre had written, also on November 2, to announce and praise, to his friends in Strasbourg, this
plan which seemed to him more vast and bolder than that which consists in defending the
dif erent points of the territory with dif erent army corps. As Saint-Just had always fought against the scattering
of forces, he was able to sneer while reading his master's letter...
As for the famous plan, it was scarcely specified. On November 6, Saint-Just demanded new instructions
for the planned movement to Bouquenam. The next day, in Paris, Carnot, still holding the pen of the
Committee of Public Safety, wrote: “Our project so far is to march first on Bitche, then on Landau, finally on
Strasbourg. However, enemy positions or special circumstances may alter the direction of movement. »
The only novelty of these lines resided in an ambiguity doubtless due to the drafting a little
hasty; Carnot seemed to forget that Strasbourg remained in French hands.
This confrontation of the letters shows what was the part of Carnot and the mission manager in the
direction of the operations. It is impossible to claim, like Bonnal de Ganges, that these directives from Paris
"overwhelm Saint-Just", who would have "done everything to prevent their execution out of hostility against
Hoche and out of sympathy for Pichegru, his confidant 43 " . Nothing supports, at the outset, this accusation
of choice between the two great generals. Simply, as we have seen, finding himself more particularly attached
to the Army of the Rhine, his overall authority not being clearly defined, Saint-Just had endeavored, first of
all, to reinforce his immediate troops .
Moreover, until the last moment, the coordination of the Moselle and the Rhine came up against the
bad reports of the two generals and the envious jealousy of the other delegates of the Convention.
After contacting his civilian colleagues, Saint-Just's first instinct had been to request their recall by the
Committee. Having seen Ruamps, Milhaud, Lacoste, Borie and Mallarmé on October 24, Saint-Just and Le
Bas had considered “two active representatives” sufficient. They were unaware, of course, that at the same
time, the Committee of Public Safety was still sending them one of its members: Herault de Sechelles. At
Strasbourg, the disagreement, no less acute on one side than on the other, manifested itself in angry letters.
On October 27, Guyardin and Lacoste got angry with the newcomers, because they shut themselves up in
isolation and claimed to be “extraordinary envoys”, a title unacceptable to the Convention members present.
On the 30th, it was Mallarmé and Lacoste, who reproached the two delegates for sticking "to proclamations
and dismissals." The same day, it was Guyardin, returning to the charge with Milhaud, to criticize the "too
separate" action of Saint-Just and Le Bas, opposing them to Pichegru hailed as an "active, watchful and firm"
man in whom the army was gaining confidence.
Undoubtedly, these complaints were worth nothing to the majority of those who lodged them: on November
3, the Convention decreed the recall to Paris of Guyardin, Mallarmé, Milhaud, Borie, Ruamps and Soubrany.
But Saint-Just's authority was not expressly reinforced, since the same day the assembly decided to send
two of its members, Lémane and Baudot, to his side and to keep Lacoste and Ehrman. The decree added
that these delegates were "invested with the same powers as the other representatives of the people in the
armies". Finally, a letter, signed by
Carnot and Robespierre, announcing to the representatives of the Rhine and the Moselle the stopped
movements, concluded: The measure concerns you all, we have just united the two armies.
This last sentence must have seemed astounding to those in charge of the mission. First, because the
announced coordination had been accepted in principle for several weeks. Then, because it was not based
on any real decision, in the hierarchical order as in the strategic order. The two great generals had not even
met.
They conferred for the first time at Phalsbourg on November 6. It was understood that Hoche would gain
Landau by Pirmassens, and Kaiserslautern, while Pichegru would first hold back the Austrian troops by
feigned attacks, then go on the offensive, when the army of the Moselle had penetrated into the Palatinate.
The role of shock was entrusted to Hoche.
Before the outbreak of the great offensive, Saint-Just multiplied the trumpeting words and the tonic shows
to raise the morale of the troops. On November 1 , he received an Austrian plenipotentiary at the citadel. He
didn't listen to her for long. Refusing to consider the armistice, he interrupted her by shouting: I left my pen in
Paris, I brought here only my sword. Nevertheless, he found a pen, to add to the oral reply a written answer:
The French Republic only receives from its enemies and sends them lead. And these theatrical repartee were
not abandoned. Le Moniteur of November 5 informed its many readers. To this, Saint-Just added, as everyone
knows, a slogan which resounded like a drum: Landau or death.
To complete the spectacle, a few days before the battle, Saint-Just presided, surrounded by the general
staff, at a great parade of the Army of the Rhine in the streets of Strasbourg, which resounded, under the song
of the Marseillaise .
The atmosphere had changed. The Committee of Public Safety had Carnot send its congratulations to
Saint-Just and Le Bas for their "zeal and skill". Arrived the next day, in Strasbourg, the news that he had found
44
delegate, Lémane, wrote his "good colleagues Saint-Just and Le Bas making
prodigies”. He acknowledged receipt of pieces of guns, howitzers, caissons, sent from Lyon.
D-Day finally arrived.
The day before, Saint-Just wrote a note to Hoche: General, there must soon be no Prussian left, not an
enemy... It's up to you to show if you're capable of a generous blow. Ignite your army; harmonize your
movements with those of Pichegru. We are waiting for you at Landau... we will go there on our side, I hope,
via Fort-Vauban.
This message had the merit of emphasizing to Hoche his responsibility as leader of the offensive and of
recalling the need for coordination, but the more imperative than fraternal tone exasperated the soldier.
"Does this git suppose that we waited for his advice?" Suddenly, the general decided not to wait for the last
reinforcements that Pichegru was to furnish him. Writing coldly to Ambert, one of his seconds, he declared to
him on November 16 (26 Brumaire): "Listen, de h... de sans-culotte, wanting to take advantage of the enemy's
state of start tomorrow 27 brumaire, instead of waiting for the 28, like a Jean Foutre. So leave on the 27th too,
but at two o'clock in the morning. »
However, the enemy was well informed. On the very night that Hoche launched his offensive,
the Prussians tried to take the fortress of Bitche: they failed narrowly.
At four o'clock in the morning, Hoche's troops set out. They crossed the Saar at three points: at
Sarrable, Sarreguemines and Sarrelouis. Despite the rain and the sticky mud of the roads, they captured
Woerth, Bliekastel, Deux-Ponts and Pirmasens. But Brunswick, in withdrawing his troops, was not at
random. He stopped his Prussian soldiers at Kaiserslautern, a little fortified town but situated on a height,
at the foot of which flowed the Lauter, a river surrounded by marshes or steep sides. Next to it, the
Prussians had three other hills, the Galgenberg, the Kaiserberg and the Moorlautern, bastions which
were difficult to take.
Meanwhile, on the Alsace front, Pichegru's soldiers had not allowed the Austrians and emigrants
encamped around Bertsheim to breathe in real trenches. Every day the French attacked, leaving many
dead on the ground.
Saint-Just and Le Bas gallop from place to place. From Bitche, on November 21, wrapping himself in
the first successes of Hoche, Saint-Just wrote to the Committee: The Republic has Caesar's fortune and
deserves it better. To better expose himself, he added that he wanted to go to Hornbach, in order to
examine General Taponnier's army, then to Deux-Ponts "where General Hoche's army, led in chief by
General Pichegru entered yesterday". . A somewhat easy way to coordinate success and glory, in the
absence of armies.
The next day, Le Bas said to his wife: We have been running for eight days. We will hardly rest until
the moment of our departure. We saw a lot of rascals, but also a lot of good people.
However, once again, by making contact only with the military, they exasperated the delegates to the
Army of the Moselle, Soubrany and Richaud, who wrote to the Convention to complain. We saw them
pass and we could not argue with them. Nevertheless, to catch their breath, Saint-Just and Le Bas
stopped at Saverne on November 27, not without pleasure. Taking his first day off there, Le Bas gave
himself up to epistolary lyricism.
The place where I am is superb. Nowhere have I seen more beautiful, more majestic nature, it is a
chain of high mountains, a variety of sites that charm the eyes and the heart. We went this morning,
Saint-Just and I, to visit the highest mountains, at the top of which is an old ruined fort, placed on an
immense rock. We both felt, looking around, a delicious feeling. It's the first day that we have a break.
Then, after uttering his little couplet of love, the correspondent returned to the war: I hope
to increase the pleasure of our reunion by the news of a decisive advantage over our enemies.
We never cease, Saint-Just and I, to take the necessary measures to ensure it in the most prompt
manner; we run all day, and we exercise the most constant surveillance. When he least expects it, a
general sees us arrive and ask him to account for his conduct. We are approaching Landau: soon, no
doubt, he will be freed; this is the end of our mission, everything invites us to hasten it.
These rounds of civilian delegates around the soldiers who are fighting have the annoying hum of
gadflies. Especially since, on the very day that Le Bas was singing about nature and love, Hoche was
engaging in a bitter battle.
After an unsuccessful attempt during the day, Hoche's army managed to cross the Lauter during
the night and gain a foothold on the plateau of Moorlautern. But the tight, very costly struggle turned
to the disadvantage of the French, who were the least numerous.
I was unable to seize Kaiserslautern, Hoche wrote to Pichegru. For three days I fought vigorously.
The troops of the Republic performed wonders, but the total lack of ammunition, the strength of the
place, the difficulties of the terrain and more than 40,000 enemies entrenched to the teeth, forced me
to retreat. I think to be successful, we need to come together...
The coordination of the armies of the Rhine and the Moselle found itself, quite belatedly, put back
on the agenda. Undeniably Hoche had made a mistake by rushing in alone, at his time, letting himself
be sucked up by the enemy in a corner where he had stumbled against the heights, instead of
concentrating his forces with those of Pichegru. Especially since the latter, less well endowed in ardor
and talent, had won only mediocre victories by pushing the Austrians behind the Moder and the
Zintzel. And, for its part, the Committee of Public Safety had not made matters easier by estimating,
on November 22, that the successes of the Army of Moselle justified a reduction in "the sum of the aid
which should be sent to it"; that, consequently, he would be given 5,000 men from the Ardennes
instead of the 15,000 promised. After the defeat at Kaiserslautern, the Committee changed its mind
and informed Hoche that, still placing its trust in him, she was sending him 10,000 men from the Army
of the Ardennes.
As for Saint-Just, he thought that, in order to resolve this question of coordination, he must first go
to Paris. At the time of his departure, he wrote a long letter to Hoche on 12 Frimaire (December 2).
She began stiffly: “You have made a new engagement at Kaiserslautern; instead of one victory, it
takes two. But, after this affected virility, this rather irritating laconicism, we came to the serious
realities of the moment.
We advise you, if the enemy advances between the Two Bridges, to wait for him there, but always
to attack him without allowing him to warn you; it is the means of maintaining courage and hope
among the soldiers. You have everything to fear if you are attacked... You have taken wise measures
by cutting off all the gorges of Pirmasens, we have sent intelligent men there to hasten the work: give
new orders to return the country impracticable. Put the greatest concert between your movements and
those of all the divisions of the right until Brumpt. The whole line must strike at the same time, and
strike incessantly, without the enemy having a moment's respite. All who combine the combined
movements of these armies must be friends; put the greatest speed in your march on Landau: no
Frenchman can stop for a moment without collapsing. Make continuous movements with your army of
the Moselle, to occupy the enemy and to prevent it from sending reinforcements to the troops which encircle Landau.
As we see, his hope remained based on rapid and well-coordinated movement.
But, if he considered it his duty to urge Hoche to get along with Pichegru, he did not believe that he
was settling the affair. In the last lines of his letter, he said to the general: "We cannot see you tomorrow,
we will be back soon", a discreet way of announcing, we believe, his departure for Paris, which would
therefore date from December 2 .
This little date deserves attention. Because, it alone allows us to glimpse on which decisions of the
Committee of Public Safety, weighed Saint-Just, during this first fortnight of December. (His function as
Chargé de Mission prevented his name from appearing in the minutes of the meetings.) We can thus
think that he collaborated in the famous circular instruction to the generals in chief, dated December 4
and signed by Carnot, Robespierre and Billaud -Varenne. Alongside the date, the tone used and the
views expressed suggest that Saint-Just was no stranger to its writing.
The instruction shook the generals harshly. Judging that the "temporary setbacks" could not be
attributed to the "military system", which "is advancing towards complete regeneration", it turned against
the leaders: The insubordination of the generals is what has done the most harm to the public thing.
None has made the sacrifice of his self-esteem in order to cling to the single plan. Almost all of them
have thrown themselves into particular plans, either from a misunderstood mania for personal glory, or
from greed for power, or from rivalry, or from incompetence.
The war of the moment having "no relation to known wars", the military had to submit to civilians. For,
"military power" being only a "passive lever moved by the national will", the generals had to obey "the
orders of the government and the decrees of the Committee of Public Safety". Only the “representatives
of the nation” could decide on “the first plans” and “finally determine the various movements of our
military forces”. It is up to the generals to find “all the measures of application, equipment, position,
marches, camp, observation, technique, etc. but without mixing with the "government" whose science
"consists in regulating the general movement." And to conclude: It follows from this that as soon as a
general departs from his particular
instructions and risks a game which seems to him advantageous, he can ruin public affairs even by a
local success. It breaks the unity of the plan and destroys the whole. (...) Generals, the time for
disobedience is over. If you continue to isolate yourself, to follow this liberticidal system, you become
guilty. (...) There is only one way to make yourself worthy of a great nation, it is to respect its will. Wait
for her. Soon she will entrust you with her revenge and the ruin of all her enemies. But remember that
the heroes of the ancient republics, the Scipios, the Paul-Émiles took orders from the Senate and that
Rome sent to execution those of her children, even victorious, who had not waited for her commands to
triumph over her enemies. .
Undoubtedly, the circular did not expressly reinforce the power of the delegates of the Convention,
but indirectly their mere title of "representative of the people" placed them above the military, especially
if they belonged, like Saint-Just, to the Committee. For Hoche and Pichegru, it was a sounding call to
order.
Moreover, so that the defeated young general might understand better, Carnot signed a letter to him the
following day, December 5, reproaching him for having pushed too far to the left and not supported Pichegru
enough. And then, on December 9, to dissipate ambiguities, the Committee of Public Safety promulgated
the extension of the powers of Saint-Just to the Moselle. Finally, so that the delegate of the Committee and
his friend Le Bas were not hindered by the lack of financial means, it was decided, on December 10, to
allocate twenty-five thousand pounds to them.
In Paris, at least, Saint-Just had won a victory, very personal, all along the line.
And it was for this return that he agreed to satisfy his friend's desire, by bringing his wife and sister with
them. Comforted by his success in the Committee of Public Safety, he could be, in the eyes of Mrs. Elisabeth
,
Le Bas 45 as we have seen, a pleasant and cheerful traveling companion.
However, he was not done with the difficulties. The civilian delegates to the Army of the Moselle, Lacoste
and Baudot, were not prepared to surrender easily. On December 17 and 18, they again complained about
Saint-Just, in their letters, emphasizing how much the Committee's recent decision confused the hierarchy
in their corner: "Saint-Just and Le Bas have extraordinary powers, the others unlimited. So go and reconcile
all that!
The prestige of victory tipped the balance. Attacking the Austrians and Prussians on a broad front, on
December 22 Hoche won the great victory of Frœschwiller. Saint-Just immediately sent him a note:
We congratulate the army and you; courage, comrade. Fortune is for the Republic. We write to Pichegru
to take advantage of this success to fall on Haguenau and the redoubts that the enemy has built from the
forest to the banks of the Rhine.
But it was Lacoste and Baudot who immediately took advantage of this success.
In fact, when Saint-Just and Pichegru arrived at Haguenau the next day, the delegates from Moselle
informed them that they had conferred on Lazare Hoche the command of all the troops. What to do ? The
Committee of Public Safety assigned the direction of operations to Pichegru.
Saint-Just recalled this in his letter to the Parisian leaders:
... In accordance with your intentions fixed for the generals, we gave to Pichegru the command of the
assembly. We expected a lot from the agreement. Hoche was ardent and young, Pichegru more mature,
more experienced; his first orders had won us decisive successes.
The final estimate given to Pichegru is singularly lacking in basis. But it does not, however, make it
possible to take Saint-Just for a great admirer of Pichegru. Basically, neither of the two generals was to
please him. Beginning in the army at the age of twenty-six, he respected the experience, the maturity of
Brienne's tutor appointed by the Committee of Public Safety. He appreciated his level-headedness and his
discipline, but did not rely on him. With Hoche, relations had proved to be much more difficult. Younger and
much more ardent than his colleague, the general had also affirmed his
contempt, even his hostility towards Saint-Just; this one could not count on the devotion of the soldier.
Each of these generals had, for Saint-Just, its advantages and its disadvantages. If he had really wanted
to counter Hoche and favor Pichegru, he could have taken shelter behind the decisions of the Minister of War
and Carnot, but he did not use this card. For him, the main thing had to be the agreement much more than
the hierarchy. The circumstance was delicate; it was necessary in this moment to remember only the
fatherland, to appease the bitterness, to remove the discouragement and to prevent the consequences of the passions
which rise in such a case .
46
In this bitter Christmas, he had all the more merit in giving in immediately because his authority as an
"extraordinary" delegate to the Rhine and the Moselle was tarnished by the triumph of this decision by
Lacoste and Baudot. Pichegru was not the only one affected...
No doubt, it will be said that if Saint-Just, until the affair, looked at Hoche with a less hostile eye than is
generally claimed, afterwards, resentment inspired him with a resentment which he manifested during the
arrest of the general, in the month of April. That is possible. But if it is true that in the corridors of the
Committee of Public Safety, he replied to Hoche who was asking him for justice: "You will get what you
deserve", the fact remains that the arrest order seems due to the initiative of Carnot and Robespierre rather
than that of Saint-Just.
For his part, Hoche was not very diplomatic, the day after his appointment, refusing to communicate to
Saint-Just the plan of his great offensive. “I need secrecy, I answer for victory. It was another slap in the face
to the delegate of the Committee of Public Safety.
However, if Saint-Just could not reserve the direction of operations, he committed his corps to the battles
of the great offensive. On this point, Baudot - this brother in arms who did not like him - greeted him in his
Memoirs: "Saint-Just girded with the sash of a representative, the shaded hat of the tricolor plume, charges
with the ardor and the carelessness of a young hussar,” he wrote. And again: “When Saint-Just and I set fire
to the batteries of Wissembourg, we were very grateful; well, we had no merit there; we knew perfectly well
that the bullets could do nothing to us. »
The attack on authority did not affect the host. Present at the victorious battle of Wissembourg, he was, at
Landau, at the head of a column charged with taking a redoubt and, after the action, the grenadiers, according
47 ,
to Abbé Montgaillard, said to him: "We are happy to you, representative citizen; your feather did not move a
single strand, we had our eye on you; you're a good h...” He had really risked “Landau or death”.
He had known these terrible and glorious battles for forty-eight hours under the squalls of snow: on the
morning of the 27th, in front of Wissembourg, the charge of the blue battalions punctuated by drums, the
reception of the spitting grapeshot of the Prussian batteries; then, the weakening of the enemy, his disorderly
flight; finally, on the 28th, the return to Landau, the delirious reception of the population and, first of all,
the emotion of the brave representative on mission Dentzel, who had sworn to have shot the first who, in the
place, spoke of capitulation.
The mission was accomplished48 . On December 31, Saint-Just resumed his place on the Salvation Committee
public.
1. Thus, paradoxically, in Prussia, it was Frederick the Great who took up the pen in an attempt to curb the chauvinism of letters and the arts.
2. In its constitution the articles on the army are reasonable. One of them limits the use of elections in the military forces:
“An army which elects its leader, stipulates article 7 of chapter VII, is declared rebel: it is dismissed. The rest fixed provisions which have since entered into
mores: compulsory military service to teach young people the “handling of arms”; general mobilization in case of war; the national colors of the flags; the
maintenance in peacetime of a "sufficient force to resist any unforeseen attack".
3. However, didn't he already have contacts in Alsace? At the beginning of the Convention, on December 12, 1792, he had intervened to read an address
from the citizens of Strasbourg asking that their mayor, Dietrich, arrested after his opposition to the coup of August 10, should not be tried in the city. And,
finally, the Assembly sent him back to Besançon where he was tried and executed a year later (in December 1793), while Saint-Just was in Alsace.
4. See STÉPHANE POL, Le Conventionnel Le Bas, p. 130.

5. In a notebook kept by Saint-Just and Le Bas in Alsace, there are 306 decrees or proclamations for the first three weeks
(Nat. Bibl., F. na 24.158).
6. F7 4436 fol. 131.
7. Letter to the Committee of Public Safety dated 3 brumaire (24 October).

8. Order of 2 Frimaire. On a piece of paper he will mark the need to establish "a military penal code of easy application and
simple” (Arch. nat., F7 4436).
9. Letter of Frimaire 27 (December 17).
10. Letter of 24 brumaire to popular society.

11. Arch. nat., AF II 249, p. 2121.
12. Letter of 24 brumaire to the popular society of Strasbourg.
13. Order of 24 November (6 Frimaire).
14. Letter of October 25 (4 Brumaire).
15. Of having been separated from her husband by him (letter of November 12).
17. Letter of November 6. It was Carnot who signed the decree charging Hérault on October 26.
18. According to Henri Dard, it was a Frenchwoman, Adèle de Bellegarde (the Comte de Bellegarde had passed into the Austrian army where his own
brother was already serving as Field Marshal). Cf. H. DARD, Hérault de Séchelles, an epicurean under the Terror, Paris,
1907.
19. Parliamentary History of the Revolution, t. XXXI, p. 22.

20. Proclamation of 26 Brumaire (16 November).
21. Dated 4 Frimaire (24 November).
22. See our first chapter.

23. Cf. CHUQUET, the Wars of the Revolution, IX, p. 34.
24. MUHLENBECK, Euloge Schneider.
25. Arch. nat., F7 4742.
26. He was guillotined in Paris on 11 Germinal (March 31, 1794).

27. October 24 (3 brumaire). 28.
October 26 (5 brumaire). 29.
October 30 (9 brumaire).
30. October 27 (6 brumaire). 31.
2 November (12 brumaire). 32. 3
November (13 brumaire). 33. 7
November (17 brumaire).
34. In the aforementioned letter of 24 October.
35. CHUQUET, Hoche and the struggle for Alsace.
36. October 22. ("The greatest need of the army is a bold leader.")
37. The general, says the letter, “will take precautions so that nothing can disturb the gathering which is to take place at Bouquenam and Saarwarden. It will
illuminate the border and give the necessary activity to the secret party to be aware of the movements of the enemy”.
38. From November 6th.
39. Letter of October 24 (3 brumaire).
41. Letter of October 30 (9 brumaire).
42. Still in the same letter of November 3 (13 brumaire).

43. See BONNAL. DE GANGES, The Representatives of the People.
44. Letter of 16 November (26 brumaire) to the Committee of Public Safety.
45. The Memoirs of these do not give a date, but they indicate quite clearly that it is a question of a new beginning of Saint
Just and Le Bas in Alsace, after a brief return to Paris.

46. Same letter of December 25 (5 Nivose).
47. History of France, t. IV, p. 100.
48. However, Saint-Just must have remained concerned. On the same piece of paper where he marked his intention to "change all the names of the villages
and towns of Alsace" to give them the names of glorious soldiers, he wrote: It could happen that the enemy tried something with the forces he has in Luxembourg.
It is necessary that the armies of the North and the Ardennes make false right movements and that promptly. The other cunning measures are taken. (Arch. nat.,
F7 4436 a , mad. 131.)
CHAPTER III
BY FINDING PARIS
Having returned from Alsace, Saint-Just was to set out again at the end of January 1794 on a mission
with the armies, this time from the North. Returning to Paris on February 9, he would, for six weeks,
assume a major role in the direction of the government.
Elected President of the Assembly, he dominated its debates from February 19 to March 5 (from 1 to
15 Ventôse). In the name of the Committee of Public Safety, he will deliver four speeches calling to order,
in particular three indictments which will lead to the scaffold, the first: Hébert and his, the second: Hérault
de Séchelles, the third: Danton and his friends.
In all three cases, the criminal facts invoked will hardly be revealed. Is it lack of evidence? Is it because
we couldn't or didn't want to say everything we knew about the accused? Or is it, finally, because we
intended to eliminate, at the first pretext, troublesome group leaders?
In other words, did the person who led Hébert, Danton and their supporters to death lightly or seriously, in
good or bad faith? And were these executions really favorable to the interest of the nation and the Republic?
The opinion of historians is quite divergent. To take only two recent publications about the Hébertists,
we have, on the one hand, Mr. Gérard Walter who is holding their trial for "a political operation mounted
by the Committee of Public Safety to get rid of a group of 'agitators... and to dodge its responsibilities in
1
the economic crisis'; and, on the other hand, Mr. Paul Sainte-Claire-Deville who thinks that Hébert,
Momoro, in conjunction with the Comte de Puisaye, were able to remove Louis XVII from the Temple on
March 2 (12 Ventôse), then trying to provoke the agitation to establish a regency To find the thread of
2
history, it is necessary to closely follow .
the unfolding of events. And, first, the behavior of those who will be implicated.
On resuming contact with the Committee, all of Saint-Just's attention was focused on relations with the
outside world, not only because of the war and the economic crisis, but also because he feared the action
of agents from abroad.
At the Committee of Public Safety, he met three people especially attached to these questions: Hérault
de Séchelles, Barère, and Deforgues, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
1. THE GAME OF HERAULT OF SÉCHELLES.
Saint-Just hardly likes Hérault, which he knew while writing the constitution. He who, on the eve of the
Revolution, wrote and published his Petite Théorie de l'ambition 3 , a great friend of Lavater, attached great
importance to outward appearance: for him, knowing how to change one's face was the surest means of
to arrive at. He had adopted as a rule: to use tricks only in form, to keep a record of the tricks that will have
succeeded. If the application of the theory turned out badly for its author, it nevertheless contributed to
mislead historians. For Aulard, Hérault de Séchelles is a Dantonist, while for Mathiez he is a Hébertist. In
truth, the former Feuillant, now a Montagnard, seems to have covered his tracks by being, as he advocated,
alternately dog with cats and cat with dogs.
However, these variations, these shifts, however agile they may be, cannot always go unnoticed. Around
October 12, Fabre d'Églantine came to the Committee to read a note that posed troubling questions. For
example, asking why, at the time of Proly's release (after his first arrest) Hérault, holding an office of eighty
spies, seems to have summoned "cabal agents" such as Dubuisson, Prereira, Coindre, Lafaye, etc., who
all “arrived at the right time, one from Switzerland, another from Lyon, the other from Dunkirk, etc. ".
Moreover, Hérault de Séchelles often takes home public Foreign Affairs files, the modification of his face is
so rapid that everyone can find the one he wants: it is no longer a changing physiognomy, it is 4 . In front of
Janus.
Thus, the attitude he suggests with regard to Switzerland seems, to his great biographer Émile Dard, of
a pacifist nature like that of the Dantonists, while Albert Mathiez considers it belligerent like that of the
Hébertists. And both are right. When, on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, on August 25, he
presented a report on Mont Blanc to the Assembly, it was not to demand an offensive but the defense of
an acquired territory. According to him, "the Piedmontese entered Mont Blanc by three places, Faucigny,
Tarentaise and Maurienne". Posts have been taken by the enemy and the Republicans forced to fall back
on Confiant, so that this department is on the eve of being invaded, if we do not make it pass prompt
recourse of troops and especially of weapons.
Is it national defense? The rapporteur does not go that far. Only, according to him, to let it be said that
we are going to abandon a country which has given itself less to France than to freedom would be to
commit a fatal error.
Arms, men, this is what Mont Blanc demands.
To respond to this great demand, Hérault de Séchelles, on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety,
brings a rather hair-raising solution: proudly, he announces the sending on mission of two energetic men
(including himself), who, he says , by their presence will be worth a second army.
This seesaw movement is common among parliamentary reporters, who are forced to reconcile their
personal opinion with that expressed by the majority of the organization on whose behalf they speak.
Certainly, visibly he prefers, as for him, the use of force, but he is careful not to say it too
strongly, because such a project could seem suspiciously reckless at a time when the war fronts were
already numerous and badly held by French soldiers.
Moreover, the central argument used – the wishes of the public opinion of Mont Blanc – is immediately
contested. Is this really the opinion of the majority of the population? To which Tallien who, with Prieur
de la Marne and Barère, warmly supports Hérault, replies that the majority of provincial opinion has
undoubtedly not approved the change of regime, but that it is necessary to fight for the Republican
minority. And, Barère, unequaled for drum rolls, concludes by proclaiming that our diplomacy must be
that of “guns and victory”.
The adjournment of the decision did not prevent Hérault from gazing at Mont Blanc...
However, the official representatives of France in Switzerland received the order not to meet the “special
agents” of Hérault on the move. Thus, in his letter of October 7, Minister Deforgues admonished
Barthélémy, ambassador to Switzerland, because he had had a meeting with Dubuisson 5
.
The question would even have come back to the Committee, if we are to believe the secret note given
to the Basel chancellery, which Robespierre quoted in his speech of 27 Brumaire (17 November).
Note, in passing, that the information could have come from Hérault, who in his Codicille gave himself
the principle of dropping papers to spread the news.
According to the Basel note:
It was on the 18th of October that the question of the invasion of Neufchâtel was raised in the
Committee of Public Safety. The discussion was very animated, it lasted until two hours after midnight.
A member of the minority opposed alone. The affair was suspended only because Saint-Just, who is the
rapporteur, left for Alsace, but we now know for good part that the invasion of Neufchâtel was solved by the
Committee.
Of course, Robespierre brings a denial to this information, but a limited denial. He confines himself to
declaring that Neufchâtel was never a question of the Committee of Public Safety. It is, according to him,
a "stratagem" employed by the Austrians with the support of certain shadowy committees, which are held
in Paris, composed of bankers, foreigners, intriguers covered with a mask of patriotism.
The clan to which he alludes, is it not the one denounced by Fabre's note, that is to say the friends
of Hérault de Séchelles and the Hébertists?
It is interesting to note that Saint-Just is indicated as having to present a report on the question
(Robespierre does not deny this). In addition, several letters confirm the information. First, on the same
October 18, Deforgues sent Barthelemy a long missive which, by its unusual tone and the proud policy it
advocated, seemed to convey a meeting of the Committee of Public Safety with Saint-Just. Indeed, he
writes: The French Republic, citizen, does not want to
compromise with its enemies. Strengthened by its own power, it claims to reduce them to asking for
peace, or to crush them. Such is its resolution: it is invariable. She
will emerge triumphant from the struggle which has begun between her and the kings of Europe, or else she will be
6
buried entirely under the ruins of the city.
This is not the usual tone of this curious Deforgues. (It is very regrettable that the latter, surviving the
Revolution, did not leave any papers or memoirs.) Former clerk of Danton, attached to the police in September
1792, chief of war disputes, then general secretary of the first Committee of Public Safety Hérault de Séchelles,
7
June 21, 1793. Also, one must think , he was elected Minister of Foreign Affairs on the proposal of
that he maintains good relations with the latter, even if their ulterior motives and their game do not always
merge. In any case, Colchen, the head of the Swiss office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced to
Barthélémy the arrival of Hérault in a way that clearly indicated the uncertainty and concern that the charge de
mission inspired. It is said that he left with good intentions for Switzerland and convinced that we must remain
in peace. But he called Darbelet to his side, who had returned to Paris and whose exaggeration has often
displeased you. It is to be hoped that the Hérault citizen will be able to distinguish in himself what belongs to his
patriotism from what is the product of an exalted imagination 8 . However, fifteen days later, Barthélémy,
recounting a conversation he had on the border with Hérault, explainedthat he had a lot to do to stop the offensive
plans of the special envoy.
This one affirmed that one could take this small Republic. The ambassador, duly styled, undeceived him, by
showing him that the Protestant cantons were too rich to be abandoned without firing a shot by the confederation.
“He told him that it would be a great mistake to reunite Mulhouse by force, because this violence would throw
Switzerland back towards the allies. The Mulhouse capitalists would leave the territory. “It was better to
9
temporize, until peace .»
Always flexible, Hérault will write his report, on November 11 (1st Brumaire), as if he had never been in favor
of annexation. Better, he will deplore “the deep concerns” that certain noises cause: It has spread in Switzerland,
he will write, that one wanted to unite with France the Republic of Mulhausen (Mulhouse) and the principality of
Neufchâtel In Limiting, a week later, his denial to what concerns. Neufchâtel, Robespierre will bring, in a way, a
10
confirmation for Mulhouse.
Moreover, the variations of Hérault de Séchelles are better explained if we consider that war and peace were
for him only means or, if you prefer, "covers" allowing him to achieve objectives. policies. In his Memoirs the
Prince of Hardemberg – who, as Prussian ambassador to Switzerland, will meet Barthélémy – provides a
plausible explanation. He writes :
Danton, having concerted with Hérault de Séchelles, the latter mysteriously went to Savoy, and there, used
himself for his relations outside of his intimacy with Mlles de Bellegarde. He even had conferences with
Barthelemy, ambassador in Switzerland, which the Committee of Public Safety, to whom they were revealed,
11
. regent.
regarded as suspect. It was rumored that Danton dreamed of making peace and that he aspired to be
It is undeniable that Hérault had been in charge of a mission in the Haut-Rhin, rather than in Switzerland.
It is also true that he traveled accompanied by the young ladies of Bellegarde. As for Danton's regency
project, it will be talked about a lot in France, a few months later. This testimony deserves all the more to
be remembered since Hérault's report to the Committee lets us glimpse, alongside the Jacobin stampings,
some more supple movements. After recalling that Barthélémy was ambassador to London and Vienna and
that Switzerland remains "a very advantageous center in Europe", Hérault adds : receive from us only death
for any
transaction; but at least we can desire to be better instructed than we have been hitherto. Barthélémy, if
the Committee authorizes me to use him in this respect, seems to me the man in the best position to directly
transmit positive reports on the state and the projects of the enemy powers. In short, it was a question for
him and Bartholomew to be allowed to meet representatives of foreign powers with which we were at war.
With this cover, under the guise of seeking information,12.
we could undertake talks.
But the Committee of Public Safety already had too many reasons to be wary of Hérault to let him
embark on this path.
At the same time, Saint-Just harvested others in Alsace. As we know, he had seen his colleague arrive
with disgust. But, although Saint-Just and Le Bas had refused to collaborate with him, Hérault distinguished
himself, on the one hand, by playing the hebertist with the friends of Euloge Schneider and, on the other
hand, by finding himself at issue in seized letters.
Returning to Paris and knowing that he was threatened, Hérault pleaded his defense before the
Convention on December 30 (9 Nivôse). Cleverly, he was careful not to respond by attacking Saint-Just
directly: he made two of his Hébertist friends, Simon and Mallarmé, act in this direction. There again, he
was applying one of the precepts he had inscribed in his Codicil: Make others say the evil one thinks of
one's enemies.
Personally, he invoked Danton: I was the
first to denounce and have the Committee of General Security arrest a parricide Frenchman, an emissary
of foreign powers who, mysteriously making the most infamous remarks, tried to disunite us with Danton, to
render him suspect, and to nullify the fiery and formidable energy of this support of liberty 13
.
And then, he boasted of having, in the Haut-Rhin, purged the popular societies and all the constituted
authorities... purged the traitors, arrested a large number of suspicious individuals. Finally, for his relations
with dubious persons: I learned, citizens, through public papers, that a member of the Convention had
sought to present to you in me intimate and suspicious liaisons with Proly, Peyrera and Dubuisson. Well !
he had only seen Peyrera and Dubuisson four or five times in his life, Proly a little more often, but, of course,
out of any combination...
After him, Mallarmé, mounted the rostrum, incriminated Saint-Just and Le Bas, who were absent.
According to him, the special envoys had committed a fault by having the administrators of the directorates
of Meurthe, Soubrani and Milhaud, arrested and sent to the prison of La Force. According to him, the latter
had been denounced by the administrators of subsistence, because the latter, fearing the same fate for
them, wanted to divert what threatened them. Devoid of arguments to show the good management of
Soubrani and Milhaud, Mallarmé advanced on their part a gift of three hundred pounds for the wives and
children of the victors of Toulon, although this only indicated that the administration of Meurthe did not had
not ruined the defendants...
Simon, succeeding Mallarmé at the rostrum, supported his argument by stigmatizing the "denunciations
falsehoods in Strasbourg" without providing more precise facts.
Obviously, such maneuvers were not to soften the feelings of Saint-Just with regard to Herault de
Sechelles. But they did not change the policy in Alsace either, since, two months later, on February 21,
Saint-Just again had the Committee ratify a decree suppressing the revolutionary tribunal of Strasbourg
and bringing the defendants to Paris, starting with an agent of the administration of the army of the Rhine
who would be locked up in the Abbey.
Moreover, on December 29, feeling his situation was seriously compromised, Hérault de Séchelles
offered, before the Assembly, his resignation to the Committee of Public Safety. The latter officially refused
it, so as not to have to undergo a new member imposed by the parliamentary majority, but by letting the
interested party know, two days later, by a special note, that he had to choose: to make a report on his
conduct or resign from office. Prudent, Hérault opted for a semi-retirement in order to write the requested
report which, as soon as printed, was sent, on February 14, to Barthélémy in Switzerland.
In these pages, we find proudly recounted the celebrations of the “Parisian Notre-Dame”, that is to say of
“Reason”, at the cathedral of Colmar, under his presidency and with the help of the Hébertists. And then,
assuring that one of the objects of his mission was to consolidate relations with Switzerland, he recounts
his conferences near Hurringue with Barthélémy, but without providing any new information or arguments.
He was already burned.
2. PLOTS.
Finally, while Saint-Just was in Alsace, the Hébertists had become agitated, scandals
had burst.
In order not to place themselves on governmental ground, the Hébertists had initially wagered on
anticlericalism, with targets other than the Church, and on armed force, with concerns other than national
defence.
The spectacular and painful gesture of the Archbishop of Paris, Gobel, coming with all his clergy to
solemnly abjure before the Convention on November 7, was not, as everyone knows, a
spontaneous gesture. The day had been prepared in secret meetings at Gobel's, with not only Hébert,
Chaumette and Momoro, but Dantonists or, if you prefer, right-wingers like Bourdon de l'Oise and Clootz.
And, according to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, Sieyes would have even contributed a lot to this
maneuver. We wanted to shake up public opinion with a brutal challenge.
An important personage, the Duke of Orleans, was about to be tried. He still had a few supporters... On
October 28, Ronsin, Boulanger and Parein, in their capacity as generals of Paris, wrote to the committee
of general security to ask for orders, that is to say the authorization to purge in eight days the surroundings
of Paris of the aristocratic horde which is agitated in all directions to break the springs of the Republic. The
projected operation hardly 14.
seems to have had a future. But let us not forget that Robespierre, during the same month of October,
noted in his personal notebook: to keep the revolutionary army ready, to recall its detachments to Paris to
foil the conspiracy. As if, not having confidence in the troops detained in Paris by the Hebertists, Ronsin
and others, he wanted to bring in others. Let us not forget that, on the same October 28, the Jacobins
decided, under the impulse of Hébert, to send to the Convention a delegation demanding the judgment of
the Girondins within twenty-four hours. And Fouquier-Tinville, for his part, wrote to the Committee of Public
Safety to recommend an acceleration of the trials. So the Convention pronounced itself in this direction,
on October 29th.
As we know, the anti-Christian exhibitions sickened more than they excited the people.
However, the Dantonists did not want to let this current pass without slipping into it: Thuriot de Larosière
and Basire had the right of the communes voted to suppress all worship.
What were they hoping for? Flatter certain feelings or exasperate others? We cannot tell.
But, on November 6 and 7, the guillotine fell on two famous people: the Duc d'Orléans and Madame
Roland.
3. THE INDIAN COMPANY SCANDAL .
Thereupon, eight days later, the scandal of the Compagnie des Indes broke out.
The case is significant. In this too variable political climate where the State has not yet taken a stable
form, where the belief in civic rules remains eroded, the greedy upstarts of money allow themselves to be
led by the racketeers into veritable swindles. As Saint-Just suggested in his report, everything needs to be
reviewed. The most revolutionary past brings no assurance of life. In one year, we have seen many
changes, and we do not know who, tomorrow, will hold power.
Result: the uncertainty and the government crisis lead some to denounce their relations to strengthen
their position, or even to divert the threat from their heads.
At the time of the renewal of the general security committee, there had been talk of arresting the members of the
old one, in particular Chabot, Basire and Julien de Toulouse. Friends had alerted them.
The ex-Capuchin Chabot and the lawyer Basire, friends of Danton, feeling particularly in danger, had tried everything
to defend themselves. On October 5, at the Jacobins, Chabot had wanted to justify his marriage to the rich sister of the
Austrian bankers, known in France under the name of Frey. Ten days later, at the Convention, he intervened to oppose
the decree against foreigners, presented by Saint-Just. Finally, on November 10 (20 Brumaire), no doubt inspired by
Fabre, he had unleashed, with Basire, a major offensive against the Committee to deprive it of the right to arrest
deputies, in other words to restore the parliamentary inviolability. Of course, the trembling majority had eagerly voted
for such a decree.
But that evening, at the Jacobins, Hébert had taken to measure. As he represented a disturbing force, forty-eight
hours later at the Convention, Barère and Billaud-Varenne could have the decree rescinded without difficulty.
This time, Chabot and Basire lost their supreme hope. So they thought it was worth
better, for them, to throw themselves into the sea by denouncing the scandalous traffic of the Compagnie des Indes.
The mark was known to the deputies of the Convention. In July, when Delaunay d'Angers had intervened to have
the speculation companies sealed, Fabre d'Églantine had drawn the attention of the Assembly to the important
Compagnie des Indes, born under Louis XV and endowed, thanks to Law, with a privilege for economic relations with
South Asia. In 1793, his shares experienced sharp rises on the Stock Exchange. Attacking him in the name of the
defense of the franc, Fabre decreed that he, Delacroix (from Eure-et-Loir) and Delaunay from Angers, would join
Chabot, Basire and Julien on the finance committees. A special commission to "supervise speculation" was founded
on July 20 and, on the 26th, Delaunay, in his turn, brutally denounced the Compagnie des Indes.
Suddenly, the shares of the latter fell rapidly from fifteen hundred to six hundred pounds. This was what the
members of the new commission and their friends from outside wanted. They then hastened to buy back the shares at
a low price.
But not finding himself, like his colleagues, interested in the business of the Compagnie des Indes, not being linked
with their grand master, the Baron de Batz, to carve out a place for himself, Fabre d'Églantine resumed his attacks,
August 3 and 14. Basically, he advocated what would today be called the nationalization of the Compagnie des Indes.
Not being able to confine itself to operations of corridor, the council of the company came to present its defense to
the tribune of the Convention, while, for its part, the baron de Batz united in a dinner in Charonne, Basire, Chabot,
Delaunay, Julien de Toulouse and bankers or businessmen. The evening was not wasted. At first, as if by chance, the
commission of inquiry fell dormant.
(Later, one of its members, Cambon, will explain in court that the political charge could not be retained: in its last form
the Company had granted no loan to the Monarchy.)
On the other hand, believing that the best way to save the Company was to take responsibility for its dissolution
himself, without letting uncertain parliamentarians get involved, Batz 15 wrote a note which became the report
presented by Delaunay, the October 8. They prided themselves on putting an end to the stock market operations of
the Compagnie des Indes, without resorting to confiscation or seals. But, once again, Fabre d'Églantine balked,
judging the measures insufficiently democratic: I demand that the government seize all the merchandise belonging to
the Compagnie des Indes, and that it have them sold by its agents. It was going further than ever. Lacking competence
in economic matters, Robespierre supported him warmly. The commission found itself expressly charged with the
liquidation of the great society.
As a precaution, to give himself a certificate of independence and probity, and to continue his blackmail game with
the band, Fabre wrote, four days later, a memorandum of denunciation which he went to read before the principal
members of the committees of public safety and general security. He protested against Chabot, linked by his marriage
to Frey – a Moravian Jewish wheeler-dealer ennobled under the name of Baron de Schonfeld –; against Hérault de
Séchelles, protector of Proly, another foreign wheeler-dealer “son of the mistress of the Prince of Kaunitz”; against
Des Fieux and Dubuisson, also linked with foreign financial powers. The Prolys and the Desfieux had been
successively partisans of La Fayette, then of Dumouriez, and finally of Hébert.
There was no revelation there. But the blow was severe enough to make the men targeted understand what
remained to be done. Caroline Rémy, Fabre's mistress, was indeed a friend of Batz and the Freys. However, as his
influence lacked weight, Batz sent word to Chabot that he would have two hundred thousand pounds and half a
property in Auvergne, if he persuaded Fabre to modify the decree. The ex-Capuchin, without much difficulty, it seems,
persuaded Fabre d'Eglantine, by paying him one hundred thousand pounds, to lend himself to the transformation of
the voted decree. The deputy, who had demanded a liquidation ensured by the State, signed a decree whose article
7 stipulates that “the sale and the liquidation of the Company will be done according to the statutes and regulations
of the said Company. »
On October 27 (6 Brumaire), Fabre and Delaunay undertook to present the new text to the President of the
Assembly – Louis du Bas-Rhin – so that the decree would appear in the Official Bulletin, without having been
submitted as it should have been . to be, in second reading to parliamentarians.
The trick seemed played.
But fear came to make him fail.
Knowing that they were being observed and threatened, having tried everything to justify and protect themselves,
Chabot and Bazire, after the new abolition of parliamentary inviolability, thought that they had only one chance left:
to present themselves as informers.
On November 14 (24 Brumaire), Chabot went to wake Robespierre to tell him that "holding the thread of the most
dangerous conspiracy that has been woven against freedom", he should be allowed to "visit the conspirators". As
proof, he brought the hundred thousand pounds that had been given to him
to corrupt the Mountain. Always suspicious and cautious, Robespierre brought Frey and Bazire's brother-in-
law over to the general security committee.
In the evening, the two committees together decided to arrest the deputies who informed and denounced,
Chabot, Bazire, Julien and Delaunay. And the next day they issued a warrant to arrest the Baron de Batz,
Benoist, Proly, Dubuisson, the bankers Simon, Duroy and Boïd.
However, not only did Julien, from Batz, escape prosecution, but the main author of the forgery, Fabre
d'Églantine, far from being worried immediately, was rather encouraged at first. When presenting his report
on the arrests to the Convention on November 18, Amar, from the top of the rostrum, abjured his friend Fabre
to help in the investigation. So, coincidentally, the investigation was conducted without serious questioning.
Of course, the accused and suspects had connections in all circles, including government. In troubled
times like this, you never know if the person to whom you are introduced, with whom you are having lunch,
will not be denounced tomorrow as a traitor or a crook. Thus, on November 24 (4 Frimaire), a suspect, Pierre
Boucher, questioned about relations with Proly, replied that he had received him "about six times, 16 for its
over the past two years, with the citizens of Saint Just, Bentabole, Chaudron-Rousseau, Fabre d'Eglantine.
On the other hand, the same Boucher assures that Proly came to see him in the countryside with Joachim
Vilate, the friend of Barère and Desmoulins, with doubtful memories.
This is the only time Saint-Just's name appears in the interrogations. Note that he finds himself here
surrounded by rather Dantonist elements, such as the lawyer Bentabole, Chaudron-Rousseau and Fabre.
These relations are rather surprising, but let us not forget that Saint-Just had as a childhood friend a
Dantonist of bad reputation, who was to spit on him the day after 9 Thermidor: Daubigny. Two months earlier,
he had intervened in the Assembly to defend it. And even quite warmly, saying: I join with pleasure my
testimony to that of Robespierre and I declare that I have always known Daubigny as a good man. He is from
my country. I have seen him sell his belongings to provide sustenance for his mother, whom he fed for fifteen
years. In a word, I know of no better friend, more ardent patriot, or more estimable citizen than Daubigny.
In any case - perhaps because of the names he put forward - Pierre Boucher does not seem to have been
seriously worried.
The process of arrests was to be reproached to the Committee of Public Safety by Camille Desmoulins,
as a complacency with regard to the Hébertists. In one of the notes he wrote in prison in April, Desmoulins
endeavored to demonstrate that the Hébertist conspiracy, “Chabot had denounced it to the Committee five
months ago”. But the facts that he would put forward to support his accusation of complacency on the part
of the Committee with regard to the Hébertists were hardly conclusive. According to him, the big fault was to
have decided on the arrests for the morning instead of waiting for the evening, as Chabot suggested, by
raiding the latter's house, which was to receive the Baron de Batz and Benoist d 'Angers. However, delaying
an arrest for the better was a good business.
risky. Couldn't the Batzs and the Benoists of Angers have been informed, in particular by men from the
Committee of General Security? This would also explain the decision to charge the Commune with the
arrest rather than the normally empowered security committee.
In truth, it was not a question of a party enjoying protection against another party. Because, in their
testimony, if Chabot takes it out on Hébert, Basire, he blames Danton by saying that Delaunay was
counting on him. Basically, the Committee of Public Safety does not dare to attack these leaders of the
right and left opposition: so much does it fear the prestige and the means held by them.
In the draft of the speech which he did not deliver, Robespierre acknowledged the fact: We have hitherto
been more severe towards the accusers than towards the accused... Almost all the denounced have fled
or are at liberty: they talk, they write whatever they think is relevant. However, according to him, the
testimony was extremely clear: it resulted from it that there existed a conspiracy whose goal was to corrupt
the representatives of the people and to defame all the others.
But if Robespierre did not make this speech, was it not precisely because certain members of the
Committee found that he said too much?
4. DIFFICULT END OF YEAR.
Moreover, at the end of November, in order not to rush too brutally, the Committee had other reasons
than the sympathies and ties of some of its members. He could not sanction certain tendencies of his
mountain and Jacobin majority without displaying the fragility of his base. So, instead of attacking his
opponents directly, he first tried to keep them on a leash.
The Hébertists' first instinct was to flatten out. Coming after the failure of their dechristianization
campaign, the scandal worries them. On the evening of November 21 (1st Frimaire), at the Jacobins,
Hébert flatly thanked Robespierre for his protection and retracted the attacks he had made against Danton.
The latter, at the Convention, supported Robespierre and, condemning the anticlerical intrigues, he showed
his audacity by asking the Assembly, on November 26 (6 Frimaire), that all the light be shed on the
Compagnie des Indes. Three days later, Merlin de Thionville and Thuriot intervened, in the Assembly,
against Bouchotte, Minister of War joined with Hébertists. Those Ci try to replicate, at the Jacobins and at
the Cordeliers, by resuming the offensive against the Dantonists. But Robespierre intervenes on December
3 (13 Frimaire) to defend Danton, who, protected by such authority, seems to have won the game.
Especially since the decree of the next day reduced the role of the sections and reduced the functions of
Hébert to those of national agent with the municipality. Finally, on December 5, Camille Desmoulins
released the first issue of his Vieux Cordelier.
Having thus regained their strength, the Dantonists returned to the opposition in the name of indulgence.
December 12 (22 Frimaire) Barère and Bourdon de l'Oise ask for the renewal of the Committee
of Public Safety, but they do not obtain satisfaction. Five days later, Lecointre and Boursault intervene to
protest against certain vexations of which elected representatives of the people have been victims. And
Fabre d'Églantine, still in a threatened position, attacked the Hébertists, Vincent, General de Vendée, and
Ronsin, second in command to the Minister of War. The Committee seizes the pretext to arrest these
cumbersome agitators, on December 17th. But on this, "Indulgent" and "Exaggerated" are reconciled.
Sections demand the release of Ronsin and Vincent. On December 20, a large delegation of women and
children came to demand the release of the prisoners.
A few more weeks, and they will find freedom...
However, a great feat of arms made it possible to restore the much compromised authority of the
Committee of Public Safety: the recapture of Toulon thanks to the young Bonaparte. In the draft of a
speech against Fabre d'Églantine, Robespierre will indicate the
incidence: ... The Committee of Public Safety was strongly shaken in the opinion of part of the National
Convention. It had already been passed off as a principle that he was responsible for all the unfortunate
events that could happen, that is to say, for the wrongs of fortune, and even for the crimes of his enemies;
and this triumph of calumny was all the more certain because there was no doubt that he would necessarily
succumb under the weight of the task imposed on him...
... It was all over, if the genius of liberty had not suddenly worked the astonishing prodigies which saved
the Republic. Already it had been rumored throughout the South that the Committee of Public Safety had
taken the resolution to deliver Toulon, and to abandon all the southern countries beyond the Durance,
while within the Convention it was secretly accused not to take the necessary measures to reduce Toulon.
The prodigious victory which returned this city to the power of the Republic silenced for a moment the
slander, but if this happy event had only been postponed, the Republican government would be
overwhelmed under the weight of the slander...
However, if Bonaparte's victory saved the Committee, paradoxically it also reinvigorated the Hébertists,
linked as everyone knows to the Ministry of War. On the other hand, Le Vieux Cordelier, released on
December 5, a dangerous competitor to Père Duchesne, opposed the dirty and heavy coals of the latter
with a mocking and relaxed smile with greedy lips that called for the sweetness of life. At first Hébert
hardly flinched, then he launched an offensive against Desmoulins through the voice of his newspaper
and his own at the Jacobins. Robespierre remained fairly neutral. Not without difficulty, Hébert obtained
from the Society that the appointed commission present a report on the last two issues of Le Vieux
Cordelier. As said report was long overdue, Hébert let out howls on December 31 (11 Nivôse).
Four days later, the Committee of Public Safety learned, documents in hand, that Fabre d'Églantine
had signed the false decree of the Compagnie des Indes. The news was not immediately made public:
Fabre was not arrested until January 12. But, Bébertists could rub their hands; this time it was Danton's
friends who were in trouble.
However, divided, bound by old friendly relations, and fearing to favor Hébertist extremism, the leaders of the
Jacobins and the Committee of Public Safety remained reserved. Presenting the famous report requested, on
January 5, Collot d'Herbois delivered an indictment against Philippeaux, but showed himself to be rather indulgent
with regard to Desmoulins by recalling that he had "served the Revolution well". Such clemency exasperated Hébert
all the more because the issue of Le Vieux Cordelier for the same day accused him of being paid by the Ministry of
War.
At the Convention, Danton's and Fabre d'Églantine's friends launched a new attack on Father Duchesne, pushing
it to the Committee of Public Safety. Relying, according to Robespierre, on notes by Fabre, Bourdon de l'Oise
invited the Assembly not to let the government spend any more, "without a decree of the Convention", and to
instruct the Committee of Public Safety to “immediately present a new organization of a ministry”. Philippeaux,
Bentabole and Danton himself came to support Bourdon's proposal. It was adopted in principle. Immediately, the
same group, wanting to go further, resumed its attacks against the Hebertist Ministry of War and the Committee of
Public Safety: Philippeaux, supported by Merlin de Thionville, evoking the reverses of Vendée, demanded an
investigation and the attachment of operations soldiers on the general security committee.
In short, once again, the Committee of Public Safety saw its attributions and its majority called into question at
the Convention. He could no longer count on the support of the Dantonists, and he had everything to fear from the
Hebertists.
The Desmoulins-Hébert quarrel split the Jacobins and marked the beginning of their
END. Saint-Just, who no longer went to the club, wrote:
What was the strength of the people and the Jacobins last year was that the orators who presented laws in the
legislative body matured these laws at the Jacobins. Today the Jacobins only exercise censorship, and no work is
planned there. Also, no laws will come out of an assembly where one party seeks only to offend and the other to
fight . .
Robespierre remained loyal to the Jacobins. Their tribune offered him an extra-parliamentary means of
expression. Always attached to his centrist position, on January 8, he came there to pronounce an indictment
against the extremists: the “Indulgent” and the “Exaggerated”.
Four days later, Fabre d'Églantine was finally arrested.
But this centrism could not satisfy Father Duchesne's friends . These came more and more to the Cordeliers
who, on January 17 (28 Nivôse), adopted a motion against Robespierre, held to be “leader of the party of the
moderates”. At the Jacobins, the Dantonist Legendre prevailed over Hébert, who stopped coming there.
If the two clans insulted each other, they still happened to agree against the Committee of Public Safety. On
January 31 (12 Pluviôse) a member of the Cordeliers protesting against the arrest by the Committee of Public
Safety of Hébertist generals, Ronsin and Vincent, a motion was passed stipulating
that a veil would steal the rights of man from the eyes of the Cordeliers until justice was done to the persecuted
patriots.
As if by chance, forty-eight hours later, the Committee of General Security presented a report favorable to
the prisoners, and it was Danton who had the Assembly vote for their release.
The decisive game was about to begin.
1. GÉRARD WALTER, Hébert and “ Father Duchesne ”, Paris, 1946, p. 213.

2. PAUL SAINTE-CLAIRE DEVILLE, In Search of Louis XVII, Paris, 1946.
3. Under the title Codicille... Épone, 1788.
4. SAINT-JUST will say so in his Report, and BARÈRE in his Memoirs.
5. See Barthélémy Papers, t. III, p. 121.
6. Papers of Barthélémy, t. III, p. 147.
7. It is he who indicates this past in the letter A to his fellow citizens, of 30 Thermidor Year III.
8. Letter of November 6 (16 brumaire). Papers of Barthélémy, t. III, p. 199.
9. Cf. A. MATHIEZ, Danton and peace, p. 209, and C. SCHMIDT, A customs conquest, Mulhouse, p. 20.
11. Memoirs of Prince DE HARDEMBERG, t. II, p. 400.
12. Papers of Barthelemy, t. III, p. 215.
13. Monitor, t. XIX, pp. 82-83. This is Louis Comte.
14. Courtois Report, p. 172.
15. Cf. The Conjuration of Batz or the day of the sixty, by BATZ.
16. See TUETEY, t. X, n. 457 (W 76, no. 9 ).
17. Papers found on him on 9 Thermidor.
CHAPTER IV
"THE SECT THAT PLAYS ALL PARTIES"
1. HÉBERT 'S FIRST TURN .
The crisis begins in the middle of February. In his letter of the 10th, the informant of d'Antraigues, notes that
Robespierre does not dominate the municipality where Chaumette and Hébert (have) strong grudges against
him. Moreover, the municipality gives or seems to give headlong into the system of destruction that I imagine
1
the English Dantonist clan, by refusing . And, among the Jacobins, Dufourny, intriguing, provocative, linked to
to admit Vincent, one of the leaders of the Cordeliers, to the club, provides them with a pretext to raise their
voices. of their opposition.
On February 12 (24 Pluviôse), at the Cordeliers, Momoro replied to Dufourny by denouncing "the clever
system of machination combined against the best patriots". After which, Hébert aggressively attacks those who,
greedy for the powers they accumulate, but always insatiable, have invented and pompously repeat in their
great speeches the word ULTRA-REVOLUTIONARY to destroy the friends of the people who monitor their
conspiracies. For him, there is no remission: This entire clique that opposes equality must be overthrown forever.
The next day, he comes back to the charge so that we act quickly in this direction.
It was a few days later that the Committee of Public Safety would have held, at the request of the Minister of
the Interior, an extraordinary meeting at the Hôtel de la Guerre, rue Grange-Batelière. For the Minister: Never
had the state of Paris been more alarming in whatever respect one wanted to consider it 2 . Because the supply
crisis brought a formidable springboard to Hébert. Moreover, Robespierre, ill, was absent from the Committee
of Public Safety and - if we are to believe the Parisian informant of d'Antraigues - he confided to one of his
"intimates" that on the necessary government he joined Mirabeau's opinion "when he was stricken with the
3 ".
disease from which he died
What means were employed to soften the redoubtable Hébert? I do not know. In any case, when Father
Duchesne 's man returned to the rostrum on February 20 (2 Ventôse), it was to sing a piece of eloquence in a
very different tone and refrain. No more insurrection! It was necessary to make a new newspaper by taking
again the title the Friend of the People. The initiative is particularly curious on the part of someone with a high-
circulation sheet. She explains if the journalist has sold his pen to the rulers or if, swimming in troubled waters,
he hopes with this branch
release themselves from the responsibilities of the principal company. Because Hébert insists: no article must be signed.
This evasion, the anonymity of which exasperates Marat's sister, who sends the Cordeliers a letter
to be indignant that Hébert had "advised to be pusillanimous".
But the person concerned must have strong reasons, since, in front of the members of the club, he endorses without
flinching the public reading of this hurtful letter. Better still, forty-eight hours later, he makes a new speech to ward off
the thunderbolt he had, a week earlier, rumbled over Paris. This time, he denounces as responsible for the high cost of
living, the farmers, and he invites the audience to rely on the guillotines which must follow the armies.
Obviously, he is now trying to hold back his clansmen.
2. TRUST AND AUTHORITY (THE VENTOSE DECREES).
It was on this that, on February 26 (8 Ventose), Saint-Just came to the Convention to read his report in the name of
the two committees. It is a question, he declares, of fixing the shortest means, of recognizing and delivering oppressed
innocence and patriotism, as well as punishing the guilty. In short, his mission was to respond to the campaigns led by
the friends of Danton and Hébert by giving satisfaction to the two oppositions.
But, immediately, he indicates his will not to consider the particular cases: I do not want to treat this question before
you as if I were accuser or defender, or as if you were judges. He intends to consider detentions only in relation to the
"safety of the people and the
government ".
Moreover, for him, the situation of the country and the regime justify the detentions. They constitute one of the forms
of the necessary purification: A society
whose political relations are not in nature, where interest and avarice are secret springs of many men on the contrary
opinion and which strive to corrupt everything to escape justice; Shouldn't such a society make the greatest efforts to
purify itself if it wants to maintain itself ? And those who want to prevent it from being purified don't they want to corrupt
it ? And don't those who want to corrupt it want to destroy it ?
Without hesitation, he declares: I am without indulgence for the enemies of my country.

Moreover, according to him, the Terror made fewer victims than the monarchies: In
1788, Louis XVI had 800,000 people of all ages and all sexes immolated in Paris, in the rue Mêlée and on the Pont-
Neuf. The court repeated these scenes at the Champ-de-Mars; the court hung in the prisons. (...) There were four
hundred thousand prisoners; and they hanged, a year, fifteen thousand smugglers; three thousand men were robbed;
there were more prisoners in Paris than today. In times of scarcity, the regiments marched against the people. Travel
through Europe: in Europe there are four million
of prisoners whose cries you do not hear, while your parricidal moderation allows all the enemies of your
government to triumph. (...) Your revolutionary tribunal has killed three hundred scoundrels over the past year...
In this bold tirade, the numbers are obviously wrong. But the judgment – reckless as it is – has the accent of
sincerity. And we know for example that, already under Louis XV, the lettres de cachet were sometimes sold with
the names in blank. As Arthur Young recounts – in his Travels in France – the buyer thus became capable, in
order to satisfy a private revenge, of tearing a man from the bosom of his family and burying him in a dungeon
where he would be forgotten and die unknown. And Young tells the story of a certain Gordon who, after thirty
years in the Bastille, was freed because the English ambassador saw his name on a list of prisoners with the
Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The established regimes throw a veil over the executions, the arrests that they decide on. As noted by Albert
Mathiez, the number of people shot (by mistake) during the war of 1914 and then rehabilitated by the Court of
Cassation amounted to 2,700, while the Revolutionary Court of Paris did not pronounce, until 9 thermidor, only
2,500 convictions. Undoubtedly, the changes of regime make the judgments more spectacular, more difficult –
the civic rules being found but the number of human lives unjustly sacrificed is often not inferior to that which falls
reversed –, to the previous regime. Only, as in the lot there are eminent persons, the opinion, much more
affected, can be easily exploited for literary or political purposes.
For Saint-Just, the regime is not a matter of governmental combination. It is

the organization, the improvement of society which must give it its true face.
Returning to what occupies all his quiet moments, he says: We have a government; we have this commonplace
of Europe, which consists of powers and public administration...
We lack the institutions which are the soul of the Republic... We have no civil laws which consecrate our
happiness, our natural relations and destroy the elements of tyranny... For him, a State where these institutions
lack is only an illusory Republic, because there is then nothing to compress mores..., to stop the corruption of
laws and men.
But in order to build and develop these institutions, the ground must be cleared. However, Saint-Just finds
that we proceed with too much slowness and too much moderation.
Coldly, he proclaims: When a neighboring Republic of tyrants is agitated by it, it needs strong laws; he needs
no consideration against the partisans of his enemies, even against the indif erent.
(...) What constitutes a Republic is the total destruction of what is opposed to it.
However, he attacks directly and at length the leaders of the opposition with changing themes: There is a
political sect
in France, which plays all parties. (...) Do you speak of terror, it
speaks of clemency; become lenient, she boasts of terror to you.
He attacks "those who want to break the scaffold because they are afraid to climb it". And, aiming at the
Philippeaux campaign, the Hébert-Desmoulins quarrel, he throws out, not without contempt: Lately, we have
been less concerned with the victories of the Republic than with a few pamphlets; and while the people are
diverted from male objects, the authors of criminal plots breathe and grow bolder. (...) One seems to count for
nothing the blood of two hundred thousand patriots spread and forgotten.
For him, the Revolution is a cycle: “Revolutions, he says, go from weakness to audacity and from crime to
virtue. You have to accept the unpleasant phases. We must frankly face fatality if we intend to overcome it: as
human interest is invincible, it is only by the sword that the freedom of a people is founded. And Saint-Just takes
up his great axiom: "Those who have made half-revolutions have only dug their graves." »
And he lays down the lawsuit of the indulgence of the last months: The greatest of our misfortunes was then
a certain fear of deploying the authority necessary to save the State. At the End of the Count: The rise of the
revolutionary government, which had established the dictatorship of justice, has fallen; one would think that the
hearts of the culprits and of the judges, terrified by the examples, have compromised in whispers to freeze
justice and escape it.
It is not that he expects everything from terrorism: Terror is a two-edged sword, some of which have been
used to avenge the people, and others to serve tyranny; terror has filled the prisons, but the guilty are not
punished; the terror passed like a storm.
What is needed is to keep an eye open and a firm hand, at the moment when "some attack is brewing, on the
outcome of which kings are counting". What is also needed is for the revolution to “penetrate the civil state”. And
for this, Saint-Just invites the deputies to take energetic measures, in particular by sequestering the properties
of "persons recognized as enemies of the revolution", and by releasing the "detained patriots" who can account
for their conduct since May 1, 1789 . .
In short, suggesting a conciliation between generosity and harshness, he launches an
appeal: For you, destroy the rebel party; tan freedom; avenge the patriotic victims of the intrigue.
Make common sense and modesty the order of the day; do not allow there to be an unfortunate or a poor man
in the State: it is only at this price that you will have made a revolution and a true Republic.
Hey ! who would be grateful to you for the misfortune of the good and the happiness of the wicked ?
This speech was all the better received as everyone found there something to drink and eat according to their
tastes. Among the Jacobins, Collot d'Herbois, welcoming the report, congratulated himself on "the release of the
detained patriots." And a delegation of the Cordeliers immediately entered to "swear union" with the Jacobins.
However, despite all the harshness with which Saint-Just accompanied them, such concessions to the
movement of opinion in favor of the opening of prisons would result in a new grouping, dangerous for the
Moreover, personally, Saint-Just had considered tougher measures. He had proposed to his colleagues "to
employ justly suspect men" to restore the paths "which are
ruined for the most part, to pierce the canals of Saint-Quentin and Orléans, to transport the timber of the navy, to
clean the rivers...".
But the Committee had not retained this plan of great works, however less cruel and more useful than the ax
of the guillotine. Those who made so many heads fall were opposed to the project, in the name of a sentimental
humanism!
Here is what Barère recounts in his Memoirs: Saint-

Just had such composure that he came one evening to propose to the Committee a strange means of quickly
ending the struggle of the Revolution against the noble suspects and prisoners. Here are his expressions: “ For a
thousand years the nobility has oppressed the French people by exactions and feudal vexations of all kinds.
Feudalism and nobility no longer exist: you need to have the roads of the border departments repaired for the
passage of artillery, convoys, transport of our armies: order that the noble prisoners will go to work every day to
the repair of large
roads. »
... Well! when Saint-Just had finished, there was only a movement of silent indignation among all of us, followed
by the unanimous demand for the order of the day. I thought it my duty to stipulate for the national character, by
telling Saint -Just and the Committee that our morals would be repugnant to such a kind of punishment applied to
prisoners, even if the law were to pronounce it; that the nobility may well be abolished by political laws, but that
the nobles always retain among the mass of the people a rank of opinion, a distinction due to education, and which
does not allow us to act in Paris like Marius acted in Rome.
“ Well ! exclaimed Saint-Just, Marius was more political and more of a statesman than you will ever be .
4 !»
mattress, a mattress, two pairs of sheets, six shirts, six handkerchiefs, six pairs of stockings, not to mention a
paycheck. This was significantly more generous than what is attributed to a simple soldier. Citizens were casually
led to death; but we didn't want to impose chores on them, nor that they lack clean linen!
Social humanism is never without contradiction, nor prejudices of this order. Since the rights of the individual
cannot be unlimited, they always remain conditioned by the regime and the society of the
moment.
Moreover, with his report of March 3, Saint-Just was going to pass the famous decrees of Ventôse whose value
and social audacity were so celebrated by Albert Mathiez and so contested by his successors: MM. Georges
Lefebvre, Gerard Walter and Daniel Guérin.
In truth, on one side as on the other, we seem to have made an optical error. Indeed, to take these decrees for
a "vast expropriation of one class for the benefit of another", like Mathiez or, for a "demagogic diversion measure",
like Mr. Daniel Guérin, is to let oneself be taken in by a modern ideology, and get lost on the path taken by the
rapporteur.
However, this one warned them in his speech. The force of things may lead us to results
which we have not thought of. Obviously, he meant by this that he referred less to the ideal than
to the necessities of the moment.
Five months had passed since the promulgation of the general maximum. And, in these first
weeks of 1794, the increased scarcity, the absence of meat, the empty shops provoked new
fights in the queues at the doors of the shops. Prolonged starvation exasperated the townspeople
and, above all, drove them to despair. The liquidated “Enrages”, the myth of saving taxation, had
soon followed them into nothingness. Now, we expected everything from rigor, without really
knowing what form to give it, or in what direction to exercise it. The government was reproached
for its impotence against "the hoarders", its softness in execution, and the scandals in the
administration. Moreover, embittered by the rumors which peddled stories of suspects feasting
on champagne in the prisons, the spirits turned to the Hébertists, apostles of violence, who
demanded a new insurrection and massacres.
Also, is it singularly simplifying the problem, and falsifying it, to pose it in terms of class.
Law's adventure, liberalism, the night of August 4th and the war had brought about a veritable
cyclone of fortunes, making some and undoing others. As in all the great epochs of transition,
the old classes had broken up, ceasing to exist as homogeneous groupings, united by common
interests and thoughts. And the relief had not really been taken, because the game was not over.
However paradoxical it may seem, the error of Marxist historians consists in judging the years
of the Terror according to a static schema, as if the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the
people, on the other, had then formed two classes quite distinct, dividing France. In this way,
they artificially transpose, in order to immobilize it, what was prodigiously moving. How many
profiteers, starting from nothing, amassed a fortune thanks to the Revolution, by speculating, by
trafficking, but not by producing. Better still, by one of those ironies whose history shows itself
lavish, it will even happen that the first great theoretician of socialist industrialism, the most
obstinate in calling for a government of producers, the father of technocracy, Saint-Simon, will
be a former nobleman ruined by the Revolution, and very handsomely restored by it, thanks to
astute speculations on national property.
A class policy is never anything but an exchange of services rendered between the state and
those who own the essential means of production. In 1794, this possession was not yet seated.
Everything remained at stake; the wheel continued to spin. It is significant, for example, that the
value of landed property collapsed from 1793, at the very time when the land of emigrants was
put up for sale in small lots. In many cases, political uncertainty kept the peasants from risking
their savings in acquisitions that a return of emigrants could cancel. In industry, as in agriculture,
the new propertied classes were scarcely born. And childhood is not encumbered with especially
collective designs: it lives in the present and in the individual. These were the
intermediaries in the order of credit or state purchases, or supplies, which held the upper hand.
It is therefore difficult to claim, like Mr. Daniel Guérin, that the Hébertists were eliminated because they
constituted an “obstacle to the realization of the designs of the bourgeoisie”. Especially since the followers
of Father Duchesne seem, as we will see, to have wanted to exploit the people rather than serve them.
On the other hand, we understand very well the position taken by Saint-Just in his Ventôse reports: he
directs his fire against the parasites, that is to say, for him, the high officials and the wealthy idlers.
Of the former, he would say on 8 Ventôse: The more the civil servants put themselves in the place of the
people, the less democracy there is. And, five days later, returning to the charge, he chiselled from a civil
servant's household, this portrait as fierce as an engraving by Daumier:
The day after a man is in gainful employment, he puts up a palace; he has submissive valets: his wife
complains of the weather, she cannot get the ermine and the jewels at the right price, she complains that it
is very difficult to find delicacies. The husband has climbed from the pit to the brilliant theater boxes; and
while these wretches rejoice, the people cultivate the land, manufacture the shoes of the soldiers and the
weapons which defend these indifferent cowards. They go to public places in the evening to complain about
the government. If I were a minister, says this one; if I were the master, said this one, everything would be
better. Yesterday they were reproached and dishonored. Compassion filled them with blessings; they are
not satisfied; they need a revolt to get them the birds of the Phase.
As we can see, these upstarts of the bureaucracy exploit their privileges anarchically, because the
government remains subject to too many vicissitudes to link them to its destiny and the absence of an
institution releases them from rules and even from administrative responsibilities. Their interest is reduced
to the conservation of the position acquired. And, Saint-Just
concludes: Where is the city ? It is almost usurped by officials. In the assemblies, they have the votes
and the jobs; in popular societies of opinion. All obtain independence and the most absolute power, under
the pretext of acting revolutionary, as if the revolutionary power resided within them. Any revolutionary
power that isolates itself is a new federalism, which no doubt contributes to the scarcity. The government is
revolutionary, but the authorities are not inherently so; they are, because they carry out the revolutionary
measures dictated to them; if they act revolutionary of themselves, that is tyranny, that is the cause of the
misfortune of the people.
Alongside the civil servants, there are still the idlers:
It is the class which does nothing, which cannot do without luxury, follies... It is this class which must be
repressed. Oblige everyone to do something, to take up a profession useful to freedom...
Do we not have ships to build, factories to increase, land to clear ? What rights have in the fatherland those
who do nothing there ?
Finally, this imperative invitation:
So go and get these scoundrels from the bankers: they're in pants, their words are revolutionary: you're
never up to them; they always conclude with a delicate line directed gently against the country.
Note that Saint-Just does not condemn these social categories for their opinions. On the contrary, he
endeavors to underline the chameleon side of this display of ultra-revolutionary sentiments. It is a very
ridiculous prejudice that wants extremism to be a proof of audacity.
What could be done against this parasitism, against this scattering of national forces? Saint-Just's intimate
response was: to create institutions that would be “the soul of the Republic”.
But the Committee had not instructed him to set forth his personal views on this question. This was the
immediate policy. And, if the rapporteur rose above his subject, by painting an overall picture of the
situation, by laying down major principles of action, at the end of his speech, he had to stick to the
measures adopted in common, by his colleagues and himself, to the Committee of Public Safety.
To tell the truth, it is not obvious that he was convinced of the effectiveness of these decrees. If he
presented them in such an exhaustive manner, it was primarily to arouse, through them, two currents of
opinion: one within the Assembly, the other in public opinion. It was a question of pushing the first to
organize its authority, and of inspiring the second with the necessary confidence. Finally, it was
undoubtedly a means of laying the groundwork for these institutions of which he dreamed.
Admittedly, when Mr. Gérard Walter writes that these were "purely police measures", whose "main
goal was to finally resolve the irritating problem of supposedly arbitrary arrests", he did not quite wrong.
This is what article 1 of the decree of 8 Ventôse proposed : “The committee of general security is vested
with the power to release detained patriots. Anyone who claims his freedom will report on his conduct
since May 1 , 1789." But article 2 of the same decree stipulating the "inviolable and sacred" character of
the properties of patriots and, moreover, the sequestration of " property of persons recognized as enemies
of the Revolution”, indicates a less narrow objective than Mr. Gérard Walter sees.
However, the additional decrees of the decree of 13 Ventôse should not cause the opposite error, that
of Albert Mathiez, to be committed. Doubtless, the municipalities are asked to draw up "a list of the
destitute patriots they contain", so that the Committee of Public Safety can draw up "a report on the
means of compensating all the unfortunate with the property of the enemies of the Revolution", but it is
excessive to speak in this connection of a "vast expropriation of one class for the benefit of another".
Obviously, Robespierre, Saint-Just and the men of the Committee of Public Safety thought less of
advancing on the path of egalitarianism than of calming discontent, of restoring hope to those whom we
would name today. today the "economically weak" and, also, to make the country's resources bear fruit.
As in periods of great governmental difficulties, it was a "psychological shock" that was first sought to be
provoked.
However generous, however utopian the members of the Convention may have been in their secret
thoughts, they would have needed a great deal of unconsciousness to imagine, in the circumstances in which
they found themselves, being able to "transform property". They were far from having the country in hand, and
in spite of their representatives on mission, they saw departments and communes accommodating in their own
way the measures which they had just taken.
Moreover, it does not seem that Saint-Just or the other members of the committees were astonished by the
difficulties and the slowness in applying the decrees of Ventôse. They had to face the facts: receiverships
provoked disorderly reactions and often discontent. Here (in Thiers, for example), carried out too quickly and
above all arbitrarily, they had to be canceled and the "suspects" returned to possession of their property.
Elsewhere (in Burgundy, in particular), the creditors of these "suspects" protested against the sequestrator
which harmed them by preventing them from being settled. As for the indigents, affected by the climate of rigor
and uncertainty which enveloped these decrees, they hesitated to put their names on the lists. "Terror has
spread in the countryside," wrote National Agent Bonnefoy in his report of 11 Germinal.
The indigent are reluctant to be registered, in the fear where they are that one does not want to transport them
in the islands! »
In short, not only did the material application of the decrees of Ventôse prove to be thorny but,
psychologically, the texts produced an effect contrary to that expected.
On top of all this, in the shadow of the Committee of Public Safety, were grafted intrigues. And not just
national.
3. DEFORGUES AND AMERICAN AID.
To resolve the economic crisis, it was necessary to improve France's relations with foreign countries.
Saint-Just knew this well. But the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deforgues, was a protege of Hérault de Séchelles.
Their relationships were to suffer.
If the bulletins and information letters of the Antraigues Drake network are to be trusted, it is on this subject:
for, when the minister is incarcerated, Drake in his letter to London on June 24 will communicate some lines of
d'Antraigues, lamenting that the source had dried up: When Deforgues was a minister, he wrote, we had a
sure way of rectifying his reports through our intelligence in his private office. We do not yet have the same
advantage with its successor.
Now, what do these secret bulletins tell us for the period of February and March? According to one of them
5 on February
, 10, Saint-Just having announced to the Committee that the Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Deforgues, wished to introduce Sir Morris "Minister for the United States", he had been asked to , and Collot
d'Herbois, "to bring the two characters to the meeting room of the Invalides in the evening".
But the diplomatic meeting, although cordial, had not succeeded; because the United States – while
understanding the difficulties of France and comparing them to those of their struggle with the Indians
– asked the French government to provide them with financial assistance.
The call for American help is certain. You can read the letter again in the Quai d'Orsay Archives.
that Deforgues sent to Philadelphia to ask for help on January 2 (13 Nivose), the 6 To get this
minister was referring to a victory: that of Toulon. Moreover, France was all the more entitled to this
loan in that it had shown itself (since 1781) to be a long-suffering and generous creditor with regard to
the United States . .
As regards the thinking of the American ambassador, one of d'Antraigues' agents provides
additional information 8 . Sir Morris hinted to one of his friends, who is particularly mine, he writes,
that America would at this moment have, on sea and on land, forces considerable enough to repel
any insult. By this measure the Americans put themselves in a position: 1o not to lend themselves to
any request from the French to displease Spain, 2o not to fear the English in the event of invasion
thrusts, standing on their respectable defense under the pretext to hold the savages in check. But the
informant immediately adding, in the manner of d'Antraigues: "This is for you alone", one cannot be
surprised to find nothing of it in the English bulletin. Let's not forget that Morris, although representing
a republican state, was a warm monarchist. When he saw Louis XVI to obtain credits, he gave him at
the same time "memoirs on French internal policy". And when the Republic had been proclaimed, his
first gesture had been to refuse to enter into contact with the new regime, not being, he had said,
accredited to that State.
It is certain that relations with foreign countries were of great concern to the organizers of the
Committee of Public Safety. They wanted, as Barère had noted in his report of September 21, to
improve their relations with neutral countries, to keep them out of the enemy coalition and to boost
the economy of France.
Saint-Just, back in Paris, was to put these questions back on the agenda. The decrees concerning
this policy, signed mainly by him, Carnot and Lindet, will be quite numerous during the months to
come. From February 26 (8 Ventôse) it is to fix the indemnity of those who are responsible for making
contracts for subsistence with neutral and allied powers. The next day, he signed a passport to James
Swan, a curious businessman from Boston with banking ties to Paris, so that he would strengthen
exchanges, even improve relations with the States.
United 9 . On March 5 (15 Ventôse), it is to establish the right to import basic necessities. On the 10th,
these are important diplomatic measures: from now on the Committee will sign the credentials of all
the envoys, the Minister of Foreign Affairs having to stick to a countersignature. The Committee will
fix the special authorizations of the envoys; he will stop the operations which are incumbent on them;
he may correspond directly with a foreign government when he deems it appropriate.
This decree appears as the result and the confirmation of a quarrel between Saint-Just and
Deforgues of which the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletins speak.
10
The first collision would have occurred, a week earlier, on March 2 . As it was said that Hébert and
the Cordeliers were preparing a great uprising, the alarmed Committee questioned the Minister of Foreign
Affairs to find out if the party of the Cordeliers maintained "some intelligence with the allied powers",
Deforgues answered "that he did not believe". At this word, adds the bulletin, Saint-Just rose furiously and
called the minister a scoundrel and a rogue, saying that after having spent more than 180 millions in his
department, he must still be a traitor if he was reduced to saying that he did not believe, while he had to be
sure of all his agents, considering the expenses. And it had taken Barère's authority to put an end to the
bitter dialogue.
Such violence, with such a starting point, is quite surprising, at first sight. But there is another testimony
to Saint-Just's outings outside of the sharp phlegmatism by which he wanted to distinguish himself: that of
the widow Le Bas. In her handwritten memoirs, as we have seen, she speaks of Saint-Just, whose burning
love of country sometimes led to too many
11 .
severity and whose character erred with anger As for
concern for the gaze of foreigners, Saint-Just manifested it in another form, shortly afterwards, when he
ascended the rostrum to present a new decree supplementing the social measures of the 8 ventose.
In his eyes, the attribution to the "indigent", to the "unfortunate", of "property of the enemies of the
revolution and the investigation to be carried out in each prison into the conduct of all prisoners since May
1, 1789" , had first the advantage of constituting excellent propaganda for foreign countries:
The peoples of Europe are being deceived about what is happening here. We disguise your discussions.
Strong laws are not disguised; they suddenly penetrate foreign countries like inextinguishable lightning. Let
Europe learn that you no longer want an unfortunate person, nor an oppressor on French territory; may this
example bear fruit on earth; may he propagate there the love of virtues and happiness ! happiness is a new
idea in Europe.
Happiness ! it was above all a very daring idea in this Paris overwhelmed by the high cost of living,
insufficient supplies and the future which looked very uncertain. But, for Saint-Just, the result depended on
the firmness of the will. "It is better," he said, "to hasten the march of the Revolution than to follow it
according to all the plots which embarrass it, which hinder it." In short, it was a question of doing useful
work by disarming the opposition.
4. SECRET REPORTS.
It is on this that, on March 10 or 11, 1794, Saint-Just is said to have made this report before the
Committee, the authenticity of which has been disputed. For my part, I believe that if this report does not
.
appear authentic in form, it remains so in substance 12
Deforgues having requested secret credits, Saint-Just would have violently opposed it. (We have seen
by the decree which we have quoted how the Committee was to settle the question.) Then Saint-Just
would have pronounced this long indictment of which the Antraigues bulletin was to furnish the text,
twenty days later.
Brutally, he would have expressed his weariness of hearing, for four months – talk about the interests
of neutral powers and the need to sacrifice everything to spare them. First of all, for him, it cost too much:
forty millions at least, and even seventy, counting the diamonds sold. And then, the representatives were
worthless. Those of Constantinople, Hénin and Descorches, deserved the guillotine; for Switzerland,
Barthélémy drew too much from the “treasures with the barrel of the Danaides”; in Italy, in Genoa, Tilly,
known as being "a coward and a rogue", raged without profit for France; finally, in Venice, O'Neil, known
as Noël, distinguished himself by his "boorishness" and his "nullity."
Not very tender, as we can see, for men, the report is no more so with regard to the countries
concerned. He protested against Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and Venice, which had every
interest in remaining neutral and whose neutrality, however, was being paid dearly.
Faced with this situation, what did he recommend? First, establish trade with these neutral countries,
and only with them, by exporting surplus or luxury goods and importing the necessary raw materials.
Then, maintain secret agents in enemy countries to collect information and agitate it in a way favorable
to France. (“It is to discontented generals, he would have said, that the doors of the treasury must be
opened.”) On the other hand, expecting nothing more, among neutrals, from ridiculous negotiations,
broken promises, exhausted and political novels that end only in "ruinous madness". Finally, quite lightly,
he would have suggested publishing all the correspondence exchanged with neutral States, in order to
sow
discord.
This last proposition is not very serious. As for the style, it often lacks the Roman draped side of its
usual speeches. Quite often it is even distressingly vulgar. (For example, he will say: We pay our allies
13
or neutrals in p..., m... and rascals of all kinds was it a text published by him, notes taken while .) But
he was improvising his exposed, or even notes of his, revised and completed by the one who had stolen
them? Especially since these themes were perhaps included in a first version of the report on "the
factions abroad" that he was to present to the Convention on March 13 (23 Ventôse).
Before providing the slightest indication of the content, Drake's bulletin speaks of the reception given
to the Committee of Public Safety at Saint-Just's presentation. Notably, Prieur de la Marne reportedly
said that this report contained a host of random facts and no essential facts. To which Saint-Just would
have replied that he agreed with this criticism, but that the fault lay with Deforgues. So the Minister of
Foreign Affairs protested: in his eyes, Saint-Just was all the more unjust in his denunciation because he
“had not used all the information provided by him”. But the
rapporteur did not want to budge: The event would prove that all the money he had used for such a plan was lost
14 .
The criticisms of the representatives abroad are better explained when they are known to be based on indications
from Deforgues. Indeed, he personally exhausted most of the same individuals – Hénin, Tilly, Jacob, Noël – in
September. And the Bulletin Drake-d'Antraigues reporting this diatribe, brought before the eyes of the Committee
15 trial of Hérault de Séchelles. , shall be deemed accurate enough to be quoted at
What did this text say?

Forgues, consulted on what he hoped for from foreign intelligence, said that the means were getting weaker
every day, either because the means of paying the agents in cash were becoming more difficult every day, or
because people were stealing the funds. instead of using them, that Mackau, Flotte, Tilly, Hénin, Noël, were
especially in this case; that there were perhaps only two true servants of the Republic, Barthelemy and Soulavie,
the latter with zeal and without talent, the former with talent, genius, zeal.
As we can see, Saint-Just and Deforgues are somewhat similar in their judgments (except for Barthélémy) but
are opposed in their conclusions. For the Minister of Foreign Affairs, we lack the means to "pay the agents in cash",
while, for Saint-Just, we waste a lot by devoting such large credits to them.
But we can think that Saint-Just did not find what he was looking for by carrying out an investigation to establish
this report. This is what his response to the criticisms of Prieur de la Marne seems to indicate.
Probably he wanted to catch, hand in hand, this Hérault de Sechelles whose treachery he had glimpsed in Alsace,
and find in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the center of gravity of the plots which worried them all. But Deforgues
had above all transmitted to him names and facts already known and denounced. No doubt he had been more
severe than the minister in judging people. Thus, for Barthélémy, representative in Switzerland, he would have
declared: this man of real talent is regarded by Deforgues as the most useful, and it has at least been proved very
clearly that, without any proportion, the expenses of his ministry are the dearest of all the diplomatic expenses
incurred by the Republic for two years. However, these judgments – especially in the regrettable form in which they
have come down to us – did not bring any important revelations.
Finally, the most surprising suggestion - the publication of the correspondence with the neutral States - appears,
if one looks at the previous bulletins of Antraigues, only as the adaptation of a project formulated by Deforgues, on
March 2 , during his first altercation with Saint-Just.
Indeed, according to royalist informants, the minister would have defended himself “with a lot of presence of
mind and talent”. He would once again have condemned Tilly, whose expenses, since the recapture of Toulon,
would have amounted to more than seven millions, deplored the onerous action in Switzerland where, in Zurich and
Vaud, two millions had been wasted. As all negotiations with London had to be abandoned, the minister believed
that, in order to divide the Allies, it would be necessary to publish everything that had been said and done on this
16
subject. That he had important pieces in his office . In short, he
suggested the publication of what would now be called a White or Yellow Book. But, as we have seen, if
Saint-Just had retained the principle of publication, he had slightly modified its nature, wanting to center
the edition on documents coming from neutral States rather than from the powers with which one deals.
was at war.
Still according to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, the minister would have even gone a long way in his
project of publication, asking for that that 600 workers from Paris be put at his requisition, that they be
kept for three months locked up in a house , that they cannot go out day or night, nor speak to anyone
except in the presence of two commissioners. And, on March 7, the Committee would have decided to
requisition 800 workers instead of 600 in order to print "in all languages works which could inspire in the
peoples of the different kingdoms the horror of tyranny and the contempt of their sovereign" .
If the official texts do not include such a decision at the Committee of Public Safety, on the other hand,
one finds the trace of it in one of the letters of an agent of Antraigues in Paris (probably the Abbé
Brottier). Unfortunately this letter, written like all the others in sympathetic ink, is only partially legible.
She announces that a great measure is being prepared at the moment by the Committee of Public Safety
17
. Without knowing its exact object, we think that it will have great e ects,
because it must act for the inside as well as for the outside. As for the practical provisions, they join
those indicated by the bulletin, except that one speaks about it as acquired from February 21st. He
currently has 200 (...) which he has enclosed in an enclosure. (...) The last ones will stay there for three
months and will be paid... No one could leave it for a moment or have spoken to anyone from outside
except in the presence of commissioners who will not leave them. It was therefore not an ex nihilo
invention of the Comte d'Antraigues.
Finally, through Deforgues, Saint-Just was aiming at foreign policy. Next to the minister was Barère.
It was the latter who, on September 21, had the Committee adopt the guiding principles of diplomacy,
the use of "secret agents, secretaries of legation, charges d'affaires." Very undulating, he had left the
banners of Hérault a month later to line up under those of Robespierre. But, such agility could not inspire
confidence. As we have seen, it was he who, during the first dispute between Saint-Just and Deforgues,
had intervened to stop the discussion and protect the minister. This time, it was Saint-Just who had
taken him to task, declaring quite frankly that, with regard to the very singular doctrine of the minister (...)
and the negotiations with the neutral powers (...) the ideas supported here by Barère (...) had more or
less led the Committee astray.
According to the bulletin Drake-d'Antraigues, although suspended from his duties, Hérault de
Séchelles would have attended the conflict between Saint-Just and Deforgues. And, to lend his support
to the minister, he would have, the following days, told his friends that Saint-Just had proposed an
abandonment of the neutral powers and peace with the belligerent powers. Hence, “a fairly great
fermentation in the clubs”. And it is to reply to the false intentions attributed to him that Saint-Just would
have "allowed himself to deliver his speech to the printer". But immediately the Committee would have
decided to stop the flow of it as much as possible...
This publication story is hardly plausible. First, the "fermentation of the clubs" left no trace. And, as everyone
knows, no copy printed in France of this report has been found. But it would be going too far to hold that to be
unfounded. Whatever one says, the way in which the English agent William Drake catches fire, on receiving the
text communicated to him by his associate from Antraigues, remains significant.
I have not yet seen anything more interesting than Saint-Just's speech, this scoundrel must surely be a man
of talent; there is a lot of nerve, a lot of boldness and a lot of accuracy in what he says, in time he will be a
formidable rival for Robespierre.
Of course, he thought it good for British propaganda to spread such a text, which would "displease the neutral
powers". But he does not want to deliver it to the printer without the consent of the Count d'Antraigues: I ask your
opinion on this, because I will do nothing without your prior consent; and I will not release the document to anyone
until I receive your response. The article of the Republic of Genoa is very well treated there
18 .
In short, if the text of the report and its publication are doubtful, on the other hand, on the merits of the case –
the position attributed to Saint-Just, the conflict with Hérault de Séchelles and Deforgues – we touch on the truth.
Not only because d'Antraigues had informants in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but because the acts of the
Committee of Public Safety, signed by Saint-Just go into this
sense.
In addition to the important decrees that we have already mentioned, the other arrangements made during
the same period show Saint-Just intervening, especially with Carnot and Lindet, to detach international politics
from the hands that hold it and control it more closely.
On February 25, he granted passports and export rights to foreign traders like Schmidt and James Swan. On
March 2, with Barère and Collot d'Herbois, he signed the release of Reybaz, a resident of Geneva in France. On
the 5th, with Lindet, he had a decree adopted for the tanners of Basel. Then, on March 11, 14 and 23 (21, 24
Ventôse and 3 Germinal), he countersigned decrees regulating economic relations with foreign countries,
encouraging the export of luxury goods (except works of art) and the importation of colonial foodstuffs, but also
stipulating that the authorizations will no longer be issued by the Executive Council: because everything must
come back to the Committee of Public Safety.
Moreover, this economic policy corresponds to the constant ideas of Saint-Just on the subject. Not only, in his
speech of October 16, he already said: There are no more foreigners, it is better to do without luxury goods than
courage and virtue, but he will take up this classic theme of export reduced to surplus or luxury products, in its
speech of April 15 (26 Germinal).
5. HÉBERT 'S SECOND TURN .

During that time, what was Hébert doing?

After Saint-Just's speech on 8 Ventose, always cautious and moderate, Hébert tried hard to keep the
Cordeliers back, when Ronsin invited them, on March 2 (12 Ventose), to proclaim "the urgent and
necessary insurrection." Not without difficulty the director of Father Duchesne obtained that we content
ourselves with sending a deputation to the Assembly to demand the punishment of sixty deputies - in
particular Philippeaux, Bourdon de l'Oise and Desmoulins (Danton no longer appearing on the list men
to be shot for a few weeks) – but these cards, thrown away as a diversion, seemed the last.
Forty-eight hours later, as soon as the Cordeliers session opened, Momoro, who was presiding, had
the table of the Declaration of the Rights of Man covered with black crepe. It will remain veiled, he
announced, until the people have regained their sacred rights through the annihilation of the faction.
We resumed the process used, two months earlier, during the arrest of Vincent and Ronsin.
But, at the beginning of March, what could they openly complain about? Vincent protested, once
again, against the exclusion which Dufourny had imposed on him at the Jacobins. Returning from
Nantes, the Jacobin Carrier came to declare himself “frightened” by the “new faces” which he had seen
at the Mountain and the remarks which had “come to his ears”. He saw only one thing to do: insurrection.
Then Hébert ascended the rostrum to support his predecessors. Once again, he changed position.
Brutally, he branded "this faction which wants to save Brissot's accomplices, the sixty-one royalists".
And, after a few variations on this old theme, he condemns those who always put others first, who stand
behind the canvas, who, the more powers they have, the less satisfying they are, who want to reign! As
for himself, he declares that he imposed circumspection on himself for two months, but that he can no
longer restrain himself in the face of such men: In vain would they want to attack my freedom. I know
what they've been up to. I will find defenders.
As his listeners ask him for details and names, Hébert hides: You rightly reproach me for the prudence
that I have been forced to employ for three months. But did you notice what system of oppression was
directed against me ? And, to throw out a few names, he quotes that of Desmoulins, of Paré, Minister of
the Interior, of Deforgues, Minister of Foreign Affairs, whom he considers, according to a formula which
will be taken up after him, a "foreign minister for foreign affairs". ". Finally, he announces (in a sentence
so badly constructed that it will often be misinterpreted by his listeners 19) the forthcoming appointment
of Carnot-Feulint as Minister of War. For him, it's a disaster, because he considers the general "brother
of Carnot", as having to resuscitate the policy of Beurnonville and Dumouriez. Obviously, as he was
paid out of the funds of the Ministry of War, it was particularly important to him that the portfolio should
remain in the hands of a friend. Moreover, Westermann effectively maintaining friendly relations with
Danton, what were they going to do in the North?
Because it is this clan and the general security committee that he is targeting when he asks why we no
longer talk about the Chabot affair, and why Fabre d'Églantine has not yet been judged. He takes it out on
the appointed reporter, Amar, whom he considers the great doer, the instrument that claims to save the real
culprits from the avenging sword.
I don't know if the information on the Committee's projects was justified, but, on the other hand, one can
think that the criticisms about Chabot, Fabre d'Églantine and Amar did not come to him spontaneously and
that they had been whispered to him by a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
If we look for the source, what do we find? An eminent member of the Committee has written two draft
reports – one against Chabot and his acolytes, the other against Fabre d'Églantine and his friends – reports
which were discarded and the texts of which will not be published until after 9 Thermidor by Courtois.
Moreover, their author, a week after Hébert's speech, on March 16 (26 Ventôse), intervened at the
Convention to criticize and send back to the committees the report on the Chabot affair, finally presented by
Amar.
This man is Robespierre.
The one whose susceptibility we know, ulcerated by the refusal of his reports, should not have been
reluctant to seek support from the extra-parliamentary forces, after having been defeated in the committees.
He was not lacking in flexibility or promptness.
Moreover, the very nature of the texts – notably that on Fabre d'Églantine and the men of Baron de Batz
– reveals that Robespierre was quite complacent with regard to the Hébertists. Doesn't he blame Fabre for
having attacked Ronsin, Vincent, Bouchotte, Mazuel?
We understand better that, on March 16, Amar having told his neighbor that Robespierre was a "traitor",
such a qualifier reported to the person concerned, left him affected enough to come and complain about it
for five months. later, on 8 Thermidor, in a decisive session of the Committee. Especially since the story is
told by Barère who had strongly contributed to the dismissal of Amar's report on March 16. But the charge
of treason was aimed at more than parliamentary intervention for a referral to committee.
Seen from this angle, the illness that has kept Robespierre in his room since February 12 takes on a new
meaning: it appears to be a political attitude. In his retirement, Robespierre received numerous delegations
from the sections. He wanted to rely on Hébert and the man in the street, not being able to achieve his ends
with the committees. Moreover, Élie Lacoste will affirm that, "six months before Thermidor", Robespierre had
proposed to the two committees the suspension of the sessions of the Assembly, to break the impasse in
which they seemed to be engaged...
We understand then why Hébert changed his mind. Forty-eight hours earlier, he had again stopped the
call for insurrection; and now – on March 4 (14 Ventôse) – he launches it himself.
The insurrection, yes, the insurrection, he proclaims. And the Cordeliers will not be the last to give the signal
which must strike the oppressors.
Too distrustful to lead, personally, openly, the political intrigue, Robespierre was able to make act in
the direction that he wished an extra-parliamentary personality like the mayor of Paris, Pache. Because
the latter operates a lot in the shadows. All foreign intelligence agents, a Mallet du Pan as well as
informants from d'Antraigues, report the secret councils held for several months in the evenings at
Pache's. Not that Robespierre harbors any particular confidence or esteem for him. But the relations of
the Incorruptible follow the variations of the political situation.
Let us remember, finally, Hébert's attack against “the men who always put others first, who stand
behind the canvas? Who was he aiming at? Not a minister, nor a member of the committees, nor the
mayor of Paris, nor a pamphleteer journalist like Desmoulins, nor even a noisy Jacobin like Dufourny. All
these came before the limelight, well "in front of the canvas".
Here, the intelligence agents of Drake and Antraigues provide an answer with the name of Sieyès.
6. SECRET NEGOTIATIONS AND INSURRECTION.
The day before, March 3 (13 Ventôse), one of the royalist informants wrote to d'Antraigues:
At the Convention nothing equals the force of their intrigues and the underground passages they have
dug to hide from the sight of the patriots and to make them fall into ambushes... Each of the parties blames
the other for being the cause of the evils. The Dauphin could well be immolated in the shock, there is
every reason to believe it. Preparations for this are made as they were before the famous days of
September 2 and August 10... Pichegru would not march his troops 20 .
However, the decided insurrection failed miserably on March 5 (15 Ventose).
Only one section, that of Marat, led by Momoro, demonstrated publicly by going to the Commune to
express its demands. Received by Lubin, who was presiding, she heard, perhaps not without surprise, the
eulogy of the Committee of Public Safety and of Saint-Just, given by Chaumette and by Arthur, the
president of the Piques section.
How to explain that the breath of the Cordeliers gave only a small flame, easy to extinguish?
According to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, the very worried Committee would have decided to "coax"
the mass in order to avoid the dangers. And it is not forbidden to think that it was precisely by “coaxing” –
with money and promises – the leaders of the Commune and the sections, that the Committee put an
end to the projected insurrection.
The flash of March 5 diverted, the sky of Paris remained however stormy. The Committee could
still fear.
On March 6, at the Jacobins, Collot d'Herbois lifted a veil on the situation of the higher organ, deploring that
it had found itself dismembered by the absence of Billaud-Varennes and Jean-Bon-Saint André, the Couthon
and Robespierre disease. It was not very clever: fanning such news risked weakening an already compromised
authority. But the remark was perhaps not gratuitous, nor devoid of ulterior motive. For the man who was to
distinguish himself by burning Lyons and presiding over the Assembly on 9 Thermidor felt much more sympathy
for the opponents than for Robespierre and Saint-Just.
For the rest, although reduced to four or five members, the Committee stood firm. The same day, Barère
had obtained from the Convention that an inquiry be opened into "secret conspiracies abroad." And, by way of
answer, the next day, Collot d'Herbois was going to lead a delegation of Jacobins to the Cordeliers: tightening
the ties, after all, could be a way of tying a noose to strangle the Committee of Public Safety.
Robespierre had to come to terms with him and change his plan... Everyone wanted to have the extra-
parliamentary opposition on their side. But the cards passed from hand to hand. The game was tight. According
to an informant from d'Antraigues:
The aristocrats, after having pushed Hébert to declaim against Robespierre, now line up on his side,
generally declaiming with him against Hébert... Some claim that Danton is behind Hébert and that he presses
Father Duchesne to unleash against Robespierre... In this case, Danton would make a pact, would cede the
ground to some power... Also, in this conflict of factions, we see Hébert who wants the death of Fabre
d'Églantine and the other Convention members of this faction, wanting to make his own dominate over all the
others, Danton taking advantage of the momentary ascendancy of Hébert to crush all that can rival it and end
up crushing Hébert himself, which would not have been difficult for him in some respects , but luck having
turned, Robespierre having resisted the denunciation of Hébert, it is said that Danton will side with Robespierre
21 .
To defend themselves against a threatening and dangerous opposition as soon as it brought together the
extreme right and the extreme left, Robespierre and the Committee could only alternate provisional agreements
with one against the other.
This is indicated by the following bulletin from Drake :
22 On the evening of the 9th, Robespierre and the Abbé Sieyès retired to Choisy with some of the leaders
of their partisans to take the last means of avoiding the danger which threatened them. , and wait there for the
outcome of Danton and Barère's negotiations with the municipality, and the leaders of the Cordeliers club. On
the morning of the 10th, Hébert, Pache, and Chaumette went to Choisy. The party of the Convention granted
them, in order to obtain peace, to have the municipality pay 2,200,000 livres on the one hand, under the pretext
of extraordinary supply costs, and to lend 100,000 écus to Hébert, and 800,000 to the club. Cordeliers. Peace
or rather the truce was concluded at this price !
However, a little further on, the same bulletin notes that “the reconciliation between the two parties did not
last long”. It is difficult to judge the value of information. If it was established
that Robespierre and the Committee indeed held many meetings in Choisy whose mayor, Vaugeois, was the
brother-in-law of the carpenter Duplay (and, consequently, the uncle of Le Bas), on the other hand, the talks of
Danton and Barère, the visits and the large sums paid to Hébert have hardly left a trace. It is only noted, in the
Acts of the Committee of Public Safety, the granting to the municipality figures would be inaccurate, but the case
23
not devoid of (which is rare) with an advance of fifteen thousand pounds, on March 7th. Thus, the date and the
foundation.
Because, how publicly evolves Hébert, at this time?

On March 11 (21 Ventôse), the director of Père Duchesne covers the walls of Paris with a poster
where he defends himself against "calumny".
It is true that he has just been caught in a case of "black market". Oh, scandal! At the home of someone who
has always waged a violent campaign against hoarding, we found a recent package containing twenty-four pounds
of salted bacon! In his poster, he claims that it is an "atrocity" committed against him. As far as the Cordeliers are
concerned, he pretends to confuse the veil recently worn over the Declaration of the Rights of Man with that laid
down in January for the release of Vincent de Ronsin. This allows him to approve the gesture while modifying its
meaning: Far from being a sign of revolt against national representation, this courageous act was on the contrary
accompanied by the most energetic measures to defend the National Convention and support the national
government that a new system of moderantism tended to paralyze. Finally, to complete the lie, he affirms that he
never denounced "a patriot", whom he is careful not to name, but for whom, according to him, he "never showed
anything but the highest esteem ". Of course, all the press reports are disavowed and called "turpitudes" of "vile
follicles".
The next day, he took up the same themes again, not without awkwardness, at the Cordeliers. But he was
overwhelmed by the movement he chaired. The same day, a deputation from the Cordeliers was to once again
renew to the Jacobins "the assurance of the most intimate fraternity" and announce that the veil thrown over the
Declaration of the Rights of Man had been lifted. The journalist, demi-hébertiste, Charles Duval, who chaired the
meeting, declared that the Jacobins saw with the greatest pleasure the Cordeliers contributing with them, as they
had always done, to save public affairs.
A new offensive was preparing.
24
At the same time, according to the bulletin of Antraigues , Robespierre Couthon, Barère, Saint-Just, Billaud-
Varenne, Pache and Sieyès held a decisive meeting at Choisy. The strange mayor of Paris, Pache, who had
strong ties with the Hebertists, provided proof that a serious plot was being prepared on that side.
The discussion was long. At three o'clock in the morning, the Committee held a new session in Paris.
If the informant is to be believed, what happened? Distraught, Robespierre and Couthon said that there was no
than one solution: to leave France and take refuge in the country to cheer United States. So, trying to find more
them up, Sieyès launched into a long analysis: for him, all the trouble came from the fact that England got along
with the hebertists. They planned to put Louis XVII on the throne, under their regency council. In exchange for this
and the dissolution of the Convention, Pitt would conclude
peace, would recognize the new government and have it accepted by Europe. For him, one conclusion was
obvious: it was necessary "to get rid of all the prisoners of the Temple". According to royalist informants, the
Abbé de Sieyès mainly insisted on this measure, assuring the Committee that the object of Mr. Pitt's
negotiations would always be the recognition of Louis XVII, because his childhood left a free field open to all
speculation. from England ; but that at the same time this power, well resolved to destroy the house of
Bourbon, would never lend itself to recognizing or allowing to be recognized as a king one of the emigrant
princes of the family of the Bourbons; that thus the Committee should think that the death of Louis XVII was
perhaps the salvation of the Republic, because this event would immediately change the nature of the war
25 .
To answer this serious question, we would have voted: but out of eight voters, there would have been only
two yeses and six noes. Thereupon Robespierre attempted to conclude; but tired, unable to do so, it was
Saint-Just who ended by summarizing the resolutions taken.
It was he who was entrusted with the task of making the speech and reading it to the judges and
committees, before delivering it to the Assembly. We would have fixed the key phrase in common: We
recognize only one way to stop evil, it is to immolate without pity on the tomb of the tyrant all who regret
tyranny and all who would be interested in the avenge, anything that can revive her among us.
7. DEFIING ALL ATTACKS.
In the afternoon, Saint-Just went up to the podium of the Convention to read his report "on the
foreign factions and on the conspiracy hatched by them".
Is it to make the alarm he has just sounded more resounding, through the histrionics of an orator or, more
simply, because he cannot hide the vertigo he experiences as he skirts an abyss in the fog? More than ever,
he punctuates his speech by making the beating of a heart seized by anguish heard.
I come... today to pay you, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, the severe tribute of the love of
the fatherland. (...) I come to tell you, without any consideration, bitter truths, veiled until today. The voice of a
peasant from the Danube was not despised in a corrupt senate: we can therefore dare to say everything to
you, the friends of the people and the enemies of tyranny.
In the middle of his analysis of the situation, he stops again: I
don't know if anyone would dare to tell you all these things, if he felt in no way guilty or complicit in the ills
of his country. I speak to you with the frankness of a probity determined to undertake everything, to say
everything for the salvation of the country. Probity is a power that defies all attacks.
And then, at another moment:
If the foreigner prevails, if vices triumph, if other great ones have taken the place of the first, if the tortures
do not pursue the hidden conspirators, let us flee into nothingness, or into the bosom of the deity:
there is neither happiness nor virtue to hope for on earth.
Because, for Saint-Just, suicide in the ancient way must even be considered: What
friends do you have on earth, if not the people, as long as they are free, and the hemlock, when they have
ceased? of being.
Here, for him, is the essential, truly alarming question: on whom, on what can we rely?
And, much more than the trial of a conspiracy, it draws up that of the system or, if one prefers, of the society in
which he must live and act. It's the gap between the idealism of his adolescence and the brutally discovered
reality that inspires him with vertigo, it's the exercise of power that makes him gag. If he considers his judgment
"rough" and not devoid of "courage", it is because he pronounces it without concession to the forces of the
moment or to public opinion.
However, this indictment to which the next day will give a particular meaning is not aimed at anyone by name.
Clearly, he only cites men who have already been arrested, such as Chabot and Proly. But, as we have seen,
he attacks the social categories which, in order to develop or acquire advantages, make use of the means of
Tartufe. He attacks the faction protected from abroad with its various parties (...) which collide and combine their
lightning and their blows to strike the people. In his eyes, a large number of people seem to be serving the
conspiracy: There they buried foodstuffs, intercepted the arrivals through anxiety; there the citizens were
embittered by seditious speeches. There are men of intelligence with foreign countries; there are others deceived
by various pretexts.
These attacks affected Dantonists almost as much as Hebertists. Admittedly, Saint-Just knows it well, and
underlines it: such people can put on the costumes of different parties, but they are only opposed in appearance,
because he adds:
... all plots are united; it is the waves which seem to flee from each other, and yet which mingle. The faction
of the indulgent, who want to save the criminals, and the faction of the foreigner, who is howling because they
cannot do otherwise without unmasking themselves, but who turn severity against the defenders of the people;
all these factions meet at night to plan their attacks of the day; they seem to fight each other so that opinion is
divided between them; they then come together to stifle freedom between two crimes.
For the rest, for him, no hesitation: Every party wants evil in the founded Republic. (...) When a
gone, there is a new trap, whatever color it takes.
One fact, for Saint-Just, leaves no doubt: the faction of the foreigner is that "which shows itself howling", in
other words that of Hébert. He also gives images of the latter when he declares: This one disguises himself who
has declared himself the leader of an opinion and who, when this party has the bottom, declaims, to deceive
his judges and the people , against his own opinion. Or else: What merit do you have in being patriots when you
are lavished with goods, when a pamphlet brings you thirty thousand francs a year, when you oppress the
citizens? For who had been denounced as affecting his journal of the secret funds of a ministry, if not Hébert by
Desmoulins? Finally, it is a portrait of Father Duchesne that he seems to be doing when he declares:
A haggard eye, a writing without naivety, but dark and stilted where, by a trap set perhaps for a long
time, freedom is burlesque, is this then all the merit of patriotism ? It is the foreigner who sows these
faults; and he too is a revolutionary against the people, against republican virtue; it is revolutionary in
the sense of crime.
On several occasions, he deplores the slackness of popular societies, invaded by businessmen,
schemers and officials. Aiming clearly at the Cordeliers, he said:
Ever since popular societies have been filled with artful beings, who come clamoring for their
elevation to the legislature, to the ministry, to the generalate: since there are in these societies too
many functionaries, too few citizens, the people suck there.
He discovers that in such a world “everyone wants to govern, nobody wants to be a citizen”. Beyond
the factions, it is a state of mind that he incriminates. He thought he was living in a democracy and he
realizes that the oligarchies prevail. For the plot, he provides very little information. According to him,
"a large number seem to serve the conspiracy". This, prepared by foreigners (especially the English),
has been known "for a long time" by the Committee of Public Safety. The plan provides for the
annoyance of public opinion by the diversion of supplies. The British government stops its major
offensives to better allow the conspirators to act, reserving to intervene at the decisive moment. The
government must be annihilated and replaced by a regency which "would have spared and promised
the return of the Bourbons". Who was to ensure this regency? On this, Saint-Just seems to have no
precise information. This idea of a chief, he says, seized the ridiculous hope of some characters who
already believe to see themselves on the shield: the fatherland is already divided between the
conspirators, flattered by the hope of a great fortune.
On the other hand, on the monetary means of the plot, he is more
precise: There are three billion assignats printed in Brussels and Frankfurt, and allocated to the
property of the patriots of France, with whom we were to establish Republican assignats exchange
offices in all 26 districts
.
But it goes no further. He wraps this information in the general considerations that we have already
seen, and in others where he even defends his notion of happiness, which is not, he says, that of
Persepolis, but that of Sparta and Athens. . Once again, it puts infras and extras in the
same bag:
What do you want, you who don't want virtue to be happy ? What do you want, you who do not want
terror against the wicked ? What do you want, O you who, without virtue, turn terror against freedom ?
And yet you are in league, for all the crimes stand together and form at this moment a torrid zone
around the Republic.
In short, the speech marks above all a return to the Terror. Since the effort to get out of it has failed,
being exploited in the wrong way by the two oppositions, it is now necessary, he says, "to wage war
against rampant corruption". Particularly attacking foreigners – Italians, Neapolitans, English –
which rage in the clubs and the corridors of the ministries, it seems to target the agents of Hérault de
Séchelles.
Of course, revelations are promised for the next day: In a few
days you will be given a report on the personages who conspired against the fatherland: the criminal
factions will be unmasked, we surround them. The interest of the people and of justice does not allow
you to be told more and does not allow you to be told less, because the law that I am proposing to you
was immediate, and had to be motivated.
The decree in question enumerates the cases of treason, prevarication or agitation, subject to arrest
and punishable by death. On the other hand, the decree sets new rules for civil servants inside and
outside. In this respect, he agrees with the famous disputed report, by stipulating that the constituted
authorities [i.e., among others, the ministries] may not send any commissioner inside or outside the
Republic without the express authorization of the Committee of Public Safety After having read his
27
report to .
the Assembly, Saint-Just went, accompanied by Robespierre, to the Jacobins. There, perhaps not
without ulterior motive, Couthon, who was presiding, invited Saint-Just to "give knowledge" of his text.
Criticizing the popular societies quite strongly, Saint-Just must not have wanted much to submit his
text to the members of the club.
He went up to the podium to say that he was sorry, but that his text was in print... Then the audience
inviting him to send a clerk, he had to bow... The new hearing of the report was a great success for its
author, according to the Journal des Jacobins. “It is difficult, we read, to describe the attention caused
by Saint-Just's speech. He was often interrupted by the liveliest and most heartfelt applause. »
During the night, the arrests began with that of Hébert, at four o'clock in the morning.
The reactions to the Cordeliers club provoked others in the sections. Wasn't there talk of holding a
demonstration at the Commune (among those in the Marat section, for example) or even going door
to door to invite citizens to come out in favor of Hébert and his friends (notably in the section of French
Pantheon)? As for the Cordeliers, a man having asked the question: “Isn't it true that the insurrection
was preached in this tribune”, “no” were shouted from all sides.
Fortunately, to contain public opinion, the Committee had the press at its disposal. Thus, the report of
this meeting of the Cordeliers only appeared in a form established by Rousselin, head of the "bureau
de l'esprit public" at the Ministry of the Interior, according to the report of the policeman on duty. Where
the latter had noted that the public held in the negative when answering the question on the
28
insurrection, Rousselin corrected and had it printed in the newspapers: .»
To influence and contain public opinion, the Committee also used the oral route. For example, at
the last session of the Cordeliers, chaired by Momoro, "a citizen having disapproved of Hébert's
conduct, Vincent cried out that the women had to be purged, because there were some among them
who were paid to insult Father Duchesne”. Whereupon a citizen rose to shout:
“Yes, prank, I am paid by you to smack you. And, addressing Marat's sister and friend, she added that "the
scoundrels who were there were trying to ruin them and deceive them." Then, exasperated, Vincent shouted:
"You just have to chase away all those spinning tops!" But, taking the lead, the knitter got up and theatrically
left the room to the applause of the “women of the Hébert et Cie29 party ”. Alongside these women-with-history,
talkative strollers were made to talk on the street corners who, under the guise of expressing a personal
sentiment, warmly approved of the Committee of Public Safety.
According to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, to pay for this propaganda, Robespierre would have paid eight
hundred thousand pounds 30 .
It is certain, in any case, that hebertism did not form a homogeneous block and had to be handled with great
care. Its ramifications went in all directions. The mayor of Paris, Pache, would be seriously implicated. And, it
is significant that, among the four hundred witnesses heard during the investigation, two childhood comrades
of Saint-Just, Daubigny and Gateau, came to defend the soldiers involved. In his capacity as assistant to the
Minister of War, Daubigny claimed to have heard certain men in the offices speak of a faction wanting to follow
in Brissot's footsteps, and to conclude that the Convention should get rid of them, moreover that the popular
societies should have met to present a petition to this effect to the Assembly. Better still, five days later, on
March 18 (28 Ventôse), Gateau – the one who would remain faithful to Saint-Just beyond 9 Thermidor – had
come to defend Vincent 31 by presenting him as a “warm friend of the
,
freedom ".
Obviously, individual guilt is always delicate and difficult to establish in this kind of trial. But there, the tracks
were going to be all the more muddled as most of the witnesses for the prosecution would seek, by appearing
before the court, to exploit the trial for political ends.
The other opposition, the Dantonist, would endeavor to present itself as a victim of the Hébertists, to exculpate
itself of any attachment and reinforce its prestige. In some cases, she would even try to reach the Committee
of Public Safety by gang. This is why Dufourny would ask the Jacobins that the testimonies be noted on the
"tachograph" in order to be minutely and faithfully reproduced and so that the provinces could be well informed.
However, not only will the request be rejected by Robespierre and Couthon, but the two printed accounts of
the trial will be so falsified, for political reasons, that the surviving witnesses at 9 Thermidor will complain about
it violently during the judgment of Fouquier Tinville.
All of this seriously obscures the truth.
8. THE HEBERTISTS MONARCHIST AGENTS.

Saint-Just, meanwhile, will not hesitate. Speaking of Hébert, in his speech against Danton, he will say:
The covered partisan of royalty declaimed against the banks and supped every evening with the bankers.
This last feature is certain. All the wheeler-dealers who will be judged with Hébert maintained good relations with
him. The Dutch banker, Jean Conrad de Kock had often received Hébert and his friends at his beautiful property in
Passy. And Jacob Pereyra, Anarchasis Clootz, Berthold Proly, Desfieux all displayed ultra-revolutionary ideas to
better conduct their commercial or financial enterprises.
As for Hébert's royalism, the Comte d'Antraigues' Paris correspondents spoke of it extensively, well before the
trial, in their letters in sympathetic ink. These passages which – unless I am mistaken – have not been noted by
historians, deserve special consideration. Because, if they were printed tracts, one might think they were written by
royalists to sow discord, trouble among the Montagnards and blind the revolution. But those who wrote these letters,
assuming a risk, took every precaution so that they were not seized or deciphered. In reality, the information only
seems, here and there, to be influenced by the fear, so frequent among royalists, of being tricked by a member of the
royal family and a foreign power that escapes them.
Because what does the secret agent say?
October 29: I believe in what I have often said: Pache, the leaders of the Cordeliers and Hébert are for the princes
32 .
February
10: Hébert, Chaumette and the municipality seem to give headlong into the system of destruction that I suppose
33 .
the English March 7: I told you formerly
that Hébert, Chaumette and the others... were in correspondence in Lyons with the big brother and all this family;
I still believe it. Follow that. Certainly Hébert and the municipality are in agreement with some powers... From one
moment to another, they can give us a master who would disconcert many ambitious views from outside... Some
decision is being hatched. I can't tell you more
34 .
Finally, on March 17, when the affair broke out, but before the trial, the informant wrote: It has been more than six
months since I knew that Hébert, Pache, Chaumette and others from the municipality were in correspondence with
the emigrants from Switzerland. Now the great conspiracy has just broken out, been discovered.
After sighing that he has “no more heart to write”, the correspondent of d'Antraigues continues: I see that the blow
dealt to Hébert and his faction hits Pitt and the English system at the same time. The municipality was constantly the
agent of the English... As a result of their system of corruption, the English made use of this municipality, after having
caused the death of the King and Queen, to thwart the princes and deprive them of their rights. The Pitt therefore
wanted to make money for a regency at will during which he would have had all the influence
35 .
Once again, on March 24, the intelligence agent focuses on the fact that this scoundrel Father
Duchesne, like Bouchotte and Pache, had friends in the Vendée and in Brittany; than in Brest
Above all, he had intelligence with the help of which he hoped to deliver this port, as he had delivered
that of Toulon ...
...
As the confidential bulletins drawn by d'Antraigues maintained – although with less precision and
insistence – the accusation of relations between England and the Hebertists, agent William Drake,
intermediary with London, reacted, but not without caution. . "I doubt very much," he wrote to
d'Antraigues on April 18, "that all this is correct, because I know that we are very" To his knowledge,
circumspect37 . London had hardly employed politicians in France,
“except Dumouriez, he acknowledged, and perhaps
Marat...” Obviously, it is the rule never to recognize secret agents, especially when they fail.
Even with regard to a Mallet du Pan who notoriously works for Great Britain in Switzerland, Drake
will feign ignorance. "This Mallet du Pan of whom you are speaking to me," he wrote to d'Antraigues,
"is only known to me through a few pamphlets he has written .. " agent for England.
Moreover, in the few lines he addressed to Lord Grenville when forwarding him the bulletin from
Antraigues, Drake was careful not to dispute the information. On the contrary, he warned London
“that it will be proven when they have been guillotined” how the Hebertists maintained relations with
Pitt.
That said, curiously enough this royalist story came back to the ears of the Committee of Public
Safety. I say to the ears, because it is not following a seizure and a deciphering of letter, that Billaud-
Varenne declares to the Jacobins, on March 14 (24 Ventôse), that is to say the evening of the arrest
of the Hebertists: This conspiracy had far-reaching ramifications. We have learned from today's
correspondence that a counter-revolutionary in the Constituent Assembly had said in a foreign country
that in five or six days a conspiracy would break out in France which would stifle liberty.
This former Constituent residing abroad, who was it if not the Comte d'Antraigues, installed in
Venice? Going to chat in the salons with his lovely wife, he had been able to express his hopes.
He knew perhaps as much as the correspondent whom we have quoted (Abbé Brottier, no doubt)
about the decision that was being “engineered”. A Vendéen like the Comte de Puisaye belonged to
39
the network . However, Puisaye's eldest brother found himself very close to the Hébertist Momoro, of whom he
of Antraigues shared the wife, which enabled his family to obtain certificates and useful information
cheaply. And, in the pocket of a Vendéan taken prisoner, in July, was found a manifesto written by
the Comte de Puisaye and dated March 10 (20 Ventôse), expressing the hope of "seeing all the
French abjure their errors and their vengeance around the throne where they will have replaced a
young prince”.
MP de Sainte-Claire Deville 40 cites the fact to support the fragile hypothesis of a kidnapping of
Louis XVII at the Temple. But if everything suggests that the child prisoner has not changed during this
March, on the other hand, everything suggests that a major operation was planned for the middle of the month.
This is the conspiracy that has been talked about so much.
Only, the coup d'etat being able to succeed only thanks to one of these provisional amalgams, where one
agrees rather against than for, the ulterior motives of the participants were not always to agree.
Nevertheless, there William Drake shared d'Antraigues' hopes. After receiving the first information bulletins
for the month of March, he wrote to this one: The state of Paris is such as we should have wished and it seems
to me that the wind is good everywhere; God grant that we know how to take advantage Of course, for him, 41 .
the Vendeans had to play a decisive role. For his part, the Swiss intelligence agent - hated by those in
d'Antraigues and who returned the favor - announced in his letter to London in February, which we have already
quoted, the great uprising for the mi
March.
According to d'Antraigues' confidential sheet, the Minister of the Interior had told the Committee of Public
Safety on March 4 that Hébert and the Commune were preparing a plot in which they were going to "liberate
the prisoners." For them, the moment of renewal of the Committee of Public Safety would be the moment of
insurrection.
This renewal of the Committee was to take place around March 15. As for the Cordeliers, a friend of Hébert
and Momoro, Chenaux, expressed great hope by writing, in a letter to a friend on March 8 (18 Ventôse): Paris
is always at the mercy of intriguers; but one more moment and all the intriguers will disappear... We will take up
42 .
arms, and our triumph is assured
The plan to free the prisons is confirmed by the account of Robespierre's doctor, Dr. Souberbielle. This one
will tell that, at the same time, Ronsin and Vincent had invited him in a coffee to propose to him to take part in
their coup d'etat with a vast massacre to open the doors of the prisons. Whereupon, indignant, Souberbielle
having gone to find Robespierre, the latter would have flew into a rage and would have cried: "Revolutions
have horrible aspects!... Always blood!... Haven't we had enough? already widespread! Must the Republic
devour itself? »
As, at the same time, he found himself warned by one of his informants – Gravier – against the insurrection
that the Hebertists were preparing, Robespierre had decided to give up the illness. No more kindnesses for
the Ronsins, Vincent and others. All these holders of the Parisian armed forces could take advantage of his
complacent retirement to lose him. Finally, Pache, as we have seen, would have revealed to him the secrets of
the plot.
9. CONDEMNATION OF HÉRAULT DE SÉCHELLES.
Shortly after, Hérault de Séchelles lost face. Already denounced, it had been seriously compromised,
towards the end of December, by the bulletin of Antraigues, seized in Toulon in the form of a letter
from Las Casas to the Duke of Alcudia.
One can even wonder why the arrest of Hérault was not decided immediately.
Buchez and Roux collected testimony on this subject: that of Gravenreuth, president of the regency of
Augsburg, under the Empire. According to him, it was rather Billaud-Varenne who transmitted the
information. His letters, assures the note, passed through Venice and Toulon to go to Spain with which he
got along. At the capture of Toulon, an unsigned correspondence was seized on Spanish officers (...),
containing information that only a member of the Committee could provide. It was given to Robespierre,
who went among his colleagues and told them that he suspected that there was a traitor among them, that
he had proof of it. Thereupon he showed them. Then Billaud, to avert the blow which threatened him,
exclaimed that only Hérault de Sechelles was capable of such conduct. This gave rise to the trial of the
latter 43 .
To explain the gap between the discovery of the letter in Toulon and the indictment, the bulletin
44
Drake-d'Antraigues provides a plausible explanation. According to this secret note , Deforgues had
kept the letters written by Las Casas to the Duke of Alcudia communicating them only to Robespierre and
the Abbé Sieyès who did not believe they had to indict Hérault de Séchelles. However, events caused the
holders of the coin to exhibit it. So, adds the bulletin, Robespierre wanted to make the report (...), but
Saint-Just asked to be put in charge of it and he obtained it from the Committee. Hadn't he been one of
the first to denounce Hérault?
And then, contrary to public appearance, Saint-Just did not always maintain good relations with
Robespierre. The previous bulletin from Drake-d'Antraigues affirms, without hesitation, that Robespeirre
"will soon have a formidable rival" on the Committee of Public Safety: it will be Saint-Just, who truly seems
to have much more talent than Robespierre. For, according to royalist informants, Robespierre lacked
courage and genius: Without Abbé Sieyès, who was attached to him, he would have lost all influence long
ago.
This presence of Sieyès at certain meetings of the Committee initially surprised historians, but well.
45
facts invite us to consider it exact and Oh ! certainly, the agents of Drake and Antraigues are not
unfavorable. They hold him to be the most wicked man who has ever existed... the most ferocious in
France... He wants, they say, to govern those whom by his advice he leads to supreme authority. He found
that at Robespierre, and most certainly he won't find it at Saint-Just.
So, on March 14 (15 Ventôse), the Committee of Public Safety and that of General Security decided to
arrest Hérault de Séchelles and Simmond du Mont Blanc. And, forty-eight hours later, Saint-Just ascended
the podium of the Convention to announce and justify the measure taken.
This report is one of the shortest and weakest written by Saint-Just. Obviously, it was difficult to found
the first charge on the letter of Las Casas, this one having been seized several months before without
leading to the arrest of Hérault. Also, Saint-Just quickly slips on this in the middle of his speech. According
to him, "for about four months" the Committee had informed Hérault that it would no longer deliberate in
its presence, that it was regarded as a friend of the foreigner, and as
suspected for having demanded, with tears in his eyes, the freedom of Proly, having seized the diplomatic papers of the
Committee, having compromised them in such a way that they were printed in the newspapers and distributed outside.
And Saint-Just says nothing more. As the first ground for indictment, he gives the discovery at Hérault's house of
"a man accused of emigration" wanted by the Lepeletier section, and the fact that, forcing the guards, Hérault and
Simmond, went to speak to him in prison, in order to , believes the rapporteur, to give the culprit the watchword in
the investigation of his trial. As for Simmond, he reproaches him for having been, in Strasbourg, "the friend and
supporter of Schneider" (the former Austrian Hebertist priest who raged as a public prosecutor), but he slips on
the mission of Hérault and Simmond at Mont Blanc, the latter only proving in his eyes that they have "never ceased
to act in concert" and "that they are accomplices".
In short, the indictment is rather distressingly poor in argument. To conclude, Saint-Just invokes Roman civic
morality and the ways of destiny: “The senate of Rome was honored by the virtue with which it struck down
Catiline, a senator himself. »
The superficial character of the charges finds no compensation in the form.
Devoid of vigorous features, striking shortcuts, this one does not have its usual movement.
To what should we attribute this total mediocrity? Hasty writing? To the embarrassment for the Committee to
open a shutter on its internal affairs? In the absence of indisputable proof? Undoubtedly on these three conditions.
In his speech against Danton and his friends – which is a veritable gallery of portraits – Saint Just will retrace
the figure of Hérault with an agile and hard line: Hérault was serious in the bosom of the Convention, buffoon
elsewhere, and laughed without stops to apologize for not saying anything. As the adversaries of the Committee
sought to benumb it with work, the one among us who always accepted power with the greatest joy was Hérault,
the accomplice of Fabre and of the foreigner. Having placed himself at the head of diplomatic affairs, he made
every effort to fan the plans of the government. Through him, the most secret deliberations of the Committee on
Foreign Affairs were communicated to enemy governments. He made several trips to Dubuisson, in Switzerland,
to conspire there under the seal of the Republic. And Saint-Just recalls the letters from Las Casas...
,
But, when he will appear before court 46 with the Dantonists, Hérault will not provide any additional information
through his answers. Recognizing "having been appointed with Barère to direct the operations of diplomacy", he
does not speak of his exclusion from the Committee in December.
(Besides, the letter he addressed to the latter, the day after his arrest, did not allude to it either; he expressed his
great astonishment, asked to be heard, thereby confirming that it was a question of 'arrest, rather than a dismissal.)
In front of the judge, he will say:

With regard to diplomatic operations, I have done nothing on my own, and if it happened to me, like any other of
my colleagues, to propose some plan, I have always submitted it to the sanction of my collaborators, and I believe
they are all too friends of the truth to dispute this fact, and to accuse me of having involved them in
my opinion. With regard to the alleged communications of plans from the French government to the
enemy governments, I defy to represent the least clue, the least adminicule capable, I am not saying of
convincing myself, but only of making me suspect of these communications.
The former lawyer who became the accused was not lacking in audacity! And, as he was asked if it
was not he who had sent Dubuisson to Switzerland, he immediately replied that it was not he but
Deforgues. Obviously, the minister had to sign the mission order; but who was in contact with Dubuisson
and who had suggested that he be sent to Switzerland?
However, the presiding judge did not stop at this case, he wanted to answer Hérault's question: “You
are asking for proof, he said, I will produce unequivocal evidence for you. And, if we are to believe the
official report, the judge reads a passage from Las Casas' letter to Hénin, but modifying it, supplementing
it so that it speaks of the "foxes of the Diplomatic Committee", informants from abroad, in particular
Hérault who "acquits himself very skilfully" of this work and "removes himself as far as he can from the
revolutionary tribunal". Now, neither in the letter from Las Casas nor in the bulletin from Drake-d'Antraigues
there was any mention of Hérault de Séchelles. After which, the judge read a few lines from the bulletin
of Antraigues transmitted by Clément de Campos to the duke of Alcudia, on July 31, but, this time, more
faithfully, without supplement.
It is easy for Hérault to reply that the "content of these letters sufficiently indicates that they were
fabricated abroad only to make the patriots suspect and lose them." And, even, to pride himself on having
“maintained with Barthélémy an important neutrality with the Swiss”, whereas – as we have seen – he
had pushed the ambassador in the opposite direction.
In short, the condemnation of Hérault seems to have been pronounced without proof of his guilt being
able to be established or confessions obtained. Yet – apart from the blatant lies – from what can be read
on these letters in sympathetic ink from the royalist agents, it appears that he was strongly linked to them.
When one of d'Antraigues' main informants, Lemaître (who writes under the pseudonym of Le Traine) is
47 . So he
arrested, it is said that Hérault de Séchelles is acting for the release of his friend who was
indeed attached to the clandestine network. On the other hand, an intelligence agent like Mallet du Pan
wrote, as early as February 16, in London, that Hérault remained "in the Committee for fear of making
himself suspect by detaching himself from it", convinced that he was walking " on a razor blade. Better,
according to the Swiss informant, to maintain good relations with his colleagues of the Committee, Hérault
had placed at their disposal the private mansion of his cousin Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau. The house
had, it seems, become a place "where the infernal gods gather and indulge in the most villainous
debauchery".
Thus, the young Hérault, endowed with means, greedy for pleasure and power, no longer believing in
anything – except in Lavater's theory on physiognomy – had wanted to play a great Machiavellian game.
But with the game, he lost his life.
10. THE NEW FORM OF GOVERNMENT.
The elimination of Hérault de Séchelles could not improve Deforgues' relationship with Saint-Just.
The latter, according to the bulletin Drake-d'Antraigues, having asked the minister, "with great bitterness",
where the negotiations with Sweden were going, Deforgues, by way of answer, invoked the difficulties
of diplomatic relations. This made Saint-Just jump up and, once again, strongly insult the minister.
According to royalist informants, for two days he had so frightened the Committee about the
provisional executive power that he took what he asked for, by having the ministries decided to be
abolished and replaced by the commissions of choice of the Salvation Committee. audience.
It was Carnot who, as rapporteur, had the Convention ratify unanimously the decree establishing
new government arrangements.
As during the same period many decisions of the Committee of Public Safety were signed by Saint-
Just and Carnot, it is not forbidden to think that the specialist in war and the theoretician of institutions
worked together. In the new organization, the six ministries being replaced by twelve commissions
directly attached to the Committee of Public Safety, and responsible for executing the policy fixed by it,
Deforgues lost his portfolio.
Undoubtedly, the bulletin of Antraigues is not entirely wrong in presenting Deforgues as protected by
Sieyès and Robespierre. The minister's good relations with the Incorruptible left a trace in the letter he
will address to him from prison: I
cannot renounce your old friendship, because I have always deserved your esteem... You must be
yourself. even my guarantor, you have been so during the most interesting periods of my political career.
I remembered with pride that, when I told you that the Committee of Public Safety wanted to take me to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you exclaimed: “It's not possible! but are we saved then? I attributed, with
good reason, this exclamation to the confidence you had in my devotion more than in my talents .
.
And, Deforgues assures us that he was not particularly devoted to Danton, but that he wanted to play
the "painful role of conciliator", having often met "patriots who tore themselves apart for lack of knowing
each other". He reminds Robespierre how he reconciled him with Barère and how, after despising each
other, they are now fighting "under the same flag". Also, in postscript, Deforgues asks Robespierre to
communicate his letter to Barère, but he does not speak of Saint Just.
In the leaflet 49
that he will publish to defend himself, after 9 Thermidor, Deforgues will present
himself, according to the fashion of the moment, as an heroic defender of the poor victims of the Terror.
Of course, in order not to go into detail, he will affirm, with haughtiness and disdain, that he does not
need that we take into account the good he has been able to do, the evil he has prevented, of the "open
resistance" which he "opposed to tyrants", nor of the victims which he wrested from the Billauds, the Collots, the
Robespierre. But, one wonders why Deforgues does not follow the fashion which always evokes the
monstrous "triumvirate" of Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois and Saint-Just. Why does he remove the last
name, when he gives that of a man he considered himself a friend? Perhaps because it was appropriate
then to spit particularly hard on the corpses of those with whom one passed for having maintained good
relations. A Daubigny will act in the same way with regard to his childhood friend Saint-Just.
That said, why did the two committees decree the arrest of Deforgues on April 2 (13 Germinal)? Not
only are we imprisoning the former minister in Luxembourg, but we are putting him incommunicado. The
same day, Saint-Just and Carnot sign a decree stipulating that each minister must give the list of his
employees and heads of offices. Better still, during the course of the month, a circular will announce the
examination of the special funds of the ministry: The statements of expenses will be verified with the
. Republic.
accuracy and the scrupulous attention required by the interests of50the
But the modification of the governmental structure does not explain the severe arrest of a man who
had good and old relations in the two committees. It is perhaps the curious affair of Foresta, Grand Cross
of Malta, who lost Deforgues.
Albert Mathiez is, I believe, the first to have stopped at this story which evokes a Drake bulletin from
Antraigues and which Las Casas recounts in his letter to Hénin of May 9. According to the Spanish
ambassador in Venice, Foresta, a great friend of Hébert and Deforgues, had left Paris on March 10 for
Constantinople with the sum of five million intended for Poland, but the Salvation Committee public,
having found letters from him in Hébert's papers, had him arrested at Genoa. After painstaking research,
Mathiez had been able to get hold of the National Archives only on Foresta's passport, signed by
Deforgues on March 10, charging the person concerned "with a government mission in a foreign country".
The secret information was therefore confirmed but not completed.
Also the historian could write: “I did not find the parts relating to this mission, but a” Well! these parts were
another researcher may be happier than I 51 the Acts . simply in
of the Committee of Public Safety. On February 25, Saint-Just, Barère, Prieur, Carnot, Lindet and Collot
d'Herbois signed a decree charging a mission to Malta and Genoa Foresta, Grand Cross of the Order of
Malta, surrounded by Flachat, Fiquet and Mannessier. They had to negotiate a rapprochement with Malta,
to use its neutrality, and pass subsistence markets in Genoa 52 . And, on March 4, the same members of
the Committee signed new decrees to confirm the instructions given to the persons in charge of mission
and to authorize them to receive twenty-five thousand pounds from the subsistence commission. Alongside
the economic relations, one had to think of a great European political operation. In his letter of April 3, the
English agent William Drake estimated that the Jacobins were losing ground in Genoa. "The scoundrel
Tilly, he wrote, missed his mark by too many" And, for his part, the correspondent in Paris of d'Antraigues,
precipitation 53
. the Abbé Brottier, spoke of
the "conspiracy" of Naples and Genoa in his letter of May 4 (13 Floreal). According to the information he
had been able to gather, the dangers of this conspiracy had determined this Republic (of Genoa) to
give up its neutrality to ask to be attached to the coalition and to repair its wrongs towards the king of Sardinia. But the
main thing at the moment is to properly fix the position of the courses that have been 54 . Thus an operation had
missed.
The affair became particularly serious for Deforgues if his project managers turned out to be linked to Hébert, in
particular after a seizure of letters from Father Duchesne. Such an ensemble could justify the minister's internment in
the Luxembourg prison.
Without a minister, discussions resumed at the Committee of Public Safety. On April 7 and 9, Goujon and Buchot
(from the Jura) were named to assume the direction of the services of the ministry. According to the bulletin of
55
Antraigues , Sieyes then gave a long presentation. In his view, negotiations had to be undertaken to
conclude a separate peace with certain powers like England, Sweden and Turkey. For the rest, hold on, without
capitulating. If the Committee were strengthened, Europe, next winter, would recognize the Republic.
This speech was, it seems, strongly applauded by the Committee, but strongly censured by Saint-Just, who
denounced it as a tendency to dictatorship. Sieyès and Robespierre asking him what he was proposing instead, he
contented himself with replying that he had not thought about it, but that he would think about it. This insolence put an
end to the discussion, and they parted without deciding anything.
Nevertheless Saint-Just continued to the end to meddle in Foreign Affairs.
Whether it is to sign new decrees on the import of basic necessities (April 29-10 Floréal), or to set the working
hours of administrative staff – from 8 am to 2 pm and , in the evening, from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. 30 ( June 1-Prairial 13);
or recall, with Billaud-Varenne and Lindet, all the precautions taken by the Committee for those in charge of mission
(July 8-20 Messidor), he intervened so much and so well in foreign policy that, the last week, the 1st Thermidor ( July
19), a note will stipulate that the information notices of the Committee on External Relations must henceforth be made
in duplicate, one being "addressed to citizen Barère and the other to citizen Saint-Just
56 ".
It was a bit like the seat of Hérault de Séchelles, which belonged to Saint-Just. But he won't have the
time to warm it up.
Moreover, the action taken against the factions in the spring of 1794 involved risks of which he was aware. This is
no doubt why, having seen the letter seized in Toulon, Saint-Just had written on a small piece of paper: Danton-
Lacroix. – Secretly send to Paris 2,000 men of the Army of the Rhine. – Measures to deceive Pitt 57 . Nevertheless
the soldiers had remained in Alsace. Moreover, Robespierre had not initially supported the drastic decisions. So much
so that the elders of the Committee, after 9 Thermidor, forgetting their theme of the triumvirate, wrote: Do we not know
that Robespierre had already suffered a long illness at the end of winter (...) either to call on his person the public
interest, the solicitude of the patriots, and isolate himself from the difficult and fortunate measures that we were
preparing?... Robespierre pretended to be ill and absented himself for some time from the Committee during the affair.
aire Hébert, as well as Couthon who watched how the case would end
58 .
1. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 146.

2. Newsletter no.o 13 from d'Antraigues, transmitted by Drake (February 16 and 25).

4. Memoirs of BARÈRE, Paris, 1872, t. II, p. 170.
5. Bulletin No. 11 (February 8, 10, 12, 14).
6. See Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 321.

7. See the study by M. MARCEL MARION (La Revue des Deux mondes, April 1 , 1928).

9. The powers of this Swan will be increased in the aftermath of 9 Thermidor. And it is he who, a few months later, will be responsible for ensuring the
repayment of American debt.
10. Drake Bulletin No. 14 (March 2, 7, and 9).
11. Cf. STEFANE POL, Le Conventionnel Le Bas, Paris, 1900.
12. Details on this matter can be found in the appendix.

13. Drake Bulletin No. 15 (March 11, 13 and 15).
14. Drake Bulletin No. 18 (March 18, 25 and 28).
15. Who received it from Ambassador Hénin to whom his friend Las Casas, a Spanish diplomat, had transmitted the main passages of the
Bulletin of Drake-d'Antraigues.
16. See Bulletin No. 14 .
17. For this sentence and the following ones, cf. the Arches. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 143-144.
18. Arch. of the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 632, fol. 32 19.
BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXI, p. 329: "We must appoint to the Ministry of War a Carnot, ex-constituent feuillant, brother of the
Carnot of the Committee of Public Safety... and general of the army of the North, a Westermann. »
20. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 161. In Bulletin No. 14 , we read: “Pichegru and Hoche will be on the Cordeliers party if this
party triumphs", and the note also announces that the royal family must be "massacred".
21. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 165. Albert Mathiez has already given most of this letter. See MATHIEZ, Studies
robespierrists. The foreign conspiracy, Paris, 1918, p. 210-211.
22. Bulletin No. 15 (March 11, 13 and 15).
23. At the trial, Whindel will declare “that he heard that the sum of forty thousand pounds was to be received two days before the arrest of the conspirators,
but that the payment was not made. »
24. Drake Bulletin No. 17 (March 15-21).
26. After 9 Thermidor, to finance the Vendeans, Puisaye resumed the process and had fake assignats made.
27. The decree continues as follows: “The powers or commissions which they may have given up to this moment are canceled as of
here ; those who, after promulgation of this decree, would dare to continue the exercise of it will be punished by twenty years in irons. »
28. Cf. WALTER, Hébert and “ le Père Duchesne ”, p. 231.
29. This is Jarry's testimony at the trial.
31. For his part, as early as 13 Nivôse (January 2), Daubigny had sent a letter to Robespierre, at the time of Vincent's first arrest, to defend him, by
transmitting "the closets", the life and profession of Vincent. faith of the one whom in his eyes they had "slandered".
33. Ibid., fol. 146.
34. Ibid., fol. 163-164. Needless to say, the "big brother" is the future Louis XVIII.
36. Ibid., fol. 175.

38. Arch. du Quai d'Orsay, ibid., fol. 32.
39. Both will fall out in 1795 and will be reconciled thirteen years later. In the meantime, writing his memoirs, Puisaye will criticize the intelligence network
and in particular Abbé Brottier.
40. In his book In Search of Louis XVII, Paris, 1947.

42. This letter is quoted during the Chenaux trial on April 13 (24 Germinal). This one should benefit from a strong protection
since he will be acquitted (cf. BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXII, p. 294).
43. BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXI, p. 24.
44. Bulletin No. 19 (March 27-April 2).
45. On this question, see Appendix III .

46. Cf. report of the Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire, BUCHEZ and Roux t. XXXIII.
48. Unpublished papers found at Robespierre, Paris, 1828, t. II, p. 191.
49. DEFORGUES, To his fellow citizens, 30 Thermidor Year III.
50. Arch. du Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 321, circular of 6 Floréal (April 25).
51. Cf. MATHIEZ, The Foreign Conspiracy, p. 172-173.
52. Acts of the Committee of Public Safety, t. XI, pp. 387 and p. 587.
55. Drake Bulletin No. 20 (April 4, 12).
56. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 632.

57. Arch. nat., F7 4436, fol. 132.
58. Reply... to the imputations of Lecointre, year III, p. 62.

CHAPTER V
THE JUDGMENT OF HÉBERT AND DANTON
1. IN COURT.
Alongside Hébert, among the accused appearing before the court, there will be many military
leaders. There you will find Ronsin, commander of the revolutionary army, Vincent, secretary general
of the War Department, General Laumur and the squadron leader Mazuel.
1
According to the Drake-d'Antraigues newsletter , Robespierre had even suggested, on March 15
(25 Ventôse), the recall and judgment of Pichegru, because having asked the latter if "on an order
from the Committee of Public Safety, he would march against Paris, he would not only have replied in
the negative, but alerted Hébert”.
On the planned military operation, the trial – even by carefully comparing the two reports – sheds
little light. The witnesses mainly relate the anti-parliamentary remarks made by the Ronsins, Vincent,
etc. Nevertheless, in the less Dantonist version, Molin's statements are invoked according to which
Ronsin had organized a large introduction of weapons into the prisons. Of course, there were also
among the defendants a twenty-six-
year-old medical student, Armand, and Madame Quetineau, wife of a general imprisoned as a
result of his behavior in the Vendée; their plot, denounced to the Committee by an officer of the
Germanic legion, Haindel, applied to the prisons. The young student thought with a false patrol to
seize arms at the Abbey and at the Conciergerie by killing the soldiers on guard there. Then, with the
prisoners, go to the Mint, take funds there and give money to the people to rally them. In the event of
an attack by superior armed forces, he intended to take refuge on the Île Saint-Louis, and from there
bombard Paris...
The connection between such a puerile plan and the intentions of the Hébertists was by no means
established. However, Billaud-Varenne, in his report, will not hesitate to present this as an "infernal"
whole. And then, in the second batch of Hébertists and Dantonists (the judgment of Chaumette, Lucile
Desmoulins, Mme Hébert, Dillon and others), on April 10 (21 Germinal) when Rameau was questioned
about his relations with Ernest de Bucher, the accused will answer: He confided to me that we were
to seize the Pont-Neuf and that when we were in force, we would put little Capet back on the throne;
but as Ernest was weak-headed, I thought no one ought to pay any attention to these remarks; I still know that
Dillon was to command and lead the whole counter-revolution plan 2 .
It is this mixture of "weak heads" and strong heads that makes it difficult to judge this kind of plot.
However, there is another defendant who, unless I am mistaken, does not seem to have been given all the
attention he deserves. It is the young Jean-Charles Bourgeois, carpenter, commanding the armed forces of the
Mucius Scaevola section (the one where Vincent reigned supreme). He will admit in court to being the author of
a false decree promulgating the transfer of prisoners from the Temple to the Conciergerie and, for this, the
change of time of the guards in charge.
Obviously, it was an escape plan for the royal family, comparable to the one that had failed with Rougeville
for Marie-Antoinette. The young Bourgeois had been arrested, like his comrade Ancard, for having advocated at
the Cordeliers, on March 14 (24 Ventôse) – that is to say the day after the indictment of Hébert and others – a
great uprising. And when the police came to take him home two days later, his first reaction was to choose as a
lawyer the best defender of the royalists, Chauveau-Lagarde...
The Dantonist organ reporting on the trial passes over Bourgeois's story completely in silence.
As for the other account, without going into details, it learns that, according to a witness, Bourgeois was known
to be the partisan of Vincent whose motions he warmly supported. How, under these conditions, to explain that
the latter was not questioned about it (or that we did not want to print his answer), when he was directly involved?
Be that as it may, all of this is to be compared with what Couthon will say in his report of 26 Ventôse: We tried
to send the Capet children a letter, a package and 50 louis in gold.
The object of this dispatch was to facilitate the escape of the son of Capet; for the conspirators having formed
the project of establishing a council of Regency, the presence of the child was necessary for the installation of
the Regent. We join here what Saint-Just said in his speech on the conspiracy hatched to establish a “regency
which would have spared the return of the Bourbons”.
As men designated to play a major role in this regency, the investigation and the trial brought to light two
names: Pache, or Danton, under the title of "Grand Judge", with Hanriot as military leader.
Were we going to bring the story to the attention of the general public?
One evening, before the trial, the tribunal assembled in the council chamber and deliberated on the charges
which were brought against Pache and Hanriot in the various declarations received. Dumas, who was drunk,
offered a warrant for Hanriot's arrest. Fleuriot opposed it on the pretext that the chief of the Parisian army should
not be arrested without having referred it to the Committee of Public Safety. This last opinion prevailed and, the
same evening, Fouquier, Fleuriot, Dumas and Hermann went to the Committee of Public Safety to inform it of the
deliberation which had just taken place. Ferral, who tells this story 3 adds that he learned "the next day that they,
had received a warning from the Committee and, particularly from
Robespierre, for having deliberated on the arrest of Hanriot, and they were ordered to discard the
evidence which might exist both against Pache and against Hanriot”.
Despite the Committee's instructions, the judge was unable to prevent the citation of the prohibited
names at trial.
The twelfth witness, Raymond Verninac, Minister of the Republic in Sweden, relates that having
seen General Laumur on March 7 (17 Ventôse) and having asked him when he was thinking of
leaving for Pondicherry, the other replied: "I don't do not intend to leave, my government must be in
the power of the English. And to clarify that we were talking about the establishment of a Grand
Judge; that Pache was designated to fulfill this function; that he, witness, speaking of the necessity
of the meeting of the patriots, Laumur replied: by cutting off five or six 4 .
heads, that will be very easy . named Pache, and he adds that the Cordeliers having made this
outcry, they would doubtless only choose Danton and would address themselves neither to
Robespierre nor to Pache. Shortly after, when General Westermann comes, in his turn, to report the
words of Laumur who would have told him that we wanted a Grand Judge, the term dictator being
too well known, too frightening, the accused repeats the denial and claims that "it was the witness
who spoke to him about Pache". Nevertheless, a little later, again questioned about this story of
Grand Judge, Laumur "admits having spoken about it to Westermann and others, even having named
Danton".
The surviving witnesses to 9 Thermidor will affirm, during the trial of Fouquier-Tinville, that the
accounts have distorted the testimonies by substituting the name of Danton for that of Pache. Now,
if the substitution is not always true, it is undeniable for the first and last sentences of Laumur which
we have just quoted. Because, during the investigation, before Judge Ardouin, on March 13 (23
Ventôse), Laumur had declared that the dictator in question would be neither Danton nor Robespierre,
these belonging to the Jacobin society, but that we would probably choose the municipality. In this
statement, 5 .
which has not been modified, we come closer to the truth. Because if it directly involves the mayor
of Paris, Pache, it also shows that we thought of Danton and Robespierre for the function of Grand
Judge: we dismissed them because they were not members of the Cordeliers. And that agrees well
with what I have put forward on the rapprochement, followed by rupture, between the Hébertists and
Robespierre. As for Danton, it should not be forgotten that a month before the Hébertist insurrection
attempt, on 14 Pluviôse, he had spoken in the Assembly to demand the release of Vincent and
Ronsin. And that in response, the Hébertists had completely stopped attacking him. But here too the
rapprochement had been only temporary.
Once again: in troubled times, the human relations of politicians are found
often overthrown by partisan manoeuvres.
Six months earlier, at the beginning of September (at the time of the failed escape of Marie
Antoinette), Danton confided to David: “Hébert is a boy whom I love very much. »
Let us not forget, on the other hand, that the comrade of Saint-Just, Villain-Daubigny – as Dantonist as
Hébertist – had organized in the first fortnight of Ventôse, on the eve of the outbreak of the Hébertist affair, a
reconciliation dinner between Robespierre and Danton. The evening took place at Humbert's, head of the
foreign relations funds office; Minister Deforgues, Legendre and Panis were there. But nothing says that
Saint-Just was present. Finally, as we have seen, d'Antraigues' informant, in his letter of March 10, spoke of
a Danton-Hébert accord.
So even if the name of Danton has sometimes been substituted for that of Pache, the fact remains that it
may very well have really been pronounced for the function of Grand Judge. It is significant that the most
Dantonist version – that of the printer Nicolas – passes over in silence the testimony of Marie-Thérèse
Tavernier, who refers to remarks made by Westermann and his neighbor Allard, remarks from which it
emerged that Danton was planned as Grand Judge-dictator.
Certainly, the winners of Thermidor will continue to evoke the name of Pache. Courtois will talk about
“criminal meetings” at the mayor's who, according to him, “directed the hidden springs of the machine 6 ".
But Pache was not alone. And, obviously, certain witnesses came before the court less with the intention of
overpowering the Hébertists than with that of implicating the Committee of Public Safety, its members and its
creatures.
A subtle laborer like Dufourny, attached to the Baron de Batz, had already denounced Proly as an "agent
of the House of Austria" in a very curious way. First he had declared that he had not dared to have Proly
arrested because he was linked with Barère and Hérault de Séchelles. And to support this assertion he
referred to two letters, written from Sainte-Pélagie, by an accused, another agent of Batz: Desfieux.
In court, he will bring out these letters, which he will even leave with the clerk. In one of them, according
to the best account, Desfieux said that it was very unpleasant for him to be detained for knowing Proly and
that it was very extraordinary that Hérault de Séchelles, who was the friend of the latter (since he had lodged
him for six months, and Proly had written various essays for him), that it was quite extraordinary that Hérault
should declare that he did not know him and made no move for his freedom.
These letters having had to be arranged – to make them more striking in the desired direction – Des Fieux
recognized them while disavowing them. Having fallen out with Dufourny, having been denounced by him to
the Jacobins, he could be wary of him. Asked about the documents, he declared that they were not written by
his hand, but that one was an "informal extract from the justifying memorandum" written by him at Sainte
Pélagie, and that the other contained "his principles". .
In fact, if it were the two missives kept in the Archives, dated 4 Frimaire (November 24); in one, Desfieux
asked Gaillard to intervene on his behalf with Hébert and, in the other, he forbade himself to maintain relations
with Proly, Dubuisson and Pereyra. They therefore did not constitute damning evidence. But, in such
circumstances, no one found his own. The enemy of the day before could present himself as a friend, or vice
versa.
Westermann's account of Laumur is typical in this regard. First, it shows that the Dantonist general
maintained friendly relations with the Hébertist general. But then, in recounting Laumur's remarks on the
Grand Judge's project, Westermann takes care to emphasize that his interlocutor had told him about it
"without seeming to applaud it". Not knowing what answer could be favorable to him, Laumur first disputed
the authenticity of the story, then abruptly admitted it.
Moreover, the accused could hope to find some help from the judges. A month after their execution, on
April 20 (1st Floréal), Leymerie wrote again to Couthon to denounce Fouquier Tinville “who had become
the echo of the Lalliers, the Chaumettes”. In fact, the questions were not asked on the most important points.
How to explain, for example, that Hébert was questioned so little about his interventions in economic
matters, that he was not told about the “black market” affair in which he had been caught?
It is only at the trial of his wife that the subject will be broached. Several witnesses (the “last depositions”
will say the report) will report the remarks made by Chabot in February: You complain, he said, of the
scarcity of subsistence, of their lack of arrival ; if you sincerely want to put an end to all these evils, to
restore abundance, arrest the leaders of the conspiracy who are Hébert, his wife and the Baron de Batz 7
.
Wasn't it Hébert who imposed the famous “law of the maximum” on the Convention? However, of this
Barère said, as early as February 21 (3 Ventôse), in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, that it
was a “trap set for the Convention by the enemies of the Republic. .a London present” whose “counter-
revolutionary origin is forgotten”. For his part, Saint-Just was to mark this law in his notes as the work of
Batz. And this one, thanks perhaps to complacency in high places, continued to elude the police...
In short, on all sides, it appeared that the Hébertist clan, which presented itself as an extreme left-wing
republican, strongly attached to the fate of the common people, was, if not under orders, at least in collusion
with the royalists and foreigners.
In the end, the Committee of Public Safety could no longer know where to turn; one lost oneself in the
spider's web stretched for the Hebertists. If the defendants were not so overwhelmed with charges, on the
other hand, the untried, linked to the Committee, remained implicated. Next to Pache, there was Barère.
From the first day, Dufourny having joined him in Hérault as a friend and protector of Proly, in the evening,
at the Committee, Barère had lectured the judges: for him, it was less necessary to let the witnesses speak.
However, the last of these, the journalist Payan, spoke of him again. Having evoked "Chaumette and Hébert
who denounced eight people in the morning, and cleared them in the evening", he affirmed that Barère
meeting Hébert in the street had said to him: Hello, my friend, you denigrate me, but let us be friends, let
us act in accordance with the principles de Vergniaud who said that it was necessary to chain to the chariot
of the revolution all those who could be useful to it 8 .
In truth, this trial was a dirty business, for the rulers as well as for the opponents. On all sides there
were accomplices to the projected coup d'etat. Why not arrest a Carrier who had called for an
insurrection on 14 Ventôse (March 4)? Why not quote the Minister of War, Bouchotte, who had covered
up Vincent's actions? And what would have happened if we had satisfied the claim of Ronsin who, on
Germinal 2 (March 22), asked for the citation of Collot d'Herbois, Danton, Élie Lacoste, Hanriot,
Boulanger, Daubigny...
If we are to believe the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, the Committee, worried by the extension of the
case, had even thought on March 22 and 23 of abandoning the trial, keeping the accused in prison.
Is it to discuss this that Robespierre had Sieyes summoned to the Committee of Public Safety for
March 23, at nine o'clock sharp? (this note is still in the National Archives).
Moreover, the parliamentary opposition reacted immediately: on March 18 (28 Ventôse)
Bourdon de l'Oise had asked the Convention to vote a reprimand against the municipality – that is to
say Pache – who had not come to the Assembly with the sections to congratulate it on the arrest of
the Hébertists. For him, the conspiracy remained incompletely revealed. Danton, supporting this, had
asked for an inquiry into the conduct of the civil servants and, first of all, of Minister Bouchotte. To
appear to respond to the vote against the municipality, the Committee decided to replace Hébert and
Chaumette with Legrand and Cellier.
But, on March 20, Bourdon de l'Oise returned to the charge. As, before him, Tallien had deplored
the abusive arrests which continued to be made in the provinces by Hebertists, and asked for a report
on this from the Committee of General Security, Bourdon de l'Oise went on, taking advantage of the
absence of any member of the committee, to have the Assembly vote for the arrest of Heron, as the
main person responsible.
The said Heron working as a police chief for all the governors, the vote against him constituted a
great vote of no confidence as well with regard to the Committee of Public Safety as with regard to
that of general security. Basically, like all governments whose members or agents find themselves
implicated in a great and murky political scandal, the committees were in great danger of losing face
in the affair.
Alerted immediately, Robespierre and Couthon arrived at the Convention. They still had enough
authority to induce the Assembly to reconsider its vote. But the alarm signal had sounded, it had to be
answered.
2. THE TURN OF DANTON.
In replying to Bourdon de l'Oise and Tallien, Robespierre had immediately learned the lesson that
was obvious to him. It is true that a faction that wanted to tear the fatherland apart is about to expire, but
the other is not defeated, she wants to find in the fall of the first a kind of triumph. The extermination had
to be completed.
But which heads to designate? To affect public opinion and ensure the maintenance of the government,
it was necessary to attack important, dangerous figures, and not to forget those who had been denounced
during Hébert's trial.
Danton imposed himself. According to the bulletin of Antraigues9 , on March 27, at the Committee of Public
Safety, in the presence of Sieyès and Hanriot, a message had been read from Fouquier-Tinville informing
that, during an interrogation, in order to exonerate himself, Hébert had spoken of a plan providing for
Danton as regent, because the latter "had been expressly appointed by Pitt". As we have seen, other
witnesses had spoken in the same vein. On 9 Thermidor, Billaud-Varenne boasted of having been the
first to ask for the head of Danton, and, a year later, Courtois replied that it was because he benefited, at
the start of his career, from the Danton's aide that Billaud had "paid off his debt by assassinating him " .
Finally, in his Memoirs, Thibaudeau will reproduce a letter of September 1794, which he said he found in
the papers of the Committee of Public Safety, and according to which Danton had been executed
"because he wanted to restore the King with Malesherbes as regent”. It is of course a letter of information
11 .
written by a royalist agent. Moreover, the Committee could fear that Danton
intensified the campaign of opposition. In his Notes et souvenirs, Courtois reports that, when the
Hébertists were arrested, Danton had said: “If the tyranny of the Committee is not contained, I despair of
the salvation of the Republic. »
The Terror, a two-edged sword, reinforced the authority of the Committee but did not win it the
sympathy of the people. There was a firm discussion in the government about the names to be added to
that of Danton and about the manner of presenting the indictment. According to confidences of Barère to L.
A Welshman, Robespierre would have liked to include Bourdon de l'Oise on the list of convicts and
exclude Camille Desmoulins from it, but Saint-Just and Billaud-Varenne would have insisted that the
editor of the Vieux Cordelier be retained.
For Bourdon de l'Oise, this is not very surprising: we had already buried Robespierre's report against
him and, in his note to London, which we have already quoted, Mallet du Pan, three months earlier, gave
Bourdon de l'Oise and Philippeaux as counting protectors on the Committee of Public Safety. But why did
Saint-Just particularly resent Desmoulins, his childhood friend? The memory of a few past quarrels, of a
few jokes from the journalist? Or, the will to demonstrate Roman intransigence, without allowing oneself
to be softened by individual sentimentality? Doubtless for both reasons, for Saint-Just was not devoid, it
seems, of a youthful susceptibility, and it was in his speech against the Dantonists that he was to
pronounce his famous phrase : world has been empty since the Romans, and their memory fills it and still
prophesies freedom.
But neither his temperament nor his short career could incline him to be an executioner. Having a short
political past, he did not have to fear, like some of his colleagues, revelations
embarrassing. On the contrary, he possessed enough perspicacity to understand that public opinion had
to be given something other than the spattering of blood from the scaffold. In all his indictment speeches,
he had endeavored to balance harshness with hopes or measures of detente.
And then, if Saint-Just was, at his request, appointed by the Committee, whereas Robespierre had,
before him, expressed his desire to write this report, it is doubtless that he better expressed the views of
the majority of members.
According to the bulletin Drake-d'Antraigues, having obtained this, he suggested adding to the
measure against the Dantonists, the release of the 73 so-called Girondin deputies who had been in
prison for nearly a year. Still according to d'Antraigues, this idea would have been inspired by the desire
to form with the parliamentarians whom he would liberate "a powerful party in the Convention, which
12 ".
would put him in a position to fight
against Robespierre The Hébertists who demanded the execution of those these being themselves
executed, such a gete could respond to the current of opinion in favor of indulgence, and thus balance
the new executions decided upon. But, in the eyes of Robespierre, who had saved the lives of these 73
in the Assembly, a few months earlier, the gesture seemed too risky. He didn't want them to be judged,
but he thought they should stay. “held as suspects”. And this time, Robespierre prevailed over Saint-Just.
We do not see at all why the Comte d'Antraigues would have invented this story. It was not serving
the massive anti-revolutionary propaganda, always indefatigable on "blood drinkers", to present the first
accuser as wanting to free "accomplices of Brissot".
Moreover, this story of the 73 will often return to the public scene with the 9 Thermidor. But the
explanations of the members of the committees will be very confused 13 . L. de Ruhl will say: “It was
Robespierre who wanted to put the 73 on trial, and it was we who opposed it. On the other hand,
according to Clauzel, “on 9 Thermidor, Robespierre having challenged the members of the committees
to prove that he had ever wanted to have the 73 charged: no one dared to stand up. Robespierre defended them”.
Finally, for Voulland, Robespierre had sent letters against the 73, and "we were waiting for the
manifestation of the Cordeliers to demand that they be put to death." But the two committees together
decided not to.
None of this invalidates what d'Antraigues wrote. Because the Thermidorians, who had just had Saint-
Just guillotined, could not say that it was he who had advocated the release of the 73 and, on the other
hand, we understand how Robespierre's reserved position could have aroused controversy and
contradiction.
3. DRAFTS.
Finally, if we have notes written by Robespierre on a draft of a speech by Saint-Just, it is perhaps not by
chance. Although they had both asked to produce the report, the Committee, after having conferred responsibility
on the second, was able to invite the latter to draw up its text in collaboration with Robespierre.
Confrontation, meticulously made by Mathiez 14 , From Robespierre's notes and Saint-Just's
final text, it appears that the first intervened above all to provide colors - in the form of anecdotes, collected
remarks - of a nature to give more liveliness to the gallery of portraits of the great partisan families that Saint-
Just must present to the Convention.
These are especially Fabre d'Églantine, Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles and Danton. And the facts
mentioned, often prior to the Convention, are those that Saint-Just could only know by hearsay. So it's not
surprising that we find on a sheet, referring to passages that have disappeared from the draft, words from
Robespierre such as: deleatur, to rectify, to remove, to examine, false, to explain, etc. But, as we see, the notes
in the margin have a character more professorial than friendly.
For his part, Saint-Just does not use what Robespierre prompts him without shaping it to his
manner.
Thus, Robespierre writes:

At the time when the numbers of Le Vieux Cordelier appeared , Desmoulins' father showed him his satisfaction
and kissed him tenderly, Fabre present at the scene, began to cry, and Desmoulins astonished no longer
doubted that Fabre was only an excellent heart and consequently a patriot.
From the pen of Saint-Just, this becomes: It
was said as proof of Fabre's bonhomie that he was at Desmoulins' when he was reading to someone the
writing in which he asked for a clemency committee to the aristocracy, and called the Convention the court of
Tiberius, Fabre began to weep. The crocodile also cries.
But, it's not just about changing the tone or adding strokes. Judgments about people do not always agree.
Robespierre reproaches Fabre and his friends for not having ceased "to calumniate Pache and Hanriot."
In his definitive text, Saint-Just retains the theme for Hanriot, but nothing on Pache. And, there again, we join
the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin which, a few weeks later, will speak of a new violent clash between the two men
about the mayor of Paris.
We also find, in these sheets, their divergence on Desmoulins. Robespierre, taking a
soft pen, writes:
Camille Desmoulins, by the mobility of his imagination and his vanity, was fitted to become the minion of
Fabre and Danton. It was by this road that they pushed him to the point of crime; but they had attached him to
themselves only by the outward appearance of the patriotism with which they covered themselves. Desmoulins
showed frankness and republicanism by vehemently censuring in his papers Mirabeau, La Fayette, Barnave
and Lameth, at the time of their power and reputation, after having praised them in good faith.
On the other hand, for Saint-Just:
Camille Desmoulins, who was at first duped and ended up being an accomplice, was, like Philippeaux, an
instrument of Fabre and Danton... As Camille Desmoulins lacked character, his pride was used. He attacked the
revolutionary government as a rhetorician in all its consequences, he spoke boldly in favor of the enemies of the
Revolution, proposed a committee of clemency for them, showed himself very inclement towards the popular party,
attacked, like Hébert and Vincent, the representatives of the people in the armies; like Hébert, Vincent and Buzot
himself, he treated them as pro-consuls. He had been the defender of the infamous Dillon, with the same audacity
shown by Dillon himself, when at Maubeuge he ordered his army to march on Paris and take an oath of loyalty to
the King.
The scathing contempt is fueled here by very personal memories. Saint-Just has not forgotten
the intervention of Desmoulins, in favor of Dillon, in the debate on the Girondins.
Finally, Robespierre blows out certain examples that Saint-Just does not keep. As in his draft report on Fabre
15 , Robespierre wanted to talk about the demonstration at the bar of the Convention of the “widows of the Lyon
conspirators”. But, with good reason, Saint-Just thought it better not to cite the consequences of the bloody policy
in Lyons as an example.
Sometimes it was even diplomatic concerns that led Saint-Just not to repeat the facts that Robespierre
transmitted to him. Thus, the latter notes: Danton said to me one day: “ It is
unfortunate that we cannot propose to cede our colonies to the Americans; that would be the way to make an
alliance with them. Danton and Lacroix have since passed a decree, the likely result of which was the loss of our
colonies.
The most curious thing is that the decree to which Robespierre refers promulgated the abolition of slavery. As
Mathiez notes, Robespierre had already fought against this great measure, when Brissot was the protagonist.
In fact, the so-called humanitarian and progressive measures are often accompanied by those who propose
them with self-interested ulterior motives.
But it was hardly adroit to raise the question about the abolition of slavery. And then, on the other hand, having,
as we have seen, taken steps to obtain American aid, it was hardly appropriate to show what concessions a French
16
leader had to make in order to obtain help from overseas. Atlantic. was ready
In short, if Saint-Just wanted to draw up the indictment against Danton and his friends, it was not to collect – like
rare postage stamps – anecdotes about the Dantonists, paste them on paper and complete the collection with his
memories. personal. Nor is it to show people the underground passages of revolutionary politics as a guide.
No. A little tired, even disgusted by the guerrillas in the shadows that is the Terror – certainly murderous, but
confused – he wants to face Danton and his friends in full light. He wants to come face to face with them, and make
the fight decisive by taking things from the start. Anecdotes will be like banderillas to him. He wants Danton to be
present in the Assembly when he
will attack him. He includes in his speech direct apostrophes, like a bullfighter holding out the red cape
for the beast to charge.
Do we want some examples of the advances with thrusts planned for Danton?
You got along with everything. Brissot and his accomplices always left happy with you! At the tribune,
when your silence was accused, you gave them salutary advice so that they concealed more. You
threatened them with indignation, but with paternal kindness; and you rather gave them advice on how
to corrupt freedom, how to save themselves, how to better deceive us, than you gave to the Republican Party...
And, after having spoken of the large sums that Danton received from Mirabeau to keep silent,
then of his complicity with d'Orléans and Dumouriez, Saint-Just asks: Do
you dare to deny having been sold to the three most violent men conspirators against freedom !
Blaming him for having retired to Arcis-sur-Aube at critical times, notably on August 9, he launched:
What would I say of your cowardly and constant abandonment of the public cause in the midst of crises, where you took
still the retirement party ?

Finally :
Bad citizen, you conspired; a false friend, two days ago you spoke ill of Desmoulins, an instrument
you have lost, and you ascribed shameful vices to him ; wicked man, you compared public opinion to a
woman of bad life: you said that honor was ridiculous; that glory and posterity were foolishness. These
maxims were to conciliate you the aristocracy; they were Catalina's. If Fabre is innocent, if d'Orléans, if
Dumouriez were innocent, no doubt you are. I have said too much: you will answer to justice.
The attack was violent, but it attacked character rather than advanced specific facts.
It was based on comments made in the corridors, but not on evidence, indisputable writings.
The risks were great, because the rapporteur was not an improviser, he read his carefully written
speeches, while Danton, endowed with a powerful organ, with the temperament of a sacred monster,
knew how to express himself, always without preparation, in a seductive or impactful way.
The young man of twenty-five, with his serious, cold and cutting, could be ridiculed, pulverized by the big
baritone – who was only ten years older than him.
4. A DANGEROUS FACE TO FACE.
However, Saint-Just – despite his youthfulness – had enough discernment (his work with Robespierre
proves it) not to commit himself lightly. On the other hand, he had shown himself sensitive enough not to
bow to a possible parliamentary slap. Clearly, it was all or nothing for him.
If he reproached Danton for making fun of history, it was because, for him, the judgment of history took
precedence over all others. This perspective was the only one that left him optimistic. His belief in a future
verdict made him say, - and not without Vendée –, about the relations of the Hébertists with the
foundation:
... It is a remarkable thing, and of which posterity will be ashamed, that the foreigner took the pretended
restoration of religion as a pretext for the war he waged against us, and at the same time endeavored to give
us atheism.
It was so much a matter of a final judgment for him that he began his report by saying: I come to seek
justice in the name of the fatherland against men who have long betrayed the popular cause, who have
made war on you. with all the conspirators, with d'Orléans, with Brissot, with Hébert, with Hérault and their
accomplices.
All this formed for him a bloc: the bloc of parties inspired by foreign countries. No doubt, he distinguished
the Orléanist faction, led by Brissot, Buzot and Dumouriez, that subject to the directives of Hanover, with
Carra, and that attached to the Bourbons with Manuel, Lanjuinais and others... But the whole had for him
the same character:
Everything convinces us that the foreigner has always formed or favored various parties to weave the
same plots and to render them inextricable. He who was going to distinguish himself, a few weeks later, by
charging at the head of his cavalry against the Austrians, wanted to do the same against the enemies of the
interior.
Now, to offset the risks of the offensive, there was perhaps the hope of a retreat from the opponents. A
member of the Committee of Public Safety, Lindet (whom the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletins present as being
then a friend of Saint-Just) had gone to see Danton to incite him to leave Paris. But if we had, at the same
time, informed him that his affair would be settled within the Assembly, we can understand why he wanted
to keep the soles of his shoes in contact with French soil.
Only that he remained could only further worry the members of the Committee who
Danton was particularly feared because he knew their past too well.
Also, the meeting of the Public Safety Committee on March 30 (10 Germinal) saw a dramatic change that
Vadier and Courtois mentioned but which historians have not sufficiently taken into account.
What will a member of the general security committee say like Vadier, an old skeptic,
greedy and eager for pleasure?
Saint-Just, through his stubbornness, had almost caused the downfall of the members of the two
committees, for he wanted the accused to be present when he read the report to the National Convention;
and such was his obstinacy that, seeing our formal opposition, he threw his hat into the fire in a rage and left
us there. Robespierre was also of his opinion; he believed that by having these deputies arrested beforehand,
this step would sooner or later not be reprehensible; but as fear was an irresistible argument with him, I used
this weapon to fight him 18 .
Courtois tells the same story, except that, according to him, Saint-Just not only threw his hat into
the fire but also his report and that it was Amar who withdrew the text before it burned 19 In his .
Danton, Louis Barthou, who only knew this last testimony, writes: "Everything makes this gesture
improbable, the character of the rapporteur and the care he had taken to develop his work with the
.
20
collaboration of Robespierre" But if Louis Barthou had taken the same care in reading the text, he
would have seen that the direct apostrophes of Saint-Just became ridiculous and in bad taste when
addressing a deputy imprisoned. It is true that Barthou relates the gesture as meaning that Saint-Just
was “stricken with fear”: another misinterpretation. As a result, the parliamentarian-historian finds
"incredible that Saint-Just said to an 'individual' when he saw Danton enter the apartment where he
was: "I shudder to think that we want this man not to exist in ten” No, whatever Louis Barthou thinks,
21
. Saint-Just didn't need “anything else to shudder”. He was not an unconscious executioner, a
contract killer. And if he quivered, it was perhaps precisely because he had to come face to face with
the man to end his life.
However, if the conclusion was not what he wanted, the session had earned him a success.
Another member of the General Security Committee, Lavicomterie, later recounted that Saint-Just
had read his "seductive" report, with "so much soul", that the members of the committees, including
him, had not hesitated to give their signature to the decree of arrest.
It was over the confrontation scenario that the dispute broke out. A year later, in what he called
My catilinary 22 , attacking Barère and Billaud-Varenne, Courtois even publicly
hint:
... The day when cowardly insolent you ordered the representatives to decree that they would not
hear your victims ? It's Robespierre, you will say again (because if the absent are wrong, we know
that the dead are even more wrong). Tell me, Billaud, is it Robespierre who didn't want d'Églantine to
be heard ? Is it Robespierre who, in the tone of a proud master, dared to utter these words: woe to
those who sit next to this man ? Is it Robespierre still alone, say Barère, who did not want Danton,
Camille, and Philippeaux to be heard ? Fear and audacity lent you the strength to strike fear into the
souls of the courageous deputies.
Nothing tells us how Saint-Just was led to reconsider his first reaction. During the night, Danton,
Camille Desmoulins, Philippeaux and Lacroix were arrested. But the process envisaged had been –
voluntarily or involuntarily – brought to the attention of some parliamentarians. So, the next morning,
at the Convention, as soon as the session opened, two of them resolutely set out on the planned
course.
The first, Delmas tabled a motion of order so that the members of the Committee of Public Safety,
who conferred at the Tuileries, were summoned on the spot.
After him, it was Legendre. Needless to say, the butcher swooped in brutally. “I come to ask, he said,
that the arrested members be brought to the bar where you will hear them and where they will be accused
or absolved by you. He does not know the names of the new accused, he only knows that Danton is from
number; then, after recalling his revolutionary titles, he launches: I believe Danton as pure as I am; he
has been in irons since that night, it was doubtless feared that his answers would destroy the
accusations directed against him. I therefore request that before you hear any report, the detainees
be summoned and heard.
After him, Fayan makes an intervention in the opposite direction, but the Assembly remains stormy.
It was then that Robespierre entered the room, with Barère, and immediately ascended the rostrum.
Of course, he acts as if nothing had been planned and puts forward a strong argument against
Legendre's motion: those who are preparing to vote on it today have, a few weeks earlier, voted
against a similar motion tabled by... Danton in favor of Bazire, Chabot and Fabre d'Églantine. So will
they contradict each other? And, after having replied to the accusation of dictatorship, of
antiparliamentarism, which was beginning to circulate against the committees, and to the few voices
which made themselves heard on the benches of the Convention, Robespierre sounded the death
knell: We will see today if the Convention will know how to smash a so-called idol, rotten for a long
time, or if, in its fall, it will crush the Convention and the French people.
After him, Barère also came to defend the Committee against accusations of dictatorship and to
vote against the motion.
Saint-Just, says the Monitor, then enters the room and goes directly to the rostrum. He slowly
exhibits his large painting which brings to life the deeds and gestures of the accused - in particular for
Danton and Fabre d'Églantine: their intrigues with Mirabeau, their secret dealings with the court, their
affair with the Duke of Orleans, Dumouriez and the Girondins , their equivocal conduct in moments of
crisis, August 10, March 31. He sometimes refers, without citing them, to specific documents. For
example, he says: the embassy in Switzerland "tells us of the consternation of the emigrants since
Fabre's trial." This is not sales pitch to impress his audience, because we find today, in Barthélémy's
papers, a letter of March 23 addressed to Deforgues and signed H. (probably Haupt) where we can
read : The arrests of Chabot, Bazire,
de Launay, Angers, Julien de Toulouse, Fabre d'Églantine and a few false Jacobins are thunderbolts
for the emigrants and for all the allied despots who counted on the punctual execution of this infamous
plot. .. I had the opportunity last night to speak with a citizen of Basle whom I had charged to undertake
a ci-devant Baron de Vincennes, one of General Wurmser's aides-de-camp, on this chapter, which
assured him in all confidence that the ci-devant princes as well as the allies had been working for
several months on this plan and that it was above all a question of kidnapping little Capet. On the other
hand,24 .
we do not see precisely to what Saint-Just refers when he speaks of "all the information obtained
on Fabre d'Églantine, Danton's accomplice, which leaves no doubt about his
treason ".
In his vast panorama, apart from those whose trial he was asking, Saint-Just shed light on eminent
prisoners who took advantage of the shadow of the dungeons to make themselves forgotten: by
example, Choderlos de Laclos. Hadn't he intrigued among the Jacobins, contributed with Danton to
provoke the shooting of the Champ-de-Mars? Saint-Just condemns “the motion of Laclos which, he
says, was a disastrous pretext and paid for by the court to unfurl the red flag and try tyranny”.
At the Conciergerie, this reminder of the red flag appeared to Laclos as a serious alarm signal.
The author of Dangerous Liaisons went to great lengths to write and send to his wife and children a
touching letter from a good father. We do not reread it without a smile:
... My hair bothered me to fasten the loop of my wig, I had it cut this morning and thought that
perhaps it would please you. At my age, they won't grow back and it seemed right to me that having
your children's first hair, you should have their father's last. It is a small monument of tenderness that I
beg you to keep. I love you and embrace you with the best of my heart 25 .
As everyone knows, the moving correspondent was to die, very prosaically, in his bed, ten years
later, of dysentery. He had some protective "connections", some good relations in the committees.
Moreover, Laclos, questioned, could have informed Saint-Just about Danton. He had maneuvered
enough with him to know him well. He knew that the great tribune did not hesitate to eat at all the racks.
In order to cover their tracks, Laclos and his master of Orleans, had not hesitated, in November 1789,
to pretend to share the opinion of the French ambassador in London, worried by the action in France of
two individuals, “one named Danton and the other Paré, whom some people suspect of being private
agents of the English government”.
Of his friend Paré, Danton had made Minister of the Interior whom Saint-Just was also to
cause in his report, addressing himself, once again, directly to Danton:
Your friends have done everything for you, they place your name in all the foreign newspapers and
in the daily reports of the Minister of the Interior; the reports of which I speak, sent every evening by the
Minister of the Interior, present you as the man of whom all Paris talks: your slightest reflections are
made famous there.
Undeniably, Danton always used part of the secret funds he received to finance his personal
propaganda. This had greatly upset one of its first backers, Mirabeau, who wrote to his friend La Mark
in March 1791: Danton received 30,000 pounds yesterday and I have proof that it was Danton who
wrote the last issue. by Camille Desmoulins 26 . (The publication of Desmoulins, Revolutions of France
and Brabant, was very violent against the established power.)
Saint-Just did not know this letter. But, like Robespierre, he had clearly understood that, in their
cynical game, Danton and his friends did not hesitate to slay those with whom they maintained very
close relations.
... Friends of the profound Brissot had long said of him that he was inconsistent, even thoughtless.
Fabre said of Danton that he was carefree, that his temperament led him to the country, to the baths,
to innocent things. Danton said of Fabre that his head was an imbroglio, a repertoire of comic things
and presented him as ridiculous, because it was almost only at this price that he could not pass for a
traitor, by the mere glimpse of his twisted way of behaving...
If History has proven Saint-Just right by proving Danton's venality, historians – oh irony! –
proved him wrong for more than a century. It was not until Mathiez that the real file was brought
to the attention of the public. And yet important testimonies were not lacking. As early as 1857,
the Revue des Deux Mondes published pages from the Memoirs of La Fayette in which he
recounted how Danton had received for his office as a lawyer – which was worth ten thousand
pounds – one hundred thousand pounds from the court. In his Memoirs, made public at the end
of the 19th century, Théodore de Lameth explained how he had paid Danton to get the Convention
to decide in favor of Louis XVI. Fersen's correspondence shows that he had been bought to help
Marie-Antoinette escape from the Conciergerie. Pitt's agent, WA Miles, wrote on April 11, 1794,
that he had known him and that his "character was not considered incorruptible." Finally, the
American ambassador in Paris, Morris, considered him, at the same time, “too voluptuous for his
ambitions and too indolent to acquire supreme power. Moreover, his goal seems to have been
rather to amass great wealth..." In this respect, Sénar will go so far in his Memoirs as to say that
he owned, with Delacroix, two factories of false assignats...
We could still advance many other pieces on the venality of Danton if Albert Mathiez had not
done enough. Let us just remember that he is absolutely right when he writes about the historians
of the 19th century, fervent Dantonists: "The positivist school to which belonged Dr Robinet ,
Pierre Lafitte, Antonin Dubost, exerted a considerable influence on the formation of all the
27 . A Barthou was still a
statesmen who founded the Third Republic
fervent Dantonist...
When Saint-Just had finished his speech, the Assembly pronounced itself "amid the liveliest
applause" by voting unanimously – that is to say, Legendre included – the decree deciding the
accusation of Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles, Danton, Philippeaux, Lacroix and Fabre
d'Églantine.
Some historians – Mathiez, for example – have estimated that this reversal of the Assembly
came from the "pathetic" intervention of Robespierre. I am not convinced.
No doubt, if a Legendre backtracks immediately, it's because he discovers that the scenario
he was told about has been completely abandoned. But it was also during Robespierre's speech,
according to Courtois, that deputies shouted: Down with the dictators ! Down with the tyrants!
And if Barère also insisted on responding to this accusation, it was because the cause was not
completely heard. Certainly, Robespierre still possessed enough authority to shake the Assembly,
but we see nothing in what he said of a nature to rally it completely.
By what aspect of his speech could Saint-Just touch his audience? First, he seemed to know
a lot more than he was letting on. And then, it was not awkward to present Hebertist and Dantonist
action as a unit. But, above all, the harshness of the indictment was compensated by the prospect
it dangled: this new series of executions appeared to be the ultimate; afterwards was to come a
new order of things in which Parliament would take on particular importance.
May you, he said, after seeing them repressed, see all factions extinguished and enjoy in peace the
fullness of your legitimate power.
Then severity became a question of energy and clairvoyance: Justice can never compromise you,
but indulgence must destroy you. And, further on, taking up the theme: It is indulgence that is ferocious
since it immolates the country. But above all, it was very good to say to these parliamentarians, always
worried by these forces of the street which escaped them: You neglected to specify the guarantee of
the people and yours against the influence of the intermediate powers, that is to say ie the armed
forces, popular clubs and civil servants. For Saint-Just, it was necessary to put an end to the constant
usurpation of the influence of the national representation and of the government emanating from it; it
was necessary to find "the supreme harmony of action in the body politic." In short, far from attacking
Parliament, he wanted to make a pact of alliance with it against common enemies.
Finally, he made variations on the Promethean theme: You will steal fire from heaven to animate the
still lukewarm Republic, and inflame the love of country and justice. For, “the days of crime are past”;
no more question of “temporizing with the culprits”. Returning to one of the themes of his book, he
asked his listeners to be "similar to the Supreme Being who puts everything in harmony without
showing himself", because, obviously, it was appropriate for him to come out of theatrical exhibitionism,
personal intrigues, financed from abroad, which degraded and compromised the Revolution. He even
came to speak like an old plowman to his children: Freedom calls you back to nature and they wanted
you to abandon it. Have you no wife to cherish, children to raise ? Respect each other. And you,
representatives of the people, take charge of the supreme government, and let everyone enjoy freedom
instead of governing.
Transposed from the noble language, all this was equivalent to saying vulgarly: Leave us alone,
keep quiet in your corner, and far from boring you, we will protect you. But it was not a shameful
bargain. It was a tragic alternative: rigor or death.
Republics are not made with care, but with fierce rigor, inflexible rigor towards all those who have
betrayed. That the accomplices denounce themselves by siding with the party of the packages; what
we have said will never be lost on earth. We can snatch from life men who, like us, have dared
everything for the truth, we cannot snatch their hearts nor the hospitable tomb in which they escape
slavery and the shame of seeing the triumph of the villains 28 .
It was on this great shadow of glorious death that his speech ended. Justice from beyond the grave
remains his only support, his only comfort... his last illusion.
For the time being, Saint-Just had received a unanimous vote, but amassed fierce antipathies.
A few days later, at the Jacobins, a woman will report having heard Dufourny say: “What is Saint-Just
meddling in? It is not up to him to judge anyone” (sic).
5. THE SENSATIONAL TRIAL.

As soon as it opened on 13 Germinal (April 2), Danton's trial took on, with the temperament of the grand tribune,
a very different tone from that of the Girondins and the Hébertists. The crowd crashes into the room and, the
window being open, the stentorian voice resounds so much that the pedestrians gather on the quay to follow the
diatribes.
The first day is devoted to the scandal of the Compagnie des Indes, on which Cambon testifies.
Immediately, Danton stands up and calls out to the witness: Do you think we are conspirators ? See, he laughs,
he doesn't believe it. Secretary, write that he laughs...29 .
When his turn to explain comes, Danton rushes in with thunderous vociferations. Having had to be informed of
the scenario originally planned, he can cry out: Would the cowards who slander me dare to attack me face to
face ? Let them show themselves and soon I will cover them themselves with the ignominy, the opprobrium that
characterizes them... Having played the indulgence for a few months, he adds not without address: I will confuse
30 .
them, and then I will I will have the generosity to ask for their pardon
As the president interrupts him and asks the accused to lower his voice, reminding him that calm is "the essence
of innocence", Danton resumes by declaring that he will answer Saint-Just point by point, following the outline of
his report. But, devoid of precise arguments, the tribune can only get out of it by movements of cape and chin very
playfully. Soon, he enhances the
your :
Sold to Mirabeau and others ? How much did they pay me ? A man of my caliber is priceless.
Nothing he says constitutes an argument. It has to be shouted. The vigor of the form must compensate for the
weakness of the substance. The plane of history, on which Saint-Just wanted to stand, becomes for him a
fairground trestle: And you, Saint-Just,
you will answer posterity for the defamation launched against the best friend of the people,
against his most ardent defender!
Is it about his relations with Dumouriez? Danton declares that he only saw the general once:
cannons.
Next to this big bully, is the little myopic who only expresses himself well by sucking his pen: Camille Desmoulins.
He began to write a note in prison in which he attacks Saint Just – whom he only calls the Chevalier de Saint-Just
to mock his lesser nobility:
If only two days were left to me... how I would confuse the Chevalier de Saint-Just! how I would convince him
of the most atrocious calumny! But he writes at leisure in a bath, in a boudoir; he meditates for a fortnight on my
assassination, and I have nowhere to put my desk, I have only a few hours to defend my life!...
... And first of all there is no one at the Convention who does not know that the ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-
Just has sworn implacable hatred to me for a light joke that I allowed myself five months ago in one of my numbers.
Bourdaloue said: “ Molière puts me in his comedy, I will put it in my sermon. »
I put Saint-Just in a laughing act with a 31,

and he puts me in a guillotine relationship where there is not a
word of truth about me.
Unfortunately, the demonstration of the falsity of the accusation is null. Desmoulins can think of nothing
to say, except that Saint-Just, "yesterday's patriot", has forgotten his pamphlet against the Brissotins. He
insists on the fact that the committees did not immediately respond to Chabot's denunciation of the
Hébertists; and he ends his note with sketches of some members of the Committee of General Security.
However, if the arrows of Camille Desmoulins could hardly carry, it was not the same for the tirades of
Danton. The public warmed up, applauded him so much, that the judges took fright when he asked for the
hearing of sixteen defense witnesses. Distraught, Fouquier-Tinville sent a note to the committees informing
them that a "terrible storm" had been rumbling since the start of the session and asking what he should do
for the sixteen parliamentarians whose summons had been claimed.
The committees refused the testimonies requested by the Dantonists. They had a strong reason for it;
they had just received, transmitted by the Commune, a letter from an informant at the prison of the
Conciergerie from which it emerged that General Dillon was preparing a great insurrection with Lucile de
Desmoulins and Simon. Although a prisoner, Arthur Dillon had been able to transmit a thousand crowns to
Lucile "to be able to send people around the revolutionary tribunal", and, on the other hand, very well kept
informed of the progress of the trial, Dillon had peddled in the corridors of the Conciergerie the incidents that
have occurred.
6. A CONSPIRACY.
Here too, posterity has largely confirmed the denounced fact. First, the very young Lucile – whom Camille
called her “dear Lolotte” – had gone a little lightly. After having written to Legendre to ask him to go and kill
Robespierre, she had turned to Dillon's side. The latter, with another defendant, the swindling businessman
d'Espagnac, had written to General Séhuguet, cousin of the latter, asking him to march promptly on Paris
with his troops in order to deliver them. Finally, Barras will tell in his Memoirs how General Brune, a friend
of Danton, had to come in force to the court to snatch Danton from his judges.
However, this conspiracy of prisons will be denied for a long time after 9 Thermidor, and the brutal end
of the trial will be attributed to Saint-Just, in particular by his former friend Villain Daubigny.
According to him, on the evening of the 14th, Fouquier-Tinville had gone before the committees to ask
them how to respond to the claim of witnesses. As the committees forbade him “in the most imperative way
to have any witness of the accused 32 heard ”, Fouquier would have insisted, emphasizing that the refusal
constituted a “violation of the principles”. And this insistence would have earned him threats from the
members of the committees, “in particular from Billaud and Saint-Just”.
Obviously, one could be suspicious of a public accuser who was a distant relative of Desmoulins.
Besides, why was he rebelling against what he had very willingly accepted for the trial of the Hebertists?
Quite worried about his behavior, the Committee went so far as to send Hanriot the order to arrest the
prosecutor. Then, as such a spectacular gesture in the middle of a public trial risked setting fire to the
powder, the decision was quashed.
But, the next day, Saint-Just and Billaud-Varenne, at the Committee, had just received a letter informing
them of Dillon's conspiracy in the prisons, when they received a new note from Fouquier which, in order to
meet "the multiple complaints" who disturbed the session, asked for a "rule of conduct" to answer them.
It was on this that Saint-Just drew up the report and the decree – which all his colleagues approved –
but which immediate posterity deemed a scandalous cheating. According to Daubigny, by quoting in his
report to the Convention only the first sentence of Fouquier's note on "the horrible storm" rumbling at the
courthouse, Saint-Just had "distorted" the letter by using it as a pretext "to extract from the Convention a
decree which would put the accused out of the proceedings".
This thesis is even more false than the last historians have said. For the decree that Saint-Just had the
Assembly vote on, far from stipulating the end of the trial, decreed that “the court will continue the
investigation”. It is only up to the president to "suppress any attempt by the accused to disturb public peace
and hinder the course of justice". It is decreed that "any conspiracy defendant who resists or insults national
justice will be put out of the proceedings on the spot".
It is so little question of putting an end to the lawsuit that Billaud-Varenne, one of the principal persons in
charge for the decision, will intervene immediately after the vote of the decree, to ask the Convention that
Mrs. Philippeaux be heard like witness .
Basically, everything suggests that Fouquier-Tinville, caught between his friendly or family relations with
the accused and the fear of the Committee of Public Safety, wanted, in order to wash his hands of the
matter, either a decree from the Committee putting end to the trial or the maintenance of disorder to the
advantage of the accused, thanks to the summons of parliamentary witnesses. Having been unable to
obtain the second measure, Fouquier-Tinville will pronounce the closure as soon as he can. During his trial,
much more cautious than his defense witness Daubigny, he simply said that "the jurors having declared
that they were sufficiently instructed", he had had, "under the terms of the law", to stop the trial.
Moreover, the Committee's refusal to allow the requested witnesses to be called would be highly
questionable if they were testimonies called upon to support precisely such and such an argument of the defence.
But, by claiming parliamentarians, members of the Committee – like Billaud and Lindet – with whom he had
maintained friendly relations, Danton intended above all to embarrass the rulers and cause disorder.
As is often the case in trials of this order, even on the side of the prosecution, not all the documents
could be made public. According to the clerk Pâris, dit Fabricius, the conviction of the jurors
would have been determined by a secret document communicated by the members of the general security
,
committee, Amar, Voulland and Vadier. Various historians, including Albert Mathiez 33 have thought that it was a
letter sent by the Foreign Office to the banker Perregaux to notify him to make advances to certain people, including
a CD which was to receive one hundred and eighty thousand pounds.
But it is unlikely to hold the initials as signifying Citizen Danton, while other names are indicated without C. Father
Brottier and Lemaistre. But it is nonetheless interesting to note that this letter was seized from Danton and placed in
his judicial file. This shows that the great Republican maintained relations with royalist agents. Let us note that, three
months earlier, the bulletin Drake-d'Antraigues spoke of a letter, addressed from London by the Comte d'André to
Danton, and which had been communicated to the Committee of Public Safety by Deforgues
34 .
As for the brief report that Saint-Just wrote to present the decree reinforcing the severity of the
justice, he expresses more than ever a passionate stubbornness in the face of death.
“You have escaped the greatest danger that has ever threatened freedom,” he told the parliamentarians about
the conspiracy in the prisons. And again, it is not certain that the battle will be won for him and the members of the
committees. But what ! Placed in the post of honour, he says, we will cover the country with our bodies.
To die is nothing, provided the Revolution triumphs; this is the day of glory; this is the day when the Roman senate
struggled against Catiline; here is the day to consolidate public liberty forever... Your committees have little regard
for life; they value honor. People, you will triumph; but may this experience make you love the revolution by the perils
to which it exposes your friends.
In short, once again, for him greatness consists in rising to the judgment of History. He will write in his Notes on
Institutions: “Man forced to isolate himself from the world and from himself casts his anchor in the future and presses
to his heart the innocent posterity of present evils. This is the ultimate escape, the supreme comfort.
Alongside this commitment to posterity, and in such a heated tone, he intends to demonstrate that the violence of
the accused constitutes a confession. It's not very original or very persuasive. But the sincerity, the conviction that
inspires him, seems undeniable. With his intransigence heightened by his disgust for dirty, misty swamps where
political maneuvers burst like poisonous bubbles, he always rushes towards the full light, even if it means passing
under the black sun of death.
This stubbornness, this obstinate intransigence have not been asserted in vain. All those who were agitated, paid
the crowd to come and demonstrate in favor of Danton, found themselves spotted or took fright and gave up their
enterprise. It was in front of indifferent Parisians that Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles and their
friends went up to the scaffold.
1. Drake Bulletin # 18 .
2. See BUCHEZ and ROUX, vol. XXXII, p. 294.

3. At the trial of Fouquier-Tinville.
4. Trial heard and judged against Hébert, p. 94.
5. TUETEY, Directory, t. X, No. 2385 .
6. Second report on 9 Thermidor.
7. See BUCHEZ and ROUX, vol. XXXII, p. 300.
8. The version published by Buchez and Roux, which gives this sentence, places it in the mouth of Hébert. We can be all the more sure
that it is an inversion that the other more faithful account bears: "Barère denigrated by Father Duchesne... "
9. Cf. no . 19 (March 27-April 2).
10. COURTOIS, Ma Catilinaire, year III.
11. THIBAUDEAU, Memoirs (Malesherbes was guillotined shortly after Danton).

12. Drake Bulletin No. 19 (March 27-April 2).
13. See Monitor, t. XXIV, p. 53-54.

14. See Robespierre terrorist, p. 79-119.
15. Where he said: "These are the same men who welcomed with such tender interest the insolent women of the Lyon conspirators." »
16. We cannot think that it was a joke, since Danton offered through Noël, a part of the West Indies
to England, to keep it neutral, in 1792.
17. Of course, he got this from Robespierre who, in one of his notes, says that Danton, during his last visit, “spoke to him about
Desmoulins with contempt; he attributed his deviations to a private and shameful vice, but absolutely foreign to the revolution”.
18. Vadier's account is given by TASCHEREAU-FARGUES in an appendix to his M. Robespierre in the Underworld.
19. Notes de Courtois (published by Dr. Robinet, Révol. franç., 1887).
20. LOUIS BARTHOU, Danton, Paris, 1932, p. 365.
21. It is Courtois who reports this sentence in one of his notes.
22. My Catiline or Continuation of my report of 16 Nivôse year III.
23. It was on the day of Fabre's arrest that Billaud-Varenne said this to Danton.
25. The letter is from 19 Germinal. Cf. E. DUARD, General Choderlos de Laclos, p. 397.
26. BACOURT, Correspondence of Mirabeau with La Mark, t. I, p. 150.
27. See Girondins and Montagnards, p. 304, and Studies on the French Revolution by M. GEORGES LEFEBVRE, Paris, 1954.
28. In his diary, Weiss notes, in 1810, a note from Danton which he received from the prefect Jean de Bry. When someone was talking to him about
Saint-Just, Danton is said to have said: "I don't like this extravagant: he knows neither the character nor the spirit of the nation." He wants to give us
the Republic of Sparta and it is the Republic of Cockaigne that we need” (An. hist. de la Rév. fr., July-August 1924).
29. Cf. TOPINO-LEBRUN, The Trial of Danton.
30. See Arch. nat., F7 4443, notes by Topino-Lebrun and the official report reproduced by Buchez and Roux (t. XXXII).
31. Allusion to the formula “Saint-Just carries his head like a holy sacrament”.
32. Cf. his testimony at the Fouquier-Tinville trial.
33. Cf. The Foreign Conspiracy, p. 129-137.
34. Drake Bulletin No. 8 (January 31). In 1953, in the Historical Annales... M. Reinhard, for the first time, reproduced a conversation between
Danton and an envoy of André, Peter Lewis Robin. Which seems to confirm the story.
CHAPTER VI
DIFFICULT BROTHERHOOD
Lifestyle was very important to Saint-Just.

In his note, Camille Desmoulins had spoken of the baths he liked to take, and Danton, before the
court, specified that they were “Chinese baths! ” What ".
did these Chinese baths consist of? The Guide for foreign travelers to Paris teaches us this. Located
on the Seine, near the Pont de la Tournelle and the Quai Dauphine, they grouped their customers in
"bathtubs" of three people, where they were taught the art of swimming fully clothed, because that is
how , says the prospectus very seriously, that one falls into the water, "which makes a weight capable
of dragging the swimmer along". Moreover, certain bathtubs received water so quickly, the guide
further assures us, that they allowed “baths by friction, which is very beneficial for certain illnesses”.
Moreover, anyone who included in his Notes sur les institutions, as a compulsory examination, the
crossing of a river by swimming by any adolescent, must have known how to answer it. He had made
too much fun of Papius and Poppeus to put, like them, in contradiction his life and his laws.
And then, let's not doubt it, these little pools in the Seine, despite their Chinese name, had for him
a Greco-Roman character. He would plunge into the river as, on other mornings, he would mount a
horse and gallop through the woods of the Champs-Élysées 2 , to revive the world with a few old
dreams.
Like the hero of M. Henry de Montherlant's Dream who, living near the Jardin d'Acclimatation,
shuddered in the evening when he heard the wild beasts growl, because they evoked for him those of
ancient Rome, Saint-Just escaped from political mediocrities and found the breaths of the Tiber by
doing a bit of swimming and horseback riding.
This youthful way of enhancing, of illuminating the present, it still appears in the anecdote reported
by the lawyer Roussel. One day, coming to the Committee very early, Saint-Just had sent for a
sausage, some bread and a bottle of wine for his lunch. “The supply arrived, Saint-Just walks around
the office, eating, and seems absorbed in serious reflections. Suddenly he stops and makes this
exclamation: "What would Pitt say if he saw the president of the National Convention of France having
lunch with a simple saucisson ? " »
However, he remained too lucid to be fooled by these evocations of a legendary past.
A few days after Danton's death, in his report of 26 Germinal (April 15), he said :
despise nothing, but imitate nothing that has passed before us; heroism has no model.
He was able to measure how difficult it was to agree on the present, on the conclusions to be drawn, on
the path that should be taken. Notwithstanding the execution of the Hebertists and the Dantonists, the
Committee was to continue to watch on its right and on its left; the dead left friends, enemies of the
government.
It was in response to this that Saint-Just wrote a long report presenting economic and financial, judicial
and police measures, such as to enable the Committee of Public Safety to better hold in hand the country
dismantled by the war, the struggles of opinion and scandalous trafficking.
1. DIFFERENCE AT THE COMMITTEE.
But, according to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, the conversations had resulted in a new one in a
violent clash between Saint-Just and Robespierre. The latter, meeting at the Hotel des Invalides,
4 having explained that it was necessary to safeguard Pache and others because of the services they had
rendered, Saint-Just would have expressly claimed that Pache, by name, had been involved in the
conspiracies under the pretext of discovering them, that he did not had made a spy of it only when he had
seen that this party was going to be exterminated, that he had in this regard complete proofs which he
reserved to put forward in due time and, for that, that he refused his assent to the safeguard requested of
him. After a debate throughout the night, the Committee, under the influence of Robespierre, ensured this
safeguard, "Saint-Just however still persisting in refusing it".
And, the next day – still according to the same source – Saint-Just would have repeated the contradiction,
in connection with the presentation by Sieyès advocating the simplification of government and peace
negotiations. For Saint-Just, by embarking on this path, the successors of the Héberts and the Dantons
would be enabled to prove to all the departments the existence of the projects of which Hébert had accused
Robespierre.
Disagreements of this nature are much more likely than those attributed by Michelet to a more anticlerical,
more exterminating position of Saint-Just than that of Robespierre. Especially since, to support his
demonstration, the historian falsifies the nature of the report that Saint-Just will read at the Convention on
April 15 (16 Germinal).
2. APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT (16 GERMINAL).
Because, this one attacks less with the noble ones, the declared anti-revolutionaries, than with the
leaders, with the persons in charge of the new mode. It is to them that he throws brutally: Ambitious, go for
an hour's walk in the cemetery where the conspirators and the tyrant sleep and decide between fame,
which is the sound of tongues, and glory, which is 'estimated. As we see, he always collects the rustlings of
the land of the dead. However, for the time being, he does not appeal to sentiment or reason but to civic conscience:
Have a public conscience, for all hearts are equal in the feeling of good and evil; it is made up of the inclination of the
people towards the general good. Honor the spirit; but lean on your heart. Freedom is not a chicanery of the palace; it is
rigidity towards evil, it is justice and friendship.
For him, the revolutionary by having a "sensible, frugal, simple, inflexible" behavior must be a "hero of common sense
and probity".
Oh ! of course, he wishes for this new way of being without having many illusions: I know that those who have
wanted good have often perished. Codrus died precipitated into an abyss; Lycurgus had his eye gouged out by the
rogues of Sparta who thwarted his harsh laws, and died in exile; Phocion and Socrates drank hemlock; Athens that day
crowned itself with flowers: no matter, they had done good; if it was lost for their country, it was not hidden for the Divinity.
Now, he resigns himself to what anguished him, three years earlier, when he wrote the Spirit of the
Revolution where, evoking the same fatality in the ancient world, he said:
How blind was the freedom of Rome ! So it was to end up being the fortune of a single person. A word from Seneca
makes me feel sorry for Cato when I think of him: he was barely a lender and he never became consul with so many
virtues. There was nothing in Rome, everything was Caesar. When I think where the discipline and frugality of so many
heroes were to end, when I think that this was the fate of the most rebellious constitutions, and that liberty always lost its
principles in order to conquer, that Rome died after Cato, that excess of its power produced monsters more detestable
and more superb than the Tarquins, pain rends my heart and arrests my pen.
Today, there is only one stop for him: death. Faced with her, it is better to be Roman.
“Let the revolutionary men, he repeats again, be Romans and not Tartars. »
He already discerns very well the two themes that will be exploited by those of 9 Thermidor: "The aristocracy, he
declares, tries to avenge itself by accusing the government which is becoming stronger of despotism, it is indignant that
you have recognized the Divinity. »
Nevertheless, he dismisses with disdain what we would call nowadays, realism, combinations
with the political forces of the country:
If your committees had sought authority, they would have spared all parties, and would have
levers: it was the march of all tyrants, and it was that of the leaders of the destroyed factions.
But that does not mean that he despises the Assembly. On the contrary, to these games and intrigues he opposes this
which he presents as a great contract between the government and the Convention:
... We no longer have support except in yourselves, and in the example that we will give to Europe and to the French,
of our respect for you.
You yourselves have given an example which must be imitated by all; you have punished those who conspired in your
midst: what enemy of the fatherland in the rest of the Republic will dare tax you with
partiality if you punish him himself.

All attention must be focused on the leaders and the organization of the state. "It is the leaders
who must be disciplined," declared Saint-Just, "because all evil results from the abuse of power."
To remedy this, new laws and institutions are needed.
Also, in the decree he is presenting, and which will be voted on with numerous amendments, we
find his major projects. Article 25 stipulates that two commissions must be formed: one to establish
a “complete code of laws” and the other to fix the institutions without which there is “no lasting
freedom”; both will present their report in a month.
As everyone knows, the two commissions will never exist. It will take Napoleon to establish the
Civil Code. And the institutions will only be sketched by Saint-Just in a few notes.
The other measures promulgated are mainly provisions for war. Henceforth, requisitions were
forbidden to all, except the subsistence commission and the representatives of the people near the
armies, under the express authorization of the Committee of Public Safety (art. 22). Foreigners and
"ex-nobles" will no longer have to stay in Paris or in the strongholds. Those accused of conspiracy
will be brought from all parts of the Republic to the tribunal of Paris (art. 1). Finally, the Committee
of Public Safety will demand "a severe account of all agents", will prosecute those who "have turned
their powers against freedom", and it will be seized of "thefts, uncivil speeches and acts of
oppression" by all witnesses or victims (arts. 20 and 21).
More than ever, this is a balanced report. Speech of the Terror in the sense that it constitutes a
new effort to restore by measures of an increased rigor this authority of which the State was
deprived vis-a-vis the demagogic factions and the traffics of its own agents. But, a discourse also
inspired by the need to reassure and inspire confidence.
The member of the Committee of Public Safety stigmatized those who make it their business to
arrest people and set them free. To the deputies, he said: You must make it understood that
revolutionary government does not mean war or a state of conquest, but the passage from evil to
good, from corruption to probity... And, to give concrete examples. It was a tyrannical method on
Custine's part to pretend to discipline the army by shooting the soldiers. It is the leaders who must
be disciplined, because all evil results from the abuse of power... From now on, the complaints
brought by the citizens against the abuses of authority will be returned to you. In a few words, he
demanded that the law be "full of harshness towards the enemies of the fatherland" and "gentle and
maternal towards the citizens".
But in practice, one might say, what did Saint-Just contribute to economic and social life? Well,
this time, he dwelt less on the fate of the peasants and the destitute than on that of the merchants:
Trade lacking credit buys little; the citizens, who formerly made provisions for two, four, six, eight,
ten days, make them from day to day: this is the cause of the gatherings at the doors of the food
merchants. They buy little at a time, because they lack funds, and bills of exchange do not multiply
values and means.
In other words, as a last expedient, we tried to remedy the bottleneck in distribution, the stagnation of
production by opening up new credits. Article 24 of the decree proposed to the Assembly by Saint-Just
defined this credit and subsidy policy very clearly.
The Committee of Public Safety will encourage, by indemnities or rewards, the exploitation of mines,
manufactures, the draining of marshes; he will protect industry, confidence between those who trade; he
will make advances to patriotic merchants who will offer maximum supplies; he will give guarantee orders
to those who will bring goods to Paris, so that the transport is not disturbed; he will protect the circulation
of truckers in the interior, and will not suffer any attack on public good faith.
All this, it will be admitted, is quite far from the decrees of Ventôse.
It remains to be seen whether the secret thought of Saint-Just did not nevertheless incline towards
this social egalitarianism, this “transformation of property” that Jaurès and Mathiez sought with great
attention. To support their affirmative answer, the latter looked at the notes left by Saint-Just and
published after his death under the title: Fragments des Institutions.
We find in these pages, with regard to the economic and the social, themes already dealt with by
Saint-Just: condemnation of taxation and the need to restrict monetary circulation 5 . But this fits into
sketches of institutions whose object, let us not forget, belonged to the moral order, and even religious,
as we will see later. It was a question of "substituting the ascendancy of morals for the ascendancy of
men." And, in the area that interests us, Saint Just started from the following principle: “Everyone must
work and respect each other. That is to say, he wanted "neither opulence nor misery." Also, he said, to
reform morals, one must begin by satisfying need and interest; we must give some land to everyone. For
the same reason, a domain and public revenues in kind are necessary... Where there are large
landowners, one sees only the poor; nothing is consumed in countries of great culture. Begging must be
destroyed by the distribution of national goods to the poor. However, the last sentence of the little diary
found on him, 9 Thermidor, provides an important corrective: “Do not admit the sharing of properties, but
the sharing of rents. »
Wanting to develop the small culture by using the national goods, that can hardly pass for a real
“questioning of the property”. In these pages, Saint-Just hardly appears as a precursor of collectivism or
nationalization. He even seems singularly reserved, if we compare his views with those of the men who
excited passions, for months, with disparate projects that were always described as "agrarian law". Thus,
the Jacobin priests of Mauchamp and Epineuil advanced more briskly than the Conventionnel. The
second declared bluntly: “The property will be shared, there will be only one cellar, one attic where
everyone will take everything they need. »
At Saint-Just, the “public domain in nature” is much less extensive. It is made up of “taxes, estates
attributed to the Republic and national property”. It is "established for
relieve the people of tribute in difficult times”. And, if we look at the measures of largesse he expects from
the public domain, we find there all the pensions and compensation distributed by the modern state, and
nothing more. First of all, military pensions (for "mutilated soldiers"), pensions for old people (provided that
they "carried arms in their childhood"), family allowances (for those who have "more than four children or
have adopted them, or support father and mother), victims (of war or, for farmers, of a natural disaster),
finally public assistance (for orphans) and free education (with a fairly spartan way of education).
As for property, its right is maintained: it includes obligations but not restrictions. Only the investment of
money abroad is prohibited. Also, one must "report every year, in the temples, on the use of one's fortune".
Of course "idleness is punished, industry protected." And, any owner who does not practice a trade or
who is not a magistrate must, if he is of age, cultivate the land until he is fifty years old! Every landowner
is required "under penalty of being deprived of the right of citizenship during the year, to raise four sheep,
for each arpent of land he owns."
All this obviously reflects the age of the author, and then the civic system in which these
institutions had to fit together.
Finally, “concerning the distribution of national assets”, the context of these disparate notes shows that
Saint-Just was not thinking of forming a new class of owners but of farmers. In the passage on the public
domain, it is specified that this “is farmed out to those who have no land”.
Although limited to direct relatives, the right of inheritance is maintained.
It is therefore surprising that a Mathiez considered the Ventôse decrees, supplemented by the notes
of Saint-Just, as the germ of the “programme of Equals”.
The most curious aspect of these Fragments of the Institutions, with regard to the economic and the
social, is undeniably the primacy accorded to agriculture. This time, nothing is said, or almost, of industry
and commerce. On the other hand, Saint-Just supports the provisions, which we have already examined,
with the following remark: There can be no virtuous and free people except an agricultural people... A trade
does not agree well with the true citizen; the hand of man is only made for the earth or for arms.
This remark is all the more surprising since Saint-Just had, as we have seen, in his first discourse on
subsistence, discarded a fairly similar perspective, by declaring: "Our climates and our moods are not
proper either to laziness, nor to the pastoral life; and yet we walk, without realizing it, towards such a life. »
For laziness he had not changed his mind, but the pastoral life seemed to have won him over. He ... not
It wasn't an immediate measure, but it was part of the ideal institutions he dreamed of.
3. THE FUTURE CITY.

Yes, his supreme hope rested on institutions. The word designated, for him as for his contemporaries,
both the great civic rules and the social organizations. Hastily, he wrote: If there were mores,
everything would be fine; institutions are needed to purify them; we must tend there... All the rest will
follow... Terror can rid us of monarchy and aristocracy; but who will deliver us from corruption?...
Institutions. We do not suspect it; one thinks one has done everything when one has a machine of
government... Do you know what must be done today, and what belongs only to the legislator
himself?... It is the Republic.. .
Indeed, the latter was not limited, for him, to the "harangues" of the assembly nor even to the
"charter" of the laws: it was to be embodied "in the civil state" and to substitute the ascendancy of morals for
the ascendancy of men.
However, shaping a society, organizing the game of moral rules, the task is tough: what criteria to
use, on what basis to rely?
The papers left by Saint-Just bear only sketches. As much as the notes of examination of
conscience or judgment on the situation of the moment remain very endearing – by the clairvoyance
and the feelings that they express – so much the constructive projects often seem childish and of a
needy utopia. The disgust that his contemporaries inspire in him, the swells of war, and the memories
of his education, push him more than ever to seek a port of salvation in antiquity to find Stoic models
there. Only, putting on the costumes of the past quickly takes on a carnivalesque aspect. Moreover,
once again, these notes being drawer bottoms, often carried dreams of a day, projects that he had
abandoned on 9 Thermidor.
The same goes for education. Children are left with their mothers until they are five years old, after
which the state takes charge of them. Until the age of ten, they remain boarders at the cantonal
school. There, "clad in canvas", they eat "roots, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, bread and water",
and sleep only eight hours a night, lying on mats. They are taught to read, to write, to swim.
Then, from ten to sixteen, their education becomes “military and agricultural”. Assigned to companies
of sixty, they camped, learned horsemanship and foreign languages. “They are distributed to laborers
during harvest time. Finally, from seventeen to twenty-one, they "enter the arts and choose a
profession."
For dressing everything is planned. Up to sixteen, no change. Afterwards, the "worker's costume"
is imposed. Then from twenty-one to twenty-five, the soldier's uniform, "if they are not magistrates."
As for the residence: until their majority, the teenagers must live with their teacher who is a
plowman, manufacturer, craftsman or trader. If they leave their garrison, they are "deprived of the right
of citizenship during their lifetime".
All this evokes a little scouting and the mobilization of the youth by modern dictators.
But the real parents of the children of Saint-Just are Greek, without their mode of education being
identical to that of Greece.
In Lycurgus, for example, if the young Spartans are left to their mother until the age of seven (two years
older than in the Montagnard), on the other hand, afterwards they remain the property of the mother until
their death. 'State. The latter trains them in frugality, teaches them the handling of weapons and espionage.
He excludes them from manual trades, but strongly urges them to denounce them.
In a Plato, education takes up much more space, not only in the timetable of young people, but in the
lives of adults. Mathematics and music are strongly inculcated. It is only at thirty that one learns dialectics
and, at fifty, the art of governing. Gold and private property are prohibited, but the three orders of citizens
join those of Saint-Just: spiritual leaders and rulers, guards and soldiers, craftsmen and labourers.
However, on other notes - no doubt later - Saint-Just came out in favor of the
rights and functions of the father.
But back to the terms. For the girls, it is understood that they will be brought up in the maternal home and
cannot appear in public, on holidays, without their father, their mother or their guardian, as long as they are
adolescents, and virgins.
As for friendship, it will be imposed and severely controlled. He who does not believe in friendship or who
has no friend is banished. Every man must, every year, declare publicly, in the temple, who are his friends.
In case of rupture, the explanation is obligatory and ingratitude is also worth banishment.
On the other hand, for marriage, the affair goes without complication. Those who love each other do not
unite by a contract, but by tenderness; the act of their union establishes that their property is pooled without
any clause. However, “spouses who have had no children during the first seven years of their union, and
who have not adopted any, are separated by law”. In case of marital disagreement, divorce is authorized
and, if there are children, a public officer appoints a guardian.
Let us pass over the conditions imposed on heredity, contracts, funerals and retain the penalties.
Banishment is a big part of it. He is liable to it who strikes a woman; the one who starts a virile fight where
the blood flows; he who, "being drunk, has said or committed evil." Moreover, one cannot remain a passive
witness: anyone who has seen a man or a woman hit and has not stopped the one hitting, is punished by
one year's imprisonment.
For the army, the penalties are even more severe. The soldier who insults his chief or disobeys him, the
chief who insults or strikes his subordinate are punished by death. In case of theft or violence, the culprit is
expelled from the army, on French territory, and punished by death, if it is in enemy country.
Honor in war becomes an obligation. The French garrisons...must perish rather than be taken prisoner...A
soldier, near whom another soldier has been struck with a bladed weapon, is dishonored if he returns from
combat without the weapon of the one who hit his brother.
In the civilian as in the military, as a punishment as a decoration, the ornaments and the color of the
dressing are painted with care but not without childishness. Murderers will be dressed in
black all their life, and will be put to death if they leave this habit. As for the soldier, he wears "a gold star on
his garment at the place where he received wounds... If he is mutilated or if he has been wounded in the face,
he wears the star on his heart ".
By seeking a new lifestyle, Saint-Just hoped to cure the nation of its weaknesses. But, in order not to get
lost in the laws, whose excessive abundance he deplored, nor in the factions, whose intrigues he condemned,
it was necessary to rely on well-established social categories. However, how to determine and organize them?
Saint-Just came up against what once separated a Plato from an Aristotle. The first envisaged ideal
constitutions out of time. The second, more realistic, worrying about the immediate, wrote: State if one does
by assigning some to public not begin by classifying men and dividing up goods, "We will never form a state
use and distributing the surplus to curiae and particular tribes. A Phaleas of Chalcedon hailed Hippodom of
Miletus as "the inventor of the division of the States by orders of the citizens." Without doubt, Plato, at the end
of his life, in the Laws, advocated a division of goods and citizens based on the sacred number: 5,040. But
this Pythagorean esotericism could not be taken up. And, it was difficult, in 1794, to claim to restore a social
classification, whereas the revolutionaries on the night of August 4 had abolished the privileges which
distinguished the three orders of the old regime. Moreover, the sale of national assets, the financial crisis, the
war, the establishment of a new regime resulted in the enrichment of some, the ruin of others: everything
seemed doomed to instability, swept away by the bubbling events.
How to fix the condition of the citizens? Saint-Just lays down the first principle: the hand of man is made
only for the earth and for arms. The other professional activities are repudiated: A job does not go well with
the true citizen. He believes that it is necessary to give some land to everyone and to destroy begging by the
distribution of national goods to the poor, but without specifying further the organization of this new agriculture.
To animate the people, he counts on virtue and glory. For the destiny of a people consists of those who
aim for glory and those who aim for fortune... If there are more people who aim for glory, the State is happy
and prosperous, s If there are more people aiming for fortune, the state withers away.
But, if we intend to push the citizens towards glory, it is advisable to consecrate it socially, by awarding
honors (flattering attributions, titles and decorations) and by organizing hierarchical advancement (by
examinations, competitions and established rights).
However, Saint-Just does not draw many maps for the paths of glory. Apart from the cloakroom and the
decorations of which we have already spoken, to which are added, for the young people, a few prizes for
laconic eloquence and poetry, it is only age that counts.
He reserves an even larger place for old people than in his draft constitution. It is understood that "respect
for old age is a cult in our homeland". From the age of sixty, all
men who have "lived without reproach will wear a white scarf" and will constitute a true spiritual
authority to watch over civic morality.
These old men will be enthroned and they will exercise their functions in “temples”. Saint-Just
does not say how these temples will be established, but he seems to refer to a state of affairs: the
absorption of many Christian buildings by the revolutionaries. It is not a question, for him, of
keeping Christianity on the pavement. On the contrary. The temples will be "open to all cults" which
will be "equally permitted and protected". But, the traditional religions will not be able to manifest
themselves outside, on the roadway.
This Templar regime probably responded to the intention of safeguarding the Catholic churches
without offending the anticlerical Jacobins. As we have seen, Saint-Just marched with them, but
their anti-Christian parades had made him cry in Strasbourg... Raised in Catholicism, he had
ceased to practice it and to believe in the Church, but not in God. Shouts expressing his belief in
the future life and divine justice cut through his reflections on institutions.
To overcome his anguish, he needed to shout – to himself – his last hopes.
The role attributed to the elderly is rather thankless. Saint-Just intends that they maintain, each
in turn, for twenty-four hours, the incense which will smoke within the temples, and that they preside
over important ceremonies. They must constitute the superior civic authority within the local
framework. Indeed, "the eldest of a ceremony is required to appear in the temple every ten days
and to express his opinion on the conduct of the officials". The latter, when they are accused,
cannot defend themselves orally: one of their friends reads their written answer “with decency”
and, without discussion, the people judge whether or not they should be referred to the criminal
courts. If they are convicted of a bad life, they will be banished.
Saint-Just attaches the greatest importance to censorship. Because, for him, the revolution
dilemma: it takes “a dictator to save virtue”. poses a State by force, or censors to save it by the
Of course, he would like to be able to make use of virtue, by establishing "in each district and in
each army of the Republic, until the peace, a censor of public functionaries." This one would hold
a strictly spiritual power. He could not sign an arrest warrant or issue a judgment. He would even
be forbidden to speak in public. Modest, austere and inflexible, he should summon the functionaries
to demand accounts and explanations from them, and have the conspirators or squanderers judged
by the courts; those who oppressed the citizens; those who do not execute the measures of
government and public safety within the fixed deadlines: all agents who prevaricate, in any way
whatsoever. In the army, the censor should oversee "discipline, officers, generals and
administration". Only one category of citizens would escape his control: the deputies. Only ordinary
citizens could accuse the members of the Assembly. On the other hand, “the charges against the
censors would be brought before the legislative body”.
In the end, Saint-Just came back – perhaps without realizing it – to the three great castes of the old
Eastern and Greek tradition: brahmana ( priests and holders of spiritual authority), kshatroya (warriors) and
vaicya (breeders and farmers). His education, a passage in Freemasonry, his anguish had been able to
push him in this direction.
Oh ! he was not sure of having found what was needed to infuse new blood into the social body or
circulate the sap in the tree of the State. He measured the gravity of the illness and the difficulties of the
operation: What violence, what weakness in this body devoid of connections, whose sterile mechanism is
like a tree whose roots and hanging branches do not touch the trunk. It needed deep roots well anchored
in the earth, and high branches well raised in the sky. Not convenient to cultivate both simultaneously. First,
we had to worry about the opportunity. Coldly, Saint-Just wrote:
No doubt it is not yet time to do good. The particular good that one does is a palliative. It is necessary to
wait for a general evil great enough for general opinion to feel the need for measures calculated to do good.
What produces the general good is always terrible or seems odd when started too soon.
Terror and violence prevailed. For now, everything should be devoted to strengthening the authority of
the state. This is why he advocates, in his speech of 26 Germinal, new powers for the Committee of Public
Safety.
Everything will be weighed at the foot of common sense. Those especially will be pursued without pity, who would violate the
public guarantee by outrageous representation.

You were also mistaken, you who robbed the State, and believe you will enjoy the price of your packages for a long time.
This sentence earned Saint-Just “strong applause”. Never perhaps has it been interrupted so often by
the approvals of the Assembly. However, this success will not encourage him to come back anytime soon
to seek the support of the majority of the Convention.
He will not return to the tribune until 9 Thermidor.
4. POLICE OFFICES, NEW DISAGREEMENTS.
In fact, for him, apart from putting the institutions and the Civil Code on the agenda, the decree,
from its report of 26 Germinal, provides authorization to establish a police office.
As Barère very rightly says in his Memoirs: It was Saint-Just and not Robespierre who formed the office,
which was not very considerable in its origin and which was presented to the Committee only as responsible
more particularly for the supervision of civil servants and national agents. under law 6 .
Yes, it was Saint-Just who set up the office on the second floor of the Château des Tuileries. He
surrounds himself with men he has known in the Aisne or who are recommended to him by friends. For
example, to follow the correspondence and monitor the offices, he takes Augustin Lejeune, wounded in the war, former
clerk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (escaping 9 Thermidor, he would become a novelist and, in 1802, head
of customs, he would pride himself on having saved the aristocracy of Soissons condemned on a list drawn
up by Robespierre). As an intelligence agent, Saint-Just even hired his former tutor, Êve Demaillot, and then
Jean-Baptiste Garnerin, whom his friend Gateau had known as army commissioner.
But, fairly quickly, relations between the new office and the Committee of Public Safety became strained to
the point of calling into question the prestige of Saint-Just. Thus Mr. Arne Ording, in his precious study 7 Mayor
of Soissons, who,, cites as a simple curiosity the case – however highly symptomatic – of Vielle,
on 8 Floréal, having had his appointment to the police office signed by Saint-Just, Barère, Collot d'Herbois,
Billaud-Varenne and Carnot, found that insufficient as collateral; he returned to the Committee to have the
same text ratified by Robespierre, Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois and Barère. This mayor was not a
whimsical, but a cautious one who wanted to be on the side of the handle.
Undeniably, the first gestures of Saint-Just in his office, between 4 and 9 Floréal (April 23-28), must have
aroused anger within the Committee of Public Safety, since a Carnot and a Lindet will give the same period
like that of their first dispute with Saint-Just. In their answer to Lecointre, Barère and Billaud-Varenne will
specify that it was on the occasion of a decree of arrest signed by Carnot, against the accountant of
Luxembourg.
But for this kind of business, the affirmations of the Thermidorians are highly subject to caution.
Take, for example, the case of General Huchet, which is very revealing. Carnot will say that, denounced for
his cruelties in the Vendée, the general had been defended by Robespierre, and that he, Carnot, had been
obliged to sign his dismissal to the army.
But the archival documents singularly complete and rectify Carnot's assertion.
First, it appears that it was Saint-Just who had Huchet arrested on 6 Floréal, writing in the margin of the
denunciation submitted to him:
Warned of corresponding with the rebels, who told a young girl he would rape her over a corpse and
dig. – Have him dismissed and brought to Paris.
A month later, Saint-Just being on mission with the army of the North, Robespierre, Carnot and Barère, on
8 and 10 Prairial, will sign the order of release and return to his post of the same general hutch. As everyone
knows the absent are always wrong...
It was therefore by devoting the first activity of the police bureau to the official personnel of the new State
that Saint-Just came up against his colleagues on the Committee, who had their connections and their proteges.
Yet he does not keep them away. On 7 Floréal (April 26), for example, having received a denunciation
according to which Ysabeau and Tallien had instructed Le Mail to prepare their departure for America where
they wanted to "retire", Saint-Just sent for Le Mail to be heard by the Committee...
Moreover, his notes in the margins of the files submitted to him are not particularly fierce. He only manifests
a requirement of rigor, thus writing about a stranger: By what right did he punish those who behaved well,
after having recognized him ? ask him. If he shows himself, as Mr. Arne Ording notes, less suspicious of the
8
Robespierre Committee of General Security, it is because he does not intend to practice, like this one, that
a clan policy.
This liaison with the general security committee will leave traces during his absence. It will undoubtedly
help to impose the arrest of "papa Pache" and his son-in-law Xavier Audoin, on 21 Floréal (10 May). By being
signed neither by Robespierre nor by Couthon, the incarceration order confirms what we have said about
Pache, especially since Robespierre marks his presence by signing the affixing of the seals on the papers of
the decrees (as if dreading the knowledge of their content, he wanted to limit the damage).
Obviously, the nature of such relations between Saint-Just and the Committee of General Security could
only upset Robespierre more. He must have found that the young rapporteur and head of the police bureau
was taking on excessive independence and authority. And don't be the only one to think so.
Ah! the time was well past when the adolescent, writing to him from Blérancourt to ask for his support,
hailed him as a “great man” not “just a deputy from a province” but “from humanity”. Glory opens up
perspectives that are often contradicted by daily work relationships. Seen closer, "the Incorruptible" seemed
less big to him.
The fraternity proved more difficult to maintain in acts than by correspondence.
As for Saint-Just's relations with Lindet, the matter is less clear. Because, for the same period of the
beginning of Floreal, Lindet will affirm that he had a first clash with Saint-Just about "portable weapons and
powders which were lacking in Paris 9 ", while the Drake d'Antraigues bulletin of to go to the armies of the
10
North to recounts that Lindet asked, on the evening of April 21 (2 Floréal), that "Saint-Just be charged
enforce the decrees of the Committee of Public Safety”.
And, to add: “Robespierre wanted it to be Couthon, but, for this time, Saint-Just had the plurality of votes. »
The very text of Saint-Just's speech for 9 Thermidor rather encourages us to agree with Drake-d'Antraigues,
because Lindet will be one of the members of the Committee of Public Safety whom Saint-Just will greet
kindly. He will say he is "buried in his offices" and will join him to those whose powers Barère, Billaud
Varennes and Carnot have absorbed, taking advantage of their absence or their administrative work.
Be that as it may, Saint-Just and Le Bas left Paris on April 29 for the northern front. It is a new return to
the praetorian energy of which the member of the Committee of Public Safety dreamed under the sky of the
Tuileries.
1. Report to the general security committee (Arch. nat., F7 4443).

2. See police reports published by Aulard.

3. DE PROUSSINABLE, Secret History of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Paris, 1815, t. II, p. 150.
4. Drake Bulletin # 20 .
5. The manuscript shows that this is a draft speech. As for the notes, written on very different dates, they do not all have testamentary value
(cf. appendix II).
6. Other members of the committees, who will survive 9 Thermidor, will present this office as a business of the triumvirate
(Robespierre, Couthon and Saint-Just) because they needed the myth of the triumvirate to release their responsibility.
7. ARNE ORDING, The General Police Office, Oslo, 1930.
8. He transmits eight cases to the Committee during the five days of Floréal.
9. See ARMAND MOUTIER, Lindet, Paris, 1899, p. 247.
10. Bulletin No. 21 (April 20, 25).
CHAPTER VII
LOVE AND WAR
1. FROM LOUISE TO HENRIETTE.
This new mission in the Aisne and the departments of the North will be accompanied for him, at the
departure, of women's stories.
It is not the first time that this has happened, nor that he returns to the department of his childhood.
The previous year, he had already found the horizons of his childhood loves (from July 18 to 30). And
he had not passed through, it seems, without leaving a trace, since, a month later (September 2), his
comrade Thuillier, writing to him from Chauny, aside from the questions of subsistence, spoke to him of
the sudden escape of sweet Louise Thorin who had abandoned the marital home. "You always pass," he
said, "for having kidnapped her." It was known in the country that she now lived at "the Hôtel des Tuileries
opposite the Jacobins, rue Saint-Honoré", that is to say next to the Hôtel des Etats- States where Saint-
Just lived. Admittedly, the handsome boy already had a strong reputation as a successful runner in
Blérancourt and Chauny. But, this time, the connection passed the terminals. And Thuillier to warn his
friend: "It is time... to do everything that is appropriate to preserve the esteem and the honor that you had
before this kidnapping. You have no idea of all this; but it deserves attention. »
In his reply note, Saint-Just had uttered an exclamation: Where the devil did you dream what you are
asking of the citoyenne Thorin ? Please assure anyone who tells you about it that I have nothing to do with
it.
But he was careful not to affirm that he was unaware of the presence in Paris of his first love and that he
had never met her.
One might wonder if it was not this last meeting that inspired him to write this curious page written in
tiny letters, in tight lines on the little notebook he was carrying, it is said, on 9 Thermidor. On these small
sheets, acquired very recently by the National Library, one can read this story to which Saint-Just gave, we
a romantic form: She arrived at very slow steps. She came in, kissed
him, squeezed his hand. He reproached her gently for her long absence, and her silence; she answered
nothing. He led her by the hand and, when he arrived in her apartment, he lavished on her the sweetest
caresses.
She smiled and said nothing.
They both laid down on a bed. She tasted no pleasure but took a great part in
that of his friend. She ran her hands over the skin around her body, crossing her legs over his.
He asked her if she no longer loved him; she kissed him and kept a deep silence.
“ Let me open your mouth,” he added, with a kiss. Then he reproached her for what she had not written.
“ I had to come,” she replied.
– In the past, when you came, you brought me several letters.
She answered nothing.
" I'll run away from you," he told her. She doesn't say a word. But, he added, where will we end up ? We will have to separate,
don't you think of the future ?
“ I don't think about it anymore, I don't know why. It seems to me that I will always see you here.
– You are becoming indifferent, but why so much sadness?
- You want me to follow you. I will never be able to bring myself to it. I'll promise you to commit you to do
your progress, we'll see later, but I can never bring myself to do it.
“ In that case, let's forget about it right now. Come on, take courage, since we have to part one day, let's save ourselves more
regrets. Farewell. I will have another wife. I will bring you my grandchildren, you will love them as yours.
“ No,” she cried. And she burst into tears, squeezing him several times.
" Let us overcome our weakness," he continued. And he repeated to her that he would take a wife who would look like him
and that he would bring her his grandchildren. You see how I know how to take my side. I would take it the same if you were
unfaithful. Aren't you jealous ?

– No.
– Do you love me ?
– Yes, I love you.
– Well, we must forget it, part, never see each other again.
She cried. It wasn't long before he showed her that he still loved her the same way. He made her promise to come back
two days later. She took away the secret of her sadness.
Having gone out, she was quite calm and ... she promised her friend to tell him many things. She had written as many to her
friend. And when he asked her, she didn't answer. He said to her as he left: “ Many things grieve you, which you confided to me
2. He drove her back and
the other time. she wanted to know... kissed him tenderly.
He said to himself: either she distrusts me, or she is jealous, or she has a plan that she dares not confide to me...
This sketch of an autobiographical novel is preceded, on the sheets of the same notebook, by notes
on the art of being loved. We read this:
To be happy with women, you have to make them happy without making them feel it...
Leave her absolutely free... Whoever wants to make a woman happy must leave her to her
even...
It is dangerous to be too eager with women and to satisfy them. It takes indif erence to inflame
them; and they grow so accustomed to excessive caresses that they grow disgusted with them.
Always leave them desires and, by treating them with a little eagerness, you will gain that as soon as
2
they cool down, the slightest fire awakens them, instead of ... that exhausts everything, they still ask
if you more or become disgusted .
All this does not lack kindness or youthfulness. Vis-à-vis women, this is not the behavior of a
Valmont or a Julien Sorel. What preoccupies the revolutionary is less how to conquer women than
how to make a love lasting. In the midst of the wanderings and sandstorms of a turbulent time, he
dreams of the calm, the rest of an oasis. In a handwritten note which is in one of Barère's files, we
read for Saint-Just: “Austere and simple manners, good manners, neat costume, chaste language,
literate spirit. Distinguished in manner, politeness, urbanity 3 another notebook (lost) quoted by Barère
in his Memoirs, . Even a little theatrical on occasion, the attitude has its underlying reasons. In a
Saint-Just on the first page, had written to
pencil 4:
He sees the human heart and seeks his spirit

Love is the pursuit of happiness.
After the last meeting with Louise Thorin, Saint-Just sought a new path to happiness, becoming
engaged to the sister of his friend Le Bas, Henriette, who was staying with the Duplays. At the end of
Elisabeth Le
Bas. the year, he even took her to Alsace with
Henriette – despite her youth – was not one of those great sentimentalists in whom heart and
senses prevail over reason. His nephew – Philippe Le Bas – would write to Lamartine to reproach him
for having, in the History of the Girondins, presented his aunt as having “lacked reserve” with a “vain
and frivolous character”. For the nephew, Henriette “would rather have deserved the reproach of
being more serious and more severe than her age warranted. It is perhaps even to this disposition,
he adds, that the disagreements, moreover very slight, which sometimes arose between her and Saint-
Just, were due, but the latter never questioned the sincerity of the affection she had for him, and
Robespierre, who did complete justice to my aunt's qualities, would never have to reproach her for
any inconstancy of heart. 5 ”.
Through family devotion, Philippe Le Bas's letter makes Robespierre appear a little like a spiritual
grandfather and Henriette a little like a woman who deals with politics, a knitter rather in the bedroom,
but willingly wears pants. Moreover, the explanation that the family will give to the quarrel between
Saint-Just and his fiancée in this month of May 1794, corresponds well to this type of temperament. It
will be said that Saint-Just got angry with Henriette "because she had contracted the bad habit of
taking tobacco 6 ".
However, even giving due consideration to the mores of the time, the explanation seems insufficient.
Everything suggests that the divergence between the fiancés stems from politics and, more particularly, from
a falling out between Saint-Just and Robespierre.
Concerning governmental action, did not Henriette approve of the views of the grand master of the
Duplay's house, more than those of his brother?
2. JOURDAN PURSUED AND PROTECTED.
As soon as they returned from Alsace, the two friends, Saint-Just and Le Bas, had, in the shadows,
manifested their independence with regard to the Ministry of War, Robespierre, and the Committee of Public
Safety, apropos of a fact that the biographers, I don't know why, have not retained: the case of General Jourdan.
On January 6, the Minister of War having written to Jourdan that he did not understand how with his
150,000 men he could not manage to extricate Cambrai and Landrecies, the general replied that he had not
150,000 but 15,000 men, and that with such numbers he could not prevent the enemy from foraging Carnot
7
drew up and had . But, without waiting for this answer and, no better informed than the Minister,
Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varenne and Barère sign an order stating that Jourdan and Ernouf, his
chief of staff , would be "removed and placed under arrest".
In the notes of Elisabeth Le Bas reproduced by Stefane Pol, there are a few lines on this story. The widow
takes it out on Ernouf – whom she calls Burnouf – reproaching him for having behaved badly with her, after
Philippe's death, when her husband had saved her life.
“He and Jourdan, she wrote, found themselves compromised in a matter in which nothing less than death
was involved. Le Bas, Saint-Just, Robespierre and other patriotic deputies saw clearly that it was treason,
that they were innocent; but above all, it was necessary to remove them from their denouncers.
Le Bas hid Burnouf for forty-eight hours, and Saint-Just hid General Jourdan at the home of one of his friends.
As the decree shows, Robespierre had seen nothing since he had signed the dismissal and the arrest 8 .
But, for a daughter of the Duplays, he remained an infallible man. Be that as it may, she and Henriette knew
of the courageous protection provided by Saint-Just and Le Bas. And it is not certain that Henriette approved
of this escape from the Committee's decisions.
The rescue of Jourdan is all the more interesting since his replacement designated by the Committee of
Public Safety was Pichegru. If Saint-Just and Le Bas had been as seduced by the latter as some historians
claim, they would have approved of his appointment. But by maneuvering so well, with the committees,
keeping the interested party hidden, they obtained the cancellation of the measure taken.
On January 19 (30 Nivôse), Bouchotte notified Jourdan in a letter that his sentence had been commuted to a
kind of rigorous arrest in his department of origin.
Nevertheless, this change in sentence was only half a victory for Saint-Just, he continued to keep Bouchotte cold. A
week later, leaving Paris on a mission to the armies of the North, he did not even bother to go and collect information
from the minister. Also, sorry, Bouchotte wrote to Saint-Just: "You left without saying beware for the North, I'm sending
you the on the strength of the armies?
9
.
In any case, for his third mission in the North, Saint-Just essentially relied on these generals he knew, or thought he
knew well: Jourdan and Pichegru. On the other hand, he had signed, on March 20 (30 Ventôse), the arrest of Hoche.
The good relations that Hoche maintained with representatives of the people like Baudot and Lacoste must have
contributed to inspiring mistrust in Saint-Just. Let us not forget that Drake-d'Antraigues, at the same time, gave for certain
that Hoche - like Pichegru, moreover - would march with the Hébertistes and the Cordeliers if the party triumphed.
10
...
3. HEART PAIN.
Leaving Paris on April 30 (11 Floréal), Saint-Just left his private relationships seriously challenged. Not only did his
relationship with Robespierre, Carnot and others become tense, stormy, but his fiancée Henriette did not follow him on
this path. His brave brother Joseph Le Bas is quite worried: working together will not be easy. However, in Noyon, on
May 2 (13 Floréal), he breathes: We are currently very good friends, Saint-Just and I; nothing was discussed. We
immediately acted together as usual. Gateau and Thuillier seemed very happy with this good harmony; they augur well
and so do we.
The same day, Saint-Just went to Blérancourt to see his mother again.
And Le Bas slips to his wife: Advise Henriette not to be so sad any more; but it is possible
that a voice more powerful than mine has spoken. So much the better !
What could this “more powerful voice” be, if not that of Robespierre? Indeed, if he is one of
causes of the misunderstanding, he can reconcile the betrothed better than anyone else.
It is certain – as we will see in the next chapter – that Saint-Just returned to Paris in the last days of this first fortnight
of May, and that his meetings at the Committee with Robespierre, far from improving his relations with him have
poisoned them.
The following letters from Le Bas clearly show that the reconciliation, expected from the "more powerful voice", was
not made. The sweet husband begins to be depressed. My position is not pleasant, he wrote on 25 Floréal (May 14);
domestic sorrows come to mingle with the sorrows inseparable from my mission. It ruins my existence. As for Henriette:
I dare not speak of her at Saint-Just. He is such a unique man. Unfortunately, the letter does not specify how the
singularity manifests.
But, it is a dark era which opens.

Two days later, Le Bas remains dejected: I have
no conversation with Saint-Just that concerns my domestic affections or his.
I am alone with my heart. Kiss Henriette for me And the next 11.
day brings a rude disappointment: Today, my dear
friend, I received a letter from Henriette addressed to Saint-Just and to me. Saint-Just had opened it and read
it; he gave it back to me, without telling me anything else, except that it was for me alone. It was about Désiré,
about whom I said two words to him another time, which he seemed to hear with great indifference. I wrote to
Darthé to get some information about it and communicate it to me. You can say the same thing to Forestier. I
hope it will be nothing...
... Apparently you did not receive all my letters, because I wrote to you almost every other day. It's my only
pleasure. It is only with you that I can explain myself; there are so few friends! Every day you are dearer to me, if
12 .
it is possible Obviously, the
proud Henriette had not made the slightest gesture; on the contrary, putting both names on the address was
a discreet way of indicating how much she kept her distance. And friendship itself was altered.
14,
Le Désiré, of whom the letter speaks, was Henriette's third brother . Maybe him or his father
notary in Frévent (Pas-de-Calais), did he have local troubles, which would explain why Le Bas turned to a Darthé,
Commissioner of Pas-de-Calais, secretary to Joseph Lebon, and to a Forestier, lawyer, deputy. As we can see,
the cares of the heart were accompanied in Henriette by family concerns.
This letter from Le Bas is, moreover, the last that provides some details about his sister's relationship with
Saint-Just. We don't even know what became of Henriette – who was eighteen in 1794 – after 9 Thermidor.
In any case, it was not her, but her sister-in-law, who went to the Hotel des Etats-Unis to buy the pastel portrait
of Saint-Just. Le Bas's widow, writes Lamartine, "burned with the desire to possess this painting, which would at
least remind her of her husband in the figure of the young republican, Le Bas's dearest colleague and friend".
When reading the History of the Girondins, Madame Le Bas will not correct this sentence; she will simply write
in the margin: "I confess. »
However, it is not only through friendship that Saint-Just will leave a memory. The first
Warm biographer of the Conventionnel, Ernest Hamel, wrote during the Second Empire:
Our patient research has led us to discover that, some twenty years ago, a woman died at Versailles who, in
her youth, had been an actress and who publicly bore the name of Madame de
Saint-Just, confessing quietly to her close friends that she had kept this name in memory of her relations with the
illustrious Conventional 15 .
And Hamel adds that, if he is not in a position to guarantee the authenticity of the liaison, on the other hand
he can assure that it does not take place after the engagement, "because, he adds not without daring, since
that time, we have the most positive information about Saint-Just's private life (?) and we can affirm that, from
the day when there was talk of his marriage to Mlle Le Bas, he withdrew into the stricter austerity of morals.
From then on, as a young man, he had only one ardent love: the fatherland and sacrificed everything to it”.
However, at the same time, in the other clan, one will lend, by referring to the Memoirs of Sénar, a criminal
dissatisfaction with Saint-Just. What does Senar say? "The cruel and ferocious Saint-Just had the Sainte-
Amaranthe arrested out of resentment at not having been able to enjoy her, and fear or suspicion that at that
16
moment another would have been preferred to. »her.
In fact, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe and her lovely daughter, married to Sartine junior, ran a gambling
den at the Palais-Royal and belonged to the secret royalist network of Baron de Batz. They had been mentioned
publicly for the first time at Hébert's trial. In his testimony, Dufourny assured that Chabot and Desfieux were
keenly interested in the business.
To which the defendants had replied that they only received 10% of the profits of the house. Women thus
placed on the agenda, Saint-Just evoked them in his speech against the Dantonists, saying: Danton often
dined in the Rue Grange-Batelière, with the English; he dined with Gusman, a Spaniard, three times a week,
and with the infamous Sainte-Amaranthe, Sartine's son, and Lacroix. It was there that some of the meals at
one hundred crowns a head were made . But Saint-Just did not imply the Sainte-Amaranthe family – arrested
on March 31 – in the decree he was having passed. It was during his mission with the armies of the North that
Elie Lacoste accused the latter of being part of the Batz conspiracy and that it passed under the scaffold with
the "red shirts".
In the papers omitted by Courtois, one will find, with those of Saint-Just, a note on the domiciles of Sainte-
Amaranthe. But, that the head of the police office had this sheet without deciding the condemnation of the
pretty girls, it rather indicates intentions not completely fixed.
Did he even know Sainte-Amaranthe other than by reputation? The time of madness
d'Organt was already far for him.
4. WITH ARMIES.
In their first mission in the North, Saint-Just and Le Bas had deployed the same kind of activity as on the
Rhine.
Moving around a lot, sitting successively in Lille, Réunion-sur-Oise, Maubeuge, Saint Pol and Arras, they
used the same means to restore finances, reinforce the discipline of the troops and ensure the necessary
order. They launched a forced loan in Lille, where those who did not have
paid at the end of ten days owed the double, and the triple, at the end of twenty days. They decreed that
merchants and speculators who failed to observe the law of the maximum would see their houses razed to the ground.
Moreover, their severity seems a means of restraining disordered forces rather than an expression of cruelty.
They condemned, for example, an army accountant for having "left the Arques division without fodder for four
days." And if they decreed the arrest of "all the ci-devant nobles of Pas-de-Calais, Nord, Somme and Aisne", it
was as much, perhaps, to prevent espionage, agitation, occult intrigues , only to save lives. The widow of Le
Bas would show Michelet sheets bearing denunciations, torn out by her husband and Saint-Just from the
registers of the revolutionary committees of the North. They had not even hesitated to release a squadron leader
like d'Hautpoul arrested by their predecessor, Duquesnoy, Carnot's second.
But the new mission will have a much more strictly military character.
The day before his departure, on April 27 (11 Floréal), Saint-Just had signed, with his colleagues on the
Committee, an order stipulating that all news concerning the armed forces should be transmitted, "with speed",
to the Committee of Hi audience. This was part of the strengthening of the latter's authority.
The situation looked bad in the North. The enemy had just retaken Landrecies, which assured him of a
passage of the Sambre above Maubeuge. Once again, Saint-Just must have left abruptly, since Carnot wrote to
him on April 30 (11 Floréal): I am sending you the military laws, the maps, as well as the sword you are missing.
(The said saber was perhaps not addressed without a touch of irony: Carnot had already had thorny dialogues
with the delegate.) With regard to the "military laws", the Committee had just promulgated, on the same day , a
decree – signed by Saint-Just before his departure – ordering General of the Army of Moselle Jourdan to march
the bulk of his troops towards Liège and Namur, while saying that he was preparing an offensive on Trier and
the Palatinate.
But that was not to satisfy Saint-Just completely. On May 3 (14 Floréal), he and Le Bas addressed a rather
imperative letter to Carnot, drawing the conclusions which, according to them, were necessary after the loss of
Landrecies.
This misfortune comes from the extreme disorder which reigns in this part of the Army of the North, from
Maubeuge to Cambrai.
... We found dejection among the generals. No plan existed, everything must have a determined goal; we
don't have any here. Hasten to send us a recovery plan from Cambrai to Beaumont.
The enemy is not in force. We could at the same time advance in maritime Flanders, encircle Valenciennes,
Quesnoy, Landrecies and march on Bavai.
As we can see, Saint-Just gave the outline of the plan he was asking for. Oh ! they must not have come out
of his head alone. Saint-Just had focused his first effort on setting up a large command post where the four
generals – that of the army of
Ardennes and those of the army of the North - would hold a daily conference to decide, coordinate the movements
of their troops. In his Memoirs, written after 9 Thermidor, Levasseur de la Sarthe reproached Saint-Just for this! It
was because he had established this great headquarters with severe discipline. The very day they sent their letter to
Carnot, he and Le Bas decreed:
The representatives of the people near the army of the North, wishing to strengthen the discipline which leads to
victory, forbid until further notice, under pain of death, to any soldier who is not of the garrison or of the general staff,
the entrance to the headquarters after the publication of this decree.
The military tribunals answer for the impunity of all those, whoever they are, leaders or soldiers, who would have
violated discipline, and will be prosecuted themselves.
In his second letter (May 4), Carnot came out in favor of Saint-Just's plan, but not without
skepticism. The march on Bavai seemed very uncertain to him:
Can you carry out this last operation near the forest of Mormale from where the enemy can come out in force to
surround you yourselves, when the simple operation of lifting the siege of Landrecy could not be carried out? ? How
will you get to the headquarters of the enemy army, if you don't take the outposts first ? So start with these: rout the
Austrians and then push them as far as you can. It is certainly not for us to wait for the enemy; that it is to
18 .
you keep attacking him
Between the orders from headquarters and the variants or counter-orders from Paris, the conduct of
operations was not without difficulty and friction.
However, on May 13, the Austrians were defeated at Kortrijk. Five days later, the French return to Tourcoing, the
enemy evacuates Arlon, and Carnot decides for the general offensive.
Jourdan retakes Neufchâteau on 5 Prairial (24 May). The same day, Saint-Just wrote to Jourdan:
We occupy the camp of the Tombs; we will try to seize Charleroi. You will no doubt take Dinant; then an army
corps which we will form at Maubeuge will march on Mons and another on Brussels.
This is what Desjardins, Jourdan's second in command, called "Saint-Just's plan." The excellent progress of the
operations is, however, hampered by the weakness of the Army of the Rhine, which has just lost part of its manpower.
The very day that Saint-Just wrote to Jourdan, General Michaud informed the Committee that the enemy had retaken
Kaiserslautern and that Landau seemed compromised, the Army of the Rhine risking being turned by his left.
Nevertheless, on 11 Prairial (30 May), Desjardins announced to Jourdan that he was in front of Charleroi, which he
was going to bombard.
On the same day, the Convention was informed of a letter from Saint-Just and Le Bas
summarizing with precision, without any lyricism, the unfolding of the fights.
Finally, Ypres capitulated on 29 Prairial (June 17), which prompted Carnot to write the following day:
Receive, dear colleagues, and share with the worthy general-in-chief Pichegru, our sincere congratulations on the
important conquest of the city of Ypres which must have such a great influence on the fate of the whole
campaign. Long live the excellent army of the North. Each of his steps is marked by a new victory. The
enemies must be confounded, they must be pursued without giving them a moment to breathe. It's time to
cut the thread that unites England and Austria by taking Ostend.
Saint-Just is then in front of Charleroi with Jourdan. After several days of battle – which Saint Just fought
very hard – the French army completely won.
On the morning of 7 Messidor (June 25), a senior Austrian officer presented himself, bearing a letter
of the governor. Saint-Just receives it, but refuses to open it.
"It's not paper, but space, that I'm asking you for," he said, returning the envelope to
the Austrian officer.
“But if the garrison surrenders at discretion,” replied the envoy, “it dishonours itself.
– We cannot here honor or dishonor you, as it is not in your power to
dishonor nor to honor the French nation. There is nothing in common between you and us.
The officer still insisting, Saint-Just put an end to the conversation.
“Yesterday we could have listened to you,” he said. “Today you have to surrender at discretion; I talked. I
have made use of the powers entrusted to me, I have none left to retract; I count on the courage of the army
19
and on my own .
The envoy having transmitted this reply to the governor, the latter made it known that he capitulated
unconditionally.
It was time. Large foreign troops arrived to help the occupants of Charleroi. The French soldiers faced
them on the plains of Fleurus, and it was the great victory that we know.
Three days later, the Convention celebrated the triumph and decreed that the victorious army would
henceforth be called the "Army of Sambre-et-Meuse".
This victory, Saint-Just not only contributed to it, by granting the generals, their plans and those of Carnot
in Paris, by imposing a new climate of rigor, discipline and authority, but by paying with his person.
It was a royalist informant from d'Antraigues who reported – in his letter of June 9 (21 Prairial) – that Saint-
Just “charged the artillery in person several times at the head of the cavalry and as a valiant man 20 ” . For
his part, no doubt having information from the Le Bas family, Lamartine wrote of Saint-Just: "Wrapped in the
representative's sash, he charged at the head of the Republican squadrons and threw himself into the fray,
in the middle of grapeshot and bladed weapons, with the recklessness and ardor of a young hussar. »
For him, returning to Paris means leaving a melee for another, less spectacular, not adorned with glory
and honor, but also decisive: the government, the regime and his personal life are at stake.
1. Bibliothèque nationale, Fr. (na) 24158. – To make this text clearer, I thought I should add paragraphs (there are no
none) and punctuation.
2. The following words are indecipherable.
3. National Library, Fr. (na) 24158, fol. 49.
4. This last notebook (which essentially includes military notes) is dated from July 15 to August 3, 1793, that is to say
the very moment when he was to see Louise Thorin again.
5. Cf. quoted by STEFANE-POL, Le Conventionnel Le Bas, p. 57.

6. See HAMEL, Saint-Just, t. 2.
7. HENRI WALLON, Representatives of the people on mission, Paris, 1890, t. IV, p. 207.
8. In his personal notebook, he noted: “Jourdan and Ernouf suspected by their inaction and their correspondence. »
9. Letter of 4 Pluviôse (23 January), Army of the North.
10. Robespierre's hostile attitude is corroborated by his autograph letter: "We have proof that Hoche is a
traitor... It is necessary to have him arrested immediately. »
11. Letter of 27 Floreal (15 May).
12. Letter of 28 Floreal (17 May).
13. Désiré Le Bas will join, like Simon Duplay (the one-legged man), the Ministry of General Police, after 9 Thermidor; he will render services
there during the Empire.
14. A month later, on 9 Thermidor, he was arrested by order of the Committee of General Security as "agent of the emigrant, former prince
de Bergues” (cf. BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXV, p. 365).
15. ERNEST HAMEL, History of Saint-Just, Brussels, sd, t. II, p. 214.
16. SENAR, Memoirs.
17. The kitchen of the caterer Rose and his hotel, 26, rue Grange-Batelière, were very famous. The Committee even placed important foreign
prisoners there, such as Baron d'Esebeck (cf. MATHIEZ, Danton et la paix, p. 183).
18. Quoted by H. WALLON, People's Representatives on Mission, t. IV, p. 229.
19. Report of the siege of Charleroi by the commander of engineers MARESCOT (Archives of the war).
20. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 213. Curiously enough, in the bulletin Drake-d'Antraigues (no. 27 ) it becomes: “Saint Just, at the
committee of the 8th, said that he had charged the Austrians five times at the head of the cavalry. »
CHAPTER VIII
WITH AND AGAINST ROBESPIERRE
It has, up to now, been rather estimated that Saint-Just, during this northern campaign, had returned to
Paris only once, recalled by Robespierre, to sit there from 12 to 18 Prairial (31 May-6 June). ).
But everything assures that during the month of May, he made his first return to the Committee: a quick but
very important passage.
Indeed, after 9 Thermidor, Collot d'Herbois would affirm that "Saint-Just was recalled twice from the army of
1
the North by Robespierre". And, Jacques-Maurice Duplay, questioned by Harmand, on 12 Nivôse Year III, will
say that, after the capture of Landrecies (14 Floréal), Saint-Just and Le Bas “became one”. Of
secret trip to Paris to confer with the Committee of Public Safety on the plans of campaign made, Saint-2
Just is brought present at the meeting of the Committee, on 20 Floréal (9 May).
On the other hand, to defend himself against the attacks of Lecointre of Versailles accusing him of having
drafted the decree of 25 Floréal (May 14) establishing two first commissions to operate in the prisons of Paris,
Billaud-Varenne will affirm that, s he had to write this text, it was at the request of Saint Just.
Finally, the day before, on 24 Floréal (May 13), Robespierre, who was acting head of the police office,
stopped transmitting the files to the general security committee. Such a decision could not be taken lightly.
Especially since Robespierre did not consider the service as his own. In his speech on 8 Thermidor, he even
took care to release his responsibility in a not very affectionate way for Saint-Just:
I have been charged momentarily, in the absence of one of my colleagues, with overseeing a recently and
weakly organized general police office at the Committee of Public Safety. My brief administration was limited
to bringing about thirty arrests, either to release persecuted patriots, or to secure a few enemies of the
Revolution. Well ! will anyone believe that this single word of general police served as a pretext for placing on
my head the responsibility for all the operations of the committee of general security, for the errors of all the
constituted authorities, for the crimes of all my enemies?
In fact, Robespierre changed the character of the office, it transformed it into an autonomous, isolated body,
which was an organ of cohesion.
What happened ?
If we are to believe the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletins, for the period which interests us, Saint-Just
would have returned almost every week to Paris. It is certainly false, or rather exaggerated, but
explainable. The Comte d'Antraigues, having fewer informants in Paris (one of them lamented the loss
of their "two deputies" 3), arranged more for what he received. It reports on several bulletins what is
indicated by a letter 4 ; or else, he adds, here and there, a well-known proper name to make the story
more crisp. For example, we read on the letter in sympathetic ink: Robespierre, who for some time has
been showing great anxiety, has daily conferences with Darçon and others at Passy, Belleville, Bruelle;
while the bulletin of Antraigues gives: Every day, Saint-Just and Robespierre have conferences with
Darçon in Passy, Belleville and Bruelle 5 .
All this therefore invites us to retain with circumspection and reserve the information from the
bulletins of this period, but not to discard them. Because noises can be artificially amplified, even
distorted, without losing their reality.
1. THE DIVIDED COMMITTEE.
In what state of mind was Robespierre then? According to one of Antraigues' informants: Some
malicious people who want to destroy Robespierre claim that he wanted to deal with the powers and
that, having failed, he has the Capet family treated better than ever in the Temple in order to use them.
in the last danger. How awful ! The virtue of Robespierre – who, in truth, could presently hand over [or
liberate?] the Republic – his virtue already reassures me and I fear nothing... The Republic can only be
destroyed by marching and taking Paris. For that, there are only two means, that of arriving there with
a victorious army, after having seized our strongholds... or of getting along with the committee of
6
Robespierre. You feel it's impossible .
This kind of reasoning must have been quite widespread. Boatswain quite flexible, by temperament,
Robespierre would seek, until the last minute, what forces to rely on.
What were the clashes between him and Saint-Just about? First, according to the Drake d'Antraigues
bulletin, Robespierre called for the extermination "of all prisoners." So, we read, "Saint Just pronounced
himself, with the greatest fury against the opinion" expressed. Supporter of the acceleration of the
investigation procedure, he was willing to allow executions of suspects in prisons, but no carnage
before the French armies had, "on all sides", won great victories. He declared himself to be less
pessimistic than Robespierre: for him, the coalition against France would break up "before the end of
the year", as no coalition member wanted to restore the House of Bourbons 7 .
This agrees with what Billaud-Varenne will say about Saint-Just's insistence on obtaining the
establishment of commissions in the prisons. And this may indicate what spirit inspired him. As
everyone knows, special commissions, in politics, often serve as an outlet: those who fear being
compromised by them keep quiet. On the other hand, in these overcrowded and highly agitated prisons,
the judgment on the spot of notorious suspects could impress the prisoners without appearing too much in the eyes of
the man in the street as a new twist of the Terror. Is it not then that he writes in his notes on institutions: "The exercise of
terror has blasé crime, as strong liquors blase the palace." In other words, it was no longer appropriate, according to
Saint-Just, to give a spectacular character to capital executions.
Then, still according to the same source, Robespierre and Saint-Just would have clashed on the occasion of the
renewal of the powers of the Committee of Public Safety. "We knew without a doubt, we read, that Saint-Just and all his
supporters were to declare themselves against Robespierre and ask that we return to the ballot for the confirmation or
the dismissal of the members of the Committee. However, Sieyès, intervening as
8
.»
conciliator, would have obtained that Robespierre, to give a pledge, yielded on Pache whose arrest was immediately
decreed. But Saint-Just was not a man to make concessions: advocating all-out war and prevailing over Robespierre
over the Vendée, reconciliation was postponed.
Finally, Robespierre wanting to defend himself against the charge of dictatorship, Saint-Just would have greatly
regretted seeing him absorb so many powers, by keeping, for example, the national guard at his disposal.
This last antagonism is not impossible either, because it could have occurred, on the occasion of the police office
removed by Robespierre from the committee of general security.
The Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, which reports this dispute, concludes: We cannot conceal that
9.
Saint-Just by his multiple attacks gradually destroyed the popularity of Robespierre
Note that, curiously enough, the confidential sheet prides itself on having a direct source – which it does not boast
about for any other member of the Committee – the opinions of Saint-Just. In the bulletin that we have just quoted, we
read: Saint-Just questioned by the person who wrote about what he had said two days before, he told him clearly that
this crisis was decisive forever, that within two months it would all be over.
That if he could (that was his word) reach, without Paris being taken, the first ears of the harvest, the Republic would be
saved and the kings lost; that if he were forced to abandon Paris, the Convention and all the partisans must be taken to
Marseilles.
Obviously, one can think that it is a simple bluff of the count of Antraigues to impress his customers. But if, in the
letters of informants, we find nothing corresponding to the same dates, on the other hand, in that of July 14 (26 Messidor)
10
difficult to read - relating the discussions of economic policy at the Committee of Public Safety, we read – alas, very
that the latter "did not follow this aristocratic knight who was such a warm friend of..." Not only is Saint-Just the only
member of the Committee to have borne the title of knight, but the thing is particularly reproached to him at the time
when this letter is written. Sieur Legray was denounced, on 29 Messidor, for having attacked the Committee of Public
Safety by asserting that the decree against the nobles had "been provoked by Barère de Vieuzac and Saint-Just,
themselves nobles 11 " . Robespierre himself alluded to it in his
speech of 8 Thermidor. Unfortunately, the certainty that it is Saint-Just makes even more regrettable the
impossibility of reading the name of his friend, erased by time or a kind hand...
Be that as it may, Saint-Just's friends or relations – as we know – were not only pure. Beside a Daubigny or
a Pichegru, in the army as in the police station, attentive and interested ears could listen to the confidences of
the young Saint-Just, without the latter being able to know the use that would be made of them. do.
In short, everything suggests that if the disagreements between Robespierre and Saint-Just did not take on
the bitterness and violence that the Antraigues bulletins lend them, complete agreement on the policy to be
pursued had nevertheless disappeared.
Saint-Just's second return to Paris and the history of the decree of 22 Prairial will provide us with proof of
this.
2. SAINT-JUST AGAINST THE DECREE OF 22 PRAIRIAL.
On May 23 (4 Prairial), returning home, Collot d'Herbois narrowly escaped two shots.
Arrested, the aggressor admits that he especially wanted to kill Robespierre, but that, unable to find him, he
shot Collot d'Herbois. The missed assassin is fifty years old; employed at the office of the royal lottery, his
name is Henri Ladmiral. The investigation will reveal that he is a good friend of Roussel, agent of Baron de
Batz. Once again, we come up against his clandestine network...
On the other hand, prices are high, foodstuffs are lacking: in front of the merchants, discontent is expressed
more sourly; and a new project of insurrection in the prisons has just been denounced.
Very worried, the Committee decided, at the instigation of Robespierre, to call Saint-Just for help.
Didn't the latter have the appropriate authority and prestige – being completely detached from parliamentary or
Jacobin intrigues – to report on the situation and impose measures of exemplary harshness on the Convention?
As his disputes with Saint-Just hardly allowed him a personal letter, Robespierre wrote in the name of the
Committee so as to be able to add to his signature those of Prieur, Carnot, Billaud-Varenne and Barère.
He paints the "dear colleague" a black picture of the situation. Freedom is exposed to new dangers; the
factions are waking up with a more alarming character than ever. And, after evoking recent events, he
concludes: We fear an aristocratic uprising, fatal to freedom. The greatest of the perils which threaten her is in
Paris. The Committee needs to bring together the lights and the energy of all its members. Calculate whether
the Army of the North, which you have powerfully contributed to put on the road to victory, can do without your
presence for a few days. We will replace you, until you return, with a patriotic representative.
The letter was sent on Prairial 6 (May 25), but Saint-Just was in no hurry to reply to it.
since he will not arrive at the Committee until six days later.
Obviously, a few months earlier, when Saint-Just was in Alsace, the letters exchanged with Robespierre had a
completely different tone. The latter wrote at the time: "My friend, I have not forgotten for a moment either the
Army of the Rhine or our two commissioners." And, very affectionately, he concluded: Farewell, I kiss you with all
12 .
my heart Now we weren't kissing anymore.
According to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, it was not even this letter of 6 Prairial which caused Saint-Just's
return, but a missive from Lindet. Still according to this source, the latter, adopted by Saint-Just as spokesman on
the Committee, having in turn clashed with Robespierre (about the ships of Toulon) would have recalled the
delegate of the army of the North.
We find nothing on this in the preserved letters of informants, but we read nevertheless this
in that of May 26 (7 Prairial).
Aristocrats rejoice well in other circumstances. They are sure that Lindet, a member of the Committee of Public
Safety, a constitutional bishop, a shrewd, skilful, witty and ardent civil man, showed himself the antagonist of
Robespierre to the point that Couthon's wife, a partisan of the latter, could not escape. to prevent her from
expressing all her pain the day before yesterday to one of her friends, in front of whom she shed torrents of tears,
13 .
on
this subject. common relations which earned them information... Moreover, flexible, reserved, inclined to follow
the forces of the moment, Lindet will contribute to 9 Thermidor by changing position.
In any case, when he returned to Paris, Saint-Just had, before the Committee, to focus strictly on the questions
military and remain fairly reserved on the policy to be pursued.
According to the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin, he went so far as to complain about Pichegru and Jourdan. In
fact, feeling the government divided, the generals each sought specific support to obtain the necessary material
14
means. According to Barère, in his Memoirs wanted to leave only when “the , Saint-Just and Le Bas
necessary supplies had been completely dispatched from Paris. The two main consignments were the powders
and the spirits which were sent to the Sambre”.
In the meantime, as the Thermidorians very clearly indicate, the relations between Robespierre and Saint-Just
were called into question shortly afterwards, when the reason for the convocation was discussed.
In their reply to Lecointre, the members of the Committee relate that Saint-Just affected to ask Robespierre,
one day, the object of his return; Robespierre tells him it's to report on the new factions. But Robespierre is the
only speaker in this session. The deepest silence of the Committee answers him and he goes out with a terrible
anger 15 . More clearly still, in his private memoir, Billaud-Varenne says that Saint-Just was so intimidated by the
reception he received that he
was obliged to disavow Robespierre's approach and leave immediately. Also, “weeping with rage”,
Robespierre would have shouted: Hey, what! everyone leaves me here !
In short, undeniably, Saint-Just deviates from Robespierre once again, by refusing to make a new report
in order to wring from the Assembly a decree toughening justice and sending fifty-three prisoners to the
scaffold – including the Sainte-Amaranthes – held as accomplices of Batz.
Obviously, historians – from Ernest Hamel to M. Louis Jacob via Albert Mathiez – did not want to retain
the testimony of the Thermidorians, because it went against the legend of an unfailing understanding
between Robespierre and Saint- Just. But, note that the victors of Thermidor had no interest in inventing
this, while they presented themselves as the liberators of a power absorbed by a triumvirate. On the contrary,
they must have been inclined to minimize the difference.
Finally, Saint-Just did not move away from Robespierre (about the law of 22 Prairial) to adopt the opposite
trend (that of the Committee of General Security, about the prisoners to be executed). Because, in this case,
the Committee would rather have sought to entrust the report on the fifty-three “red shirts” to a colleague of
Saint-Just, sharing his ideas. Now, Élie Lacoste, the designated, is one of those with whom Saint-Just
argued most violently and most often, for example in Alsace.
The reason for his behavior?
What Gateau wrote, in prison, after 9 Thermidor, provides it to us unconsciously. Wanting
greet his childhood friend Saint-Just, he said:
What tears I saw him shed over the violence of the revolutionary government and over the promulgation
of the dreadful regime which he only aspired to temper with gentle, beneficent and republican institutions !
But he felt he had to relax and not break the strings of the bow. He wanted to regenerate public morals and
restore all hearts to virtue and nature.
He was imbued with corruption and wanted to destroy its germ by a severe education and strong
institutions. " Today," he said to me, "one cannot propose a rigorous and salutary law that intrigue, crime,
fury do not seize upon it and do not make of it an instrument of death, according to whims. and passions. »
I witnessed his indignation when he read the law of 22 Prairial, in the neighborhood garden.
General de Marchiennes, at the bridge in front of Charleroy .
16
Thus, according to a fervent Robespierrist, who did not write to defend himself, the law drafted by
Robespierre and Couthon toughening up the judicial system had outraged Saint-Just. As Gateau indicates
very well, he thought that it was necessary to "loosen" the strings of the bow, that is to say no longer to
continue the policy of the great spectacular Terror, more harmful than effective for of opinion. It was for this
reason, no doubt, that he had refused to write the report on the fifty-three de Batz.
As for the law of 22 Prairial, to shed tears while reading it, he either had to be unaware of the text –
despite having left Paris only four days earlier – or he had to hope
its adjournment or rejection by the Assembly.

As everyone knows, the Thermidorians of the Committee will affirm that Couthon and Robespierre presented
the text to the Convention without having spoken to them about it beforehand and that this caused very stormy
sessions at the Committee of Public Safety.
On the other hand, the version of the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletin rather joins the other hypothesis. According
clandestine sheet 17 , to the debates at the Convention show the "skill" of Saint-Just and all his bad faith in
his "reconciliation" with Robespierre. Because, it is he who would have inspired "four or five deputies of his
party", one of whom was his friend. (The name of the latter not being given, it is not at all clear which deputy it
may be.) Moreover, according to the same bulletin, the day after the parliamentary debates, at the Committee
of Public Safety, “ Saint-Just and all his supporters protested against the despotism of Robespierre and what
had happened”. However, if the testimonies of the Thermidorians confirm the stormy character of the session,
it is no less certain that Saint-Just was not there: he had already left Paris.
Moreover, Saint-Just's hostility to the law of Prairial did not mark a change of opinion. In his last speech, he
said that the time of Terror was coming to an end. Freedom, he had said, emerged from the bosom of storms
and pains like the world emerging from chaos and like man crying at birth.
He saw future with more haughtiness, more detachment than Robespierre stuck in the Convention, clinging
to the Jacobins. For if he clung so much to the law of 22 Prairial, it was not out of cruelty but out of anguish; he
no longer knew what to lean on. Justice, with Fouquier Tinville and the Committee of General Security, inspired
him only with suspicion. Expressing his thoughts, Couthon, in presenting the law, would say about justice: As
much as it was indulgent towards the great scoundrels, so much was it inexorable towards the unfortunate; she
never found a convinced enemy of the revolution, nor an innocent patriot. And Robespierre would return to this
theme several times.
By intervening in the parliamentary debate, very awkwardly, he underlined how much the law targeted those
who held a place in the regime. He distinguished between the good people and the bad people, he attacked
the "rebellious and intriguing", the talkative, charlatan, artful people, who show themselves everywhere, who
abuse everything, who take over the stands and often public functions .
Parliamentarians could feel threatened. Not without a certain bad faith, Bourdon de l'Oise asked for the
adjournment of the bill which seemed to them to abolish parliamentary immunity and allow the arrest of a
deputy without his case being submitted to the Assembly. Carried away by their anger as weaklings, retorting
violently, insultingly, Robespierre and Couthon wrested the vote from the law, but did not reinforce their
prestige, nor the confidence they needed.
We know the lamentable dialogue. Robespierre saying, in connection with the request for adjournment: "It
would be outraging the country, it would be murdering the people, to allow a few intriguers, more contemptible
than the others, because they are more hypocritical, to endeavor to to involve a portion of this Mountain and to
make itself chief of party there. »
Bourdon de l'Oise jumped up: "It never entered into my intention to want to make myself leader of a party."
»
So Robespierre: "It would be an excess of opprobrium if some of our colleagues, led astray by the
slander, on our intentions and on the aim of our work! »
But Bourdon insists: “I ask that we prove what we are advancing; we just said enough
Clearly I was a villain...
- I ask, in the name of the fatherland, replies Robespierre, that the word be preserved for me. I do not have
not named Bourdon. Woe to him who names himself!
“I challenge Robespierre to prove,” shouts Bourdon.
Also Robespierre: “But if he wants to recognize himself in the general portrait that duty has made me draw,
it is not in my power to prevent him from doing so. Yes, the Mountain is pure, it is sublime, and the intriguers
are not from the Mountain. »
A voice: “Name them.
“I will name them when necessary…”

Already at bay, the unfortunate Robespierre left the threatening bitterness only to pour out somberly: "I
have lived enough... I no longer want a fleeting life..."
A few days later, he was going to leave the Committee, after the stormy discussion on the law, in
saying: "All is lost, I no longer see anyone to save the country. »
3. THE DEAD END.
What can Robespierre do in such a situation? He eliminated the extreme forces – Hébertists, Dantonists –
who touched each other and benefited from extra-parliamentary means. But with them, everything broke.
There is no longer any social category on which to rely, nor any ideology to which to refer. Poor people are
exasperated by price controls, the black market and the scarcity of food. With the Hébertists, we decapitated
a Parisian armed force. The Commune, entrusted to young strangers like Payan, no longer has the same
authority. Everything being called into question, the social disintegration results in an upsurge in personal
intrigues. The Terror becomes particularly ignoble. Armed with direct memories, Montgaillard was able to
write about this period: We saw nobles, people of a name known in high society denouncing their friends,
their schoolmates, their parents, boasting of being the spies of the Committee of Salut public and arrest
themselves the individuals they denounced
18 .
To cure the social body of what was rotting and weakening it, a shock treatment was needed, either
surgical by force, or psychological by feeling. But, as Saint-Just noted, force had been blunted by using it a
great deal, and the instruments were broken and worn out.
There remained the other way: to rally public opinion – at least that of the underprivileged, the poor – by changing
the face of politics, washing it of the blood that covered it, bringing hope and confidence.
This is what Saint-Just had begun by presenting the decrees of ventôse, the distribution of the property of the
accused between the hands of needy citizens in such a way as to form a new category of producers. Or again, in his
last speech, by announcing new institutions that would change living conditions in France and mark the end of the
Terror.
But Robespierre was not the man to choose. His anguish, his timidity, his distrust inclined him to reduce everything
to a strictly personal defence. By wanting to take all the means, he was no longer going to benefit from any.
Oh ! certainly, in any case, the risks were great, the future uncertain. But, at the Convention, apart from determined
adversaries like Lecointre of Versailles, there were two tendencies: that of those who wanted a relaxation, and that
of the hardliners, apostles of atheism or provocateurs.
It is doubtless out of personal conviction as much as out of opportunism that Robespierre and
Saint-Just had thought of rallying the former with the cult of the Supreme Being.
But, to judge the trend, we have to go back.
4. THE SUPREME BEING.
Never atheist, rarely anticlerical, the Incorruptible had risen, from November 92, against the suppression of the
budget of the worships proposed by Cambon. Undoubtedly, in June 93, worried by the action of the royalists and
foreigners, wanting to retain the Girondins, playing – as we have seen – on the advanced elements, Robespierre
had fought the article of the Constitution establishing the freedom of worship. “I fear,” he said, “that men who want
to form anti-revolutionary associations will disguise them under religious guises. The question had been submitted
to the Committee of Public Safety which, not sharing the fear, had maintained the article in question.
But, a few months later, with the Girondin chiefs eliminated, it was important to keep “on the left” after having kept
“on the right”. The agitators, the intriguers, the leaders of the opposition no longer presented themselves as
moderates or royalists, but as ultra-revolutionaries.
Reacting on October 27, 1793, the Committee of Public Safety, with Saint-Just, wrote to André
Dumont:
It seemed to us that in your last operations you struck too violently on the objects of Catholic worship... We must
take care not to provide the hypocritical counter-revolutionaries who seek to ignite the civil war, any pretext which
seems to justify their calumnies. . We must not present them with the opportunity to say that we are violating freedom
of worship and that we are waging war on religion itself.
Robespierre wanted to try to lighten the mood. He must have experienced the feeling that Saint Just would write
in his notes on institutions: The Revolution is frozen! all principles are
af weakened; there are only red caps worn by intrigue... The practice of terror has blasé crime, as strong
liquors blaze the palace. As we have seen, Robespierre had prevented the Convention from passing the
death motion, presented by Osselin, a friend of Danton, for seventy-three Girondin deputies still spared.
And, as Albert Mathiez has shown, it was not a question, with Robespierre, of a parliamentary manoeuvre,
since the seventy-three deputies in question were already in prison.
On the contrary, embarking on this path of clemency, wanting to restore the principles of traditional
belief and morality, was a difficult and dangerous enterprise. The contrary current was not lacking in
strength. The Convention constantly received deputations whose members presented themselves at the
bar of the Assembly, dressed in chasubles and sacerdotal vestments, which they came to offer. On
November 1 (11 Brumaire), one of them stood out. Coming from Nevers at Fouché's instigation, she
brought large gold crosses, crosiers, miters and seventeen trunks filled with clerical goods. By depositing
these objects, the delegation expressed the wish to see the ministers of the Catholic religion promptly
removed. The demand found favorable echoes in the Assembly.
We had to play tight. So five days later, when the commune of Mennecy (Seine-et-Oise) wanted to send
a deputation of the same kind to the Convention, it was not the same. Most of the delegates were arrested
at the inn where they had stayed, by gendarmes under the orders of the Committee of General Security,
as guilty of pretending to "abolish religion." And the next day, in the Journal de la Montagne, Laveaux
published a visibly inspired article against atheism.
However, it was not known who would win. The same day, November 7, Bishop Gobel, several priests
and pastors solemnly abjured before the Convention, and Cloots thought it a good idea to present himself
to the members of the Committee of Public Safety as the instigator of the gesture.
Abruptly, Robespierre made him understand how much he disapproved of this kind of initiative. But Cloots
could be surprised, because people were preparing to celebrate the feast of Reason throughout France.
In Paris, it took place at Notre-Dame on November 10.
No doubt, encouraged by the mediocre success of the grotesque ceremony, Robespierre thought that
the time had come to lift the veil. He took a stand openly and strongly in his speech of November 21:
By what right would men, hitherto unknown in the career of the Revolution, come to seek in the midst of
all these events the means of usurping a false popularity, of leading the patriots even to false measures
and of throwing among us trouble and discord ? By what right would they come to disturb freedom of
worship, in the name of freedom, and attack fanaticism with a new fanaticism ? By what right would they
degenerate solemn homage to pure truth into eternal and ridiculous farces ?
And, after recalling that the Convention had not proscribed Catholic worship, he added that it would
never do so.
Three days later the Hébertists responded to this offensive at the Commune. Chaumette made a fulminating
indictment against “priests capable of all crimes”. Carried away, the general council decided to close all the
churches or temples, to supervise the priests by the revolutionary committees and asked the Convention for
“a decree which excludes the priests from any kind of public office”.
But, on November 26, Danton joined Robespierre in proposing "that there should be no more anti-religious
masquerades within the bosom of the Convention." For the Hébertists the game turned out badly.
A communication from Robespierre to the Jacobins, announced for November 28 (8 Frimaire), completed the
determination of Chaumette and the general council of the Commune to temporize the persecutions against
Catholic worship, and to bring back the decree of November 23 in its entirety.
Robespierre returned to the charge several times, during the month of December, at the Convention and at
the Jacobins. Finally, at the beginning of the year 94, on February 5 (17 Pluviôse), he presented a major report
on political morality.
Saint-Just was then working on his institutions, he even announced them in his speech on imprisoned
persons, on February 26 (8 Ventôse): We miss the institutions which are the soul of the Republic. And, taking
up the theme of Robespierre and Danton, he added: We are inundated with distorted writings: there they deify
intolerant and fanatical atheism; one would think that the priest has become an atheist, and that the atheist
has become a priest.
A few weeks later, Mathieu de l'Oise, on behalf of the Committee of Public Instruction, submitted his plan
for ten-day festivals, each of which was "placed under the auspices of the Supreme Being and consecrated to
a supreme virtue." This report having been referred to the Committee of Public Safety, it was Robespierre who
presented it for a second reading, on May 7 (18 Floréal).
The expression the Supreme Being was not new to revolutionaries. Let us not forget that, as early as
August 20, 1789, the Abbé de La Borde proposed that the declaration of the rights of man should begin with
an invocation to the Supreme Being. This came from the deistic philosophers and the Masonic action of the
century.
But Mathieu's project coincides with part of Saint-Just's notes on institutions. And one can think that he
must have established certain aspects of his project shortly after Mathieu submitted his, since, on the one
hand, his year begins with spring, on the 1st germinal (March 21 ) , while the revolutionary year opens, let us
remember, at the autumnal equinox, and while, on the other hand, the first sentence of this fragment is the
first article of the decree that Robespierre will vote on, 8 may. This maxim ("the French people recognizes the
Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul") will be taken up again, five days later, in a decree stipulating
that it must be engraved on the pediment of churches.
But what distinguishes Saint-Just's proposal from that of Mathieu and Robespierre is that it is more attached
to Eternity. First, "the first days of every month are holy to the Lord." Then, "the French people dedicate their
fortune and their children to the Eternal" and they sing about it
the hymn, every morning, in the temples. After which, the general laws are solemnly proclaimed there. In
short, while with Mathieu and Robespierre it is a decade-long cult, with Saint-Just the obligation is daily.
This devotion to the Eternal, this freedom of worship expressed, in Saint-Just, an anguish of destiny rather
than a desire for political manoeuvre. The anxiety that erupted in his notes is found in all his speeches in his
senior year. In his report on imprisoned persons 19 he recalls that the "goal is to establish a sincere ,
government... such that wisdom and eternal Providence presiding alone over the establishment of the
Republic, it is no longer shaken every day by a new bundle”.
20
In his indictment against Danton , he said to the deputies: A revolution is a heroic enterprise,
the authors of which walk between perils and immortality: the latter is yours, if you know how to immolate the
enemy factions. And, a little further on, attacking the Hébertists, he adds:
They attacked the immortality of the soul, which consoled the dying Socrates. They claimed more: they
strove to erect atheism into a more intolerant cult than superstition. They attacked the idea of eternal
Providence which, no doubt, watches over us. One would have thought that one wanted to banish from the
world the generous affections of a free people, nature, humanity, the Supreme Being, to leave only nothingness, tyranny and
crime.
Eternity, the belief in the immortality of the soul not only brings him comfort, a reason to persevere in what
he thinks is good, but also – very logically – an invitation to modesty. He saw so many men fall who seemed
to have arrived forever, seated on a beautiful and solid position. “We will learn,” he cried, “to become modest;
we will rush towards the solid glory and the solid good which are the obscure probity 21 of your predecessors
warns you to finish your work yourselves; . And, he apostrophizes the deputies of the Convention: Destiny
to be wise and to propagate justice without running to fame, similar to the Supreme Being who puts the world
in harmony without showing himself: the public good is everything; but for fame, it is nothing !
Yes, the vertigo of death grips him. His belief in a historical destiny slowly crumbles. And it is from this
angle that his famous phrase, pronounced in the same speech – “the world has been empty since the Romans:
and their memory fills it” – takes on its full meaning. He thinks that life may not bring him much more and that
he must think about what he will leave sub specie aeternitatis.
That anguish led him to Mlle Lenormand, like Robespierre, Barère and Barras, to . Involved in struggles
22
have a horoscope drawn, in floral (that is to say April or May), this is possible
politically, we do not stand every day on the serene heights of eternity.
But shouldn't this cult of the Supreme Being establish a state religion? After all, notable philosophers of the
century and disciples of Jean-Jacques Rousseau had understood it that way.
The Abbé de Raynal went so far as to write: “The State is not made for religion, but religion for the State. And
Mallet du Pan thought the same. But, here, Saint-Just and Robespierre were inspired less by Rousseau than
by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and especially that astonishing Abbé de Mably, who,
after having made a career in the Foreign Affairs of royalty, had retired to write books which, at the
beginning of the 19th century, were to cause him to be considered a precursor of socialism. However,
for Mably, “God is the guarantor of the pact we made when entering society”. And this is how Saint-
Just understood the Supreme Being.
On the approval of Mably by Saint-Just, M. Vallay pointed out a significant anecdote reported by
Laurent de l'Ardèche 23 in his Refutation of the " History of France " of the Abbé de Montgaillard,
published under the name of Uranelt de Leuze. A few days before the feast of the Supreme Being,
the Committee of Public Safety having purchased the complete works of Mably, people talked about
it and some were surprised "at a passage where Mably declares himself in favor of the intervention
of religious ideas and divine sanction in any organization”. As people were offended by such views,
Saint-Just asked for the book and took it away "after giving a glimpse that he was not far from sharing
Mably's opinion." It is for this reason that, in the fifteen or so books found at Saint-Just after his death,
the statement bears Mably's Principles of Morality .
No, it was not a question of a new religion, but of a proclamation of principle inspired – especially
in Saint-Just – by the belief in another world and by the desire to reconcile Christians and non-
Christians. Mathiez therefore falsifies this cult of the Supreme Being when he presents it 24 like
as a "revised and corrected continuation of the cult of reason" and when he claims that Robespierre
intended only to arouse faith in the fatherland, that is to say say in "a just and fraternal society".
Moreover, the quotations he makes do not go exactly in the direction he indicates. Starting with that
of Payan, national agent of the municipality of Paris. The latter's letter to Robespierre, the day after
18 Floréal, deserves to be more widely quoted than it is by Mathiez:
Yesterday I could not hear, without emotion, several parts of your report; the character of sensitivity
with which you pronounced it, giving it a new value; it is, without a doubt, the most perfect report that
has been made: the ideas are great, new and sublime; irony is handled with a nobility, a delicacy that
will serve as a model for our speakers: it will rally to the same doctrine, the patriots of the departments,
uncertain and divided; it does not create a religion and priests, but proves that the legislators do not
want to deprive the people of the consoling dogma of the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul . .
However, if this conclusion of a long and patiently conducted operation had a great impact abroad,
on the parliamentary level, at the Convention, Robespierre's speech did not meet with great success.
The lines directed against fanaticism, hypocrisy and superstition were applauded for a long time, but
the religious ideas encountered a deep silence. Already, at the Committee of Public Safety, resistance
had asserted itself. It had taken a month for Robes Pierre and Saint Just to have the decree adopted
recognizing "the Supreme Being, the immortality of the soul" and (art. 14) the maintenance of
freedom of worship. “in accordance with the decree of 18 Frimaire”.
Certainly, this soft light coming with the spring months relaxed many French people. Many
delegations hastened to bring their congratulations to the bar of the Assembly.
Robespierre received a host of addresses and messages. An encyclopaedist like La Harpe sent him his
congratulations, and Boissy d'Anglas considered it "Orpheus teaching men the principles of civilization and
morality".
It was the same with regard to the stranger. In his Memoirs of a Statesman, Prince
Hardenberg writes:
Peace, or at least a truce with France, really entered into the combinations of the imperial cabinet. According
to the secret information received there from Paris, they expected a new order of things in France, that is to say,
that the divided power would fall there into a single hand. Robespierre was this next dictator: showing himself
willing to put an end to revolutionary excesses and the Reign of Terror, he was, in the eyes of the cabinets of
Vienna and London, the only one with whom it was possible to deal... had he not overthrown the anarchic factions
which preached the leveling of all ranks and all fortunes, and which, by abolishing the Christian worship, had
nationalized atheism ? In a report on public morality, he himself thundered against atheism and profanation:
appointed President of the Convention, he had had the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of
the soul proclaimed. The government of Robespierre began, so to speak, under the auspices of this religious
declaration, as being the source of all public morality, the first principle of all laws; he also promised freedom to
all religions. Wasn't it obvious that he longed to bring things back to a state of order that could be endured, and
that could be lasting ? Such was the idea that had been formed of the leader of the Revolution, not only in Vienna
and London, but also in Rome, Turin, Madrid, where it was rightly thought that the power would ultimately belong
to the one in whose name public order could be restored in France
26 .
And, for his part, the royalist pamphleteer Mallet du Pan wrote in his Memoirs: “The feast of the Supreme
Being produced an extraordinary effect outside; it was truly believed that Robespierre was going to close the
abyss of the Revolution. The hopes . We will see, more specifically, with regard to 9 Thermidor, what
nourished the foreign courts.

Saint-Just, being no longer in Paris, on 20 Prairial (June 8), did not attend the great celebration. At five o'clock
“precise” in the morning – in accordance with the provisions adopted – a general call resounded in the capital
and the Parisians came out of the houses which they had decorated during the night with festoons, garlands,
flowers and foliage. The streets softened under "a pleasant smell of "Everywhere, writes Th. Rousseau, the
greenery”, assures Dussault 28 . joyous national colors floating in the air: one would have said at first glance that
Paris had changed into a vast and beautiful garden, in " Finally, we know the testimony of Vilate. He had met
29 .
astonished by Robespierre: 'For the first time joy shone on his face. When he went up to Vilate's, he "was
the immense crowd that covered the Tuileries garden: hope and gaiety shone on all faces... Robespierre ate
little." His eyes often focused on this magnificent spectacle. We saw him immersed in the intoxication of
enthusiasm.
But, everyone knows, the ceremony went much less well. Robespierre had to free the statue of Wisdom by
burning the veil that covered it. And when that Wisdom appeared blackened
by the flames, certain deputies of the Convention rubbed their hands: it was ridiculous and a bad omen for
Robespierre. The crowd had cheered him on, but many of his colleagues exasperated by his success
relieved their jealousy or antipathy by sneering and murmuring sarcasm.
For a year he, Robespierre and Saint-Just had been clashing with factions, fighting parties, and nothing
was over. Robespierre knew this when, a fortnight earlier at the Convention, he had confessed a bitter
lassitude, a pessimism not devoid of pride: I have lived enough; I have seen the French people rise from
the bosom of degradation and servitude to the pinnacle of glory and republican virtue...
Complete, citizens, complete your sublime destinies; you placed us in the vanguard to support the first effort
of the friends of humanity; we will deserve this honor, and we will trace with our blood the road to immortality.
It was probably around the same time that Saint-Just wrote in his papers on institutions:
The day when I will have convinced myself that it is impossible to give the French people gentle,
energetic, sensitive and inexorable morals for tyranny and injustice, I will stab myself. ... What do those
who want neither virtue nor terror want?... Might makes neither reason nor right: but it is perhaps impossible
to do without it, in order to make right and reason respected.
In the name of the Committee of Public Safety, he had led the heads of the Girondins, the Hebertists,
the Dantonists under the guillotine... Caught in the circle of death, he now aspired to put an end to it, to find
immortality.
However, if Robespierre, with the feast of the Supreme Being, ensured a better audience in Europe, he
lost on both counts at the Convention. Because in Parliament, the soothing effect of the ceremony was
canceled by the harsh law of 22 Prairial, for the deputies of the "Marais", supporters of relaxation, while the
rigor of the new law on justice remained contradicted by this a new cult for the harsh atheists of the
Mountain. More exactly, both sides could use this as good pretexts to increase their opposition.
Nothing could be expected from a place where, as Saint-Just noted in his diary, “one party seeks only to
offend and the other only to fight”. Basically, in Prairial, a growing opposition took up the two themes
denounced two months earlier, by Saint-Just (The aristocracy tries to take revenge by accusing the
government which is strengthening itself of despotism, it is indignant that you have acknowledged divinity).
In fact, for Robespierre, the cause was already heard and almost lost. He hardly ever went to the
Committee of Public Safety. And, on 8 Thermidor, he would say why: For more than six weeks, the inability
to do good and stop evil has forced me to give up my duties as a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
1. Monitor, t. XXI, p. 338.

2. Reproduced by A. MATHIEZ in Autour de Robespierre, Paris, 1925, p. 176.

3. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 213. – Who was it? of Hérault de Séchelles? of Danton? the context does not allow us to guess it.
4. For example, the story of Robespierre in Meudon with little Louis XVII, and the hypothesis of a withdrawal of the government outside Paris,
given in the letter of May 23 (fol. 203) is exploited in bulletins nos. 24 and 25.
5. Bulletin No.24. Darçon is the military technician Lemarchand d'Arçon; general since 93, he died as a senator in 1800.
6. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 188-189.

7. Drake Bulletin No. 22 (May 4-7).
8. See Bulletin No. 23 .
9. Bulletin No.24 (17-24 May).
11. Cf. L'Af aire Legray, by MATHIEZ, in Girondins et Montagnards.
12. Letter of 12 Brumaire, published like the other in the Unpublished Papers found at Robespierre.
14. Memoirs of BARÈRE, t. II, p. 152.
15. Cf. Historical Review of the Rev. fr., I, 1910.
16. Published as a preface to the Fragments of Republican Institutions.
17. Drake Bulletin No. 27 (June 8-14).
18. MONTGAILLARD, History of France, t. IV, p. 88. 19.

16 February (8 Ventôse).
20. March 31 (11 germinal).

21. Pascal says: “The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable. »
22. Cf. MARQUISET, The Famous Mademoiselle Lenormand.
23. This Laurent de l'Ardèche, whose real name is Paul-Mathieu Laurent, was not a revolutionary. Born in 1793, lawyer, journalist, Saint-Simonian,
he was to be librarian of the Senate in 1863.
24. In Around Robespierre.
25. COURTOIS, Papers found at Robespierre.
26. Memoirs of Prince HARDENBERG, t. II, p. 452.
27. Quoted by E. HAMEL, Histoire de Robespierre, III, p. 544.
28. Political correspondence, issue of 21 Prairial.
29. Journal de la Montagne, issue of 22 Prairial.
CHAPTER IX
THE SECRETS OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE
The intrigues which will ruin the revolutionary government fall under three orders: the
religious policy, judicial and social policy and relations with foreign countries.
The first is the best known.
On Prairial 27 (June 15), the old libertine Vadier presented his report on the Catherine Théot affair on
behalf of the General Security Committee. The unfortunate old woman was the object of a special cult as
a prophetess, with initiation, in a house in the rue de la Contrescarpe.
It brought together only a few faithful, but the singularity of the ceremony gave Vadier the opportunity to
indirectly ridicule Robespierre, whom he did not like, and the cult of the Supreme Being who had
exasperated him a few days earlier. Especially since, actively led by Sénar, the investigation delivered
two good cards against Robespierre. On the one hand, one of the followers of Catherine Théot, – Dom
Gerle – former monk and former member of the Constituent Assembly, had received from him a
certificate of good citizenship; on the other hand, Catherine Théot often went to Vaugeois, mayor of
Choisy-le-Roi, brother-in-law of Duplay, whose son was godson of Robespierre, who often visited them
with friends. Although it had not yet been made known to the public, Robespierre, particularly touchy and
worried, could fear the trial. So he intervened so that the affair was buried by a new report and by the
elimination of the interested accusers.
The first of these, Fouquier-Tinville will relate: I was summoned on this subject to the Committee of
Public Safety at one o'clock in the morning. Robespierre was there: there was a very heated quarrel
between the members of the committees; they did not want her to be put on trial; it is, I believe, what
occasioned the division between the members of the committees, and what brought about the day of the
1.
9th Thermidor; I was asked for the
documents of this case to make a second report Of course, Fouquier-Tinville hastened to report the
interdict, pronounced by Robespierre, to the instigators of the trial: the members of the Committee of
General Security. They were already aware of Robespierre's hostility towards them. It didn't date from
yesterday, and they gave it back to him. Was it not he who had caused the Assembly to reject Amar's
report on the East India Company affair? Wasn't he the one who, acting in charge of the police office,
had stopped passing on cases within their jurisdiction?
For several weeks, Robespierre had been actively working to get rid of them, to absorb police policy,
not by relying on the office he had to share with Saint-Just, but on what replaced the Ministry of Justice:
“ the Commission for Civil Administrations, Police and Courts”. Because the president of this one,
Herman, former lawyer of Arras, childhood friend of Robespierre, owed him his new post.
Taking advantage of the absence of Saint-Just, they had scored many points.
On the eve of presenting his new law, Robespierre had written, with the undulating Barère, a . And,
2
letter to Herman to draw his attention to a royalist plot in the prison of Bicêtre a few days later, on
25 and 26 prairial, the members of the Committee of Public Safety signed, with Robespierre, two decrees
authorizing Herman to bring before the court the detainees of Bicêtre, considered plotters. Better, on 8
Messidor (June 26), Robespierre, Barère and Billaud-Varenne instructed Herman, after a note from the
latter, to follow "the conspiracy of the prisons", by making a report on it and taking all the necessary
measures. with the police. This could hardly satisfy the Committee of General Security, which found
itself properly dismissed.
Finally, the same day, after the stormy discussion that we have mentioned, Robespierre forced his
colleagues to accept the replacement of Fouquier-Tinville: the same evening, Herman sent a letter to
find a new public prosecutor.
Robespierre won not only in matters of judicial policy. At his request, Barère, Prieur, Billaud-Varenne
and Collot d'Herbois signed an order releasing the Englishman Benjamin Vaughan and authorizing him
to go to Switzerland.
Robespierre could be happy with the day. Not only did it bring him the means of repression, but it
gave him an intermediary for external relations. As we have seen, if the feast of the Supreme Being had
weakened him in parliament, it had increased his prestige in the eyes of foreigners. He could expect a
great deal from the English deputy, whose idealism was accompanied by a rather delirious taste for
great political operations.
1. SECRET DIPLOMACY.
The same self-centeredness, accentuated by mistrust, which had induced Robespierre to seek agents
of intelligence for the interior, was to prompt him to provide himself with secret and personal diplomats.
Especially since, removed from the conduct of the war, at a time when relations with foreign countries
were taking on vital importance, he could only think of touching them by carrying out confidential
diplomacy.
Moreover, Vaughan is not the only English agent in contact with Robespierre. In her memoir Mme
Lamothe-Langon recounts a meeting between Robespierre and Edwart Serton, according to the
testimony of a man who did not want to say his name but whose authenticity of the statements was certified
by Baron Pasquier, who became prefect of the Empire.
The stranger relates that, finding himself one evening in his private mansion, he suddenly saw arriving,
around eleven o'clock, Robespierre, with whom he had vague relations.
After walking up and down the room, the visitor suddenly turns to the master of the house and says to
him:
“I am going to surprise you: England offers me peace... Edwart Serton is charged with the mission of
coming to terms with me. He is coming tonight and will come to your house, if you will. And having
emphasized that he was still the only one aware of this trip, which showed the importance England attached
to his person, Robespierre, after announcing the arrival of Edwart Serton at one o'clock in the morning,
3. »
concluded: "He does not first comes only for me, later it will happen for them
The host by obligation remains a little worried. Isn't Robespierre making him play a dangerous role? "Did
he want to imitate Monk?" Finally, at the appointed hour, the English deputy entered with his valet de
chambre. And the next evening, Robespierre comes to talk with him for several hours. After which, the
Englishman retires not without leaving a nice gift to the one who received it.
The latter sees Robespierre again, who does not hide how much the conversation leaves him perplexed.
"My power depends on public opinion," he said in particular. I'm not a swordsman...
However, I will see to strike a blow; I will show myself to the public in such a way as to unite all eyes upon
me. I see very well that if I don't show myself, I won't be able to accomplish anything necessary to restore
France to her peace and her happiness. But the Englishman's proposals left him a little scared. “Did they
not want me to recall the Bourbons, that I recognize for myself the child (Louis XVII) of whom I would be
the regent? They went so far as to suggest his marriage to Mademoiselle! But he couldn't lead such a
delicate game alone. "I don't know a man I can lean on...I'm alone..."
Hanriot? “A fool, a drunkard. “Saint-Just? “A prank, still in the jersey. " His brother ? "A wet hen..." The
repartee is undoubtedly exaggerated by the narrator, but the fact remains indisputable. In his Historical
Notes, the conventional M.-A. Baudot will write: Robespierre lacked particular support, he could only rely on
Saint-Just; but Saint-Just had a much stronger and more powerful head than Robespierre, so that the
position was reversed.
Nevertheless, in the end, according to the story reported by Madame Lamothe-Langon, Robespierre
asked his host if “the royalists would be people to put up with a reasonable government”. Of course, the
other did not know what to answer him.
What makes these stories about the parleys between Robespierre and the English plausible is the
conclusion of the letter addressed by Vaughan to Robespierre, of Geneva, on the 26th of Messidor: I have
given enough proofs that I can keep the secret, for here I am at forty-four, almost unknown, although always
involved in great things with great men. The allusion to conversations is discreet but flattering...
According to Barère, informed of Vaughan's presence in Paris, the Committee instructed the
commission of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to monitor this Englishman. The reports were that this secret
envoy only went to Robespierre, and that it was believed that he had been chosen by Mr. Pitt from the
4.
opposition party only to deceive the police of France, and to obtain more credit with Robespierre
To this testimony, Mathiez opposes and prefers that of Billaud-Varenne, from which it emerges that
Robespierre would have first demanded the death of Vaughan, who appeared as a reactionary (he
"quoted only the aristocratic members of the Parliament of England , and did not mention a single member
of the opposition party”). But Billaud-Varenne saying that forty-eight hours after the coup d'etat, on 11
Thermidor, one would think he was worrying about the ear of England, implying that Vaughan owed his
life to the Committee of Salut public and, above all, that the Thermidorians would willingly resume
negotiations with a “less” aristocratic Englishman.
Moreover, if Barère, for his part, is careful not to indicate – given the moment – that he himself signed
the decree in favor of Vaughan, the fact remains that, in charge of Foreign Affairs, he had been able to
follow the affair better than anyone else.
Finally, the day after the arrest of Benjamin Vaughan, we find in a letter from the informant of Antraigues
a sentence which seems to relate to it. “The royalists shuddered at this news which would have confirmed
that they had nothing more to fear from the liaisons or correspondence of Robespierre with this
ambassador in France 5 .»
If on June 26 (8 Messidor) Robespierre had the advantage in the Committee, it was primarily because
he continued to hold significant forces with the commune under the impetus of his friend Payan and with
the National Guard under the command of his protege Hanriot. Then, because if the big decisions - apart
from those concerning Herman and Benjamin Vaughan - were stopped in principle, they were not in
practice. Fouquier-Tinville's dismissal had to be legally signed, and the report on the Catherine Théot
affair had yet to be written.
2. THE DISCUSSION OF 10 MESSIDOR.
For this last task, Robespierre should, logically, have thought of Saint-Just. This one could all the better
intervene because he was in the North, when the story had begun; moreover, believing in God, he
remained strongly attached to the principle of the Supreme Being.
But, as we have seen, their friendly relations were much altered. And, jealous of the great military
successes that eluded him, Robespierre, on 9 Messidor, expressed his feelings at the Jacobin club in a
manner hardly suited to satisfying a Saint-Just and a Carnot. We judge the prosperity of a State less by
the success of the exterior than by the happy situation of the interior 6 .
The next day the delegate to the Army of the North returned to Paris. Immediately, he went to the
meeting, grouping the two committees.
The discussion lasted all night. Far from leading to a new agreement, it resulted in a
particularly violent argument.
The first question on the agenda was naturally the organization of justice, after the law of 22 Prairial.
According to Barère 7 :
Vadier and Moïse Bayle were those who, among the members of the Committee of General Security,
attacked the law and its authors with the most force and indignation. As for the Committee of Public
Safety, it declared that there had been no part and that it fully disavowed it. All agreed to have it revoked
the next day; and it was after this decision that Robespierre and Saint-Just declared that they would
refer to public opinion, that they clearly saw that there was a party formed to ensure impunity to the
enemies of the people and to lose thus the most ardent friends of liberty, but that they would know how
to protect good citizens against the maneuvers combined by the two committees of government.
This well-known passage has often been quoted, but it has not been noticed how the lie is mixed with
the truth. Because, if the offensive of the general security committee is logical, on the other hand, the
reaction attributed to Saint-Just is not. Why would he suddenly become a defender of the law who made
him cry, a few weeks earlier, in front of Gateau? And if his attitude, his remarks are confused with those
of Robespierre, is it not by artifice to conceal them and maintain the legend of the triumvirate? Another
witness to the session, Levasseur de la Sarthe, when he speaks about it, will also be careful not to report
the slightest reply from Saint-Just.
This must have been all the more reserved since not only did the law of 22 Prairial seem too harsh to
him, but the follow-up given by Robespierre ended up calling into question the police office and the
judicial process of the law of 16 Germinal presented by him. Because the two stood together: the law
established the principle of commissions appointed by the committees determining, after trial, the
prisoners who were to be immediately dispossessed of their property and deported at the end of the war.
As we know, it was at his insistence that the first commissions were appointed, those of the Museum,
that is to say of the Louvre. These, after long conversations – in particular, no doubt with Saint-Just,
during his last visit to Paris – had admitted, in a letter dated 26 Prairial, to forwarding the files to the
8
police office from now on. the general security committee. , which, for Saint-Just,
The judicial organization planned by Robespierre with Herman could only bypass that one. And Saint-
Just remained too partisan of an end to the Terror, too doctrinaire to abandon the process fixed by the
law he had passed.
This – added to Fouquier-Tinville's demeanor – suited Robespierre so badly that, five days later, he
was to seize the opinion of the Jacobins. Attacking the principle of judgments by popular commissions,
he declared on 13 Messidor ( July 1): I denounce here to good people a system which tends to shield
the aristocracy from national justice and to destroy losing the patriots. Or again: We think we are strong
enough to slander the revolutionary tribunal. And, finally: How do you hope to break the threads of the
conspiracies, if justice is exercised by the conspirators themselves!
That in the meeting of the committees, the adversaries of the law of 22 Prairial went so far, as
Robespierre says, to question its legitimacy, that is understandable: it hindered the application of the law
of 16 Germinal and the decrees of ventose.
It was therefore not the line that the latter set for social policy that caused the clash between
Robespierre, as Mathiez believed, but the organization of justice and the police with the committee of
general security.
The letters sent at the same time by the faithful spokesman of Robespierre, Herman, are quite
significant. First he wrote to the Museum commission to reproach it for not coming to a decision more
quickly and for not informing the committee daily. To which, the commission responded on 14 Messidor
(July 2) by presenting its apology and recalling that it had been agreed that it should transmit the “exhibits
and tables” to the general police office. Finally, the same day, Herman asks the district of Beaune to
have to lift the sequestration he had placed on the property of the suspects, before the judgments. This
penal measure, he writes, is premature and presents an extension of the law that the revolutionary
government does not tolerate in the administrations 9 . In short, the replacementfor the Minister of Justice
endeavors to contain the operations provided for by the laws of Ventôse by taking them in hand, in the
name of the Committee of Public Safety alone.
Everything suggests that Saint-Just's attitude at the meeting of the committees was not aggressive
but very reticent. He hardly had to support Robespierre for the Catherine Théot affair, since the latter's
file was sent, on the same 13 Messidor, to Fouquier-Tinville by Lejeune in his capacity as head of the
general police office multiplicity 10. Then, the organization of justice left him very perplexed; there
of laws the staring cause confusion and disorder?
On a piece of paper, he will write: We must reduce the number of members of the constituted
authorities. We must examine the system of collective magistracies such as municipalities, administrations,
surveillance committees, etc., and see if distributing the functions of these bodies to a single magistrate
in each would not be the secret of the solid establishment of the revolution . ... But he did not have time
to push further this project of simplification of the judiciary, which could give rise to many objections.
In any case, he walked so little with Robespierre that he did not hesitate to sign – the day after the
latter's speech at the Jacobins – the arrest of Naulin, designated as vice-president of the court by the
law of 22 prairie.
However, if he disapproved of the terrorist policy suggested by Robespierre, he did not like those who
attacked him any more. A few weeks earlier, he had already had a serious clash with Carnot. However,
according to Levasseur, who witnessed the scene, it was Carnot who, this time, attacked Robespierre
the most violently, shouting at him : Only arbitrary acts are committed in your general police office... You
are a dictator. Taken aback, furious, Robespierre – still according to the same testimony – turned to
Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne to take them to witness what Carnot had just told him 12 . And,
according to Barère, Saint-Just and Robespierre withdrew, uttering threats against the members of the
Committee. Carnot, among others, was treated by Saint-Just as an aristocrat and
threatened to be denounced to the Assembly. It was, concludes Barère, like a declaration of war between the two
committees and the triumvirate.13 .
The final sentence is certainly excessive. Because, if Saint-Just goes out with Robespierre, it is undoubtedly
less to affirm total solidarity than to blame the comments made by Carnot, and, above all, to try to catch up with
Robespierre. The Committee can hardly continue without him; the sterilizing antagonisms must be overcome. But
if the nocturnal conversation they may have had left no trace, we know that it bore no fruit, since Robespierre, forty-
eight hours later, will tell the Jacobins that he plans to resign: If I were forced to renounce part of the functions with
which I am charged, I would still have the quality of representative of the people and I would wage a war to the
death against tyrants.
To prepare for this war, he would stick to his positions so firmly that he would only return to the Committee on
4 and 5 Thermidor. While Saint-Just, who did not accompany him to follow him blindly, will return the next day to
the seat of government.
3. ALONE IN THE COMMITTEE.
Ah! the atmosphere of the Committee was no longer the same. Not without bitterness, Saint-Just will draw the
darkened interior in his speech of 9 Thermidor: When I
returned for the last time from the army I no longer recognized a few faces; the members of the government
were scattered over the frontiers and in the offices; the deliberations were delivered to two or three men with the
same power and the same influence as the Committee itself, which found itself almost entirely dispersed... The
government in my eyes has really been invaded by two or three men.
It was during this solitude that they seem to me to have conceived the very dangerous idea of innovating in
government, and of attracting a great deal of influence.
... It is in these circumstances that the procedure of innocent men has been conceived, that an attempt has
been made to arm against them very unjust prejudices. I have nothing to complain about; I was left peaceful like
an unprejudiced citizen walking alone.
In order for him to be able to say this last sentence in front of those concerned, without attracting fulgurating
replies, it had to express the truth. We can be all the more certain of this because, the day after this great session
and Robespierre's speech to the Jacobins, it was not he who was being tried to remove as a notorious
Robespierrist, but Couthon. The Committee (including Saint-Just) designates him, by a decree of 15 Messidor, as
a delegate to the army of the South. Then, as he did not move, a new decree, 19 Messidor, charged him with a
mission to La Rochelle and Bordeaux.
However, Couthon will not observe the second decree any more than the first. At the point where things were,
could we know who would be the strongest in the government?
Only, if the majority of the Committee leaves Saint-Just “peaceful”, it is not always the same with
Carnot. On 14 Messidor (July 2), the two men had this great altercation that Saint-Just would mention in
his speech on 9 Thermidor.
This was the northern campaign. On Prairial 30 (June 18) Carnot, without consulting Saint-Just who
was in front of Charleroi, had given the order to the Army of the North to take a reinforcement of eighteen
thousand men from the Army of Moselle. After the victory at Fleurus, on the 8th Messidor, Pichegru had
written to Jourdan to claim the assigned troops. But Jourdan and the representative turned to the
Committee to demand the annulment of the decree: they needed troops.
In Carnot's mind, this responded to the project of pointing north and preparing a
conquest of Holland, even a landing in England.
Here is what Saint-Just had to say on 9 Thermidor: ...
A military expedition, which we will judge later because we cannot yet make it known, but which I
consider senseless in the circumstances in which it prevailed. , was imagined. They had ordered to draw,
without informing me nor my colleagues of the army of Sambre-et-Meuse, eighteen thousand men for
this expedition. They didn't tell me; why ? If this order given on the 1st Messidor had been carried out,
the army of Sambre-et-Meuse was forced to leave Charleroi, to fall back perhaps under Philippeville and
Givet, and to abandon Avesnes and Maubeuge. May I add that this army had become the most important ?
The enemy had brought before her all his forces; it was left without powder, without guns, without
bread: soldiers died there of hunger kissing their guns. An agent that my colleagues and I sent to the
Committee to ask for ammunition, was not received as I would have been sensibly flattered that he had
been; and I owe this praise to Prieur that he seemed sensitive to our needs. We had to win, we won.
Finally, on the intervention of Saint-Just, the decree had been revoked, but that should not have
improve relations with Carnot.
Having taken over the police office, he became interested in a report, dated 11 Messidor, accusing the
American ambassador Morris of "protecting the enemies of public affairs" by taking charge "of passing to
America the funds that he hand over the aristocrats”. Such a case cannot leave indifferent those who are
financial at times. But don't some members of the Committee want to have a good relationship with
Morris? Is it because of this that the first to publicly declare himself an opponent of the general police
office will be the great treasurer Cambon?
Only, after his quarrels with Carnot and the estrangement of Robespierre, Saint-Just felt quite alone in
the Committee. Unhooked from general security, the police office no longer even had a foundation.
It is understandable that he insisted with his colleagues on the Committee, in a pressing manner in recent
14
times , so that the responsibilities of the office would be shared with him. But no one wanted to
devote himself to it officially: it was thought that Robespierre had detached him too much from the
Committee of General Security. Billaud-Varenne will write: Robespierre, abusing the trust he had usurped,
secretly distorted an institution which, in pure hands, would have been preserved as intact as the other
attributions of the Committee of Public 15 .
Safety
So, very capable of flexibility, Saint-Just, for several days, had to work to bring Robespierre back to the
Committee by signing decrees likely to satisfy him. On 16 Messidor (July 4), he charged Robespierre's right-
hand man, Herman, with a wine merchant's business. And, the next day, he signed with Billaud-Varenne and
Collot d'Herbois, an order obliging the commission of civil administrations, police and courts (that is to say
always Herman) to make a new report on the behavior of the detainees in the prisons of Paris and to judge
within twenty-four hours those "who would have attempted revolt and would have excited the fermentation".
The thing had to be ready. Because, the next day, the Committee was seized of a list of one hundred and
fifty-four prisoners whose tradition Robespierre had ordered to the court, Billaud-Varenne will expressly say in
16
replying to Lecointre exemplary (the one which is kept in the . Immediately Saint-Just signed a
Archives), but, according to Réal, Collot d'Herbois exclaimed: What will you have left when you have demoralized
torture ? It was thought that it would be better to put them in three installments, "for fear of public opinion",
Lecointre would say. Then, adds Réal, Saint-Just tore up the list he had in his hands.
This eagerness to sign, then to tear up translates the character of Saint-Just well: he personally inclines to
moderation, but he does not want to stop at nothing to ensure unity, the strengthening of the government. He
gives here a new example of those "variegations of the mind" which were to strike his friend Lejeune so much.
4. TRUST A FRIEND.
Deep down, he condemned – as in previous weeks – the new terrorism advocated by Robespierre. His
conversation the same day with Eve Demaillot shows how reserved he was.
The former professor of Saint-Just will tell the story, after 9 Thermidor. Returning from a mission in the Loiret,
he found at his pupil, the deputy of the Jura, Prost, who complained of Lejeune, the other elected representative
of the region. Supporting Prost, Demaillot deplored "the weakness" and "the current indolence of Robespierre",
who maintained relations with the "traitor Dumas", president of the revolutionary tribunal 18
, and defended Lejeune.
Then, interrupting him, “Saint-Just,” he wrote, with the sardonic laugh that we knew him to say to me: Good !
Good ! Ronsin, Vincent and so many others, useful for some time, succumbed to ambition: it will be the same
for those who want to imitate them. »
Having decided to present Prost to the Committee, according to Demaillot, Saint-Just supported Prost, and
Robespierre Lejeune. Not without difficulty, Mathiez estimated that the facts confirmed the declaration but that
did not convince Mr. Arne Ording who invokes a defense of Prost by Robespierre at the Jacobins, on 26
Messidor (July 14). However, if we refer to the text, we see that Robespierre pleads
not the innocence of Prost but only requires extenuating circumstances. Responding to the accusers of the
deputy of Jura, he said: I am far from believing that their complaints are unfounded; I even have reason to
think that genuine counter-revolutionaries were able to deceive the religion of the representative of the
people and oppress good citizens. It is an injustice that the government will have to repair; but I say that
citizen Prost does not bear the character of a conspirator and a leader of a party.
Moreover, he assures the accusers that he is far from wishing to reject by these reflections the complaints
of the oppressed patriots. In short, he does not ask for the guillotine, but lets it be understood that he would
not take a dim view of the replacement.
As for Saint-Just's "sardonic laugh", should we interpret it as a sign of indifference, gross cynicism, or
simply as the reaction of a man who, at a very young age, became aware of the most cruel ironies of spell ?
It is rather the second hypothesis which seems to be the correct one. Because, if Saint Just had, in this
time of fury, learned to be tough, he must not have forgotten the help that Robespierre had given him. Isn't
that why he notes curtly: Let's be ungrateful if we want to save the country.
5. THE POLITICAL CRISIS.
Taking advantage of Robespierre's absence, on 21 Messidor (July 9), Vadier had the Convention vote, in
the name of the Committees of Public Safety, for a decree provisionally releasing "labourers, laborers,
harvesters, brewers and craftsmen by profession "detained in the prisons of the small villages revolutionary
19
committees of . The decree contradicted the law of 22 Prairial by entrusting its "execution to the
each district capital", even if it means informing the general security committee only afterwards, while the
law of 22 Prairial stipulated: No defendant may be put out of court before the decision of the chamber has
been communicated to the Committee of Public Safety which will examine it (art. 18).
Robespierre could not be satisfied. He did not conceal his aggressiveness that evening at the Jacobins.
Aiming at Vadier's law, he castigates the rulers who "see in the nobles only peaceful farmers, good
friends and (who) do not inquire if they are friends of justice and of the people". For him, no hesitation: We
want to stigmatize the revolutionary tribunal so that the conspirators can breathe in peace. The most
infamous devices are invented to persecute energetic patriots and save their mortal enemies.
Didn't he go so far as to "arrow down" the one who chaired the meeting of the Jacobins, Barère, the
member of the Committee of Public Safety, who, during this period, manifested himself abundantly at the
podium of the Assembly as well as at that of the club. Indeed, having criticized the men of the Committee,
Robespierre adds: "I certify honest men, that they declare if, when they want to defend a patriot all riddled
with the wounds of the aristocracy and that a meek aristocrat present, he does not immediately gather
around the latter many men who seek to support him. »
Barère de Vieuzac, often regarded as more noble than he was, brought together, on certain evenings, in his
pleasure house in Clichy not only politicians, colleagues, like Vadier, Vouland, Dupin and others, but pretty women.
And, in his nights in Clichy, pleasures and politics were mixed. This could only exasperate a Robespierre.
In any case, at the end of this meeting of the Jacobins, Barère seemed speechless, according to Vilate. No
only he suffered from a retracted speech, but he must have felt affected.
After the session, says Vilate 20 , I accompanied Barère to his laboratory, next to the Committee of Public
Safety. Fainting, he stretches out in an armchair: he could barely utter these words: " I'm drunk on men: if I had a
gun... I no longer recognize anything but God and nature." »
After a few minutes of silence, I ask him this question: " What could have been his reason for attacking you ?" »
Fear and pain need to pour out. “This Robespierre is insatiable, says Barère, because we don't do everything
he wants, he has to break the ice with us. If he spoke to us of Thuriot, Guf Roy, Rovère, Lecointre, Panis, Cambon,
of Monestier, who offended my whole family, and of all the Dantonist legacy, we would understand each other;
that he still asks for Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, Legendre, Fréron, good luck; but Duval, but Audoin, but Léonard
Bourdon, Vadier, Vouland, it is impossible to agree to it.
"' So these are,' I replied, 'the scoundrels, the corrupt men of the Convention ?' » We
We parted, he in a terrible despondency, I appalled at what I had just heard.
Robespierre was no less distraught than they. Basically, almost all of them, feeling threatened,
knew what to lean on, or what to axe.
The correspondent from Antraigues, who knew the secret group formed at the Convention by Lecointre of
Versailles against Robespierre, had written, forty-eight hours earlier: Robespierre is not sure of his influence, he
begs public opinion to ward off the secret party that threatens him in the . Not without insight, the same informant
21
Agreement. He did not dare to come to the assault against them already judged the speech delivered by
Robespierre, on 13 Messidor, to be “unnecessarily sour”: Robespierre, in the eyes of an enlightened observer, no
longer lives (...) like the desperately ill, he gets lost in pleasant and bad actions for him 22 . The clandestine
informant wrote this a fortnight before 9 Thermidor...
Robespierre lived withdrawn into himself. He had been going to bed quite early since he had left. And it is
23
Public Safety Committee significant that a year later, when the police question the
Duplay on this period and that they will be asked if members of the Public Safety Committee did not come to dine
with Robespierre, a little before 9 Thermidor, Simon Duplay replied: "No, except for Barère, who dined there ten,
twelve or fifteen days before. Which brings us back to the last days of Messidor, shortly after the Jacobin speech.
Worried for himself and his friends, Barère, very flexible, a bit of a chameleon, didn't want to miss a chance.
But, inspired by other reasons, didn't Saint-Just also try to bring Robespierre back to the Committee?
Thinking so, Hermand posed the question to Jacques-Henry Duplay: “Did you not hear Saint-Just
suggest to Robespierre that he be reconciled with some members of the Convention and committees
who seemed to be opposed to him? To which Duplay replies: “No. I only know that they seemed very
divided. (But does the division apply here to Saint-Just or to the committees in relation to Robespierre?)
Already, Harmand has asked the other Duplay: "Are you not aware that Saint Just and Le Bas dined
there at the same time? But Simon Duplay answered negatively. Less categorical, his brother Jacques-
Henry replies: “Le Bas often dined there as having married one of my sisters. Saint-Just rarely dined
there; but he came frequently to Robespierre and went up to his study without communicating with
anyone. »
Did he still come a fortnight before the 9th Thermidor? One can doubt it, because the speeches of
Robespierre agree badly with the signatures given by Saint-Just to the Committee and with the speech
which it wanted to pronounce, the 9 Thermidor. In any case, if there had been a meeting, it had certainly
not resulted in a complete agreement.
In these last days of Messidor (about July 14), there was talk in Robespierre's entourage, especially
in the Commune, of a great uprising against the established power. To revive the masses, civic meals
were organized in the streets, embellished with vibrant speeches. Finally, Payan summoned all the
members of the forty-eight revolutionary committees of the sections of Paris to the Commune.
For Barère:
This assembly of four or five hundred functionaries was as extraordinary by the form of its convocation
as by the nature of the functions with which its members were vested. They could not, in fact, form
themselves into a committee except in their own section and for their sole attributions. My colleagues
24 .
instructed me to write a report to have this general summons canceled.
And Barère, in his Memoirs, will pride himself on having, in presenting the report to the Convention,
on 2 Thermidor, the first to dare to question Robespierre. But then I was alone, he writes, either I was
not sufficiently understood, or... no one in this senate dared to pick up the arms which I threw into the
middle of the arena. To tell the truth, the comprehension of this muddled text remained delicate. Some
historians adopted the thesis of the interested party, others, such as Mathiez, finally rejected it. In the
end, one can think that if Barère attacked Robespierre less directly than he would have us believe, his
attack against the provincial delegations of the Jacobins, the civic banquets and the civil servants, was
nevertheless aimed at Robespierre and his friends of the Commune. For, when he says: "Since 1789,
each faction has wanted to govern"; or else: “Public functionaries must be instruments of the people
and not their rulers”; finally, when he went so far as to stigmatize "Hebert's heirs", who could he be
aiming at if not the partisans of Robespierre in the Commune and the Jacobin club? The next day, the
faithful Couthon replied by recommending a petition to the Convention: She is pure, she will not allow
herself to be subjugated by four or five scoundrels; as for me, I declare that they will not subjugate me.
When they said Robespierre was worn out, they also said I was paralyzed.
As we can see, there is no question of the third man: Saint-Just. This one still inspires enough
confidence and respect in the members of the Committee so that they designate him (we have
already seen it), the 1st Thermidor, as recipient, with Barère, of the information notices of the relations
exterior.
He was thus able to see the last letters from Switzerland. That of Bern, of 25 Messidor (July 13),
announcing the forthcoming departure of "Monsieur" for the Vendée with the landing of English
soldiers in Brittany. That of Basel, of 28 Messidor (July 16), reporting information gathered among
the aristocrats of the Bas-Rhin, who flattered themselves "on the assertion of the Austrians, to see
a suspension of arms soon followed by peace." Again from Basle, on 2 Thermidor (July 20), people
were worried because they had “announced for the second time the false news of a coup d'etat in
France and the proclamation of Louis XVII”. Finally, on 4 Thermidor (July 22), we learned from
Mainz that the Prussians wanted to start a peace negotiation with France 25 .
Such a climate was to elicit very diverse reactions. We will try, later, to distinguish how this
weighed on the governmental crisis. By temperament, by ideal, Saint-Just – who had written into
his constitution that France would never sign peace with an enemy occupying its territory – should
not unreservedly consider diplomatic maneuvers, especially reconciled with an internal operation.
But, on 3 Thermidor, the news from Antraigues wrote: The government of Robespierre (...) could
only resist with the support of a foreign power and there is more than one which [of re] la paix
26
Curiously .
enough, two weeks earlier, the same agent stated that the Committee of Public Safety was doing
its best to hasten the execution of its grand plan, conceived by the Abbé Sieyès, which is to transfer
27
all the properties to other hands, in order to force everyone to fight... and make France impregnable.
The attribution of this idea and the Ventôse decrees to Sieyès is surprising to say the least. But the
ulterior motive attributed to them is highly probable, especially at Saint-Just. The form taken by the
Museum's commissions, the obligation to refer the condemned to the grand tribunal, were not to
satisfy Saint-Just. He did not sign any of the three lists which were ratified – one with the signature
of Robespierre and Couthon – by the Committee, on 1st, 2nd and 3rd Thermidor.
This is where Robespierre will come to the Committee for the last time. That's where they go
unfold the conversations of 5 Thermidor, generally considered "decisive" by historians.
6. THE MYSTERY OF 5.
To find out about this day, we have the memoirs or writings – often contradictory – of the
Thermidorians and a study by Albert Mathiez, precious for its meticulousness, but unsatisfactory in
terms of rigor and conclusions. Wanting to combine his Marxist conviction with his predilection for
Robespierre, Mathiez starts from the false principle that the latter opposes the committees by demanding the
formation of the “popular commissions” provided for by the Ventôse decree. As the grievance is rather
poorly explained – a draft decree on this subject having been drawn up the day –, Mathiez refers
before by Barère in response to the former members of the Committee to the accusations. He finds "a
good deal of truth" in Lecointre's text assuring that Robespierre, on 5 Thermidor, did not hesitate to
"set himself up as a whistleblower", reproaching the members of the committees for being the first
support counter-revolutionaries since they had not yet formed the six popular commissions created by
the law of 23 28 .
Ventôse
But, obviously, to exculpate themselves, the old members of the Committee needed to give pledges
to “the right” by affirming to have been against Robespierre and against the imperative and social laws
of Ventôse. Writing his Memoirs later , Barère – who, most often, seems, like the others, tied down by
his earlier declarations – returns, on this point, to the truth. He wrote:
Robespierre first proposed the establishment of four revolutionary tribunals . This proposal makes
everyone indignant: but we listen to the speaker; only the principal reasons which oppose such terrible
measures are brought out. However, to know all his thought and his subsequent projects, one asks if
it is to this plan of penal establishment that the deliberations must be limited . .
It emerges from these lines that Robespierre was not referring to the six commissions provided for
by the Ventôse decrees, but to the law of 22 Prairial, which stipulated a division of the court into four
“sections” each bringing together three judges and nine jurors (art. 1 and 3). Then, contrary to the first
statements, Barère suggests that the discussion was not violent. They seem to have above all sought
to evade the embarrassing question for the men of the Committee of General Security.
In this version of Barère, after Robespierre, Le Bas then Saint-Just took the floor. While, recounting
the session in his speech of 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just presents himself as having personally opened the
discussion.
We assembled again, everyone kept a profound silence; both were present. I got up and said: " You
seem distressed to me:
everyone here must explain themselves frankly, and I will begin if they allow it."
“ Citizens,” I added, “I have already told you that a Swiss officer, taken prisoner in front of Maubeuge
and questioned by Guyton, Laurent and myself, gave us the first idea of what was going on. This officer
tells us that the formidable police which had arisen in Cambrai had disconcerted the plan of the allies;
that they had changed their views, but that Austria was not placed on any assumption of accommodation
with France; that everything was expected of a party which would overthrow the terrible form of
government; that we counted on intelligences, on less severe principles. I invited you to watch more
carefully all that tended to alter the salutary form of present justice: soon you saw yourselves pierce
this plan in foreign libels. The ambassadors have warned you of approaching attempts against the
revolutionary government; today what is happening ? We realize the extraneous noises; they even say
that, if you succeed, you will contrast indulgence with your rigor against traitors.
I say then that, the Republic lacking these institutions from which resulted the guarantees, one tended to distort the
influence of the men who gave wise counsels, to constitute them in a state of tyranny; that it was on this plane that the
stranger walked, according to the very notes which were on the carpet; that I knew no ruler who had not seized great
military credit, finance and government, and that these things were not in the hands of those against whom the
insinuations were insinuated.
suspicions.
David agreed with me with his usual frankness. Billaud-Varenne said to Robespierre : " We
are your friends, we walked together. This disguise thrilled my heart.
The day before, he called him Pisistratus, and had drawn up his indictment.
There are men whom Lycurgus would have driven from Lacedaemon on the sinister character and the pallor of their
forehead, and I regret not having seen the frankness and the celestial truth on the faces of those of whom I speak.
Very curious, the first monologue! With slowness and flexibility, the argument encircles, envelops
the intended object so well that it no longer appears very clearly.
Certainly, we see the intention of asking the Robespierre question. But is it to rehabilitate it, or to lose it? Or to
hieratically preside over the court, perhaps reserving to intervene as conciliator of the two conflicting parties?
This is, without doubt, the third thought that animates Saint-Just. Otherwise, Billaud-Varenne's variation, far from
making his heart tremble, would have calmed and relaxed him. Moreover, if he declares having heard, the day before,
Billaud-Varenne "draft (the) indictment" of Robespierre, he is careful not to add that he replied to it and pleaded the
defence. Saint-Just declares that he limited himself, on the 4th, to saying:
Citizens, I experience sinister omens; everything is disguised before my eyes; but I will study everything that happens;
I will tell myself what probity advises for the good of the country; I will trace for myself the image of the honest man, and
what virtue prescribes for him at this moment; anything that does not resemble the pure love of the people and of liberty
will have my hatred.
According to Barère's Memoirs , Saint-Just said something else, on 5 Thermidor. He declared: “ The
evil is at its height, you are in the most complete anarchy of powers and wills. The Convention floods France with
unexecuted, and often even unenforceable, laws. Representatives close to
30
armies dispose as they please of the republican fortune and our military destinies. The representatives in
mission usurp all powers, make laws and collect gold for which they substitute assignats.
How to regularize such political and legislative disorder ? As for me, I declare on my honor and my conscience, I see
only one means of salvation: this means is the concentration of power, it is the unity of measures of government, it is the
energy attached to the political institutions of which the ancients made such useful use. Impatience was already winning
over all the members of the two committees. Explain, where are you coming from? people cry out from all sides. Saint-
Just resumes, with that phlegm which is the character of Machiavellianism and concentrated ambition: “ Well, let me
explain; a dictatorial power other than that of the two committees is needed: a man is needed who has enough genius,
strength, patriotism and generosity to accept this use of public power; Above all, it takes a man endowed with such
accustomed to the revolution, its principles, its phases, its action and its various agents, that it can answer for public
safety and the maintenance of liberty; finally, a man is needed who has in his favor the general opinion, the confidence
of the people, and who is, in fact, a virtuous and flexible as well as incorruptible citizen. This man, I declare, is
Robespierre: he alone can save the State. I ask that he be invested with the dictatorship, and that the two united
committees make a proposal to the Convention tomorrow. »
According to Barère, the proposal would only have been approved by Couthon, Le Bas and David: We
found the dictators a little precocious, and we spoke out with force and even derision against this institution which was
not in conformity with our morals, our habits, our principles, and totally subversive of the system adopted by the national
representation.
After a lively and short discussion, the dictators, ashamed and annoyed, were unanimously rejected, their proposal
for dictatorship rejected by an agenda which was like a declaration of war on

dead.
As we can see, Barère's account agrees with that of Saint-Just only on one point: David's approval.
Before examining the veracity of the remarks made, let us also record that, according to the editor of the Memoirs on
Carnot "during the speech of Saint-Just, Robespierre had walked around the table, puffing out his cheeks, blowing jerkily:
everything announced the restlessness of his soul. He feigned great surprise: "Who inspired you to make this proposal,
Saint-Just?" A dictatorship is necessary for France; I think like you; but there are, in the Convention, many members who
deserve more than me to attract the votes As often in this kind of case, everything suggests that the lie of the memorialists
is a lie by omission. Saint-Just did not
31
.»
submit a solution to his colleagues, but a choice between two paths to take. This is the alternative found in his
formulated notes. It is necessary, we read, in every revolution a dictator to save the State by force, or censors to save it
32
by virtue. And, elsewhere : A republican government has virtue as its principle; if not terror. What do , several times
those who want neither virtue nor terror want ?
If Saint-Just had confined himself – with an awkwardness which was hardly his habit – to advocating dictatorship, he
could not have prepared, four days later, to read in front of the witnesses of the scene a speech exonerating Robespierre
from the accusation. Not only, in the exposition which we have already quoted, does he recall that dictatorship requires
the possession of the armed forces; but, further, he is indignant that one can consider as a tyranny the ascendancy over
the crowds, due to a talent of orator; finally, he “certifies that Robespierre declared himself the firm support of the
Convention and never spoke in the committee except with caution of infringing on any of its members”.
It will be said that he spoke thus to reassure the parliamentary majority; for sure. But, in this sense, he could not go
so far as to propose a decree stipulating the establishment of institutions so that the government, without losing any of
its revolutionary spring, could not tend towards arbitrariness,
favor ambition and oppress or usurp national representation, if he had, four days earlier, advocated
dictatorship as the only solution. He would thus have provided the members of the committee whom he
attacked by name or indirectly, Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois and Carnot, with a reply that was too
easy.
Moreover, the Thermidorians hinted at the truth in their first response to Lecointre: Saint-Just, they
write, dared to propose his opinion to the assembled committees to have France governed by patriotic
deputations until there were republican institutions.
Quoting this passage, Mathiez adds: "I don't know what Barrère, who wrote these lines, is alluding to
when he imputes to Saint-Just the project of having France governed by what he calls "patriotic
deputations". But, obviously, it is the censors! In the Notes sur les institutions, alongside the passages
devoted to them, is a draft report and decree on the said censors who are to be established "in each
district and each army of the Republic until the peace". And the text of the project takes up the same
alternative: A government can only be maintained by a tyrant or by justice and inflexible censorship.
On 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just was to say: If you want factions to die out and no one to undertake to rise
on the debris of public liberty through the commonplaces of Machiavelli, render politics impotent by
reducing all to the cold rule of justice; keep to yourself the supreme influence; dictate imperious laws to all
parties...
... This is why I ask Providence for a few more days to call upon the institutions the meditations of the
French people and of all the legislators. Everything that happens today in the government would not have
taken place under their empire; they would perhaps be virtuous, and would not have thought of evil, those
whose proud pretensions I accuse here!
On this subject, he expressed in his Notes his most intimate idea. “Censorship (must be) exercised
over the government and cannot be exercised over the people. Or again: We must frighten those who govern.
People should never be scared.
Yes, he dreamed of his censors, hoping to come out of the Terror with them. We remember his formula:
“The Revolution is frozen, all the principles are weakened; only red caps worn by the plot remain. »
We have seen, in connection with the institutions, how he envisaged the functions of these censors. It
was about establishing a sort of moral authority in the ancient way. All of this was not without clairvoyance
and a certain childishness. Because, how to recruit these men endowed with the necessary abnegation
and rigor? This was certainly the first critical question raised against Saint-Just's project. He himself
speaks of it in his Notes. “It has been objected that there would not be enough men to exercise the
censorship,” he wrote, “but it takes more knowledge and virtues to exercise the magistracy in a weak
government than to exercise it in a robust government. The argument is valid but weak as an answer to
the question posed.
In any case, it is normal that this censorship project brought the conversation to the police office which, in
Saint-Just's mind, should constitute a first step in this direction. It is not excluded that, that evening – as Lecointre
will affirm 33 – Robespierre agreed to return to the Committee of General Security the extent of its rights and to
restrict to citizens employed by the Committee of Public Safety the ef and his police office. It is obvious that Saint-
Just could only approve of the reconciliation of the office and the Committee. For his part, having never been
violently opposed to the Committee of General Security, he would hardly attack it on 9 Thermidor.
It was on this subject that Billaud-Varenne must have particularly disgusted Saint-Just by assuring Robespierre
of his good feelings. For, as we have seen and as Barère will recall (speech of 7 germinal year III), Saint-Just had
proposed to Billaud-Varenne, during the absence of Robespierre, to share the responsibilities of the police office
with him. Billaud had refused, but Saint-Just must have had some illusions about himself until 5 Thermidor. He
had counted on him to burst the abscess; now, everything was adjourned; we remained in the false provisional
agreements.
He had hoped for big decisions and, as often in this kind of meeting, we had worked to keep calm on the
surface by pushing back the delicate subjects.
For, if the second part of Saint-Just's presentation, as reported by Barère, is implausible (distorted by an
omission), the same is not true for the first. The grim picture of the situation reflects his experience in the North
and his temperament, which never faltered in optimism. But wanting, on 9 Thermidor, to reassure parliamentarians
and public opinion, it is not surprising that he slipped on this, or that he worked to reduce the government disunity
to a “political altercation”. No deliberation of the government had divided people's minds, not that absolutely all
the measures would have been wise, but because what was most important, and especially in war, was resolved
and executed in secret. He wanted to add, for Robespierre: "He has nothing to complain about the committees
and has not complained about the committees either." »
It was like gently sending everyone back to their corner.

We can imagine that Robespierre hardly flinched during the session, and that he remained with the fairly silent
reserve with which he had often welcomed his visitors – according to the Memoirs of Barras – for several weeks.
However, a precise text, touching on the thorny question, was submitted to the members of the Committee. He
it was a draft decree drawn up by Barère and approved the day before by the two committees.
The text stipulated the appointment, in three days, of the citizens to compose the “three popular commissions”
which would come, in accordance with the law of 23 Ventôse, to supplement that of the Museum. These,
"sedentary in Paris", would see their judgments "revised by the committees of public safety and general security
in the established form". On the other hand, "a report would be made to the Convention on the establishment of
four ambulatory sections of the Revolutionary Court of Paris to try the detainees in the departments sent by the
commissions to this court 34 ".
Mathiez believes that the text had been written to facilitate a rapprochement with Robespierre, by taking
up the application of the Ventôse decrees. Nothing more doubtful. First, because, as we have seen,
Robespierre was not particularly attached to these decrees; then because the break-up of the Paris tribunal,
by making the four sections (which remained to be formed) "ambulant", could only upset Robespierre.
Was the text even submitted to him? It is highly unlikely. Because, as everyone knows, the Committee
held two meetings a day, one in the morning and one at night. And Barère, in his Memoirs, says that the
discussion with Robespierre, which began at ten o'clock in the morning, did not last very long.
On the other hand, the text of the decree, corrected by Barère, was signed by Saint-Just but not by
Robespierre, although, after discussion, the last paragraph (on ambulatory sections) had been deleted,
replacing it with the vague formula and ambiguous: Provision will be made for the appointment of the
revolutionary commissions which will appear necessary for the judgment of the detainees sent back to the
tribunal. If we did not fix categorically the "four tribunals" demanded by Robespierre, at least we stopped
wanting to send them wandering around France. So, the non-signature of Robespierre can be explained only
by his absence from the Committee or because he found the compromise insufficient.
The speeches delivered by Barère, on 5 and 7 Thermidor, stating the agreement of the committees, weigh
rather in favor of the first hypothesis.
After the 9th, to clear themselves of having been Robespierrists, the Thermidorians of the committees will
affirm that the meeting of the 5th was stormy, that Robespierre wanted to impose a list of parliamentarians
to be condemned 35 . But the speeches of Barère like that of Robespierre, on the 7th, invite us to believe
nothing of it. Moreover, much later, Barras, in the notes of his Memoirs, will mention, for those days, a fairly
moderate Robespierre, anxious to maintain a parliamentary majority. For his part, narrating the session, well
informed by his friends from the Versailles committee, Lecointre will conclude: We leave each other, peace
seems made.
If Saint-Just had not succeeded in imposing his suggestions on censorship, his position was nonetheless
good: he still appeared as the man who could reconcile the two tendencies.
Also, he is appointed to make a major report that Barère will announce the same day, and of which Saint-
Just will speak in his speech on the 9th.
According to Barère:
The two committees together have deliberated to make a general report on the influence which the
foreigner had tried to acquire and on the means of putting an end to the calumny and the oppression under
which it was desired to put the most ardent patriots and which rendered the greatest services to the Republic.
(...) It will be a very instructive picture than that of the skilful intrigues by which one wanted to divide the
patriots to oppress them and oppress them to annihilate the Republic. When the reporter has examined
before you the influence that the foreigner had again tried to acquire in France and Paris, when he has
examined with you the influence that the errors or the prejudices of some patriots have had on the events
and the new faults of which events have failed to be the source in their turn, we will finally learn to
unravel these odious threads, these eternal trainings of division, persecution, calumny, injustice put on the agenda in all
the mouths, in all the spirits against the best republicans and the oldest defenders of freedom.. .
As Mathiez admits, it is impossible not to see in this speech a new advance to Robespierre, but this would be
inconceivable if the Incorruptible had opposed the committees, a few hours earlier, and if he had specifically criticized
Barère.
Besides, what does Saint-Just say?
When the two committees honored me with their confidence and entrusted me with the report, I announced that I would
undertake it only on condition that it would be respectful for the Convention and for its members; I announced that I would
go to the source, that I would develop the plan hatched to undermine the revolutionary government; that I would endeavor
to increase the energy of public morality. Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois insinuated that it was not necessary to
speak of the Supreme Being, of the immortality of the soul, of wisdom. blushed with Divinity!...
... Thus I had been condemned not to speak to you of Providence, the only hope of the isolated man who, surrounded
by sophisms, asks heaven for the courage and wisdom necessary to make the triumph of the
truth.
At the bottom of the comparison of the two texts, it emerges that, from the outset, Saint-Just's report was intended,
without attacking parliamentarians ("it would be respectful for the Convention and for its members"), to justify the new
institutions by criticizing the political mores of the moment.
Barère therefore seems very well informed of Saint-Just's intentions, when he announces that the designated rapporteur
will examine the influence that the errors or prejudices of some patriots have had on the events and the new faults whose
events have lacked be the source in turn.

Isn't this a way of announcing that Saint-Just will send Billaud back to their respective corners?
Varenne, Collot d'Herbois and Robespierre?
Robespierre's retreat and hostile distrust of the committees are classified as “errors or prejudices”. But it is necessary
to grant him extenuating circumstances: His remoteness and the bitterness of his soul can excuse something: he does not
know the history of his persecution; he knows only his misfortune, wrote Saint-Just for 9 Thermidor. And this will be one of
the themes of his speech: Billaud Varenne, by provocation, made Robespierre and the General Security Committee fall
into a trap.
Attempts have been made to dissatisfy and embitter people's minds in order to lead them to fatal steps.
Thus, for Saint-Just, the "good faith" of the Committee of General Security was surprised: ... They
flattered him, they insinuated to him that they were aiming to strip him of his authority: the slightest pretexts are seized
to magnify the 'thunderstorm. Three gunpowder workers, inhabitants of Arcueil, mixed with ten or twelve residents of
Bicêtre, who had gotten drunk together, were presented to the two committees by Billaud Varenne, like patrols of
conspirators... On this subject, we must arrest or drive out the mayor of Paris and the general staff, and seize everything. it
was announced that one would be dead within twenty-four hours; that there would be a revolt today... I adjure consciences
here;
is it not true that at the same time many members were inspired with such terror that they no longer slept at
home ? They were insinuated that certain members of the Committee were making bloody propositions about
them. Thus hearts were prepared for revenge and injustice.
And, tracing the portrait of the instigator of the manoeuvre, Billaud-Varenne, he presents it thus: Billaud
announced his design by broken words; sometimes it was the word Peisistratus that he uttered, and sometimes
that of dangers: he became bold in the moments when, having excited the passions, people seemed to listen to
his advice; but his last word always expired on his lips: he hesitated, he became irritated, he then corrected what
he had said: yesterday he called such an absent man Pisistratus; present today, he was his friend; he was silent,
pale, staring, straightening his weathered features. The truth has neither this character nor this policy.
Saint-Just also attacks Carnot, but less harshly, without naming him: A member
had taken it upon himself, mistaken perhaps, to outrage for no reason the one they wanted to destroy, to lead
him apparently to ill-considered measures, to to complain publicly, to isolate oneself, to defend oneself loudly, to
then accuse him of the troubles of which one will not agree that one is the first cause. This plan succeeded, and
the conduct reported above soured everything.
This passage joins, much more than the precedent, by the form as by the bottom, what announced Barère. We
can think that, on 5 Thermidor, Saint-Just wanted allusively, without naming anyone, to analyze the process which
had led Robespierre to move away from the committees, to fight that of general security and to utter threats which
allowed his adversaries, under the pretext of defending themselves and out of fear, of suppressing the military
forces or the judicial power which they considered to be in his hands. Against this, Saint-Just could appeal to the
parliamentarians:
Imagine that this alteration had continued, that Paris had been without a general staff and without magistrates,
that the revolutionary tribunal had been suppressed or filled with creatures of two or three members governing
absolutely; your authority would have been destroyed.
Obviously, between the report that Saint-Just thought he would present on the morning of the 5th, and the
speech he wrote for the 9th, there is a large margin. In the in-between, events prompted him to be tougher. First,
by his hypocritical reversal, by preventing him from bursting the abscess, Billaud Varenne disappointed him and
"made his heart tremble". Then, with his violent speech on the 8th, Robespierre made everything worse. However,
until the last minute, Saint-Just must have wanted not to despair. He knew how to wait:
No doubt it is not yet time to do good. The particular good that we do is a palliative, we must wait for a general
evil that is great enough for general opinion to feel the need for measures suitable for doing good. What produces
the general good is always terrible or seems odd when you start too early presentation of this one to the
.
Committee, but it is perhaps also because they did not maintain bad reports/ratios. Both were, or rather prided
themselves on being, intellectuals. bar of
Vieuzac had frequented Mme de Genlis a great deal and, under the Directory, he was to write works such as the
Life of Cleopatra, Plato's Voyage to Italy, Geochronology of Europe. Culture formed such a common ground
between Saint-Just and him that, one day, in the large green drawing-room where the Committee met, they had
exchanged, over a piece of paper, views on the exercise of memory.
37 :
Carnot's son, finding the sheet in the writings of Barère, reproduced it thus “The method
of extracts is of very little use, says Saint-Just. When you are struck either by a maxim, or by a development, or
by some other thing in a book, read it twice, you will remember it: write it down, your memory will rest on your
extract; she will become lazy, and all your education will be in the boxes. »
“Barère replies: 'The ancients studied only by learning the pieces of the great masters. »
“Saint-Just adds these words, and underlines them: By heart.
“Barère: “Demosthenes traveled among the Egyptians to “study and extract...”
“Saint-Just interrupts, and writes in a note: “I deny it. »
“Barère: “Tacitus elevated his genius by making extracts “which he called excerpta... ”
“Saint-Just interrupts again: “This idea is good if we are talking about translations from foreign languages.
Extracts from national books are rarely useful; they serve for hearing without perfecting the understanding.
Obviously, it is hard to imagine,
nowadays, ministers, during a council meeting, exchanging
views of this order on a piece of paper. Such humanism would seem a bit schoolboy to us...
However, it should not be forgotten that the members of the Committee often took their places around the large
table, without however starting the general discussion: each one worked silently in his corner. And then, in this
period of Thermidor, Saint-Just, not wanting too much to follow Robespierre in his retirement (who no longer went
to the Jacobins) nor too much to submit to the holders of control levers, distinguished himself by his comings and
goings . He often entered an evening session twenty times and only spoke out of sentence or out of anger, when
he was not constraining himself to an affected and painful silence, or rather he was spying on the Committee, his
former colleagues will say maliciously after the 9th thermidor 38 We no longer knew exactly for whom and .
against whom he was.
Because, if he personally contributed, on the evening of the 5th, to modifying the decree on justice, so that the
Parisian court was maintained in Paris, on the other hand, he gave pledges to Carnot, Billaud-Varenne and Barère
by signing with them another decree stipulating that "the companies of gunners of the sections of Chalier and the
Champs-Élysées, of Montreuil and the Gravillers", would leave Paris, to go, the first two to Douai, and the others to
Givet and Maubeuge. Certainly, he intended, on 9 Thermidor, to formulate a reservation: Since it was said that a
law allowed only twenty-four companies of gunners to be left in Paris, I do not deny that we had the right to draw
from it, but I don't know the need for it. For him it was above all a question of clearing his responsibility.
When he left the Committee, in the night, everything could seem to Saint-Just if not arranged, at least
still manageable.
7. DID ROBESPIERRE WANNA SIGN PEACE WITH AUSTRIA AND RECOGNIZE LOUIS XVII?
However, the next day, Robespierre thinks otherwise. He will no longer set foot on the Committee.
“It was said, a few days ago in the prisons, it is time to show oneself, he wrote, the Committee of General Security
declared itself against the Committee of Public Safety; it was said on the very night when the famous sitting of the two
committees took place; and it required active and extraordinary precautions to maintain order. A few days before,
newspaper peddlers were arrested, crying breathlessly: Great arrest of Robespierre; the rumor was spread that Saint-
Just was noble, and that he wished to favor the nobles; they were spreading at the same time as I wanted to proscribe
them. »
It emerges from these curious lines that there was a spoken press, rather counter-revolutionary, quite favorable to
Saint-Just, presenting him as opposed to Robespierre by his moderation, his conciliatory intentions. We join here what
Gateau reports on the need, felt by Saint-Just, to "relax the strings of the bow".
Moreover, these lines were published in a note with the text of the speech of 8 Thermidor, and this seems to indicate
that Robespierre did not keep them, preferring in the end not to speak of Saint-Just: he must have felt a little abandoned
by him.
According to the notes of A. Serrieys39 , on the morning of the 6th, the Duplay woman strongly reproached Saint
Just for his extreme reserve in this circumstance. " We don't know," she had told him, " whether you are for or against
Robespierre." “ I'm going to explain myself today ,” Saint-Just would have replied.
In the evening, at the Jacobins, Couthon – who often reflected the ideas of Robespierre – attacked violently, if not
the general security committee, at least the “villains” who surrounded him, and he criticized the school. de Mars,
founded to educate young warriors in a Spartan style (under the inspiration of Saint-Just, it will be said) and directed
by Le Bas, since his return from the North:
I honour, he said, the establishment of the Plaine des Sablons, although I do not really understand the reasons for
it, because it seems extraordinary that we want to train 3,000 students to defend a Republic which needs 1,200. 000
fighters... But why are 3,000 young people being sent a large quantity of large-caliber guns ? Why did he leave, eight
days ago, from the gunners of Paris ?
Sijas interrupts him to inform the audience that a new departure of 4,000 gunners has been decided (this is the
decree signed the day before by Saint-Just). And Le Bas steps in to defend the school of Mars. But the bad effect is
produced.
However, that evening, Robespierre did not speak as an accuser. On the contrary, it rises 40 to throw a veil over
the stories of the committees. After Couthon's speech, the Créole Gouly, deputy for Ile-de-France, who fulfilled the
functions of secretary, having requested a special session, "so that Couthon and Robespierre can clearly explain the
conspiracies that are brewing" , to his great amazement, Robespierre and Couthon gave him "a glare" and Robespierre
went up to the podium to ask the preliminary question, cursing the overzealous secretary.
One can wonder why the one who will pronounce, forty-eight hours later, such a violent speech, does
not intend to broach the subject which haunts him. And it is curious that Couthon thinks, like him, having
to stick to a few arrows.
Yes, all this is strange, but explainable. Because, as we will see, everything leads us to believe that
special circumstances caused Robespierre to speak out sooner than he intended.
Thereupon – in a letter which, unless I am mistaken, has never been reproduced – the informants
clandestines of the Comte d'Antraigues undoubtedly indicate one of the causes of this brutal change.
It is a letter written on 14 Thermidor. Its editors then maintain good relations with the triumphant men.
They brag about it in the missive; they expect from Tallien the forthcoming release of one of the members
of the network, Lemaître (of whom we speak under the pseudonym of Le Traisne), employed by the
general security committee as a prison informant.
In the passages that sympathetic ink still allows us to decipher, we read: ... The
41
Dauphin on the throne . [No doubt] the Dauphin would not have lived long under such protection,
but that was equal to Austria, which only asked for a palliative title in the eyes of Europe to manage to the
detriment of princes and emigrants. . Here is a truth which is not doubtful today and which should form the
basis of the colors with which the historian will have to paint one day the Machiavellianism of this infernal
court.
One of the things, in fact, which most determined Robespierre to burst out sooner than he had to was
the impossibility he experienced of entering the commissioner in charge of convoys and the march of the
troops, as well as that Carnot's constant refusal to communicate to him the portfolio of military operations
42 , that Austria is now getting out of trouble...
In other words, according to the informant, one of the last cards that Robespierre could play was to
sign peace with Austria, giving it as a pledge the establishment of Louis XVII, of whom he would be the
regent.
In fact, we know that there has been talk for several months in foreign courts of these negotiations.
From the month of May, there was concern about it in the Prussian camp. We saw the meetings with
Serton and Vaughan. And, on July 5, Marshal Mollendorf drew the King of Prussia's attention to the secret
talks begun by Robespierre with Thugut, the Austrian Chancellor, to sign a separate peace. Moreover,
according to the first version of the Memoirs of the Prince of Hardenberg, drawn up from the papers of his
immediate collaborator Shocell, all the courts based their hopes on Robespierre; the latter showing
himself disposed to put an end to the revolutionary excesses and the reign of Terror, was in the eyes of
the cabinets of Vienna and London the only one with whom it was possible to treat.
Such was the idea that had been formed of this leader of the Revolution, not only in Vienna and London,
but also in Rome, Turin, Madrid . .
But none of the sovereigns wants the operation to be carried out without him and against his country.
The King of Prussia can be worried, because the Emperor of Austria, Francis, has left the Netherlands
for Vienna since the end of June, not wanting, he said, that we shares the rest of Poland with its
costs. On the other hand, a former minister of the King of Prussia, the Count of Herzberg, sent his
sovereign three reports to alert him: in his eyes, the continual victories of the French left no hope, it
was necessary to hasten to sign peace with France on the basis, as regards borders, of the status
quo ante. Having been unable to begin negotiations, Prussia instructed its French prisoners to indicate
its good intentions, by a message, on July 22 (3 Thermidor).
Robespierre can therefore fear being grilled on this path. And, above all, he needed a shock to
make the armistice and the restoration acceptable to public opinion. Because, to support the French
position on Austria, it is to resume exactly the policy of the last years of the monarchy: that which one
criticized so strongly through Marie-Antoinette.
Undoubtedly, we must not forget England. On that side, to liaise and initiate talks, there are
Benjamin Vaughan, Serton and another Englishman, Smith, whose presence in Basle from March is
denounced by d'Antraigues in his bulletin, and that Francis Drake was worried to see, in Spain,
“accompanied by Incira and an Abbé Lescaris, both suspected of Jacobinism. There were several, as
indicated in 44 at the beginning of June.
his reports to the Thermidorians, Soulavie, resident of France in Geneva. The latter will speak of
“five or six letters”. To bring himself up to date, he will write, on August 10, branding Robespierre
who, he will say, had treated (by means which you will easily discover in Paris): 1o with all the
governments at war with us and 2d with all the aristocratic parties of the neutral foreign country.
Exaggerated as the accusation is, it is certainly not without foundation.
As we have noticed, Soulavie summarizes a letter from Vaughan which has no connection with the
one published by Barère. Soulavie's letter informed Robespierre "that there was a faction in London
prepared to recognize the French Republic" if he wanted to fix a removable executive power on one
or two heads, as in the Roman Republic; if he would stop pursuing merchants and religious worship
in France. The letter published by Barère, on the other hand, suggested a federative organization of
France with Belgium and Holland.
Moreover, the conditions of peace seem to differ from those posed by Austria: it
there is no open question of Louis XVII.
For the informants of Antraigues, the attention paid by Robespierre to Louis XVII is not a new
event. We have already seen the April letter where it was said that he was doing better to treat the
prisoners of the Temple. And then, on May 23, the secret agents were to send a letter whose
transposition in the Drake-d'Antraigues bulletins has often been cited. But here is the original, which
is unpublished:
We can bring down the Committee of Public Safety in one fell swoop with a successful attack in
the North. But would it not be to obviate this that Robespierre, who for some time has been showing
great concern, has daily conferences with Darçon and others at Passy, Belleville, Brueil... It is said that he thinks of do
to bring down the Neuilly bridge, which he had the little Capet transferred to Meudon, in the middle of an immense
artillery park which seems as much made to impose (sic ) on Paris as to experiment with gunpowder. There is
moreover in the same place an enormous quantity of ammunition of wars and (...) there are several hundred
strong mules there. Could it be a progression to a fugue, as aristocrats like to spout it out quietly ? That's what I
won't tell you. In any case, they will only be able to withdraw towards Toulon, Bordeaux or Marseille, because
the North is occupied by the Austrians 45 .
However, since May, the Austrians had had to beat a retreat. And, as everyone knows, according to the Drake-
d'Antraigues bulletin, Robespierre would have brought Louis XVII back to the Temple, after a forty-eight-hour
stay in Meudon.
This temporary removal has aroused much passion and objections among historians. Some, to confirm it,
evoked, as being Robespierre, the important mysterious personage who came to visit the Duchess of Angoulême
in her room in the Temple on May 11 (22 Floréal); while the others rightly underlined how difficult it must have
been to get the child of the Temple out and in – unnoticed. Finally Lenôtre considered that if Robespierre had
taken the child back to prison, it was perhaps because he had discovered that he was no longer Louis XVII.
46
...
Be that as it may, everything suggests that Robespierre really thought about signing the peace and recognizing
Louis XVII. Five days after 9 Thermidor, an agent from Basle, Bacher, wrote to Buchot: The conspiracy of the
new Cromwell which has just been discovered was concerted with Austria; This is the explanation of a remark
47
made by an agent of the Emperor. And a month later, Barthélémy wrote to .
his colleague Buchot: It is certain that the court of Vienne had entered into negotiations with Robespierre
through the Comte de Montgaillard. It is certain that the courts expected to see Robespierre dictator and counted
on that to end.
The Prussian ambassador in Bern said on the death of Danton: Finally Robespierre will be dictator and we will
48
know with whom to deal..
An émigré, Verteuil, in a report to Lord Grenville explains how employed by the Comte de Clerfayt, commander
of the Austrian army in Belgium, then by General Mack, in 1793 and 1794, to strip intercepted French
correspondence, he had knowledge of the advances made by Robespierre to Austria, from the month of May,
with secret agents, in particular Montgaillard, a restless man, "a hunchback sparkling with wit and audacity" with
connections in all camps. This one will launch out in the adventure, taking (he will write it) Robespierre for “the
only one with whom it was possible to deal”.
According to Verteuil, on May 19, the talks began; they wanted to hide them carefully from England, but
diplomatic agents like Montgaillard intended to personally play on several tables or, more exactly, on several
countries. After meeting Emperor Francis II, he went to London, at the invitation of the Duke of York. There he
published several pamphlets and had an interview with Pitt; but, after the 9th Thermidor, he had to leave the
capital: had
Hasn't he lost much of his interest in England? Is it because of these face variations, or simply by
rivalry, that Verteuil judged Montgaillard as a man “who has done a lot of harm”.
Because, according to Verteuil, the agreement was concluded. Robespierre,

he wrote 49 , undertook
to restore the young King constitutionally; a Council of Regency was to be formed for him, drawn from
the Convention, at the head of which he was to be. In fact, all the black cabinets of Europe babbled
about it, at the beginning of Thermidor. On July 15, receiving some information from his friend in
Antraigues, Las Casas answered him from Berlin: It's late, but better late than never. When will we get
along ? When will we take the first reasonable step: that of recognizing Louis XVII 50 ? On the English
side, they also wanted an end to the war, but with less reliance, it seems, on Robespierre. For Drake:
The only good way to end this war, (...) is the sincere union of the powers and the anti-Jacobin French.
51.
This is difficult, I admit, but we must not despair yet.
Several other texts on these talks have already been published. Let us simply remember, to finish,
that of the Abbé de Pradt, French emigrant in Belgium, according to which the Comte de Mercy-
Argenteau, Austrian Minister Plenipotentiary, would have sighed, after 9 Thermidor: What a misfortune that M.
Robespierre had not lived a few more weeks, he would have been the master of France; the Emperor
my master would have recognized him as head of government, and we would all have peace now. It
was a great loss that England and Austria suffered there..
52 But, in any case, to change the form of the regime – regency or consulate – Robespierre needed
a pretext, a great national occasion: a victory or a major defeat. However, Carnot kept Robespierre
away from military affairs.
8. STRATEGY DISPUTES.
In the memoirs he would write for his father, Hippolyte Carnot let this be understood, speaking of
the “torture of Robespierre's pride” exasperated by “the inability to make war serve his own elevation”.
According to Prieur (from the Côte-d'Or), he had said one day to the members of the Committee: I
expect you at the first defeat. If the Thermidorians are to be believed, he even avoided signing the
military measures “so as not to compromise himself”. Finally, in the big meeting of the 5th, he would
have reproached Carnot for "not building victory".
Indeed, Robespierre will decide in this direction, on 8 Thermidor, advocating an all-out war while
suggesting how much the signing of peace is desirable. He will deplore, on the one hand, that the
enemy armies are "fleeting, but not enveloped, but not exterminated" and, on the other hand, he will
say: Let the reins of the Revolution float for a moment, you will see military despotism to take hold of.
A century of civil wars and calamities will desolate our country and we will perish for not wanting to
seize a marked moment in the history of men to found freedom. Six
months earlier, he had already said before the Convention: "To found and consolidate democracy, we must end the war
53 . »
Did Saint-Just's position on the matter agree completely with that of Robespierre? He does not seem. Certainly,
concerning the direction of military operations, he made the same criticism, but more moderately. On the 8th, Robespierre
exclaimed: In whose hands are the armies, the finances and the internal administration of the Republic today ? in those
of the coalition that pursues me. All the friends of principles are without influence. The next day, feeling less persecuted,
Saint-Just only deplored that the freedom to move the troops was concentrated in very few hands with impenetrable
secrecy, so that all the armies would have changed places and very few people in would be educated. But he does not
specifically attack Carnot. Better, he declares, in his conclusion: The members whom I accuse committed few faults in
their functions: they do not have to justify themselves for the operations, except that of the eighteen thousand men whom
they wanted to remove from the army of Sambre-et-Meuse.
It is because, after bitter disputes, Saint-Just has just extracted from Carnot a modification of his strategic plan. As
we have seen, Carnot first thought of invading Belgium and landing in Holland in order to get his hands on the big
international credit center in Amsterdam. The great offensive envisaged was inspired as much by economic and financial
concerns as by a spirit of conquest. The great treasurer Cambon was no doubt no stranger to such a project.
Informed of the needs of this order, Saint-Just had moreover signed, with Billaud-Varenne, on July 14 (26 Messidor), an
order deciding to levy five million in Brussels while holding six hundred hostages prisoner. But the said measure was
perhaps a way of indicating that, to make a good harvest of subsidies, it was not necessary to go further north...
As we have already seen, upon his return to Paris, Saint-Just had expressed his opposition to Carnot's first project.
And, one of the representatives in the North, Richard, will go so far as to say, on August 5: Saint-Just has made the
greatest efforts to prevent the execution of the plan adopted by the Committee of Public Safety... On this subject I had
extremely lively scenes with him.
Too pessimistic by nature to approve of adventurous military enterprises, and very anxious to participate in clear and
prompt victories, Saint-Just had worked to convince the Parisian strategists to make them adopt a more reasonable plan.
And he had succeeded, since Carnot, on July 16 (28 Messidor), submitted a report to the Committee in which he wrote:
We could, if we wanted to, plant the tree of liberty on the banks of the Rhine and reunite with France all the former
territory of the Gauls. But, however attractive this system may be, it may be found that it is wise to give it up and that
France could only weaken herself and prepare herself for an interminable war by an enlargement of this nature. (...) It
seems indeed that (...) we had to reject any enlargement that would not be required by the need to secure our own
possessions, such as the places of Ypres and Nieuport, for example, without which it is impossible to effectively cover
Dunkirk and the northern territory... It therefore seems much wiser to restrict our projects
expansion to what is purely necessary to maximize the security of our country to break the coalition,
54
ensure our trade .
In short, what for three months had been a matter of dispute between Carnot and Saint-Just concerned
at its end: Saint-Just prevailed.
But such a renunciation of Carnot, such a stoppage of the troops could not satisfy Robespierre.
Such wisdom lacked luster. About 7 Thermidor (July 25), the combatants of the North, of Sambre-et-
Meuse, finding themselves immobilized, began to gossip. One of them, in a letter from Antwerp, dated
August 3 (16 Thermidor), published by the newspaper La Soirée du Camp, wrote: “We remained inactive
for ten days. In the evening, we gathered in the huts and wondered the cause of this extraordinary rest.
We were talking about peace. Robespierre could be worried about negotiations carried out without him.
Wasn't the Committee thinking of arbitration and American aid? In his memoir, Billaud-Varenne will say
that, on the eve of 9 Thermidor, we were on the point of ensuring the "recovery" of France, thanks to the
correspondence linked with the United States 55 This was undoubtedly one of .
the reasons that pushed Robespierre to burst on the 8th.
Moreover, what he said then about the great victories won – including Fleurus – is very significant: We
talk to you
a lot about your victories, with an academic levity that would lead one to believe that they cost our
heroes neither blood nor works. (...) It is neither by rhetorical phrases nor even by warlike exploits that we
will subjugate Europe, but by the wisdom of our laws, by the majesty of our deliberations, and by the
grandeur of our characters. What has been done to turn our military successes to the benefit of our
principles, to forestall the dangers of victory, or to assure us of its fruits ?
Watch Belgium. I warn you that your decree against the English has been eternally violated; that England,
so ill-treated by our speeches, is spared by our arms. (...) We have fun planting sterile trees of freedom in
enemy soil; instead of reaping the fruits of victory, (...) the defeated slaves are favored at the expense of
the victorious Republic.
All this is not very nice for Saint-Just. First Robespierre who, in front of the same Jacobins, eight months
earlier, hailed the animator of the Alsatian troops as "a representative of the", this time, not a word of it.
56
people who have both head and heart the And omission can ulcerate
young conqueror of Fleurus, who is not insensitive to crowns.
In the speech he will write, in the night for the next day, Saint-Just will not hide his
bitterness:
The Fleurus day contributed to opening up Belgium. I want justice to be done to everyone, and victories
to be honored, but not in such a way as to honor the government more than the armies, because only
those who are in battles win them. , and it is only those who are powerful who benefit from it; we must
therefore praise the victories, and forget ourselves.
And, in the conclusion, he takes up the same theme:
I really like being told about victories, but I don't want them to become excuses for vanity. The victory of
Fleurus was announced, and others, who said nothing about it, were present; there was talk of sieges, and
others who said nothing about it were in the trenches.
Certainly, after Thermidor, Barère, in his Memoirs, will give the line as essentially directed against him, in
his capacity as reporter of the military situation. According to him, the day after the recapture of Namur – that
is to say, 30 Messidor (July 18) – Saint-Just and Robespierre would have intervened at the Committee “so
that in future we would be content to read the letters from generals without commentary that would exaggerate
their content”. And, as the rapporteur defended himself, Saint-Just clarified dryly: I ask that in the future we
57
no longer make our victories so laudable. You will notice that Robespierre did not come . Only we
to the Committee on those days. In reality, Barère confuses, voluntarily or involuntarily, two clashes on very
different dates on the same subject; the first with Robespierre, the second with Saint-Just. Indeed, according
to Barère, Robespierre and Saint-Just, after the discussion in the Committee, "forced the impotent Couthon"
to take his place as rapporteur. But since he could not mount the rostrum, reading "coldly from his place the
news of the armies", would have completely failed, after which all the other members of the Committee would
have demanded that Barère resume his role.
If we find no trace of this fruitless attempt in the Moniteur, on the other hand, in a letter
58
dated 7 prairial (May 26), the Antraigues informant recounts it:
Couthon, the other day, had to bite his fingers for his too much confidence in Robespierre. The latter had
instructed him to make a very extensive report to balance [what say] these beggars of aristocrats by the
announcement of alleged victories in the north and in the south, the noise of several defeats experienced by
our republican troops. Couthon had probably little measured the probabilities. He said among other things in
this report that our Republicans had taken 500 pieces of cannon from the Spaniards. " But are you crazy or
do you take us for fools, to come and tell us such faggots," cried one of his colleagues from the Committee.
– Ah ! you're right, replied Couthon, it's 50 pieces of cannon that should be read, it's a mistake in the figures. »
Not only by what it tells 59 but by its date, this letter shows that Saint-Just cannot be considered one of
the instigators of the experiment: he was still with the armies of the North.
The choice of Couthon by Robespierre alone is better explained, moreover. This could be, for him, a means
of removing from these victories a luster, an importance which bothered him. And what Saint-Just said, in his
speech on 9 Thermidor, indicates that what irritated him was not that we made "foam the victories", but that
we absorbed them, that we exploited them, forgetting their craftsmen, starting with himself.
On the same question, Barère's other story, on the day after Fleurus, seems much more
truthful. It sheds light on the character of Saint-Just in the circumstances. What do we read?
Saint-Just arrived at the Committee earlier than the officers bearing the Austrian flags sent by the army of
the Convention with the despatches of General-in-Chief Jourdan. To supplement these despatches, I
consulted the general officers, I took note of the principal details of this day, and thus I wrote
my report on the table in the committee's deliberation room. The Assembly waited impatiently for this
communication. So I begged Saint-Just, who had been present at the battle, to take the generals' reports and
go and relate what he had seen himself. But he constantly refused to do so, as well as to give me the details I
asked of him: " Everything is in General Jourdan's letter," he told me; that's all there is to say. He was
concentrated, and seemed unhappy This discontent, as we 60 .
have seen, Saint-Just did not hide the cause: he found the Committee changed . It became more difficult to
participate in its direction. And the envoy to the North was too proud to bestow crowns on himself or beg them
from the reporter. In his eyes, this one had to understand and make the gesture spontaneously...
Also, that after Barère, Robespierre fell into the same trap, that could not delight him.
Moreover, Robespierre indirectly puts him in question, when he warns the audience that the decree against
the English has been eternally violated in the North, and that England has been "spared". Because Saint-Just,
being with the troops, did not flinch when Carnot, on June 16 (28 Prairial), told them in his despatch:
The decree which states that no English or Hanoverian prisoners will be taken does not concern the
Hessians: we must therefore keep these and send back the others by exchange for an equal number of our
soldiers or sailors.
Moreover, in his speech of the 9th, Saint-Just not only did not retain this grievance, but underlined that he
had only one criticism to make of Carnot (the plan to strip the army of Sambre-et-Meuse) .
In short, everything suggests that the relations between Saint-Just and Carnot, without being excellent,
were no longer so bad in those early days of Thermidor. They countersigned directives 61 to the troops. In
view of these, it seemed so obvious that Saint-Just was continuing to follow the operations in Belgium, that
one of the deputies in charge of the mission, Grillet, wrote to him on July 11:
Hurry, my friend, to join us: our mission here becomes very delicate. We are dealing with a great people; he
did not want to take up arms against us... Never did a circumstance more imperiously require the presence of
a member of the Governing Committee. I conjure you, in the name of the fatherland, to go there. 62 Make no
mistake: this .
warm appeal did not convey deep sympathy.
A fortnight later, on 13 Thermidor, the same Grillet, in a letter to the Committee, would say:
I had the misfortune to have the villain of Saint-Just as my colleague for a few days, and when he was
conspiring, I asked you to dismiss him. Could I believe him to be criminal, he who enjoyed the greatest
confidence?
In other words, on the eve of 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just maintained a good rating. It was in accordance with
the new war policy adopted by the Committee: if the landings in Holland or England had been renounced, they
were counting firmly on the profits of the occupation of Belgium, to restore the finances of the State. Also the
rumors circulating about a separate peace, signed by
Robespierre, must have greatly worried the members of the Committee. In his speech on 5 Thermidor, a preview of Saint-
Just's report, Barère had castigated those who would like to use amnesty for the aristocracy, peace for the people and
modifications for kings.
9. THE PARLIAMENTARY FORCE AND THE OTHER.
But if Robespierre needed the campaign in the North to be conducted more harshly in order to be stopped more
spectacularly, he also needed to reassure the parliamentarians to find a majority there against the established government.
Especially since, in the corridors, he was given as wanting the heads of thirty-two deputies. Thereupon, the words of
Robespierre reported by Barras in his Memoirs have every chance of being true.
What is he talking about? Carnot having proposed to him to leave on a mission with the Army of the Rhine, Barras
claims to have refused, saying brutally: “I know that you have conceived the project of removing from the Convention
deputies who are not your servile flatterers; I will not go to the Army of the Rhine. The great danger to the Republic is
here, I will not leave this honorable post. »
One could not show more clearly his distrust of the committees.
Informed the next day, Robespierre approached him to say: “You feel the need to stay at the Convention; it is time for
it to take steps to evade a factional majority on the committees. And, as Barras invited him to mount the rostrum to
denounce "the bloody measures", Robespierre replied: "There would perhaps be danger in making them public, but the
time is not far off when one can do it. »
Even better, a few days later, Robespierre approached Barras again, at the Tuileries, on leaving the Convention and,
in front of several people, he said to him: “I wish to confer with you on the dangers which threaten the Republic. We can
save her, let's get together; I refused any compromise with the committees; I will never associate myself with such
brigands. It is time for the Convention to regain full powers; their aim is to cut the throats of the strongest supporters of
liberty. They allied themselves at the moment with the Royalists, the Dantonists, they caressed the terrorists, even
associated themselves with the foreign party... I no longer attend committee meetings, the lenient word made me of the
63 enemies ... »
Barras had no interest in inventing that at a time when Robespierre still appeared as a monster of Terror. But this
declared opposition to the committees and to a few men like Fouché, was bound to come back to the ears of the latter
and invite them to exert themselves quickly to disarm Robespierre, by trying to remove or reduce the forces of the
Commune, of the guard. national and parliamentary support.
In the Memoirs, published by Louis Madelin, Fouché, knowing the violent antipathy that Robespierre had for him, -
since he had, while presiding over the Jacobins, on 20 Prairial, declared: "Brutus
paid homage worthy of the Supreme Being by thrusting a dagger into the heart of a tyrant; know how to
imitate it! – boasts of having been the great inspiration. First, he went to find the deputies like Tallien,
Duhois-Crancé, Bourdon de l'Oise, Legendre and others, saying to them: “You are on the list! You are on
the list as well as me, I am sure! And then he diverted Tallien "from an isolated undertaking which would
have brought down the man and maintained his system." Finally, he secretly urged those "who remained
clinging to the Committee, to remove at least the companies of gunners from Paris, all devoted to
Robespierre and the Commune, and to dismiss or suspend Hanriot." But, if he obtained the first decision,
"thanks to the firmness of Carnot", he said, the second - the dismissal of the head of the Parisian armed
forces - seemed too strong.
Moreover, six months earlier, measures had already been taken to keep the sections on a leash and
take them away from the agitators of the Hébertist Commune. The decree of 14 Frimaire (December 4)
placed the revolutionary committees under the exclusive authority of the government. Also, on the evening
of 9 Thermidor, several committees invoked this law to justify their refusal to send deputies to the Commune.
But, in the last days, on 19 Messidor (July 7), a more serious measure was adopted by the Committee of
64
Public Safety, and signed or accepted by Saint-Just: the abolition of the "surveillance committee of the
Paris department" . It is stipulated that “the members who composed it will render their accounts within
two decades” and that “the commission for civil administrations, police and courts will receive their
accounts”.
The abolition of the Supervisory Committee can have consequences, it fulfills important functions: "A
faithful heir to the Bishop's Committee, it coordinates the activity of the sections, supports petitions and
complaints, harasses the powers... It is one of the the most representative organs of revolutionary Paris
.
65 In short, it constitutes a hyphen (or, if one can say, of disunity) between the government and the
masses.
Robespierre may be worried about this dissolution and the accounts that must be rendered on 10
Thermidor. In addition to the fact that the elimination deprives him of an important weapon, the investigation
into his action may worry him: won't we find pieces, documents that can be used against him? In his eyes,
the decree of 19 Messidor only renews “the proceedings against the members of the Commune of August
10 under the pretext of accountability”. Especially since, on 2 Thermidor, Saint Just signed with Carnot
and Billaud-Varenne the transfer to the Committee of Public Safety of the weapons of the local surveillance
committees.
Let's summarize. Three reasons therefore incited Robespierre to throw away his last cards, 8
Thermidor: the fear of being burned for the signing of peace and the establishment of a new system
(management or consulate), Carnot preventing him from following the of the war ; the difficulty of
maintaining a majority in the Convention, the deputies being irritated, panicked by the lists which circulate,
where some of them are carried as condemned; finally, the worry of finding itself deprived of massive
forces, the Committee having restricted or dispersed the liaison bodies and the armed elements in Paris.
10. PREPARATION OF THE REPORT.
What is Saint-Just doing during this time? Until 7 Thermidor, he came regularly to the Committee and
signed decrees. But he must also work hard on his famous report. Will he, as Courtois tells it, collect himself
66 ,
in a small house while contemplating the Monceau plain where the new guillotines are buried ? No, his lack
of hope does not go as far as a funereal delight. As lamentable, as depressing as it was, the political
situation must, in his twenty-five-year-old eyes, offer a last chance that he had to know how to find and play.
In his Notes 67 there seems to be a first sketch of the report he is preparing. , some pages
In particular certain lines on the general good. Legislators must ensure that the question of the general
good is always clearly posed, so that everyone deliberating thinks, acts and speaks within the circle of the
established order.
The principle is simple, excellent, but difficult to legislate rigorously. Admittedly, it is easy for him to
analyze what the neglect of the general interest leads to.
Each takes the party that suits him to arrive at fortune and satisfy himself. Hypocrisy becomes
impenetrable, because it is difficult to place it in contradiction with the public interest, the extent of which is
not precisely known.
Then, jealousy awakens against those who govern; then opinion, which attaches to reputations, is not
applied to the general good; then one sees dark and criminal wrinkles on the foreheads of perverts engaged
in weaving slavery; then, while being moved by personal interest which no longer knows any limits, authority
slips out of legitimate hands through individual considerations.
Then, finally, the foreign influence forms traitors, or puts to death the Gracchi, makes honor the crime and
bans virtue.
Is the state victorious ? Each increases his personal importance: freedom is already no more; there
jealousy and slavery are in all hearts, and dissimulation on all lips.
This whole passage is consistent with what Saint-Just would say in his speech on 9 Thermidor, especially
about Billaud-Varenne and the “sinister character” of his front. But the approach is different. In the
draft, no proper names, only the historical process is considered. In the final text, the veil is lifted on the
crisis of the Committee of Public Safety.
However, in both cases, Saint-Just appealed to the members of the Convention. After the passage that we
have just quoted, the draft bears: It is therefore up to
you, legislators, to constantly pose the question of the public good, to bring everything closer to it, to submit
to it everything that is said and done. . In this way, you will retain your influence; by that, you will judge the
passions that are contrary to you; by that, you will substitute, in the State, the common genius of the fatherland
for jealousy and the cries of factions.
Very well, you will say, but how to reach "the common genius"? Well, according to the rest of the draft, it
is through a new economic and financial policy that we can return to "good
general” its value.

The question of the general good today can be posed as follows: everyone must work and
respect.
... When Rome lost the taste for work, and lived on the tributes of the world, she lost freedom.
Today, we are beginning to see citizens who work only three days each. Formerly, the nobility, the court,
filled the spectacles: this one is banished, the other is few in number; and yet the spectacles present the
same luxury. Who are those who display it, if not those who worked in the past ?
Should the Republic only exist in the tribune of harangues and in the charter of our laws ?
Will the monarchy remain in the civil state ?
Such remarks were not exactly demagogic: not only the bourgeoisie as a rising class, but all the workers
found themselves taken to task. For Saint-Just, as for all other sincere revolutionaries, the individualist and
national principle forbade the acceptance not only of privileged social bodies, but of organized professional
bodies.
Automatically, these appeared as a re-establishment of the corporations of the old regime. Thus, at the
beginning of Germinal, the General Council had refused, without hesitation, the right to “citizens founding
typeface” to create “a savings exchange” for their indigent comrades. The friend and protege of Robespierre
at the Commune, Payan, had spoken out vigorously against the desire for a strike. And, Saint-Just himself,
a week earlier, on the 1st Thermidor, had coldly referred to the public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal
the earthenware workers who had expressed their intention to stop work if the bosses did not grant them a
raise. of salary.
The demands in this direction then asserted themselves numerous: the workers of the manufacture of
tobacco and bakers' boys had already in vain assailed the Commune to get better paid.
Also, on 9 Thermidor, the workers will not rise to save those who have just been slaughtered.
Oh ! harshness is not inspired in Saint-Just by the concern to defend or exploit acquired property. He
finds himself so destitute that he has borrowed from his compatriot Villers, mainly employed as a cook, the
sum of two thousand pounds repayable on 10 or 12 Thermidor 68 .
What he wants, what he considers necessary, is for everyone to work harder so that the
France's economic and financial situation is healthier. He further writes in his Notes:
Whatever respect the people inspire in me, I cannot help censuring new mores that are being established.
Every day, a large number of citizens leave the profession of their fathers, and give themselves up to
softness...
No doubt, he knows well that “the disorder of finances leads to that of morals” and that it is necessary “to
give all French people the means to obtain the basic necessities of life, without depending on anything other
than the laws” . To clean up the finances of the state, he thought, "a domain and public revenues in kind"
were needed, "we had to give some land to everyone." In short, as we have seen
in the pages devoted to these questions, right to the end, the concern to increase production and work
is accompanied, at Saint-Just, by social concerns. If the prejudices against the professional organizations
are regrettable and the means, the solutions envisaged, questionable (as to effectiveness), it must be
recognized that the problem which seriously arises in France is approached frankly, not without
clairvoyance.
Why will he evade the question in his speech on 9 Thermidor? 'Cause we're gonna
see, the events of 8 Thermidor will upset the situation.
11. THE AFTERNOON OF 8 THERMIDOR.
Saint-Just is seated on his bench, when Robespierre ascends the tribune of the Convention to deliver
his long and stringy speech. Depressed by unhappy loneliness, he wanted first, more than ever, to
appeal to pity: Who am I ? A slave of the fatherland, a living martyr of the Republic, the victim and the
scourge of crime. All rogues insult me, the most indifferent and legitimate actions are crimes for me.
Keeping a certain sense of the ridiculous, he crossed out those lines. However, he wants to release his
responsibility. At the same time as he defends himself against the charge of dictatorship, he mentions
his absence from the Committee. For at least six weeks, he said, I have had no sort of influence on the
government.
After which, he violently attacks those who detain the police on the Committee of General Security,
Amar and Jagot, because according to him, they employ as clerks dubious men, even "spies from
London and Vienna". To release his responsibility, he also admonishes Cambon, whose financial
projects seemed to him calculated to distress the less fortunate citizens and to multiply the discontent. I
had often, he adds, uselessly drawn the attention of the Committee of Public Safety to this object. Of
course, he also explains the Catherine Théot affair and the cult of the Supreme Being...
But, in total, in his dark, he does not go without dealing indirect blows to his former friend Saint Just.
For example, when he declares that the magistrates of the Commune were "persecuted", he alludes to
the Naulin whom his law of 22 Prairial designated as vice-president of the tribunal and of whom Saint-
Just and all the other members of the Committee present signed, on 14 Messidor (July 2), the arrest
with a house search and seizure of papers.
Or else, when he affirms: Those who tell you that the foundation of the Republic is such an easy
undertaking, are deceiving you, or rather they cannot deceive anyone. Where are the wise institutions,
where is the plan of regeneration that justifies this ambitious language ? Have we only taken care of this
great object ? The last sentence is not very nice for Saint-Just who, for several months, has been
working on institutions. Everyone can feel targeted, when he justifies his departure from the Committee with a sigh
furiously: How to support the torture of seeing this horrible succession of traitors more or less skilful in
hiding their hideous weapons under the veil of virtue, and even of friendship ?
What does he ask after this indictment? The creation of a “reasonable system of finances”, that is to
say less “hasty”, less “devouring” and better controlled by the Assembly; the resumption of “external
relations (which) are absolutely neglected” (the appointment of Saint-Just to this office, a week earlier, is
not retained by him); the simplification of government and a justice that is not hampered by "new
forms" (are committees like those of the Museum not the new judicial forms?) And, in his conclusion,
Robespierre summarizes the treatment he recommends : for him, it is necessary to punish the traitors, to
renew the offices of the committee of general security, to purify this committee itself, and to subordinate
it to the Committee of Public Safety; to purify the Committee of Public Safety itself, to constitute the unity
of the government under the supreme authority of the Convention.
Under these conditions, all members or employees of the two committees may feel threatened.
The next day, Saint-Just could rightly say that Robespierre "did not explain himself clearly enough" and
that he did not "distinguish clearly enough those whom he accused." Obviously, with his usual histrionics,
Robespierre placed himself in front of the column of the Republic like a Saint Sebastian riddled with
arrows, heroic to the last drop of his blood. If I have to hide these truths, he says, bring me the hemlock !
My reason, not my heart, is on the point of doubting this virtuous Republic whose plan I had traced out.
On his draft, he even wrote: Let them prepare the hemlock for me, I will wait for it on these sacred seats;
I will bequeath at least to my country the example of a constant effort for her, and to the enemies of
humanity opprobrium and death. And he ends his speech, which lasted two hours, by saying: I am made
to fight crime, not to govern it. The time has not arrived when good men can serve the country with
impunity; the defenders of freedom will only be outcasts as long as the horde of rogues dominates.
Oh ! this theatrical lamentation does not exclude a real depression. But despair is not absolute. Losing
part of his Mountain group, Robespierre turned a little towards the center, the right, towards what was
called the Marais. To defeat the committees, he must secure a new parliamentary majority. It is his last
hope.
He still retains enough prestige to be applauded when he descends from the rostrum. His adversaries
like Lecointre de Versailles and Barère even ask (to give pledges) the impression of the speech, which is
voted without difficulty.
But those whom he has vigorously attacked intend to defend themselves. Quite limply Vadier begins to
to explain himself on the Catherine Théot affair, when Cambon brutally interrupts him:
– I also ask to speak... Before being dishonoured, I will speak to France.
Cambon had to wait for Vadier to finish, but immediately afterwards he spoke again in the same tone.
He affirms that his "last decree on the life annuity respects the rents from 1,500 pounds up to 10,500
pounds, relative to the ages", and that, basically, he only has the speculators against him.
And, to conclude: I despised all attacks; I reported everything to the Convention. It's time to say
the whole truth: a single man paralyzed the will of the National Convention; this man is the one who
has just made the speech, it is Robespierre; so judge.
To respond with such brutality, Cambon must feel threatened. In fact, Robespierre did not attack
specific measures less than financial policy as a whole. He coldly affirmed that the financial
administrators - "the Cambons, the Mallarmés, the Ramels" - are "the companions and successors
of Chabot, Fabre and Julien de Toulouse", that is to say speculators, plotters working, to compromise
the Republic, "to the ruin of the public fortune". For him :
The national treasury, directed by a hypocritical counter-revolutionary named Hermina, perfectly

supports their views by the plan which it has adopted of putting obstacles in the way of all urgent
expenditure, under the pretext of a scrupulous attachment to forms, of to pay no one except the
aristocrats, and to vex uneasy citizens by refusals, by delays, and often by odious provocations.
The demonstration is as weak as Cambon's reply, but it is clear what Robespierre is thinking:
financial policy seems to him inspired, like the law of the maximum or the affair of the Compagnie
des Indes, by royalist agents similar to the Baron de Batz. Perhaps he saw, at the police station,
the report of the 11th Messidor on the transfer of capital through the intermediary of the American
Ambassador Morris? It's possible. Moreover, what Barère will say about the correspondence with
the United States and the meeting that we will see indicate talks in this direction. And Cambon's
virulence aimed at the Swiss banker Haller, Augustin Robespierre's right-hand man, held as his
brother's great adviser for financial problems.
Basically, if both are so violent, it's because the financial question goes beyond technical
considerations. With it arises the nature of foreign relations, of the conditions of peace. And
Robespierre may fear being overwhelmed in this area; he particularly dreads conspiracies with the
weapons of Batz. As for Cambon, I don't believe that it was “his double quality of purchaser of
ecclesiastical property and financial dictator ” 69 that made him particularly sensitive and brutal. But
he must know that some kind of information has been opened, at the police station, on the new
financial relations between France and the United States and that he risks finding himself
compromised by it. Because he will be one of the first, after 9 Thermidor, to ask for the abolition of
the police office.
Moreover, this kind of financial question remains so foreign to Robespierre that his answer to
Cambon is pitiful: If there is something that is not in my power, it is to paralyze the Convention, and
especially in matters of finance. I never got involved in this part;... but I thought I perceived that
Cambon's ideas were not as favorable to the success of the Revolution as he thought.
That's my opinion, I dared to say it, I don't think it's a crime.
Such a backward step cheers up all opponents. They start barking all over the place.
After a new reply from Cambon, Billaud-Varenne intervened to defend the committees and to ask
that the speech be submitted to them before being sent to the communes.
Robespierre interrupts him: "I am not attacking the Committee en masse... I am asking the
Convention the freedom to say my opinion. »
But, in the name of this freedom, Billaud-Varenne takes up his explanation of the decree concerning
the companies of gunners.
Panis goes on to criticize Robespierre "for chasing out Jacobins whoever he sees fit".
And as Robespierre protests, assuring that he presents himself in the open, without having flattered or
slandered anyone, the name of Fouché is thrown at him. This forces him, really desperate, to take another
step back, which he tries to hide by proudly raising his chin.
They talk to me about Fouche ! I don't want to deal with it now, I put myself away from all this... I
do not want the support or the friendship of anyone; I'm not trying to make a party...
We take advantage of the retreat to ask for the postponement of the decree deciding to send the
speech to the provinces. Second-rate Convention members like Bentabole and Charlier are making their
voices heard in this regard. Always flexible, Amar, whom Robespierre has just called into question, poses
the following alternative: “Either the opinion he has on some members relates to public affairs, or it is a
particular opinion. In the first case, he must speak completely, clearly, put forward precise arguments. “But
if these are only particular resentments, one man must not put himself in everyone's place, the National
Convention must not be disturbed for the interests of a wounded self-esteem. »
Robespierre doesn't even seem to have been able to answer. Thirion, Breard and Barère (who changed
his mind), in the name of fairness and governmental prestige, had the Assembly pass a decree canceling
the previous one. Robespierre's speech will not be printed. It is for its author a big failure. Because he
was sort of asking a question of trust; and, for the first time, a majority came out against him, answering in
the negative.
In the debate, he found a voice to support him, that of Couthon, but, on the other hand, another that
was often given as its echo did not speak: that of Saint-Just. The young accuser did not leave his place
and did not flinch...
There remains only one hope for Robespierre, only one possibility: that of extra-parliamentary forces,
Jacobins. After dinner, he will reread his speech at the club to alert the members.
12. NIGHT FROM 8 TO 9.
Saint-Just does not go to the Jacobins. He settled down with some of his colleagues in the large green
room of the Tuileries where the Committee held its major meetings. He put the finishing touches to the
famous report which he was to present the next day to the Assembly. As he progresses, he sends his
friend and secretary Thuillier his draft pages so that these properly copied are easier to read in the gallery.
Around him, we chatter firm on the
situation, but he took no part in the discussion: he remained unmoved, Collot d'Herbois would say the
next day 70 .
At eleven o'clock, however, as he had to put down his penholder, Billaud-Varenne shouted at him:
71
– Since you are not doing anything, read us your report .
As Saint-Just apologizes that this is impossible for him, having sent the first sheets to one
of his friends, the other replies:
– In that case, read us your conclusion.
If we are to believe the Thermidorians, Saint-Just persists in the refusal. But no one claims that there
is a clash over it. Besides, isn't being at the Committee rather than at the Jacobins a guarantee? He
must still inspire some confidence.
However, Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne gnaw at their fists: they are leaving the Jacobins club
72
– What's .
new at the Jacobins? asks Saint-Just calmly.
Collot d'Herbois exploded.
“Are you asking me what's new? Is it you who don't know?... You deceive us with your hypocritical air.
Faced with this brutal attack, Saint-Just "turned pale and disconcerted", but he said nothing. Up, he
coldly empties his pockets to show Collot d'Herbois and his friends that he has no notes against them.
As we can see, the Thermidorians contradict themselves, by affirming, on the one hand, that Saint-
Just is only devoid of the first part of his report, and, on the other hand, that he no longer has any note.
Everything suggests that Saint-Just read them a few pages of the first version of his speech, and thus
reassured the majority of his audience. A Cambon who haunts the corridors will simply speak of a "fairly
strong brawl between Saint-Just and Collot d'Herbois", thereby indicating that it did not last long.
In fact, we will see, Saint-Just even scored a point.

However, not devoid of susceptibility, he remains affected. Such aggression shows him the
distrust that surrounds it. His hopes, his ambitions are achieved.
Why did Collot d'Herbois attack him so violently? Because he has just, with Billaud Varenne,
witnessed a triumph of Robespierre in his stronghold of the Jacobins? But for a long time Saint-Just no
longer goes there. And then, he couldn't be more associated in the evening than in the afternoon, with
Robespierre's speech. The only explanation seems to be provided by one of the first decrees that the
Committee will issue the next day; the arrest of the secretary of Saint-Just, with the confinement and
sealing of his papers. In a note, we read: It was the last who accompanied Saint-Just on his mission,
and who, on 3 Thermidor, made a lot of noise at the Jacobins. It is about Thuillier. By harassing the
majority of the audience, the delegates of the Committee, the secretary must have made them fear that
Saint-Just was playing a double game. the defiance. A Courtois, in his personal notes, judged him as
"the most
skillful perhaps in forming those political Gordian knots that only time, aided by reason, can untie 73
".
Nevertheless, if Collot d'Herbois feared the Gordian knot, Saint-Just did not have to reassure him
completely. It became "sweet" again, as the Thermidorians would say, but threatening for some. The next
day, at the rostrum of the Convention, Collot d'Herbois asserted that Saint-Just wanted to implicate him
by referring to the "stories of Robespierre's spies", even to declarations by Fouché 74 Also, he adds , .
“we told Saint-Just that the facts had to be declared to the Convention, if they were true; but that
beforehand it was necessary to examine them, so as not to cause trouble. We decided with him that we
would send for Fouché so that he could explain himself in his presence”.
Saint-Just therefore retained a strong enough position not to be immediately dismissed.
However, this small victory was also, for him, a defeat. For if the majority of the Committee did not agree
with him, they did not approve of him for all that. And then, the confrontation could not work to his
advantage, since according to the story – as Collot was to relate it – Fouché “had told someone that, if
Robespierre consented to change his behavior towards him, he would reveal the whole plot ". As he had
not reconciled with Robespierre, Fouché would probably deny the statements attributed to him. Saint-Just
therefore found himself in an impasse within the Committee.
However, it is a fact to which historians have not given all the importance it deserves: Saint-Just, after
this controversy, will remain five hours at the Committee. However, after the session of the Jacobins, we
feared more than ever a Robespierrist coup d'etat with the Commune.
Now, how do the Thermidorians explain themselves on this? According to them, Saint-Just during this
night, prolonged his allegations and his remarks so much, that it was quite obvious that he dragged on like
this only to prevent us from taking measures against their conspiracy. When we were considering
exceptional measures, Saint-Just stopped us, acted astonished at not being in the confidence of these
dangers, and complained that all hearts were closed (...), that he did not did not conceive this quick way
of improvising lightning at every moment, and he conjured us (...) to return to fairer ideas, to wiser
measures. This is how the traitor held us in check, paralyzed all our measures and cooled our zeal .
.
As is often the case in explanatory memoirs, there is, in this text, a mixture of truth and lies. Those who
wrote it needed an alibi to respond to Lecointre de Versailles, who reproached them for not having adopted
the measures he demanded of them.
Writing his memoirs for posterity much later, Barère recounts these
early hours of 9 Thermidor. Again, the page on this topic is worth quoting in full:
... We deliberated very quietly on the measures to be taken the next day, and on the proclamations and
decrees to be proposed to the Convention. I was charged with this work, and I acquitted myself of it with
such alacrity that, about three o'clock at night, I submitted to the Committee a draft decree tending to
break in the hands of the triumvirs all the levers of the armed force. , of the Commune and of the forty-
eight sections of Paris. I then read to him the draft proclamation to the inhabitants of Paris, as well as the rest of the
measures to be taken to indict the triumvirs and the known agents of the dictatorial project, object of the
wishes of the Jacobins.
About three o'clock in the morning, Cambon came to the Committee with a battalion commander from
the Rue Meslay, commanding that section which seemed devoted to the Convention. This major was M.
Lecointre, notary; he knew of the homicidal projects whose provocateurs he had heard at the Jacobin club.
He came to tell us that, that very night, these madmen were to enter the Committee, which was open on all
sides, and which no force was defending: he offered us the battalion of his section to watch over our safety
and defend us against the Jacobins. These wretches were mainly angry with the Committee of Public Safety.
Cambon insisted on accepting this offer: we refused, saying that we believed we had nothing to fear from
those who called themselves the friends of liberty; that, as for the assassins, we had never feared them,
because the Convention contained six hundred deputies ready to replace us in the committees of the
government: a representative body never dies. The notary, battalion commander, was thanked for his zeal
and his devotion; he deserved it 76 .
This is not entirely correct. First of all, there is certainly no question of the triumvirate in the presence of
Saint-Just. And then there are two Lecointres: the deputy from Versailles, a prosperous merchant, and his
brother, a notary, domiciled in the rue Meslée, actually a member of the National Guard, but not a battalion
commander. The first, which is preparing a major parliamentary maneuver against Robespierre, haunts the
corridor in front of the room where the committees meet. Unable to be received by them, he tries to alert all
the members he meets, in particular Lavicomterie and Cambon: he urges them to take measures against
the armies of Paris, their leader Hanriot, and his seconds, Boulanger, Lavalette, Dumas. At 1 o'clock. 30, he
passed a note giving a list of reprehensible agitators and informing the committees that his brother, the
notary, had been summoned, three hours earlier, by his squadron leader, to present himself on 9 , at 7 a.m.,
"for extraordinary service".
This squadron leader is called Hesmart 77 . He is also a notary and also lives in rue Meslée. He
commands the armed force on horseback. After a discussion in which Cambon had to intervene loudly, it
was decided to question Hesmart. At 2 o'clock in the morning, Saint-Just signed his summons with Barère,
Collot d'Herbois, Voulland, Louis (from Bas-Rhin), Amar and Elie Lacoste; the note simply read: The two
committees are calling you to them in the premises of the Committee of Public Safety I do not know how
78 .
Hesmart explained, justified his call to Lecointre, but it was he, certainly, who gave pledges and offered all
his services to committees. It was not to be forgotten a few hours later... After which, around 4 o'clock,
according to his brother, the notary Lecointre was summoned.
That, in the discussion, Saint-Just made the remarks reported by the Thermidorians, this is probable. It
retains enough authority for one to wish to reconcile it. It is doubtless for this reason that Barère, presenting
his report the day after the Convention, will refer to him by name. This text, which will be published
immediately, will read:
Citizens, one of my colleagues returning from the Army of the North reported to the Committee that
an enemy officer, taken prisoner in the last action which gave us Belgium, had said: "All your successes
are nothing : we I hope none the less to treat of peace, with a party, whatever it may be, with a fraction
of the Convention, and to change the government soon. »
Saint-Just brought us, as an instruction, this news. This moment, predicted by the Austrian officer,
would it not have come for the party abroad and for the enemies at home, if you had not taken vigorous
measures ?
Saint-Just, not wanting to "improvise the thunderbolt", remained – and the text of his speech was to
show it – hostile to a combination with a foreign power. It was on this that a certain agreement had been
reached in the Committee. On the other hand, Barère's decree suppressing the rank and function of
general commander of the National Guard, dismissed Hanriot and restored the previous organization:
each leader of the legion had to command in turn and ensure, with the mayor of Paris, the security of the
Convention.
Such a reform to cover up a personal political operation could only appear unacceptable to Saint-Just.
But how to tell the Committee without appearing Robespierrist, without triggering the violent animosity of
certain members? He kept silent, reserving to accuse, a few hours later before the Convention, Billaud-
Varenne, Collot d'Herbois of wanting to "concentrate authority in their hands" not only by "dispersing
what (them) embarrassed", but also by placing the citizen militia of Paris at their disposal.
The situation was becoming very delicate for him. If he disapproved of Robespierre's plans for terror
and peace, he could no longer accommodate himself to the views of a Billaud-Varenne, a Collot
d'Herbois, or a Cambon. To get out of it, he had to cut in full light, with a soft and firm scalpel - which
gnawed at the Committee. Basically, within it, no majority emerged in favor of a specific policy. The game
was not over. The Thermidorians would not know what to answer Lecointre when he said to them: "You
had a majority of five on the Committee of Public Safety", faced with a triumvirate
79 .
Back in his room, Saint-Just will transform his report. Since there is no longer a Committee, he will
express himself personally, without fearing to criticize by name the two unbearable colleagues – Billaud-
Varenne and Collot d'Herbois – allusively Carnot, and not without sending Robespierre back to his
corner. After all, he left the other members of both committees without a fuss; he can hope to rally them,
with the support of the Assembly.
But, at five o'clock in the morning, while he was working or resting – before going on horseback for a
last ride in the Bois – the first spectators gathered in front of the Convention to find a good place in the
stands. The whole antirobespierre clan has mobilized its friends. We also made three representations to
the deputies of the Marais – particularly to Sieyès – to get them to stop supporting Robespierre. By dint
of insisting, promises were obtained 80 .
The evening before, Cambon, sending his family in the provinces a copy of the Moniteur, wrote, as
everyone knows, on the margin of the paper: "Tomorrow, from Robespierre or from me, one of the two
will be dead. »
For his part, Robespierre, returning to the Duplays, said to them: “I no longer expect anything from
the Mountain; they want to get rid of me like a tyrant; but the mass of the Assembly will hear me. »
Basically, like Saint-Just, Robespierre counts on what we would call, today, in parliamentary jargon;
a spare majority. But, less at odds with the Mountain, Saint-Just could still hope to find support on the
left.
1. Fouquier-Tinville trial, in BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXIV.

2. Letter of 19 Prairial quoted at Fouquier-Tinville's trial. See BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXIV, p. 429.
3. Cf. LAMOTHE-LANGON, Les A pres-dîners de Cambacérès, t. 1, 1837. In his Historical Notes, the deputy of the Convention, MARC-ANTOINE
BAUDOT, speaks of the “communications of the English secret agent Serton with Robespierre, communications which were then followed up in Pitt's
name by Vaugham”.
6. AULARD, History of the Jacobins, t. VI, p. 193.
8. MATHIEZ quotes her in Girondins et Montagnards.
9. See Arch. nat., DIII 51 and W 500. MATHIEZ cites these plays, but giving them a different meaning in Terror and Politics
social of Robespierre.
10. Arch. nat., AFII 225.
11. Notes on institutions.

14. Memoir of BILLAUD-VARENNE (Historical review of the Rev. fr., I, 1910).
15. Ibid.
16. LECOINTRE, op. cit.

17. Testimony of Réal at the trial of Fouquier-Tinville (BUCHEZ and ROUX, t. XXXV, p. 45).
18. According to Gallois, Dumas was responsible for drafting the law of 22 Prairial (cf. GEORGES LEFEBVRE, Études sur la Révolution
French, Paris, 1954).
19. Didn't Saint-Just announce the decree in his speech of 26 Germinal (April 15) when he said: “The judges will give an account of the justice
refused to the poor in the countryside. »
20. VILATE, Secret causes of the Revolution from 9 to 10 Thermidor.
21. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 223 (July 7).
22. Ibid., fol. 222 (July 4).
23. On this and what follows, cf. the interrogations of the Duplay brothers reproduced by MATHIEZ (Around Robespierre).
24. Memoirs of BARÈRE, t. II, p. 209-210.
25. All these letters are inserted in the Papers of Barthélémy, t. IV.
26. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 228 (unfortunately very difficult to read).
27. Ibid. Letter of July 4 (15 Messidor), fol. 222.
28. Response of the members of the former Committee of Public Safety to the documents communicated by the commission of the 21 (Ventôse year III).

30. Courtois, in particular, is in question. Barère alluded to it in his Memoirs. The latter, as deputy for Aube, "sent on a mission to the army of the North, had
sought to speculate with money from the army fund, under the name of his father-in-law" (cf. . vol. II, p. 155). Caught after the interception of one of these letters,
Courtois found himself in a bad situation on 9 Thermidor. He will be the small craftsman and the great reporter of the day.
31. Memoirs on Carnot, I, 548 n.
32. Fragments on institutions.

33. LECOINTRE, The Crimes of the Seven Members, p. 13.
34. This text is the one given by SALADIN in his Report of 7 Nivôse Year III and reproduced in full by MATHIEZ in
Girondins and Mountaineers (pp. 139-1 40).
35. Thus, in his Memoirs, Barère will present Robespierre losing his temper, during the meeting, with Vadier (because of his report on Catherine Théot), Amar
(about the report on Chabot), Jagot (because he said that Naulin, among the Jacobins, had instructed him to "purge the Convention"), Collot, Billaud (as
enemies) and, finally, Barère himself (for his speech on 2 Thermidor).
But it's about showing the Thermidorians in a state of self-defense...
37. In a note in his preface to the Memoirs of BARÈRE, t. I, p. 129.
38. Reply to Lecointre, op. cit.

39. A. SERRIEYS, The Death of Robespierre, p. 56.
40. According to the testimony of Gouly reproduced by M. GÉRARD WALTER in his Robespierre, p. 423.
41. Arch. from the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 628, fol. 235-236. The words in square brackets are those that the manuscript, in its current state, does not
cannot be deciphered with certainty.
42. Note that this is in line with the question posed, a few months later, to Simon Duplay: "Didn't you know that Robespierre...
still wanted to lead the armies and that this is where the division in question was born? »
43. Memoirs taken from the papers of a man from Étai (by Count A.-F. D'ALLONVILLE, A. DE BEAUCHAMP and A. SCHUBERT), 1828, t.
III, p. 10.
46. Note that Saint-Just on July 12 (24 Messidor) adopts with Carnot and Billaud-Varenne a decree for the establishment of "lightning rods on the national
house of Meudon called the Old Castle". A precaution of this kind was not so frequent then...
47. Papers of Barthélémy t. IV, p. 22.

48. This text given by CLÉMENT LACROIX in his edition of Souvenirs de Montgaillard (Paris, 1895) is found in the Papiers
de Barthélémy (t. IV, p. 278).
49. Arch. of the Quai d'Orsay, Fr. 623, fol. 195-196.
50. Ibid., Fr. 628, fol. 292.
51. Ibid., Fr. 632, fol. 47.
52. Memories of Montgaillard, p. 207.

53. Speech of 19 Pluviôse.
54. General correspondence of Carnot, t. IV, p. four hundred ninety seven.
55. Brief by BILLAUD-VARENNES (Historical Review of the French Rev.), t. I, 1910.

56. Jacobins, session of 1 Frimaire (24 November 1793).
57. Memoirs of BARÈRE, t. II, pp. 148-149.
59. In Couthon's letters to his fellow citizens, we read, dated May 6, the following: "The army of the Western Pyrenees has chased the
Spaniards from the camp of Perpignan, taken two hundred pieces of cannon” (op. cit., p. 331).
60. Memoirs of BARÈRE, t. II, pp. 157-158.
61. For example those of July 10 (22 Messidor), July 12 (24 Messidor), plus those I have already cited.
62. WALLON, Representatives of the people on mission, t. IV, p. 268.
63. Memoirs of BARBAS, Paris, 1893, t. I, pp. 337-341.
64. Because the amplification of the decree bears his name, but not his signature.
65. HENRI CALVET, An Instrument of Terror in Paris, Paris, 1941, p. 381.

66. Notes by COURTOIS (published by Dr. Robinet, Révol. franç., Paris, 1887, t. XII).
68. Arch. nat., F7 4775 47.
69. As M. DANIEL GUÉRIN writes in La Lutte de classes sous la Première République, Paris, 1945.
71. Cf. the testimonies published by Lecointre de Versailles.
72. The following sentences are taken from the Memoirs of LECOINTRE and from the response of Barère, Billaud-Varennes, etc., to
Lecointre.
73. Notes by COURTOIS (published by Dr. Robinet, Révol. franç., Paris, 1887, t. XII).
74. In the Memoirs of FOUCHÉ, there is no allusion to this story. And no information note in the Report
Courtois does not implicate Collot-d'Herbois.
75. Response of Barrere, etc., to Lecointre (French Revolution), 1898.

76. Memoirs of BARÈRE, Paris, 1842, t. II, pp. 218-219.
77. His summons by Hanriot, reproduced in the Courtois Report, was sent to him at this address. He will survive the Revolution. He will be deputy
to the Council of Five Hundred, then to the legislative body of the year VIII. Having become president of the Court of Criminal Justice, he will judge
Cadoudal, Pichegru and Moreau. He will end up baron of the Empire.
78. The original of this text seems to have been lost. It was published for the first time, in 1885, in an anonymous work entitled:
An unpublished chapter of 9 Thermidor. We will see later what invites us not to doubt the authenticity of this note.
79. Thus Lindet, whose rather troubled role we have glimpsed, wrote a year later, on July 28, 1795, to his friend Dumont: in the principles of the
members of the Committee, if I had spoken of reunion and conciliation. It's the only time I haven't talked about it ” (cf. ARMAND MONTIER, Lindet,
Paris, 1888).
80. Robespierre having intervened, three times publicly, so that sixty-seven Girondin deputies, imprisoned because of their attitude towards May
31, 1793, were not brought before the revolutionary tribunal, the men of the Marais could be wary of his opponents of the mountain.
CHAPTER X
"I ASK FOR A FEW MORE DAYS..."

(THE MYSTERY OF 9 THERMIDOR)
Noon, at the Convention.
At the end of the morning, this July 27 (9 Thermidor), deputies of the Convention, tense, tense, take their places in
the room of the Tuileries. Everyone is waiting for an important session; but how many think that it will be decisive?
Spectators are already crashing into the stands. Most feel little sympathy for
the place of Robespierre.
1
At noon, Saint-Just ascends the tribune. “His gaze is fierce, relates Courtois , his gloomy
demeanor, his tone betrays the fear which agitates his soul and which cannot be taken for the effect of the speaker's
modesty or the timidity of his youth... He comes to accuse the government of having left wisdom. »
According to Charles Duval, "his sinister and gloomy air, his uncertain tone", the presence of Robespierre, the
memories of the day before, everything seems to announce great clarifications, an important discussion.
He launches his famous phrases. I am of no faction: I will fight them all. They will never be extinguished except by
constitutions which will produce guarantees, which will set the limit of authority, and will cause human pride to be bent
irrevocably under the yoke of public liberty.
It won't go any further. The sentences we have just quoted will remain famous, but their meaning
precise, somewhat confidential, will be misunderstood by posterity as well as by the audience.
Tallien, who was chatting with Durant Maillane and Rovère, left them saying: “Here is Saint-Just in the gallery, we
have to get it over with. »
It will be assured that, having taken his place, he shouted: "I ask to speak on a point of order, the speaker began
by saying that he was not of any faction." I say the same thing. I belong only to myself, only to freedom. That's why
I'm going to speak the truth. »
But it was Duval, in his report for the Moniteur, who made Tallien speak in this cutting tone. In fact, Tallien had to
intervene much more gently, citing strictly parliamentary reasons. Everything leads us to believe Barère who, in his
Memoirs, presents Tallien complaining "that Saint-Just attacks the members of the Committee in their absence" and
"requests that the speech be suspended until they have been warned of go immediately to Assembly 2
".
Collot d'Herbois, who chaired the session, was too favorable to them not to wish them
presence. We send a bailiff to the Committee of Public Safety.
However, as Barère will admit in his Memoirs, some deputies reacted and suggested that Saint-Just
be given the floor to allow him to finish his speech. But Tallien does not want to stop.
As for those of the Committee, they did not need an usher to be alerted. At the very hour when Saint-
Just ascended the rostrum, they received from him a very clear note: Injustice has closed my heart; I
will open it at the National Convention. Which amounts to saying: two men from the Committee, by
calling me a Robespierrist conspirator, were too “unfair” to me for me to come back and explain myself
to them. I will bring it to the Assembly.
As soon as he arrived, Billaud-Varenne, furious, worried by this escape of Saint-Just beyond the
control of the Committee, wanted to rush to the podium. He moved in his place, he seemed indignant
at Tallien's slowness, Montjoye would3 . More cautious, seeing that the parliamentary majority does not
write, not yet pronouncing clearly, Barère whispered in his ear: Only attack Robespierre, leave Couthon
and Saint-Just there.4 .
Much too scared to contain himself, Billaud-Varenne interrupted Tallien by also asking for a “motion
of order”. After having evoked the stormy session, the day before, at the Jacobins where the audience
harassed him - as well as Collot d'Herbois - he adds: "I am surprised to see Saint-Just at the podium
after what happened. 'happened. He had promised the two committees to submit his speech to them
before reading it to the Convention, and even to suppress it if they thought it dangerous. »
Thereupon, like his predecessor, Billaud-Varenne attacked Robespierre violently. Not only does he
respond to the speeches he made the day before, but he attacks Hanriot by revealing to the Assembly
that "the chief of the National Guard has been denounced to the Committee of Public Safety as an
accomplice of Hébert and a infamous conspirator. And, emptying his bag in disorder, he comes, he
Billaud-Varenne, to pride himself on having had the initiative of the arrest of Danton and to blame
Robespierre for having first opposed it!
Thus attacked Robespierre tried in vain to mount the platform to respond. The atmosphere heats up.
It does not matter whether the famous line – “President of assassins, I request the floor” – is or is not
accurate. Having become the center of the debate, Robespierre came up against not only the barrage,
the president's bell, but the barking of an Assembly that weakness made more aggressive.
They begin to shout: "Down with the tyrant!" Cornered, after having cast a last glance on the left,
this Mountain where he had his place, Robespierre turns to the right, towards the Marais to shout: "It
is to you that I am speaking and not to these brigands . But the right, hesitant at first, has now joined
the opposition.
So, says Charles Duval, in his memories, "he turns around for a moment towards Saint-Just", and
his gaze collides with a silhouette, frozen as if blocked by the refusal to enter the fray.
This is, perhaps, one of the most pathetic moments, the most weighty with consequences.
Why does Saint-Just remain leaning against the paneling of the gallery, his arms crossed, without saying
a word or making a move? According to Courtois, we see on his face alternating redness and pallor – as
has already happened to him at the Committee, will add Élie Lacoste.
This vago-sympathetic phenomenon, the doctors would say, provoked in him by the struggle of fury,
anguish and hope, attested that, deep down, he did not think he had said his last word. But he was too
aware of how slim his luck was, not to contain himself and wait for the opportune moment. The applause
that greeted his previous speech, in Floréal, may still be ringing in his ears. Certainly, he had learned, in a
few years, the fragility, the mobility of these collective opinions.
In the speech, the text of which he still holds in his hands, he wrote: Fame
is a vain noise. Let us listen to the past centuries; we no longer hear anything: those who in other times
will walk among our ballot boxes will hear no more. Good is what must be done at any cost, preferring the
title of dead hero to that of living coward.
However, the rest of the speech does not express a desperate violence. It responds to the intention of
settling – calmly, energetically – the conflict that calls into question the existence of the government. And
that, no doubt, is the profound reason for his silence. Wanting to serve as arbiter in the conflict between
the clan of Robespierre and that of Billaud-Varenne, he does not want to join one against the other. This is
the deep meaning of the sentence: "I am of no faction..."
Once again, he wants to be the judge, but not the lawyer or the accomplice of one of the parties involved.
And then, he despises the barking of the Assembly too much to mingle his own.
15 hours.
Started at noon, the parliamentary battle would be lost for Saint-Just, three hours later . the .
National Guard, and Dumas, president of the revolutionary court, who was particularly violent the night
before at the Jacobins. At twelve forty-five, the measurement is taken. To complete the decree, Barère had
no difficulty in obtaining the floor, in preference to Robespierre, in order to present his report on the
National Guard and have the decree fixing the change, prepared overnight with Saint-Just, ratified. . And,
as some wished, Hesmart, commander of the cavalry, is appointed to replace Hanriot
6.
Robespierre thus disarmed, parliamentary relentlessness became more intense. All his attempts to
obtain the floor are met with shouting and insults. But when an obscure deputy from Aveyron, – intellectual:
professor and man of letters – Louchet, demands the arrest of Robespierre, the Assembly hesitates for a
minute. However, "the first isolated applause
soon become unanimous, ”says the report. Also, Louchet can shout: “My motion is supported, to the vote the arrest!
Cries – To the voices ! To the votes! – echo it.
Nevertheless everything stops once again, when the young Robespierre proclaims: “I am as guilty as my brother,
I share his virtues, I want to share his fate. I also request the decree of indictment against me. A few members
"seemed moved," says the Moniteur, then, he added, "the majority, by a movement of indifference, announced that
they accepted." Moreover, Maximilien Robespierre having wanted to speak for his brother, resentment arose and,
unanimously, the Convention voted for the arrest.
After shouts of triumph, Louchet returned to the charge: “We heard the vote for the arrest of the two Robespierres,
Saint-Just and Couthon. Without waiting for the answer of the majority, Le Bas asks to share "the opprobrium of this
decree". Thereupon, Elie Lacoste intervenes to have the arrest of Young Robespierre voted for. And Fréron
continues by claiming that of Saint Just and Couthon. He says nothing about the first, but insists a lot on Couthon
by presenting him as "a tiger thirsty for the blood of national representation". Supporting the proposal, Élie Lacoste
judges that it is a triumvirate and, in the absence of an argument, accuses Saint-Just of having wanted to undertake
what he told the Committee: the split and peace with the 'enemy ! (He did not know that Saint-Just was to denounce
the project in his speech.) On his proposal, the Convention decreed the arrest of Couthon, Saint-Just and Le Bas.
7,
According to Montjoye "Saint-Just hearing these devastating words, turned pale and fainted".
The information may be false, or rather exaggerated, but we understand the harshness of the blow for Saint-Just.
He wanted to rise above the debate, not without personal ambition no doubt, but also to continue the work
undertaken and safeguard the existence of the former friend: wanting to dismiss the factions, each in their corner,
he did not He was not pronounced as a partisan of Robespierre, but neither could he, without cowardice, attempt to
save himself by declaring himself his adversary. After the concern for efficiency, the concern for morality condemned
him to silence.
At the request of Collot d'Herbois, supported by the Assembly, he had to submit the text of his speech to the
office. It was "almost mechanically", according to Charles Duval, that he handed his sheets to one of the secretaries
of the Convention.
The parliamentary battle lost, everything now depended on justice or public opinion and the Parisian armed
forces.
At the Commune.
At the Hôtel de Ville, the seat of the Commune, the general council held, according to Bochard, the concierge, a
very calm meeting at the beginning of the afternoon. However, around three o'clock, alarming news arrived from the
Convention. The mayor, Lescot Fleuriot, a very placid former comedian, hardly a barker, and Payan, the young
follower of Robespierre, go to find the head of the National Guard, Hanriot, who has just been dismissed by the
Convention. With several municipal officers
from the latter's staff, the decision was taken to alert the sections, to have the general beat there and to sound the
tocsin.
Better, an order is addressed to all the sections so that they mobilize, each one, four hundred
armed men so that they go "at the moment place of the house of the Commune".
At about the same time, the Convention informed the same heads of section that they were to present
themselves at the bar of the Assembly.
Obviously, with his somewhat tired, very vulgar marmoset profile, Hanriot seems rather overwhelmed by his
duties and by events. Not lacking in drive, he was promoted to his rank by the votes of the sections a year earlier.
But if alcoholism is reflected in him by an alternation of aboulism and disorderly violence, his fault will perhaps
have a less determining role than is generally estimated. Because Hanriot is not lacking in cunning. And if he must
be quite devoted to Robespierre, who saved him during the Hébertist affair, he nevertheless remains endowed
with prudence and ape-like flexibility: the events he lived through taught him how the death sentence could quickly
replace the honors of the state.
Also to the decisions of the Convention directed against him, Hanriot is careful not to reply too brutally. He had
the agents of the general security committee, Héron and others, who had come to arrest him, and Hesmart, the
commander of the cavalry gendarmerie, who had come to replace him perhaps not only, put in his prison in the
8
rue du Boulay. as they say, an effect , but he avoids condemning them to death. And this leniency is not
of drunkenness.
at the Tuileries.
However, the excitement grew when the Commune learned that the Convention had decreed the arrest of
Robespierre, Saint-Just, Le Bas and Couthon. Immediately the young Payan, on the one hand, Hanriot and his
men, on the other, decide to leave to wake up the city which, very ignorant of the events, remains very calm.
Payan is quickly arrested, but during their noisy cavalcade, Hanriot and his family come up against the convoy
which transports their friend to prison: well mounted and well armed, they have no difficulty in setting him free.
Apart from this, their calls for insurrection, their violence against certain passers-by, instead of provoking an
uprising of the people, incite the merchants to close their shops.
The nature of the conflict remains so unknown that, in some neighborhoods, the first tocsin tolls, around four
o'clock, the first movements of the National Guards, are attributed to a demonstration in front of the Workers'
Commune against "maximum wages 9 ".
The Convention having adjourned around four o'clock, the Committee of Public Safety for which the party still
looks uncertain, dispatched a man to the Commune to ask him to set Hesmart free. But the General Council
responded by ordering the arrest of the order bearer.
For his part, one of Hanriot's seconds, Deschamps - who will distinguish himself quite differently a few hours later
- is also categorical by arresting, near the Pont-Neuf, an agent of the general security committee, Savin.
Around a quarter to five, Hanriot, his staff and his small troop reach the goal of their expedition: the small Brionne
hotel which, behind the Tuileries castle, houses the general security committee. They come to snatch Robespierre,
Saint-Just and the others from their guards.
Jostling the bewildered gendarmes, they kick down the doors of the committee: none of those they are looking for are
there. Disoriented, they come out almost immediately, holding one of the Committee members (probably Amar) by the
throat, summoning him to indicate the location. But, taking advantage of the rout, another member of the Committee,
Ruhl, mounted on a table, gave the order to the gendarmes to point their sabers at the chest of Hanriot and his men.
Reinforcements arriving, the head of the National Guard is quickly arrested, then tied up with a string of whip, bought
specially.
But all this provocative, disorderly action by Hanriot is perhaps less unconscious than is generally thought. In his
booklet, Constable Méda – better known as Merda – relates, as a witness to this scene, a feature that he was quite
incapable of imagining and that he even had no interest in evoking. According to him, Hanriot arrested, Amar “comes
to him and insults him; Stunned Hanriot replies like a bewildered man: “But Amar, I don't know what you are accusing
me of, I did everything you told me. “Shut up, monster,” replies Amar quickly; guards citizens, drag him to the dungeon
10 However, a deputy, Robin, who followed the scene through a window of the Berger restaurant where he was dining
with his colleague Courtois, intervened .»
brutally and had Hanriot taken to the Committee of Public Safety, in order to that it be executed quickly. He himself
told how
11 :
"What do you want us to do," said Billaud-Varenne.

“If you do not punish this traitor immediately, it is possible that this villain, powerfully
seconded by his partisans, cut your throat this evening with the Convention.
– But what do you want us to do? said Barère; do you want us to name a
military commission which judges it prevotally?
“That would be a bit vigorous,” replies Billaud.
“Unless you're his accomplices, you don't behave that way.
As the modest deputy Robin wants to retire on this violent reply, Barère runs behind him up the stairs and asks him
to take Hanriot back to the committee of general security, assuring him that the matter will be taken care of.
In short, on both sides, in the committees as well as in the Commune, the outcome of the game seeming uncertain
and fraught with risk, they are careful not to take any hard decisions.
The last dinner.

Taken back to the Hôtel de Brionne, Hanriot was to find the two Robespierres there, Saint
Just, Le Bas and Couthon.
But they did not take their last meal together. For an usher, Chevillon, seeing Hanriot making signs "to the two
Robespierres", thought it wiser to lead them to a room in the secretariat.
Also Albert Mathiez seems to have indulged in a gratuitous hypothesis, when he writes: One can imagine the
reflections that the five deputies must have exchanged among themselves, while they were having their meal at
the Committee, before their departure for prison. . They had to agree then on a common line of conduct. Hanriot's
failure seemed to leave them no hope of being delivered by force. They had no difficulty in resolving to a passive
and legal resistance, which would at least have the advantage, they thought, of giving their partisans time to
prepare a revenge . .
Everything suggests that it was not so. Not only did they not all dine in the same room, but the bailiff who
opposed an exchange of signs had, a fortiori, to prohibit dialogue. Moreover, at the end of their meal, driven by
car, each to a particular prison, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Le Bas and Couthon were able to hear the tocsin 13
ringing, the calls of which resounded like an ultimate hope ...
Everyone had to meditate in silence, savoring the coarse salt capon, the roast mutton and the
Burgundy wine from this meal offered by the new masters.
8 p.m. 30.
Why did the committees keep Hanriot and his officers at the Hôtel de Brionne, while they sent the former
deputies to prison? Surprising measure, because the committees must have known that the Commune grouped
important armed forces and that it could attempt a new offensive on them. Especially since the Committees had
intelligence agents who kept them well informed.
From 5 a.m. 1/2, Payan released had opened, with Fleuriot-Lescot, the extraordinary session. In order to have
generals of value, very Robespierrists, the Commune had sent to the prisons concerned the order to release the
Marquis de Lavalette, general in the North in 1793, and General Boulanger.
Both had always been supported by Robespierre. To this was added Villate, a juror in court, considered a spy
for Robespierre. On the other hand, Professor Pâris had written a poster to call on Parisians to rise up in favor of
Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, Le Bas and Young Robespierre and against Amar, Collot d'Herbois, Bourdon
de l'Oise, Barère and Dubarran. Finally, around 6 a.m., Judge Coffinhal and Louvet had been instructed to order
a new armed offensive against the General Security Committee in order to free the major prisoners.
The troops arrived in front of the Hotel de Brionne around 8 o'clock, that is to say more than an hour later.
the departure of the condemned.
The new column commanded by Coffinhal, much larger than the previous one, included in particular
a detachment of four hundred men from the section of the Friends of the Fatherland, brought by
Commander-in-Chief Thiery by virtue of the order of Hanriot transmitted by the sixth legion, and more
than six companies of gunners, without counting about fifty mounted gendarmes. Quickly, passing
through the narrow path which separated the hotel de Brionne from the pavilion of Marsan, the
headquarters of the general security committee was invaded, Hanriot and his aides-de-camp delivered,
their guards disarmed, and the commander of these tied up.
Truly in control of the situation, Hanriot could direct his troops to the Convention, which had been
holding a new session for 7 o'clock, and impose his will on it, as he had done, a year earlier, for May
31. However, all the evidence shows that he did not hesitate for a second before deciding to lead his
armed forces back to the Commune.
For what ? This withdrawal has long been attributed to an order received from the Commune. But
as M. Sainte-Claire Deville has shown very well, this is impossible, because the order signed by Arthur
and Louvet enjoining Hanriot to appear before the Commune's Execution Committee could not be
drawn up. that later, the Execution Committee not yet being formed 14 .
Hanriot not only refrained from leading an offensive against the Assembly, but, addressing the
pedestrians walking in the streets, he used a very different language from that of his previous
speeches. A witness, Dulac, will say that he “rather skillfully mixed up that he had been slandered,
and that he had just cleared himself at the Committee; so that all those who had just reviled him the
moment before had already begun to sing his praises and curse his enemies . Thus, adds Dulac, he
trained the troops present so well that "only a few companies" remained to guard the Convention.
Finally, curiously enough, the one who temporarily presided over the session of the Assembly,
Bréard, informed of the situation by an usher, was careful not to bring it to the attention of the deputies;
better, he simply sent the usher away with the sole mission of observing what was going on and
keeping him informed. Someone in collusion with Hanriot couldn't have done better.
However, a deputy from Vendée, Aimé Goupilleau de Montaigu, entered to sound the alarm; having
just been insulted at the Hôtel de Brionne by Coffinhall, he demanded the arrest of the latter, of
Fleuriot-Lescot and of Payan.
Billaud-Varenne responds on behalf of the Committee. He first asserts that Payan had been
arrested four hours earlier (but we have seen how he was freed) and, as far as Hanriot is concerned,
he seems to stick to the latter's first descent. But, soon resuming his presidential chair, Collot d'Herbois
gravely launches: Citizens, this is the moment to die at our post. Scoundrels, armed men have
invested the general security committee and seized it.
One might wonder if there is not a great comedy in all this. Because, the surest witness, the
parliamentary editor of the Journal de Perlet notes – and his article will appear the next day – “a great
movement in the Assembly, many cries: To arms ! Let's all run ! live free or
die ! Another newspaper, Feuille de la République, will give the same detail. On the other hand, in
his report, a year later, Courtois gave a very different version, assuring that, after Collot d'Herbois'
sentence, the deputies sat down in their seats "with the vaunted calm of the Roman senate".
Such false correction is not free. Because how to explain that deputies and spectators rushing
towards the general security committee, did not have the slightest clash, at least verbal, with Hanriot
or his soldiers if they were still on the scene? It is as if Collot d'Herbois had come to sound the
alarm, immediately after the departure of the Commune's troops, well assured that he could not
provoke any uncertain and bloody clashes among the masses.
The behavior of Collot d'Herbois, like that of his replacement for the presidency, and the reactions
of the released Hanriot become perfectly logical if, during their two hours of solitude, the heads of
the National Guard appeared before the committees. We understand then why they were not sent
to prison at the same time as Robespierre, Saint-Just and the others, nor executed without waiting
as Robin demanded. To extract information from them, as much as to invite them, with a mixture of
threats and promises, to keep quiet, the committees had every advantage in "cooking" Hanriot and
his staff. We will see later what corroborates this hypothesis. We should already note that the
committees, before eight o'clock, must have known at the same time that Robespierre was no longer
in prison but in a town hall and that Coffinhall was heading towards them with great force: two great
reasons for trying to temporize and to put Hanriot in the game of the Convention...
If we go back to the minutes of the session of the Convention, we see that, shortly after the noisy
exit, the same Aimé Goupilleau returns to announce "that Hanriot has just escaped and that he is
being taken away in triumph" . On hearing this news "the Assembly shuddered with horror", we read.
Continuing on the release of Robespierre, Elie Lacoste, on behalf of the general security
committee, requests the outlawing of municipal officers who do not observe the decree. But not a
word about Hanriot. Another messenger must come and announce that Hanriot is on the Place du
Palais-Égalité, and give orders there, so that the whole Assembly reacts by declaring itself in favor
of his outlawing, without that it was proposed by the rulers.
Finally, the Convention, renouncing to submit the Parisian armed forces to licensed officers,
entrusts their command to deputies and in particular to Barras. This one will especially lead a first
column, with Julliot, while a second column will be commanded by Léonard Bourdon, with
Camboulas. They will have to meet at the Place de la Grève by surrounding the Commune.
Night at the Commune.
During this time, the men of the Commune did not remain inactive. They undertook to free the big
prisoners. But, if we judge from the minutes of their night, they attach themselves above all to
Robespierre and Couthon, saying that they are both refugees in the town hall, where
administration of the police, in the Ile de la Cité, as if the refusal to incarcerate them had worked for both of
them. It was first decided that General Giot, who replaced Hanriot during his absence, "will seek Couthon at
the town hall", then, a little later, "the general council decrees that the citizen gendarmes will go to the town hall
to look for the representatives of the Couthon and Robespierre people”.
But it's not about others. And the identical reaction of Robespierre and Couthon when they were picked up to
take them to the Commune is better explained if they had fixed their attitude together. Questioned, Couthon will
say that in “prison by a decree of the Convention, he only claims to be released by another decree 16
".
Of course, the prisoners who are less attached to legality join the Hôtel de Ville without hesitation. The first,
Robespierre young, arrived around nine o'clock: before the general council, he made a speech in which he
declared that he had been arrested, not by the National Convention, but by cowards who had been conspiring
for five years. He does not want to appear unparliamentary. After him, Le Bas, who had come on foot from his
prison, entered. He is greeted with shouts of joy and applause. An "execution committee for the salvation of the
Republic" was then formed with followers of Robespierre.
Nevertheless, as an assistant "announces that Dumas and Saint-Just are still under arrest,
it is proposed, adds the official report, that the patriots go to deliver them on the spot. »
But we first want to convince Robespierre to join the Commune. The mayor, Fleuriot-Lescot, considers that
a delegation must be sent to point out to him that he does not belong to himself, but that he must be entirely to
the fatherland, to the people. Six members are appointed; Lasnier, administrator of the Domains and Finances,
must lead them. In order to reassure and decide Robespierre, he will bring him the following note: The Execution
Committee, appointed by the council, needs your advice, come to it immediately.
Here are the names of the members: Chatelet, Coffinhall, Lerebours, Grenard, Legrand, Desboisseaux, Arthur,
Payan, Louvet.
Along the way, on the quays, the delegation meets Hanriot, Coffinhall and their men who are returning from
the Tuileries. After an explanation, everyone agrees to extract Robespierre from his retirement. Upon entering
the town hall, Hanriot's men take up the new theme adopted: legal liberation. Everything is arranged, they
shout; Robespierre is out; Hanriot is free and retains his command 17
.
However, faced with these new visitors, Robespierre's first instinct was to persevere in refusing to join the
Commune. His decision seemed so final that Lasnier left for the Commune, accompanied by Coffinhall 18 .
Embarrassed by the result of his mission, Lasnier intends to relieve Coffinhall – who, after all, as a judge, must
know how to express himself orally – of the report and the explanations to be provided. But Lasnier's speech
must have been so embarrassed, so muddled that the secretary got lost in it: to summarize it, he wrote on the
minutes: Citizen Lasnier, who was a deputy to citizen Robespierre, who instructed Cof inhall de... announces
that Cof inhall is responsible for confirming to the council that he is being left in the hands of the admi...
Suddenly, the
sentence which comes so painfully is called into question by the unexpected arrival of Hanriot and
Robespierre. The secretary can cross it out to move on...
Many historians have wondered what could have prompted Robespierre to change his position.
But if, as we believe, Hanriot had a new meeting with certain members of the committees, he was able
to bring this to the attention of Robespierre, to explain to him that it was not a question of fighting, but of
holding firm on the positions, and that an arrangement remained possible.
Finally, another consideration could hold Robespierre back: was he not going to find at the Commune
men of whom he should be wary? He had been given the names of friends and followers; but could he
still act in common with Saint-Just? In any case, cautious, wanting to test the waters without compromising
himself spectacularly, he was careful not to enter by the main door with Hanriot, he preferred to take the
small staircase, that known as the one of the staff, leading to rue de Martroi.
Meanwhile, no longer having to speak for Robespierre, Coffinhall made up for it by celebrating the
triumphant arrival of Hanriot. Evoking the latter's epic release, he contrasted him as a "furry and
feathered fellow" to the "cowards who made up the committee of general security, who were not even at
their post" and distinguished themselves only as “villains, former spies paid by the enemies of the people
and the allied tyrants 19 ".
In short, he pronounced an indictment against the Committee of General Security, but nothing against
that of Public Safety. This distinction was perhaps no coincidence. From the Tuileries, Coffinhall had
been able to speak with Hanriot.
In the work offices, Robespierre is going to find his brother, Le Bas and Dumas, but Saint-Just is not
there yet. It is an hour later, it seems – that is to say a little after eleven o'clock – that he will make his
entrance, also discreet, at the Hôtel de Ville.
I don't know what Barère will rely on, forty-eight hours later, to say in his report to the assembly: Saint-
Just was appointed head of an execution committee; The Bottom was the executive power; both
Robespierre and Couthon were on board. Until further notice, no testimony, no text gives an indication
of this order. And the distinction of roles is, in a Thermidorian, all the more surprising that one then
endeavors to present Robespierre as great dictator with Couthon and Saint-Just as lesser seconds.
However, the accounts of the witnesses are striking and disturbing: none show Robespierre and Saint-
Just working together or even sitting in the same room. Contrary to legend, their community boils down
to two acts: the signing of the note written by the young Robespierre to enjoin Couthon to come to the
Commune and, around 2 a.m., their solemn entry at four – Robespierre, Couthon, Saint- Just and Le
Bas – in the large hemicycle of the General Council, in order, no doubt, to boost the morale of the
partisans and to affirm their union.
Let's follow one of the surest witnesses, Hugot, who will make his statement a few hours later,
ignoring the outcome of the story. Arriving at the Commune around 11 a.m., he learned there of both the
arrest and the release of Robespierre and the others. Half-opening a door they are shown to him in the room,
but he cannot enter it. Besides, he knows them too little to identify them. At least verbal activity seems
great; a few moments earlier the execution committee decided to add twelve members to oversee the
application of its measures. Then, Hugot intends to proclaim a decree, according to which Hémart, leader
of the legion and qualified as usurper of the command, would be executed on the spot in . On the minutes,
20
presence of the we note more simply the adoption by the General Council
people of a decree "ordering Hanriot to punish Hémart and one of his adjutants."
Who was able to put this Hémart back on the agenda, imprisoned a few hours earlier? And who knows
him better than Saint-Just, to whom the Colonel's visit to the Committee of Public Safety the night before
must have left memories? No document allows us to answer, but there is a strong presumption that Saint-
Just brought his weight in the balance.
After having informed Hugot of the situation, he was told to go down to the office of the military staff to
take orders from Hanriot. There, Hugot, with his comrade Legrand, receives command of the defense of
the Charenton barrier. A young man attends with a smile the delivery of this mission order, accompanied
by verbal instructions.
He introduces himself at the end: I am the ruler of France, the new Cromwell...
It's Saint-Just.
Why does he use this irony? At the Convention, it was Robespierre rather than he who was treated as
dominator. And if anyone has often spoken of Cromwell, it is Robespierre. Didn't he just collide with the
former leader of the Committee of Public Safety, and isn't that partly why he had to go down to Hanriot's
office, leaving the others to fix the measures to be taken? ? Because, for them, like Couthon and
Robespierre, who intended to remain within the law, publicly executing a Hémart must have seemed a
cruel and clumsy act (moreover, as we will see, Hémart will be saved, thanks to the strong complicity of
the side of Hanriot).
Saint-Just's smile would therefore not be a flower of detachment but of despair.
Changing his tone, no doubt wishing not to alter the combatant's morale, Saint-Just gave Hugot a hug
and said seriously: Here is the last blow of the foreign faction, but the veil is going to be torn, and he 'is
already.
All the other testimonies corroborate this isolation of Saint-Just. Around midnight, leaving the only
Commune, Camus 21
noticed the presence of the two Robespierre, Le Bas and Dumas. Around one
o'clock in the morning, Longueville-Clémentières, agent of the general security committee, recognized and
taken to the Equality room, met Coffinhall, Hanriot, Le Bas and the two Robespierres there. The presence
of Saint-Just is not reported in either case.
And, the same goes, around 1 a.m. 30, when Couthon arrives at the Commune. On this, the three
witnesses – the gendarmes Muron and Javois, and the agent of the Committee of Public Safety, Dulac – agree.
Carried by a gendarme, Couthon is ushered into the large hall where the two Robespierres are seated
next to Lescot-Fleuriot and Payan. After the embrace, Couthon said:
“We must write to the armies immediately.
- In the name of what ? replies Robespierre.

"But in the name of the Convention, isn't it still where we are?" The rest is just one
handful of rebels that the armed force that we have will dissipate and of which it will do justice.
After a moment of reflection, it seems, Robespierre, leaning towards his brother, said: “My
opinion is that we write in the name of the French people.
Then, taking Constable Muron's hand, Robespierre showed him his affection for the gendarmerie and asked
him to come down to the square immediately in order to put "the people in the mood".
For Albert Mathiez, these remarks show that “not only did Robespierre the elder make no objection, but
(that) he encouraged revolt22 ” . Without a doubt. But if such a proclamation – which Couthon wrote on his
knees, says Muron – had really been made and transmitted to the sections, Courtois would certainly have
published it in one of his reports: it well supported the accusations against Robespierre. However, the text has
not been found either by the Thermidorians or, since then, by historians in the Archives. And the minutes do
not mention any proclamation of this order.
So, one wonders why and by whom this manifesto was rejected? Is it Saint-Just – like the
Barère will say – or was it Robespierre who presided over the mass operations?
Several reasons suggest that Saint-Just was able to exercise a preeminent authority in the
matter.
First, by leaving the great hall, the corridors and the offices on the first floor to go down to the room where
the staff and Hanriot reside, Saint-Just shows that he remained interested in the conduct of the armed forces.
There, when Hugot made his acquaintance, he was perhaps awaiting the departure of these passers-by to
question, even to shake the head of the National Guard. Already the Execution Committee had convened this
23
one urgently .
And then, after their missions in the North and on the Rhine, Saint-Just and Le Bas could take advantage of
an experience which was lacking in Robespierre, Couthon and the men of the Commune. This camp of young
soldiers, the school of Mars, which at the Jacobins, forty-eight hours earlier, Couthon sharply criticized, Le Bas
had to do his best to rally it by writing to its leader, Major Labretèche, for the plead not to leave his troops
"under the banners of traitors". Of course, he was unaware that the committees had already dismissed
Labretèche and seized the youth camp.
Finally, the few military orders issued by the Execution Committee play on a certain ambiguity to be more
effective. Thus, the most important stipulates that the general commander of the armed force will lead the
people against the conspirators who oppress the patriots and will deliver the National Convention from the
oppression of the counter-revolutionaries 24 .
Such a decree conforms more to the position of Saint-Just than to that of Couthon and Robespierre. Isn't it
appropriate, in his eyes, to put oneself above and against any faction? On the contrary, by wanting to sign with
their name a great appeal to the armed forces, Robespierre and Couthon
intended to give the situation a much more personal character. For Saint-Just, it was appropriate to step
aside in order to be better followed; for the other two, it was necessary to put oneself forward and bet on the
acquired celebrity.
Such a discrepancy would explain why, on the famous missive signed by the principal members of the
Execution Committee, Robespierre would have confined himself to inscribing the first two letters of his name.
Because, if Mathiez very well dispelled the legend according to which the hand of Robespierre had been
suspended by a shot from the invaders of the Commune, the great historian found nothing to justify this Ro,
written calmly, left without erasures . However, if it were a personally desired abbreviation, it would rather
be three letters and, in any case, followed by a period; and, if it was a question of a change of opinion of the
signatory, considering it preferable not to put his name at the bottom of this appeal, he could easily have
crossed out the two letters. Also, everything suggests that Robespierre had to interrupt his signature,
because it was pointed out to him that it was better not to be 25 ? We include his name in this message.
who had enough authority to dare to say that, if not Saint-Just can all the more think so, since the And
letter must have been written around eleven o'clock, that is to say at the very moment of the Arrival of Saint-
Just at the Commune.
Two documents, in addition, reflect the disagreements within the Commune with regard to the political
position taken: the two draft proclamations, drawn up and signed by Payan, stipulating the arrest of a certain
number of Convention members. The first list gives the names of Collot d'Herbois, Barère, Amar and
Léonard Bourdon, while the second indicts Collot d'Herbois, Amar, Léonard Bourdon, Dubarran, Fréron,
Tallien, Panis, Carnot, Dubois-Granchey (sic ) , Vadier, Javoque, Dubarran, Fouchet (sic), Granet, Moyse
Bayle.
We have already noticed that Barère's name was deleted from the second list. This may be due to the
intervention of Robespierre, as Mathiez believes. But that none of the lists gives the name of Billaud-
Varenne, whereas Saint-Just essentially directed his speech against him, shows that the text of the decree
was drawn up despite Saint-Just's opinion or in his absence. Moreover, the minutes of the Commune not
mentioning this proclamation or the decided arrests, one can think that the project was adjourned to oppose
26
these measures, while Robespierre could . Here again, to remain logical, Saint-Just had to
approve them.
In short, the relationship between Saint-Just and Robespierre may have evolved as follows: arriving first
at the Commune, Robespierre intended to appeal personally to the people, to public opinion, against the
parliamentarians, but on entering, Saint-Just – and he is perhaps not the only one – puts forward the
disadvantages of this position: since missives, injunctions of this order are debatable, the adversaries will
more easily stop their communication to the sections. And then, isn't it clumsy to speak out publicly against
the national representation of the Convention? Shouldn't we first ensure that the armed forces are
assembled? What has been done with Hémart, designated by the committees as commander? Hanriot is
summoned to provide explanations on this subject.
Maybe he's not coming. But the capital execution of Hémart is decided. On this, Saint-Just
not wanting to get lost in arguments, but trying to control Hanriot's military action, goes down to Hanriot's
office.
As the bitterness of the discussion undoubtedly left traces, to reassure all those which are there, the five
large condemned ones will appear together in the hemicycle of the room of the Equality where sits the general
council. This, between 1 h. 30 and 2 am.
The facade is thus maintained. But it's already late. And the interior, eaten away by divisions,
personal combinations, remains weakened.
After midnight, those returning from the Commune bring “good news” to their sections. They announce the
release of Robespierre and the others. And then, as the report of the Indivisibility section notes, we think that
everything is saved after "the arrest of the chief of the gendarmerie on horseback", that is to say Hémart.
Having attended Couthon's return, around 1 a.m. 30, leaving the Place de Grève, Dulac finds it "covered with
men", with even more people than when he arrived.
Of course, there are soldiers who return to their homes, tired of waiting without receiving orders or
instructions (some have been there for seven hours), there are even sections which bring back all their troops.
But the horsemen and the gunners constitute the two decisive forces. A few days later, Coffinhall, in prison,
will vituperate against Hanriot who did not know how to employ the seventeen companies of gunners that he
held...
As for the cavalry and the gendarmerie, they will turn around, thanks to the release of Hémart,
a capital fact which, I do not know why, has escaped the attention of historians.
Indeed, instead of publicly executing Hémart, as had been decided, Hanriot had him transported by car
under the pretext of putting him in prison. And to accompany him, he appoints his chief of staff, Deschamps,
who had started the day vigorously, before being arrested like him, at the general security committee.
This choice and its consequences are undoubtedly not a coincidence. Another staff member,
Ulrich, will tell the story, to defend himself, after 9 Thermidor. He would affirm several times 27 that
Deschamps, "passing rue Antoine, took the national agent out of a cab, together with Hanriot, saying that he
had been arbitrarily arrested". If, in his other statement, Ulrich is careful not to speak of Hanriot (it was
dangerous to present him as an ally of the Thermidorians), on the other hand, he also avoids naming Hémart
(for the same reasons in reverse). Moreover, Ulrich prides himself on having personally transmitted to Martin,
the other squadron leader of the mounted gendarmerie, the watchword of the troops of the Commune.
These two betrayals will tip the balance of power.
Ulrich, like Martin and like Hémart, belongs to the Gravilliers section. And Léonard Bourdon, appointed with
Barras by the Convention to command the attack on the Commune, found himself domiciled in the same
section. After passing through several others to mobilize them, he joined the Gravilliers around 11.28 a.m. It
is therefore not surprising that this one forms .
a powerful avant-garde and, starting from its headquarters (the current Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers), descends the rue Saint-Martin. However, Léonard Bourdon, who was not reckless, stopped
his troops at Saint-Merri, wanting to prepare the ground before going on the attack. From there, he
leaves with a vanguard: rather than a brutal collision, it was better to clear the ground by informing the
tired soldiers who remained in front of the Commune, of the enormous force which was advancing (the
vacuum cleaning of the square de Grève would thus be promptly secured), and, on the other hand,
introduce into the Hôtel de Ville a few killers, a few intrepid men to sow disorder there. Young Meda
would be one of them.
As has been abundantly proven, there was no downpour on the Place de Grève. And one cannot
imagine that it remained devoid of troops for long, because in this case, many members of the
Commune would have thought of and succeeded in fleeing from the Hôtel de Ville. Especially since
concierge Bochard had hung lanterns on the facade to light up the square.
Léonard Bourdon, having led his vanguard around the Commune from behind, encountered Dulac
and a troop from the Arcis section on the quays. They all agree to unite to lead the assault. We have
just seen, out for a moment, lost, bareheaded, Hanriot and his aides-de-camp: the Place de Greve is
becoming empty. Dulac will say that he then invited Léonard Bourdon to open the offensive, but that
the latter recused himself by saying that he had to be careful, that the holders of the Hôtel de Ville
would defend themselves "until death", which seems to Dulac a bad “pretext” not to run any risks. In
29 .
fact, Léonard
Bourdon considers that it is better to first blow up the house a little from the inside. And, as we are
going to see, everything suggests that after having traded in his scarf, his cocked hat of a great
30
Convention member for the simpler clothing of a few others, he entered the , left with Meda and
Commune through a small door.
In the narrow and dark corridor leading to the small room where Robespierre sits, a first fight breaks
out. Méda will say that he was “knocked down with blows on the head and on the left arm”, but that, in
the end, he forced the barrage by presenting himself as a “secret order”. In any case, the door open,
two shots ring out.
Who fired? Who is affected?
If one strives to coordinate, to cross-check the most reliable testimonies (those almost given, one is
immediately after those tragic hours) and the Meda 31 pamphlet , led to postpone a little
challenge the usual conclusions.
Indeed, it is commonly accepted, referring to the testimony of concierge Bochard, collected by
Courtois, that the first shot was that fired by Le Bas against himself. But none of the other witnesses
mentions the death of Le Bas at the time and in the room where Bochard places it.
In his testimony, he says that alerted by a guard, who told him that a shot had been fired on the first
floor, he hastily climbed up the small staircase. The door to the Salle de l'Égalité is open: on the
threshold, he sees, he will say, the corpse of Le Bas. And, curiously enough, according to him, a
a second shot bursts: the bullets pass "three lines" from his person. But it would be bullets that would have
already crossed both cheeks of Robespierre, the latter wanting to end his life. Moreover, Robespierre rushes to
the door and jostles the concierge "on leaving the room".
It's not very normal for someone looking for death to react so quickly, so nervously. Even missed, a suicide
is accompanied by depression. On the other hand, everything is explained very well if Robespierre, having just
received a blow, wants to escape the aims of his attacker...
This hasty exit is confirmed by the witnesses, listeners in the great hall. After the first shot, they saw the
mayor, Lescot-Fleuriot, leave the room and soon return "pale and trembling 32 ", then, immediately after the
second detonation, they see "a citizen" appear. And we hear shouting from all sides that Robespierre
33
who had received a pistol shot in the neck blew
his brains out. City councilors take him to another room...
Of course, Méda will claim responsibility for the shooting. But, in the section of the Pantheon, Léonard
Bourdon will boast of the same feat. According to oral information, collected during the night by Vilate, at Force
34 prison and, later, by Lamartine for his Histoire des Girondins, in order to show Méda who Robespierre was,
Bourdon would have taken the hand of the gendarme who was holding the gun and the shot would have gone...
The medical report of the state of Robespierre corroborates this version well. In their report, Vergez fils and
Manigues note in particular a swelling, especially "considerable on the left", with "ecchymosis on the eye on the
same side", and a path "oblique from outside to inside, from left to right, from top to bottom », in short, finding
in the mouth an end rather than a starting point. It is therefore hard to believe that Robespierre shot himself in
his open mouth. He would have had to be left-handed to rest the barrel on the triangular muscle on that side.
Finally, as Mr. Gérard Walter remarks, it is difficult to imagine that Robespierre "seeing this young man of
nineteen coming forward was seized with such terror that he took the gun which was within reach. with his hand
and, instead of killing his attacker, finds nothing better than to shoot himself in his mouth 35
".
Not only does the hypothesis of a failed suicide seem weak, but what Léonard Bourdon will say, at the
Convention, a few hours later, while presenting Méda, suggests that he is no stranger to the shooting of the
gendarme.
Indeed, in the Monitor which reports on the nocturnal session of the Assembly, we read this: Léonard
Bourdon enters the room amidst applause, he is accompanied by a gendarme
whom he asks permission to take up the rostrum with him.
This request is granted.
Léonard Bourdon: “ This brave gendarme that you see has not left me, he has killed two of the conspirators.
(Loud applause.)... At our approach the distraught citizens opened their eyes, and the cowards fled. We found
Robespierre elder armed with a knife, which the brave gendarme snatched from him. He also hit Couthon who
was also armed with a knife; Saint-Just and Le Bas are taken,
Dumas and fifteen or twenty other conspirators are shut up in a room in the common house which
is well guarded. »
Generosity and disinterestedness do not animate Léonard Bourdon enough for us to be able to
attribute his behavior to them, the presentation of Meda as the killer of Robespierre and Couthon. If
Bourdon is showing off this young stranger, it's probably because he thinks it's safer to wash his
hands of illegal killings or shootings. Because the era marked by Montesquieu and Rousseau
remains rather touchy on this chapter.
Moreover, while he seems to hold Robespierre and Couthon as murdered, Léonard Bourdon is
unaware of the death of Le Bas. And if that does not agree at all with the account of the concierge
Bochard, on the other hand that joins the narration of Méda in its opuscule. What is the policeman
saying? I reach a fugitive on the stairs, it was Couthon, who we were saving. The wind having
extinguished my light, I shoot it at random, I miss it, but I hurt the leg of the one who carried it. In
his testimony, the painter Laroche, who was with Couthon on the stairs, explained that having left
him, after he had been shot at, the gendarmes took him by the feet and dragged him on the quays
to throw it into the Seine. Those who had left the Commune for the Convention could therefore
believe Robespierre and Couthon lost.
What happened to Le Bas and Saint-Just in this first fight? Neither Bourdon nor Meda
say they have faced them.
The witnesses report only one brutal reaction: that of the man who was called Bonbon: Young
Robespierre. According to the account of Henriet and Dumont, seeing his brother seriously injured,
Young Robespierre gave himself up to such an excess of rage that ten men could hardly contain 36 .
him. What did he want? Pursue the aggressors, escape from the Hôtel de Ville? Without a doubt.
For if he takes care to take off his shoes to go out through a window on the first floor, if he walks for
several minutes on the stone cordon (as all those who, from the place, have seen the scene ), it is
that he, too, does not think of immediately ending his life. Determined to commit suicide, he would
have thrown himself, head first, without taking off his shoes, without walking...
As for the roadblock which he ran up against, Lescot-Fleuriot's concern to contain the disorders,
not to panic those who remained in the Commune, can explain it. As we have seen, the mayor left
the great hall for a few moments after the first shot, but although he returned "pale and trembling",
he was careful not to alert his audience. Everything suggests that he wrote and signed, after the
two shots, the following order: Immediately, 40 armed
citizens will go to the bottom of the entrance to the general staff, with a piece of cannon and
prevent anyone from entering or leaving it, except staff officers. 20 gendarmes will go to the third, in
this same corridor, and will have the same instructions. The hasty 37 .
wording makes the last sentence quite unclear. This is probably the corridor on the third floor,
similar to the one where the first struggles took place. Nevertheless, the provisions
ordered by Lescot-Fleuriot come too late. By one of the small staircases, Léonard Bourdon had time to find an exit.
Now he has joined, in the square, Dulac and his armed forces.
Inside the Commune, after the rage of Young Robespierre, the fainting of the acquired troops, the fact that Bourdon,
Méda were able to slip into the Hôtel de Ville without difficulty, provoked great rage in Coffinhall. What did Hanriot do
with the seventeen companies he owned? Isn't his inaction a betrayal? Coffinhall threw himself on Hanriot and
gunners 38
showered him with insults. The head of the National Guard wants to escape by going to an upper floor.
The other chases him up the stairs, catches him and, taking advantage of his very tall height, his far superior strength,
pulls him from the ground and throws him out the window.
Hanriot will crash into the yard where rubbish is placed; these dampen the shock a little, but not much; when they
find him, twelve hours later, and take him to finish his life on the guillotine, he will be nothing more than a lamentable
wreck. The spectators will see him "having for clothing only a shirt and a waistcoat, ... all covered with mire and blood".
According to Galast de Montjoye , his hair, his bloody hands, that eye which was only held together by filaments,
formed such a disgusting and frightening picture that no one dared stare at him for long, not to tear out that eye which
39
was falling, before place his head under the knife of the . However, the executioner's assistant will not hesitate
guillotine. The time of terror and cruelty was not over.
As for the young Robespierre, after walking along the edges of the facade of the Hôtel de Ville, he harangues the
people who are on the Place de Grève. What is he saying exactly? The manuscript of the relation of Henriet and
Dumont bears on this point – and only on this – corrections which make its fidelity doubtful. Did he really ask "by
invoking the ghosts of his brother ... that we do him the service of joining him to his brother"? One fact is certain; it is
only after having heard a representative proclaim aloud the decrees of outlawing, that he throws himself, head first,
and falls on the first steps of the central steps, knocking down two citizens . He had no hope left. The fall, moreover,
seriously injures him but does not kill him. Before dying on the guillotine, he will still be able to say a few words on the
hospital bed where he will end up the night.
He fell a few paces from Bourdon and Dulac who were waiting in front of the large gate on
decisive moment. For Tallien's friend, Dulac, this moment has just struck.
With a few riflemen, Dulac climbed the grand staircase without encountering the slightest resistance.
In the large hall of the general council where a dozen councilors remain in session, the vice president, Charlemagne,
is so surprised by this unexpected entrance that he drops his bell. After which, Dulac is taken to the Salle de l'Égalité,
where he finds Robespierre, overwhelmed by his wound, with Dumas – the former vice-president of the revolutionary
tribunal – who, hidden under the table, holds in his hand a bottle of lemon balm water, no doubt to bear the depressing
air of the hour.
Of course, not only did Dumas surrender uneventfully, but he also took charge of driving
Dulac 40 in another room where Saint-Just watches over his great friend Le Bas who is
dead.
As we see, contrary to a persistent legend, Saint-Just had not joined Robespierre at the end of
the fight. But he remained with his only, his true friend, whose death, as we have seen, must have
been long after the first shot that had sounded in the Commune.
Was it a suicide? It will generally be accepted. Admittedly, in despair, Le Bas, four or five days
earlier, walking in the Marboeuf garden, had said to his wife: If it weren't a crime, I'd blow your brains
out and kill myself; at least we would die together... But no; there is this poor child. And, at the
beginning of the evening, finding herself in front of La Force, Elisabeth Le Bas was able to walk with
her husband from the prison of the Hôtel de Ville. The words she had heard left her with no hope:
On the way, he urges me to return home, gives me a thousand recommendations about our son,
begs me not to make him hate his father's killers : Feed him your milk, he said to me; inspire him
with the love of his country; farewell, my Elizabeth, farewell ! All of this may be consistent with a
Roman-style suicide. However, at a time when people were already very attached to the death
certificates, to the reports drawn up with witnesses, it is curious that Le Bas was buried, around
seven o'clock in the morning, without anyone having taken care to establish a piece of this order.
Because, the sheet signed by the gravediggers only states that Le Bas "died in Paris, at the common
house", referring to a report drawn up by the police commissioner of the Lombards 42 section which,
unless I am mistaken , could not be found. On the other hand, Sieyereys, after investigating the
circumstances, will write that Le Bas was "pierced with blows in a stake", without giving any details.
Anyway, that's the end. Saint-Just, impassive, opens up without saying a word. With his hands
tied, he goes to follow, walking with Dumas, the gendarmes who are carrying Robespierre on a
plank. We took Couthon and Augustin Robespierre to give them care in order to "put them in a
condition to be punished", as one of the managers would say atrociously. At the Committee, Saint-
Just will bend over Robespierre who is suffering and coughing up blood, he will look at him with
emotion, very pale, but will say nothing. They will also be quickly separated. Robespierre will receive
some care from a surgeon who will bandage his face. Placed in the Committee hearing room, seated
on the edge of the window, glancing at the poster which bears the text of the constitution, illuminated
by the first – and, for him, last – warm rays of this dawn of July, Saint-Just will murmur:
“Yet it was I who did that.
And he won't say anything more.
EXECUTION.
After a few hours at the Conciergerie, he will appear in court at the beginning of the afternoon.
Appearing one after the other, Fouquier-Tinville after consulting their identity, will read them the
decrees which condemn them.
At six o'clock, three carts will take to the scaffold the first twenty-two great condemned men of
Thermidor. It will take them an hour and a half to go from the Conciergerie to the Concorde. A massive
public, on the sidewalks and at the windows, looks at them, insulting them, making fun of them.
Even the wounded inspire no pity. Despite the emotions, the exhaustion of the last thirty-six hours,
the young man of twenty-six that is Saint-Just is, will say the witnesses, remained calm, cold and
disdainful.
He climbs the stairs of the guillotine, very straight, very firm. Before him, the cry of Hanriot when
his eye was gouged out, the howl of Robespierre when his bandage was brutally removed, resounded
in the square. But for Saint-Just, existence is already over. If he had to talk, he would say what he
wrote on a piece of paper a few days earlier: I despise the dust that composes me and that speaks to
you; we can persecute it and make this dust die! But I defy anyone to tear away from me this
independent life that I have given myself over the centuries and in the heavens...
1. Report on 9 Thermidor, Year III.

3. MONTJOYE, History of the Conspiracy by Maximilien Robespierre, Paris, 1795.
4. COURTOIS, op. cit.
5. On the schedule of the day, Mr. PAUL SAINTE-CLAIBE DEVILLE has done valuable work in his book La Commune
Year II, Paris, 1946.
6. If the Monitor does not relate the fact, on the other hand COURTOIS in his First Report on 9 Thermidor, writes: “Aymard (sic) is
appointed to lead the Parisian soldiers. He's the cavalry commander. »
7. MONTJOYE, History of the conspiracy of Maximilien Robespierre.
8. See the notebook of the national guard (Arch. nat., AFII 47, fol. 89).
9. See Arch. nat., F7 4432 (pl. 7, fol. 32) and the statements of Fouquier-Tinville at his trial.
10. See MEDA, p. 23.
11. See Courtois Report on 9 Thermidor.
12. Around Robespierre.
13. According to various reports, the tocsin sounded loudly from six o'clock.
14. SAINTE CLAIRE DEVILLE, op. cit., p. 236.
15. Courtois Report, Exhibit XXIX.
16. Minutes of Chuquet.
17. Report by Dumour, Arch. nat., AF 47, pp. 341-365.
18. Coffinhall is usually given as income, later, with Hanriot, but the crossed-out sentence of the minutes is explained
only by his presence.
19. Declaration of Cietty to the section of Montreuil (W 80).
20. See Arch. nat., AFII 47, fol. 17.
21. Arch. nat., W 79.
22. See MATHIEZ, Autour de Robespierre, Paris, 1926, p. 227.
23. “General Hanriot will go immediately to the execution committee” signed: Louvet, Payan, Legrand, Lereboirès (AFII 47, pl. 388, 13).
24. AFII , pl. 368, 12, minute by Arthur's hand. It will be sent signed by Hanriot.
25. Especially since the Piques section, to which this letter was addressed, was also his.
26. Mathiez, referring to the minutes, considers “these vigorous resolutions taken... at the request of the Jacobins” (Autour de Robespierre, p.
223). But the minutes, relating that a delegation of the Jacobins came to invite the council to take measures “to thwart the maneuvers of the
perfidious members of the Convention”, adds: “Civic mention of this fraternal solicitude. And nothing more. Moreover, it is not a question, as in
Payan's projects, of those who deceived the Convention, but of interventions in the sections. On the other hand, how can Albert Mathiez, and, after
him, Mr. Georges Michon, estimate that, if the judgment has not been ratified, it is because "there was no time to base the decision on a loose
leaf", while the sentence was pronounced "around midnight" and that the report relates the facts until "half past two in the morning"?
27. Courtois Report, Exhibit XXVI, p. 121, and Arch. nat., F7 4432, pl. 6, 743 28.
This is the time indicated by Serisy in the notes accompanying his play La Mort de Robespierre.
29. Second Courtois Report, Exhibit XXIX.
30. This is what Léonard Bourdon will say later, in the section of the Panthéon, where his remarks will be collected by a friend of Buchez and
Roux (t. XXXIV, p. 59).
31. The historical summary of the events that took place on the evening of 9 Thermidor is dated September 1802, but it has not been published
only in 1825 well after the death of Méda, in 1812, in Moskowa.
32. Testimony of Hugot (AFII 47, fol. 28).
33. Report by Henriet and Dumont (AFII 47, p. 366).
34. Cf. Secret Causes of the Revolution from 9 to 10 Thermidor by Vilate, ex-judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal (Vendémiaire Year III).
35. GERARD WALTER, Robespierre.
36. Arch. nat., F7 4432, pl. 7, 6.
37. Courtois Report, p. 162-163.
38. This is what he will say a little later, in prison in front of Fouquier-Tinville.
39. History of the conspiracy by Maximilien Robespierre, 1795, p. 208.
40. Testimony of Dulac in the Courtois Report (XXXIX) and at Arch. nat., F7 4432, fol. 90.
41. Manuscripts of Elisabeth Le Bas (cf. STEFANE POL, Le Conventionnel Le Bas).
42. STEFANE POL, op. cit., pp. 317-318.
CHAPTER XI
AT THE END OF THE DAY
It was over! His body, like that of Robespierre and the others guillotined, would be quickly buried
on the height of Monceau in a place which corresponds, approximately today, to the corner of the rue
du Rocher and the rue Monceau.
Its owner would find nothing in his apartment except books , a few , military manuals,
costumes and a wicker basket full of papers. Selling it all wouldn't do much.
He was dying without illusion, having somewhat lost his appetite for power. His ambition so quickly
satisfied, his hunger and his thirst for personal power so stuffed in feasts with sometimes repugnant
guests, he had been, for several months, disgusted, seeking not a reason to live, but the meaning of
his existence, his predestination. To free himself from what he had to endorse or do, he felt the need
for justification in the hereafter.
God protector of innocence and truth, he wrote, since you led me (among) some
perverse, it was probably to unmask them...
I implore it, the tomb, as a blessing from Providence, so as to no longer be a witness to the impunity
of the crimes hatched against my country and humanity... unhappy life in which one is condemned to
2.
vegetate the accomplice, or the helpless witness to the crime
Until his last minute, he had had to fight against these depressive moods from which he freed
himself by throwing them on the paper with his
creaking little pen. Obviously, his temperament, his spiritual requirements did not predispose him
to appear as a good guest at the government table. He who, five years earlier, imagining the tricks of
the devil for his Organt, saw in his time only a "general analogy of morals with madness", had never
had the roundness, the optimism, the good side -living who facilitate political relations by evading
embarrassing questions, sticking to approximations for decisions. In the Committee, he had maintained
good relations with a man of this type: Barère, who, a little literate, knew how to adapt his southern
patter to the social salon of Madame de Genlis and to the Assembly, speaking with force and flexibility
so as not to say nothing, but according to the tastes and authorities of the day. And then, Saint-Just
did not even have the youthful "sacred monster" side, the gift of improvisation, the taste for repartee
which earned Robespierre his public, his ascendancy among the Jacobins and at the Convention.
His authority, Saint-Just owed it solely to his always disturbing rigor, to his alternation of silences
and cutting remarks. In his Notes, Courtois, who did not like him much, described him as endowed
with a "character of dissimulation and duplicity." But Courtois, to illustrate his judgment, does not
mention any facts; he confines himself to recounting a dinner in the Venua restaurant where the
various forms of government were discussed. Saint-Just, after having listened for a long time
without saying a word, suddenly speaks and says in a very pronounced tone: “ You don't hear a
thing, the greatest man of antiquity was Augustus. He is the one to take.for
» model 3
Now, how had Augustus distinguished himself, if not by carrying out a political and social
revolution which led Rome from the Republic to a new oligarchy, while preserving the vocabulary,
the republican phraseology, and relying on the popular masses to draw from create new ruling
classes and restore sacred civic institutions? It was an example of adapting to the ideological
formulas of the moment in order to overcome them. It was quite audacious to put forward this name
of Augustus, criticized by Montesquieu and even by Machiavelli. However, while such blunt praise
seems unlikely, the reference is not implausible. Because, for Saint-Just, it was a big problem to
know how to agree with the political themes of the moment, without throwing a veil on the real
problems with the phraseology in fashion: Je n'aime point les mots
new, I only know the just and the unjust; these words are heard by all consciences. All definitions
must be brought back to consciousness: the mind is a sophist who leads all the virtues to the
scaffold This preoccupation and 4 .
the memory of the Romans had led him to an elliptical, balanced, sometimes confused language,
which often had to alienate sympathy. The author of a recent work 5 , for example, declared himself
dismayed by the “orations of Saint-Just, traversed by formulas which throw a false brilliance on a
gelatinous rhetoric, his amphigouric and theatrical eloquence, his candied emphasis”. Certainly, for
the one who examines a society through salon life, who judges the value of a man through his
puns, his gallant repartee, he can not be worth anything the man who still noted: the one who jokes
to the head government, tends to tyranny.
Not being rounded, nor in one piece, Saint-Just was hardly good at appealing to the masses. Or
rather, given the circumstances, his promotion, his age and his character, he escaped all the
spiritual or material families in which contemporaries and posterity like to recognize theirs. As
Maurice Barrès wrote in his preface to Marie Leneru's study, “Saint-Just bears among its flaws the
sign of greatness”.
Like many others, he wanted to achieve greatness by filling “everything in between”, he intended
to have his feet on reality, but his head high above. The grail in search of which he remained, it
was a justification of his behavior. He thought he had found it, when he noted
Again :
Politics had counted on this idea, that no one would dare to attack famous men, surrounded by
a great illusion... I left behind me all these weaknesses; I only saw the truth in
the universe and I said...

These moral requirements, these appeals to history earned him the title of “Archangel of Terror”.
But, however great her self-sacrifice, she did not go so far as to lose interest in the planet, that is to say above all in
public opinion and the Assembly.
Anti-revolutionary historians have often taken up the anecdote of his vague cousin, Madame Lambert, who, having
come to his office and having insulted him, a week before 9 Thermidor, had been arrested at the request of the person
concerned. We kept the note from Lejeune, the secretary of the police office. It reads: “Saint-Just begged the citizen
Collot d'Herbois to arrest the woman Lambert and the man who lived with her, telling him that she had come to his
house to assassinate him. And, on 3 Thermidor, Collot d'Herbois who, six days later, was to push Saint-Just under the
guillotine, signed the order for Madame Lambert's arrest, but the sentence stating that she would be "brought to trial
revolutionary” had been crossed out 6
.
Was it Lejeune who wanted to be zealous, or was it Saint-Just who was really afraid, or who thought of using this
story of aggression, like Robespierre and Collot d'Herbois of theirs, to present as a victim? Saint-Just's behavior rules
out the last hypothesis, but makes it impossible to choose between the first two, although what he wrote did not
manifest a deep attachment to existence.
As for the Thermidorians, they presented themselves as men of the “left” who had conquered the reactionary
Robespierrists, but they were not very harsh on Saint-Just. At the podium of the Convention, in the debates on the
fateful day, Barère will judge him as "the one who had the most cunning and apparent coolness
7 ”.
And much later, devoting a special note to it – which he will not do for Robespierre – the same Barère will write:
Saint-Just had a rare talent and an
unbearable pride... If he had lived in the time of the Republics Greeks, he would have been a Spartan... If he had
been born in Rome, he would have made revolutions like Marius, but he would never have oppressed like Scylla. He
hated the nobility as much as he loved the people. His way of loving him doubtless suited neither his country nor his
age nor his contemporaries, since he perished; but at least he left in France and in the 18th century a strong trace of
talent, character and republicanism.
His style was laconic; its austere character; his severe political mores; what success could he hope For his part,
another8 ?
member of the Convention, Levasseur, declared in his Memoirs 9 Robespierre was always regarded as :
the head of the revolutionary government. For me, who saw the events of that time up close, I would almost dare to
affirm that Saint-Just was perhaps the one who combined the most exalted enthusiasm with a quick and sure glance,
the most obstinate...
Intimately linked to Robespierre, he had become necessary to him, he had made himself feared by him perhaps even
more than he had desired to be loved by him.
This last sentence corroborates everything we have seen on the tense relations between the two
members of the Committee of Public Safety. For his part, Barère lets this estrangement be understood, when he
recount :
Robespierre, speaking of him to the Committee, said familiarly: “... Saint-Just is taciturn and observant;
but I noticed, as to his physique, that he bears a great resemblance to Charles IX. That did little to flatter
Saint-Just...
It is understandable that this identification with the inspirer of Saint-Barthélémy did little to flatter Saint-
Just. Especially since Charles IX was then above all seen through Marie-Joseph Chénier's play which, in
1789, had excited all revolutionary Paris as an indictment against the cruel Monarchy! The comparison,
made publicly, could irritate the one who remained very touchy.
Friendship was also swept away by the cyclone of Terror. On what, on whom to lean? Big business lost
itself in petty quarrels, petty manoeuvres. Oh ! certainly, the fact is frequent in political history. But the
drawn wine, which he was to drink, must have seemed very bitter to the young Saint-Just...
The 9 Thermidor was not an episode of the class struggle, as some historians have written, because,
in this deeply questioned society, the social categories mixed in the parties, and the workers were
exasperated by the blocking of wages. Since the Hébert affair, they no longer knew very well who was a
Republican and who was not. Finally, the movement of the 9 inspired by fear within the Convention,
provoked by the division in the committees, had been able to be supported by those who, abroad, feared
to be harmed by an agreement between Robespierre and the Austria.
It is significant that an informant from Antraigues, in his missive in sympathetic ink, 20 Thermidor,
announces talks already begun by the organ of Monnerot [Monroë] plenipotentiary sent here by the United
States of America. There has been a hotel there for twelve days, rue de Richelieu, 10. He descended into
and with a person who will tell me about it. The opinion of this hotel, since he arrived there, is that he
came to mediate between the allies and the Committee of Public Safety.
Monroë, who was to remain the representative of the United States in France for a long time, did he
really try to play a role in this direction? We cannot say so. However, in his Memorandum on 9 Thermidor,
Billaud-Varenne speaks of the "recovery" of France, thanks in particular to "the correspondence linked
with the United States".
As for Saint-Just's last look at the poster bearing the text of the Constitution, posterity would respond
almost a century later. On September 20, 1870, the Parisian National Guard and the Committee of twenty
arrondissements took up in a resolution the article of Saint-Just decreeing that “the Republic cannot deal
with the enemy who occupies its territory”. But, insurgent, the Commune of 1871 will lose itself like that of
1794, in political discussions...
It is perhaps an exaggeration to say: “There are no great men, there are only great conflicts. »
But it is true that the value of a man lies in his way of experiencing, of expressing a great conflict
and answer it. And that Saint-Just, despite a few errors, a few weaknesses, knew how to do it with
courage and lucidity.
April 1943-September 1954.
1. The following books: DEMOSTHENES, CICERON, Life of Confucius, Life of Cromwell, The Universal History of BOSSUET, Thoughts of
PASCAL, TELEMAQUE, Characters of LA BRUYÈRE, LA FONTAINE, L'Émile, Confessions, Social Contract, Principles of morality of MABLY,
Jerusalem Delivered and the Letters of a Peruvian (novel by Mme D'ISSEMBOURG DE GRAFIGNY) (Arch. nat., F7 4435).
2. Fragments on institutions.
3. As everyone knows, the notes written by COURTOIS for his Memoirs were burned at the Hôtel de Ville in 1871. We do not know them
only through the notes taken by Dr. Robinet, published in 1887 in the review of the French Revolution (t. XI).
5. The End of a Society, Paris, 1953.
6. Cf. Saladin Report for the Commission of Twenty-one (12 Ventôse Year III).
8. Memoirs of BARÈRE, t. IV, p. 408.
9. Memoirs, t. II, p. 188.
CHRONOLOGY
APPENDICES – SOURCES
TABLE
CHRONOLOGY
1767
August 25. – Birth of Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just in Decize in the Nivernais. His father, captain of
a light horse from Berry, fifty years old, belonged to a family of Picardy farmers. His mother is the daughter
of Me Léonard Robinot, notary of Decize.
1771
The child spent his early years with his uncle and godfather Antoine Robinot, priest of Verneuil.
The latter's death forced his parents – who had left to settle in Nampcel in Picardy – to take their child
back. Madame de Saint-Just gave birth to two daughters: Louise-Marie (born in 1768) and Marie Françoise-
Victoire (born in 1769). The whole family is going to stay in Decize.
1777
October. – The Saint-Just settled in Blérancourt (Aisne) where the captain had, a year earlier,
bought a house. But the head of the family dies.
1785
Saint-Just completed his studies with the Oratorians in Soissons. During his vacation, he fell in love with
Therese-Louise Gellé. He begins to write a monograph on the Château de Coucy.
December 9. – Saint-Just and Thérèse-Louise Gellé are godfather and godmother of Louis, son of Louis
Lely, tanner.
1786
July 25. – Marriage of Louise Gellé with François-Emmanuel Thorin, son of François Thorin.
1787
April. – Saint-Just learns his law, becomes second clerk to Me Dubois-Decharme, prosecutor
in Soissons, and often goes to Reims.
October. – Officially registered at the Faculty of Law of Reims.
1788
February 14th. – Saint-Just is received, in Reims, bachelor of

laws. April 15. – Bachelor of
Laws. July the 5th. – Convening of the Estates General.
1789
May. – Publication in Paris of Or gant.

June 10. – Proceedings brought against the work. Copies are seized by Me Chenu from bookstores. Saint-Just is
hiding.
July 14th. - Capture of the Bastille.

End of July. – Return from Saint-Just to Blérancourt. He probably wrote, then, Harlequin Diogenes.
End December. – The municipality of Blérancourt is worried: young people, armed with guns, have
wreaked havoc on the market.
1790
January 3. – Organization of a national militia in Blérancourt. The Commander-in-Chief is Louis

A. Gellé; the captains are: Binart, Decaisne, Thorin the young.
January 31. – Renewal of the municipality with Honoré, mayor; Monneveux, syndic attorney. Elected officers:
Decaisne, colonel; Binart, major; Clay-Lefebvre, Rumart and Beaulieu, captains. February 10. – André-Emmanuel
Decaisne,
widower of Marie-Françoise Thorin, wife Louise de Saint Just. the 21st of February. – Civic oath signed by the
mother and sisters of Saint-Just. March 16. – We inform against Father Gellé for
“insulting the cockade”.
April. – The federative pact between the communes of Aisne was initiated by Saint-Just. The assembly of Chauny
where Saint-Just is a delegate chooses Laon as the capital. – Letters to Camille Desmoulins and to Thuillier.
May 15. – Saint-Just burns in front of the mayor thirty copies of a brochure against the decree on
the state of the clergy. The municipality sends the National Assembly a report of the ceremony. June 6. – Saint-
Just is received as lieutenant-colonel by the municipality of Blérancourt. June 24. – Saint-Just goes to
Vassens to make an offer of federation.
June 27. – At the request of several inhabitants of Manicamp, Blérancourt sends four guards
nationals as "municipal election observers".
June 30th. – Blame against the municipality of Blérancourt on the occasion of the disturbances which
occurred in Manicamp and other places (Minutes of the meetings of the administration of the department of
Aisne,
1790). July 2nd. – Saint-Just is appointed honorary commander of the national guards of the
canton. July 14th. – Federation Day in Paris. Saint-Just is present.
August 19. – First letter from Saint-Just to Robespierre on the subject of free markets.
October 17. – Grenet case (conflict over municipal property), Saint-Just is responsible for
report by the municipality of Blérancourt.
October. – Letter to Garrote.
1791
FEBRUARY. – First letter to the editor Devin.
February 18. – Second letter to Devin.

June 20. – Publication of the Spirit of the Revolution.
June 22. – The royal family is arrested at Varennes.
July 15th. – Demonstration of the Champ-de-Mars.
July 20. – Letter to Daubigny (?).
August 23. – Saint-Just stands for election, but cannot be elected because of his age. October
2. – The new Assembly declares itself legislative.
November. – Marriage of Marie-Françoise-Victoire de Saint-Just with Adrien Bayard.
December 9. – Letter from Saint-Just to Adrien Bayard.
1792
January 17. – Brissot implores the Assembly to declare war on the Emperor of Germany. 12
February. – The staff of the Blérancourt National Guard is being renewed. No more colonel, nor
of lieutenant-colonel; two commanders: Levasseur de Saint-Aubin and Saint-Just.
March 4. – We form a company of grenadiers. March
15. – Louis XVI calls Dumouriez and forms the ministry with Girondins. May 13. –
Ceremony of the Tree of Liberty. Speech by Decaisne. Saint-Just exhibits the bust of Mirabeau.
June 12. – Louis XVI dismisses the three Girondin ministers.

July 8. – Decaisne becomes captain of the company. Saint-Just is commander of the second battalion.
July 9th. – Written to Garrot, notary of Coucy, to help Thuillier, buyer of national property.
11 July. – The homeland is declared in danger.

July 24. – Saint-Just is continuing the purchase of national assets that it began on June 20.
August 3. – Pétion demands, in the name of forty-seven sections, the forfeiture of the
King. August 10. – Capture of the Tuileries. Three days later, Pétion led the royal family to the Temple.
September 1st . – Verdun surrenders to the
Prussians. September 2. – Meeting of the assembly of electors of Aisne. Saint-Just sits at the office. In Paris,
prison massacres.
September 5. – Counting of votes. Saint-Just is elected.
September 9. – Letter from Saint-Just to Adrien
Bayard. September 18. – Saint-Just
arrives in Paris. September 20. – Battle of Valmy. First session of the National
Convention. September 25. – Some Girondins denounce Robespierre as aspiring to dictatorship.
October 14. – The Prussians evacuate Verdun.
October 22. – At the Jacobins club, Saint-Just's first speech against the plan to surround the
Convention of an armed guard.
October 29. – Louvet attacks Robespierre.
November 4. – New speech by Saint-Just at the Jacobins against suspicious armaments: allusion to the
hostility of Barbaroux and others towards Robespierre.
November 13. – At the Convention, Saint-Just's first speech on Louis XVI. November
15. – Among the Jacobins, Saint-Just becomes a member of the commission responsible for preparing a
new constitution. November 29. –
Speech of Saint-Just on subsistence. November 30. – The
office of the Convention is being renewed. Saint-Just took its place there as
secretary. Barère is president.
December 12. – Saint-Just reads to the Convention an address from the citizens of Strasbourg asking
that their mayor, Dietrick, arrested after his public protest against August 10, not be tried there.
Finally, the Assembly votes a decree so that Dietrick is imprisoned and judged in Besançon. December
24. – Saint-Just presides over the Jacobins.
December 27. – Second speech of Saint-Just on Louis XVI.
1793
January 1 . – At the Jacobins, Saint-Just delivers a speech on the last speech of

Robespierre which will be
printed. January 19. – Roll-call vote on Louis XVI.
January 20. – The deputy Lepelletier of Saint-Fargeau is assassinated.
January the 21st. – Execution of Louis
XVI. January 23. – Rolland tenders his resignation.
January 25. – Speech by Saint-Just on the organization of the army.

February 1 . – The Convention declares war on the King of England and the Stadtholder of Holland.
February 11th. – Saint-Just: new discourse on the organization of the army and amalgamation.
12 February. – Saint-Just responds to an attack in the Assembly about subsistence. March 9-10.
– Failed uprising. At the Convention, Robespierre and Danton advocated a change in government. Saint-
Just was sent on a mission to the armies of Aisne and Ardennes to monitor recruitment.
March 25. – England and Russia sign a treaty of alliance against France. March 30. –
Dumouriez announces that he will direct his troops to Paris to overthrow the
government.
March, 31st. – Back in Paris, Saint-Just attacked the Minister of War, Beurnonville, at the Jacobins. An
insurrectionary committee is formed at the Bishop's Palace.
April 1 . – Received by the national defense committee, Saint-Just explains to it the measures he considers
necessary on the borders.
April 3. – Dumouriez passes to the enemy. The arrest of the Duke of Orleans is decreed. Robespierre
asks that of Brissot.
April 6. – The Convention establishes the Committee of Public Safety with Girondins and Danton.
April 15. – The sections of Paris ask the Convention for the proscription of twenty-two Girondin deputies.
April 17. –
Tumultuous demonstrations in front of bakeries. April 21th. – Marat is
sent to the revolutionary tribunal. April 24. – Marat returns
triumphant from the courthouse. Saint-Just presents its project for
constitution.
May 4. – The Convention decrees the “decreasing maximum” of the price of grain.
May 7. – Cambon accuses Brissot of being an agent of Pitt.
May 15. – Saint-Just intervenes again in the discussion of the Constitution. May
24. – New discourse on the division of the territory and the Constitution.
May 30. – Tumultuous session at the Convention. Saint-Just is appointed deputy to the Salvation Committee
public, with Hérault de Séchelles, to establish a new draft constitution.
May 31st. – Insurrectional day in Paris. June 2.
– Hanriot and his troops surrounded the Convention to force it to arrest the Girondins.
June 10. – Hérault de Séchelles presented the new draft constitution to the Assembly. June 15. – At
the Committee of Public Safety, Saint-Just is attached to the first section (general correspondence) and in
charge, with Cambon, of the report on the Girondins. Also with Cambon, he was appointed to the National
Defense Commission.
June 24. – The Constitution is voted.

June 26. – Jacques Roux criticizes it and asks for the death penalty for speculators.
June 30th. – After the intervention of Robespierre, the Jacobins obtain that the Cordeliers
disavow Jacques Roux.
July 8. – Saint-Just, on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, presents a report against the Girondins.
July 10. – Danton is eliminated from the Committee of Public Safety. Saint-Just entered it
definitively. July 13. – Charlotte Corday
kills Marat. July 18. – Saint-Just is in charge of mission, in the Aisne, Oise and Somme, by the Committee
of Public
Safety. July 25. – Departure of Louise Thorin for
Paris. July 27. – Robespierre joins the Committee of Public
Safety. July 30. – Saint-Just is back in Paris.
August 9. – Saint-Just proposes a general requisition of harvests.
August 12. – The Convention decrees the arrest of suspects.
August 13. – Lazare Carnot and Claude-Antoine Prieur are assistants to the
Committee. August 23. – The levy en masse is decreed: two million French people are called up. August
27. –
Toulon falls into English hands. September 2. – Failed
escape of Marie-Antoinette. September 4. – Hebertist
demonstration. The general price maximum is requested. September 13. – Renewal of
the general security committee. September 29. – The law of the
general maximum is voted. October 10 (19 Vendémiaire).
– Saint-Just presented his report to the Convention: “The
provisional government of France is revolutionary until peace. »
October 16 (25 Vendémiaire). – New report on the English in France. October
23 (2 brumaire). – In Strasbourg, first proclamation to the army of Saint-Just and Le Bas
that establish a new military tribunal.
October 24 (3 brumaire). – They ask the Committee of Public Safety for a reinforcement of the troops.
October 26 (5 Brumaire). – Letter from Le Bas to Robespierre: we are still waiting for General Pichegru
named by Carnot.
October 30 (9 brumaire). – A large number of disciplinary measures are taken. 5
November (15 brumaire). – Letter from Saint-Just and Le Bas: they protest against the sending of Hérault
de Séchelles to the region.
November 14 (24 brumaire). – Letter in response from Saint-Just to the Popular Society of
Strasbourg. December 3 (14 Frimaire). – First return of Saint-Just to Paris. He will stay
there for three days. December 9-26 (6 Nivose). – Saint-Just and Le Bas went to different points
on the Eastern front. December 27 (7 Nivose). – Victory of Hoche before Wissembourg.
December 28 (8 Nivose). – The French troops triumphantly enter Wissembourg. December 31 (11
Nivose). – Back in Paris, Saint-Just sits on the Committee of Public Safety.
1794
January 1 (12 Nivose). – The Convention decrees that the armies of the Rhine, the Moselle and Italy have
deserved well of the fatherland.
January 4 (15 Nivose). – We learn that Fabre d'Églantine collaborated in the making of a fake
decree on the affair of the Compagnie des Indes.
January 8 (19 Nivose). – In front of the Jacobins, Robespierre attacked Desmoulins and Fabre d'Églantine.
January 12 (23 Nivose). – Arrest of Fabre d'Églantine. January 17
(28 Nivose). – The Cordeliers declare that Robespierre is leader of the moderates. January 22 (3
Pluviose). – The Committee of Public Safety gives Saint-Just a new mission with the Army of the North.
February 2 (14 Pluviose). – Danton frees Vincent and Ronsin. February

12 (24 Pluviôse). – Saint-Just has returned to Paris. February
19 (1st Ventôse). – Saint-Just is elected President of the Convention. February
26 (8 Ventose). – Saint-Just comes down from the presidential chair to present at the Convention
its report on incarcerated persons.
March 2 (12 Ventôse).– At the Cordeliers, Ronsin and the Hébertists call for insurrection.
March 3 (13 Ventose). – Saint-Just presents a report on a new policy (the Ventôse decrees). March 13 (23
Ventose).
– Saint-Just presents a new report against the factions abroad, particularly targeting the Hébertists, who are
arrested during the night. March 17 (27 Ventose). – Saint-Just's report on the
arrest of Hérault de Séchelles and Simond. March 31 (Germinal 11). – Saint-Just's report on Danton,
Desmoulins, Fabre d'Églantine, etc. April 15 (26 Germinal).– Report by Saint-Just on the general police. April
29 (10 Floréal).– Saint-Just leaves on a mission with the Northern army. May
9 (20 Floreal). – Saint-Just returns to spend a few hours at the Committee of Public
Safety. May 22 (3 meadow). – Ladmiral, wanting to kill Robespierre and having missed, shoots Collot
d'Herbois.
May 25 (6 Prairial). – Robespierre and the members of the Committee writing to Saint-Just for him
ask to return to Paris.
May 31 (12 prairie). – Saint-Just returns to the Committee, but refuses to write the report requested of him.
June 6 (18 Prairial). – He is leaving for the Army of the North.

June 8 (20 Prairial).– In Paris, Feast of the Supreme

Being. June 10 (22 Prairial). – Law of Robespierre and Couthon on
justice. June 15 (27 Prairial). – Vadier's report on Catherine Théot, known as the “Mother of
God”. June 16 (28 Prairial). – Saint-Just takes part in the battle of Fleurus where the French armies,
commanded by Jourdan, despite the inferiority of their numbers, will win a great victory over the armies of the
foreign coalition.
June 17 (29 Prairial). – The trial of the “red shirts”. June 30
(12 Messidor). – Back in Paris, Saint-Just finds a Committee of Public Safety more divided than ever. July
23 (5
Thermidor). – Last Committee meeting with Robespierre. July 27 (9 Thermidor).
– Saint-Just begins his last speech at noon. It is decreed
of arrest with Robespierre, Le Bas, etc. Very restless night at the Commune.
July 28 (10 Thermidor). – About six o'clock in the evening Saint-Just goes up to the scaffold. He's not twenty
seven years.
APPENDICES
THE STORY OF THE FUGUE.
Under the Restoration, two notables from Blérancourt, de Grenet and Armand Brunet d'Évry, published a booklet
telling that in the autumn of 1786, Saint-Just would have fled to Paris, with jewels and family pistols, and that he
would have been put in a remand center at the request of his mother.
To support their accusation, the authors claimed to reproduce letters from Madame de Saint-Just and the interrogation
of her son.
Mr. Charles Vellay, the great Saint-Just specialist, in 1945 – in the notes of an edition of the Selected Pieces of
Saint-Just – gave excellent reasons for doubting the authenticity of this story. Added to these reasons are others.
We can think that the anecdote and the documents invoked are false or faked, because: 1o Grenet and Brunet
d'Évry say they gave the documents to
the police headquarters (where they were burned in 1871) but, for the most part , these were only alleged
doubles. This is the case, for example, of the interrogation of Saint-Just which was recognized as unsigned. 2o The
cited documents contradict each other. In her alleged letter of
September 17, 1786, Madame de Saint-Just says that her son – who has just left – came “to spend a fortnight” at
Blérancourt, while the person concerned, in the so-called interrogation of September 30, claims to have left Paris
"six weeks earlier".
On the other hand, how can Mme de Saint-Just, in her letter of November, take into account
in francs and centimes, nine years before the establishment of the decimal system?
3o In 1790 – that is to say four years later – the old mayor of Blérancourt, Honoré,
celebrated Saint-Just by declaring him worthy of his ancestors and saying to him: “Continue
as you began. He would not have said such words if the young Saint-Just had made the
town gossip with an escape to Paris and a theft from his family.
4. It is inexplicable that no one, during the Terror and especially after 9 Thermidor, mentioned
the affair: Villain d'Aubigny and Barère, though well informed, made no allusion to it. Better, the
national agent who carried out the investigation in the Aisne does not say anything about it in his
1 rating
Courtois. “According to the searches I made into the conduct of the conspirator Saint-Just,
he writes, I learned that he had bought property in the district of Noyon under a borrowed name, as, it is
claimed, he did in Switzerland; I wasted no time in ascertaining the fact. »
As we see, the investigator did not neglect any gossip. And if the first purchase of land was true, on the
other hand, the investigator should find nothing in Switzerland. 5o It
is perhaps Barère who gives the key to the affair, when he tells the story of Organt composed on
leaving college. “As soon as this satirical poem had appeared, a ministerial order ordered the search for
the author to be placed in the Bastille. Saint-Just was denounced and prosecuted in Picardy where he
lived, but he went to hide in Paris with a merchant from his country named M.
Dupey, and remained there until the time of the Estates General. It is possible that Brunet used, changing
the texts and the dates, authentic letters from Madame de Saint-Just, written so that her son could be
put in safety in Paris, with a merchant in the country. And, of course, all this while lecturing the author of
Organt to blame him for having written this erotic and satirical work. Certain sentences in Madame de
Saint-Just's letters are better explained in this case: for example, when she laments that her son "had
looked on with indifference at the event to which he exposed himself."
6o Note, finally, that the objects declared stolen, and some sold by Saint-Just, were reviewed in
the family, after 9 Thermidor.
However, if Brunet d'Évry arrested on 5 Ventôse year II, remained silent until 9 Thermidor, he
2,
speaks shortly after in a Memorandum of justification written in prison. Having recently found the
manuscript, M. Soboul published the essentials 3 . What do we read? In the first memoir, dated 22
Thermidor, Year II, Brunet asserts: “Saint-Just, as bad a son as he was a bad citizen, had taken away
his mother's most precious belongings, he had insulted and mistreated her. Hence his arrest by order of
Crogne, then a police lieutenant, and his imprisonment in Picpus's house. “The letters from the mother
of Saint Just which are under seal will attest to the fact. In another memoir, undated, Brunet reaffirms
the same thing. According to him, Saint-Just "had mistreated, by his speeches, by his threats, his
mother" and had finally taken away "his most precious effects".
But if the story had been really convincing, how to explain that the Thermidorians (Courtois and
others), very eager to publish anything that could harm the memory of the men they had just slaughtered,
did not use the letters "Under Seal" by Brunet d'Évry? How to explain, finally, that the latter waited twenty-
three years to pull them out of his drawers?
II
AN UNFINISHED BOOK OF SAINT-JUST AND HANDWRITTEN

NOTES (from incest to paternalism).
In 1947, the National Library acquired three important files of manuscripts of Saint
Just4 . The first two came from Barère, donated by Professor Paul Carnot, the third was
bequeathed by Mr. Ch. A. Clark, of New York.

Apart from a small bound volume in which we find, in the hand of Saint-Just, the first chapters and the table
of contents of an essay entitled De la nature, de l'état civil, de la cité ou des rules of the independence of the
government, the two other collections contain above all (apart from a few unpublished pages which we have
the opportunity to quote) the notes, the drafts which, edited, sometimes censored, were published under the
title Fragments on the institutions.
The first important but very delicate question posed by these manuscripts is that of their date. Although Saint-
Just's political life was limited to four years, the force of circumstances having led him to sometimes change his
opinion, it is worth trying to establish when he adopted such and such a thing, and what views a testamentary
value.
The work is all the more difficult as Saint-Just often got his hands dirty by using
his old notes, his “bottom of the drawer” to accommodate them to the conditions of the moment.
Thus, Mr. Albert Soboul, who very patiently, very carefully deciphered these often difficult to read manuscripts
5 , considers, for example, that the writing of the work De la nature... took place "in the first six months of the
Convention , between September 1792 and April 1793”.
I do not share this opinion. For me, this manuscript certainly predates the Convention and
no doubt even in the drafting of the Spirit of the Revolution.
To support his assertion, Mr. Soboul shows the similarity between two paragraphs of the manuscript and two
passages of the speech of Saint-Just on the Constitution, of April 24, 1793. But Mr. Soboul does not seem to
have noticed another place in these two texts. , where the analogy is accompanied by quite revealing differences.
In De la nature... (first part, chap. IV), Saint-Just writes: Men did not spontaneously abandon the social state.
The savage life arrived at length and by imperceptible alteration. If men suddenly united to preserve themselves,
how had they preserved themselves until they united ?
And, in the speech of May 30, we read: Men did not spontaneously abandon the state
social: it was by a long alteration that they arrived at that savage politeness of the invention of tyrants.
As we can see, the second version is much better than the first, clearer, more
precise, firmer.
A little further on, we read in De la Nature...: The ancient Franks, the ancient Germans, very close to us, had
no magistrate, the people were prince and sovereign. But when the peoples lost the taste for assemblies to
negotiate, to cultivate the land or to conquer, the prince separated from the sovereign. Here ends social life and
begins political life, or the Convention.
In the speech, it becomes: The
ancient Franks, the ancient Germans, had almost no magistrates: the people were prince and sovereign; but
when the peoples lost the taste for assemblies to negotiate or conquer, the prince separated himself from the
sovereign, and became one himself by usurpation. Here begins the political life . The state of the citizens was
then no longer discerned; it was no longer a question of anything but the state of the master.
It is no doubt not by chance that, in the first texts, Saint-Just refrained from speaking of tyrants, of
usurpation for the prince: he had to spare the established regime. If he constantly qualified the social
contract as a convention, it was because the assembly of the same name did not yet exist, and no
confusion could creep into the reader's mind.
Moreover, the table of contents and the sketched pages show that this book was conceived and
undertaken before the abolition of royalty. The plan written by Saint-Just indicates that the “fourth book”
was to be entitled “du Roi” and include the following chapters: 1. What the King is. – 2. That the King is
not a force. – 3. That the King is not a will. – 4. Of the nature of the King, etc.
If the revolution had been started, we would have found in these pages the concern to bind ourselves
to the historical movement. However, they do not contain any allusion to current events. They express a
strong anarchist, free-thinking state of mind. Wanting to reassure his readers, he tells them in his
introduction that he is "not more austere than is appropriate". For marriages, he rejects polygamy, but
comes out in favor of equality of the sexes: in his eyes “the severity of marriages is the effect of
corruption” (title of chap. X.). “The Romans, he writes, who were the most corrupt people in the universe
were the greatest promoters of the rigidity of marriages. With rather childish audacity, devoting the
following chapter to incest, he declares: I do not claim to justify incest; it is a crime for those who indulge
in it out of impiety, that is incest, it is a virtue in those who indulge in it out of innocence and is no longer
incest. For Saint-Just, among the Arabs: the horror they have for incest proves that they are as corrupt
as we are. And after having invoked the customs of the Indies, the story of Phèdre, he concludes: Attila
leaving a country peopled by customs and marrying his daughter, that seems to me more estimable than
Henry IV leaving his god for his fortune, despising his woman, not marrying her friend. Then comes the
chapter on adultery: The Romans lent their wives and punished adultery, Cato lent his to Hortensius,
nothing in there is contrary to nature.
Whoever writes this remains on the Voltairean path of Organt; only he read Hobbes. Not only does he
adopt the lively anticlericalism of the moment, but he discards the metaphysical perspective that will be
his for the Spirit of the Revolution, as on the eve of 9 Thermidor.
He interprets the same facts in an inverse manner. Thus, in the Spirit..., we find: God gave bad laws
to the Hebrews; these laws were relative and were inviolable only as long as the Jews were evil; they
became good compared to ingrates... any way that leads to order is pure. On the other hand, in De la
nature..., we read: The worst legislators of all have been the prophets. (...)
Moses makes the fable of the demons and the fable of Eden, to terrify his people by the punishment of
disobedience, so this denatured people never recovered from their fanaticism. Moses had taken care to
eternalize it by maxims of obedience under the yoke and by the hope of a liberator, a terrible idea which
seems to eternalize with lies the oblivion of human nature. If this last passage had been written after the
publication of the Spirit of the Revolution, would not its author, so attentive to his old papers, have taken
care to indicate that he had changed his opinion a little on this subject ?
Moreover, the same small bound notebook contains, in its last pages, another draft, very short, of the
same essay De la nature... But this one differs from the preceding one by its deistic character. Chapter I ,
instead of ending with an assurance of non-austerity, ends with a prayer: “O Supreme Being, receive into
your bosom an ingenuous soul who comes to you and rises to you. »
Better still, Chapter II is no longer devoted to “social life” but to the “principle of divinity”.
We can therefore consider that this second version, subsequent to the first, was written when the Abbé
Fauchet spoke in this sense to the Cercle social and that the Abbé de Borde asked for the inclusion, in the
Declaration of the Rights of the Man, of an “invocation to the Supreme Being”. Between the two versions,
as between Organt and De l'Esprit, the affiliation to Freemasonry that we have studied, may have contributed
to changing the attitude and opinion of the young Saint-Just.
Moreover, he will remain strongly attached to the central idea of this essay: the distinction between the
social and the political: the social state being "the relationship of men to each other" and the political state
"the relationship of peoples ". Not only will the formula and the theme return in the speech on the Constitution
in 1793, but it will be the mother idea of the institutions.
On the other hand, as Mr. Soboul has noted, in the collection Fragments sur les institutions we find
passages which overlap with the chapter on society. This will be a revised and completed essay. Thus, in
De la nature..., we read: Everything that breathes is independent of its species and lives in society in its
species, everything that breathes has a political or conservation law between what is not its society. or what
is not its species.
In the Fragments..., it becomes: Everything that breathes under natural law is independent of its species
and lives in society in its species. Everything that breathes under a political law, or a law of force, is at war
against what is not its society, or what is not of its species.
Between the two texts, the war intervened and left its mark. But the title of both manuscripts reads:
“Chapter II. - Of the society. It is therefore that – for quite a long time – Saint-Just will keep the intention of
resuming the unfinished work.
But there is more curious. We find, not in form but in substance, the central theme of the last chapter of
the first draft of De la nature..., in a few pages borrowed, it is said, from the little notebook that Saint-Just
carried with him, 9 Thermidor.
In the first, we read: The maximum of the territorial possession would be determined for the interest of
the population; the surplus of this maximum would be exchanged against the sign, one could not refuse to
sell to that which would be presented to acquire it, so that each individual could be owner and had a fatherland.
(...) The possession of his field being a property of the city, the minimum of the possession could not be
sold either by the creditor or by the possessor, the unfortunate debts would be paid by the city. As for
depraved debts, they would be paid with the fruits of the field or if they exceeded its value, the creditor
would be punished.
On the small blue sheets of the notebook, we read: I have said elsewhere that the principle of social life
was property because without it we had no more homeland than the vessels which run the counters of
the universe; I said that it was not necessary to divide the fields, but to determine the maximum and
the minimum of property so that there are grounds for everyone and that the members of the sovereign
freed by an illusion were not slaves of the first needs.
There again, no reference to current affairs – except to fear that the quantity of paper money, as it
increases, loses half of its value (he speaks in the future tense). Not only does the text predate the
speech of November 20, 1792 on subsistence, but, on property, its ignorance of the sale of national
property encourages us to consider it prior. Finally, these pages of the notebook bear the title “Of the
corruption of laws”, in place of a first title crossed out: “Of nature. We can therefore think that Saint-Just
was tracing in his notebook a new version of a chapter of his work. At the Convention, Saint-Just will
not take up this idea of minimum and maximum for property.
In the notes published at the top of the Fragments et donnes, also as taken from a diary that Saint-Just
carried with him on 9 Thermidor (but this manuscript has not been found), we read: Do not admit the
sharing of properties, but the sharing of rents.
This conservation of old papers has distorted the ideas of historians, especially with the publication
of Fragments sur les institutions. Because we have seen here too much an expression of Saint-Just's
last ideas, when they were scattered notes, written on very different dates. Careful examination and
comparison of these little scraps of paper invites us to revise established opinion. Thus, in the
Fragments..., we read on education:
“Children belong to their mother until they are five years old, if she has fed them, and then to the
Republic until death. And follows, for children, the spartan and frugal diet that we know. But in a note,
recently found in the National Archives 6 , Saint-Just writes:To consider that education must above all
be done by the father... Education must be in the masses, it is something other than instruction. ..
Principle : children are brought up by their father and their mother. Orphans are brought up by their
uncle or their... (illegible). The father should not hit his son. The back of this note indicates that it was
written during the Alsatian campaign, in the last months of 1793. We will say: but Saint-Just will remain
in power for more than six months, nothing proves that this paternalism is later than . Nothing, except
7
the statism of the the rather childish side of Spartan projects and above all a note
Fragments... significant – if a bit ridiculous – found in file Fr. (na) 24136 of the National Library, note
certainly written shortly before 9 Thermidor: Je n'aime ... (?) than the rapture of my happiness by
sacrificing myself for the homeland and I no longer have before my eyes but the road which separates
me from my dead father and the steps of the Pantheon.
Psychoanalysts will see there a healing of the Oedipus complex (especially when comparing with
the pages on incest). We can simply see the effect of maturity...
III
THE VALUE OF SECRET INFORMATION

OF D'ANTRAIGUES AND DRAKE.
The clandestine bulletins transmitted to London during the Convention, by the intelligence agent William Drake,
giving a fairly large place to Saint-Just, I was led, like others before me, to try to verify the information and find the
source.
Published for the first time in London in 1894 by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, these bulletins elicited a
wide variety of comments. If an Aulard condemned them with contempt, on the other hand, a Mathiez first proved, in
1914, the accuracy of certain reported facts. Then, with good reason, he saw that the information came in particular
from letters from a network of secret agents established in Paris by the Comte d'Antraigues, who, in Venice, wrote the
bulletins. At least some of these letters written in sympathetic ink can be found today in the Archives of the Quai
d'Orsay, in the Antraigues files transmitted by Louis XVIII.
After being the first to examine these letters, Albert Mathiez drew a somewhat hasty conclusion. For him, the very
interest of these missives turned against the bulletins of Antraigues.
"If the bulletins have no value, he wrote, it is not the same, as we have seen, of the letters of the informant 8
. " For what ? Because the letters deciphered by him contained fewer anecdotes than the bulletins.
But this assessment did not constitute proof. One cannot, like Mathiez, consider the information provided in the
definitive bulletins and not taken from the letters of informers, as systematically attributable to the imagination of
d'Antraigues. On the one hand, Mathiez did not decipher all the letters in question and, on the other hand, for a certain
number, the sympathetic ink has faded too much to remain legible.
Undoubtedly, it goes for these agents of information as for those of all the times: they sometimes bluff to answer
the questions which their customers put to them. That of d'Antraigues was quite important.
In his study of the letters from the Quai d'Orsay, Albert Mathiez notes as one of the rare extravagances, that
contained in the missive, dated July 11, where we read: "The most important news of the moment is that the Committee
of Public Safety has just been renewed. Marat and Robespierre are chosen to be the leaders. But Mathiez did not
notice that the same error is found in the bulletin addressed to the Duke of Alcudia and seized in Toulon 9 . In the
latter, we can read: “However, on the 11th, we heard the news of the abolition of the committee of public safety and its
renewal; nine of the principal Maratist chiefs entered it; Marat is the president and Robespierre the secretary. The date
referred to shows that the source is the same. found in the Spanish Archives in Madrid a letter, also from Venice, which
paints a portrait of Louis XVII very similar to that given in Bulletin No. 12 of Drake.
On the other hand, Mr. Louis Hastier 10
This confrontation also indicates that, if d'Antraigues sold various bulletins containing the same news to several
States, he took care to indicate the date of the letter which had provided him
information: perhaps, in order to be able to show, if necessary, to one of his clients – Drake, for
example – that he had precise references. One cannot therefore systematically oppose letters to
bulletins.
Moreover, as Mathiez showed, another of these bulletins was to come back under the eyes of the
Committee, transmitted by Hénin, representative of France in Turkey, who had received it from the
Spanish ambassador in Venice, Las Casas . The latter had communicated it to Hénin, who was his
friend, because it related a meeting of the Committee where he had been violently criticized. Again,
we find the same text in a secret dispatch from Drake. Held as evidence against Hérault de Séchelles,
the said bulletin had to contain a good deal of truth to worry the Committee so strongly and lead it to
condemn one of its members.
As for the members of this network of d'Antraigues, in the book he devoted to their leader, Léonce
Pingaud gave the names: Despomelles, Lemaître, Abbé Brottier, Duverne de Presle, Villeheurnois,
Puisaye. But Mathiez is mistaken when he affirms that all the letters preserved in the Archives of the
Quai d'Orsay are from the same agent. In truth, they appear, after a patient examination, dictated or
written, in their majority, by the Abbé Brottier, indicated under the sign 99. And if one refers to the
memoirs of Puisaye, many must have been written by Mme de Rivière who served as volunteer
secretary. I have not yet succeeded in identifying the authors of the other letters, but I have been able
to unmask two pseudonyms which Mathiez believed to be true names: that of Le Traisne, which is
much talked about, hides the strange Lemaître, and that of Thibault covers Despomelles who will still
play a big role under the Management Board.
The first of these identifications was disappointing, because the letters preserved at the Quai
d'Orsay often spoke of Le Traisne as employed by the Committee, while after research, in particular
11,
at the Archives of the police prefecture, the committee he appears only as an informant of the
of general safety in prisons.
If all came out of the Terror alive, the affair would end badly for Abbé Brottier and for Lemaître
under the Directory. I will try to retrace, in another book, the history of this curious and dark enterprise.
Let us note right away that certain letters preserved in the Archives of the Quai d'Orsay show that
Brottier and Lemaître were linked with Tallien and perhaps other known Convention members.
Let us also retain two particular points: one concerning Sieyès, the other the false report of Saint
Just.
For the first, during the publication of the Drake documents, we cried out at the implausibility. And
since then, the question has hardly been examined. However, it has been noticed that the Count of
Provence, in a letter to Madame de Balbi, held Sieyès responsible for the execution of Madame Élisabeth.
He declared himself categorically: "I could not believe this abominable murder... I was mistaken, I
12. " Gold,
misjudged the tiger soul of Abbé Sieyès, who now heads the Committee of Public Safety .
where we speak of the fate of Madame Élisabeth hardly insists on this.
above. He announces that "Robespierre, Abbé Sieyès, Bourdon 14 and Barère are the leaders of the
Committee of Public Safety". But what we read about Madame Elisabeth's fate attests to the value of
some of this information. Indeed, it is announced that “Robespierre will succumb because he is
moderate... He disapproves of the bloody prosecutions against Madame Élisabeth”.
However, Robespierre did not publicly express his opinion in this regard. However, the accuracy of
the fact can be verified in the recollections of a royalist writer who recounts that, on the day of Madame
Élisabeth's execution, that is to say on May 20, 1794, Robespierre had said to the bookseller Maret: “I
guarantee you that I wanted to save her, it was Collot d'Herbois who snatched her from me. If
d'Antraigues' agents knew Robespierre's opinion before he expressed it outside the Committee, it was
because they had good sources of information.
But let us return to Sieyes. In his Memoirs 15 , Conventional Thibaudeau reproduces a letter found
in the offices of the Committee of Public Safety, the day after 9 Thermidor. It was a letter from an agent
of Drake and Antraigues, since it is found addressed to Count Elgin in The Manuscripts of Fortescue, t.
II, p. 616. However, the correspondent notes that, the day after 9 Thermidor, “a single principal chief,
who shows little, but who is very powerful in the Committee of Public Safety, has capacity”. And
Thibaudeau writes in a note: “It is probable that it was the Abbé Sieyès. »
Let us not forget that the belief in the close relationship between Robespierre and Sieyes was so
firmly established among parliamentarians that, after 9 Thermidor, Sieyes had to ardently deny having
been one of the "makers" of Robespierre. Didn't he go so far as to claim, in a private notice, that the
16 »,
latter had never spoken to him. This is “difficult to believe even for those, like Mr. Paul Bastid, who
admit the absence of collaboration.
As for Barère, in his Memoirs, doubtless embarrassed by the existence of Sieyès and, perhaps in
order not to alienate the still powerful man, he avoids the difficulty by putting in the mouth of Robespierre
what he should to think himself: “The Abbé Sieyès does not appear; but he does not cease to act in the
underground chambers of the assemblies: he directs and confuses everything; it lifts the earth and
disappears; he creates factions, sets them in motion, pushes them against each other and stands aside
to take advantage of them later if the circumstances suit him. »
This judgment – in which Sieyès is treated as a “mole” – expresses well the action of the abbot as
reported in the bulletins and the letters of d'Antraigues; also one wonders why Robespierre would have
pronounced it if the other had really remained in retirement and inactive. Moreover, to combine a
parliamentary majority against Robespierre, on 9 Thermidor, several approaches to the moderates and
to Sieyès were necessary. If the latter had been so hostile to Robespierre and spotted, even threatened
as such by the latter, he would not have hesitated.
*
Finally, let us recall the story of Saint-Just's disputed report on France's representatives abroad.
It was the German academician Henrich von Sybel who, in order to oppose an embarrassing argument to the
academician Albert Sorel, exhibited this presentation held by him in a printed form. The value of the document
was not then questioned. M. Charles Vellay even included it in his collection of the Complete Works of Saint-
Just, indicating that the manuscript belonged to a certain M. Jéramec-Raphaël.
But no one was able to see the autograph. Then it was discovered that the report came from one of Drake's
newsletters. Then referring to different letters, Léonce Pingaud and Albert Mathiez estimated that it was a forgery
made by d'Antraigues, and used for anti-republican purposes by foreign countries.
I believe this conclusion is too absolute, because everything suggests that, if the text is not by Saint-Just, on
the other hand the subject addressed, the judgments made are attributable to the young member of the
The very manner in which the intervention is reported by Drake's bulletins deserves examination.
The commentators stopped at the one who transmits the text, on March 28. For Mathiez, it is “the first time that
the alleged Saint-Just report has been discussed”. However, a closer examination shows that this is not the first
but the third newsletter where we talk about it.
On the other hand, to demonstrate the falsity of Saint-Just's statement, Mathiez quoted the letters of the
French people targeted and of a few Europeans who declared that they had no doubts about it. But he forgot
that this was already Hénin's position, when he sent back to the Committee the one that Las Casas had
17.
transmitted to him: "I do not claim to give credence to such an indictment, he wrote, and I am not point dupe »
However, he was wrong.
Finally, when Mathiez considers that the economic policy here defended by Saint-Just contradicts that which
he had exposed in his speech of October 16, we cannot follow him. For the historian, it is a Saint-Just “changing
his mind” who can recommend an export reduced to luxury or surplus products. Now, let us recall that, on
December 16, Saint-Just said: “There are no more exchanges; it is better to do without luxuries than virtue. And,
to justify these exchanges: "It will be necessary for your Committee of Commerce to examine whether all the
foodstuffs of prime necessity produced by the soil of the Republic are in proportion to the needs of the people." »
Everything therefore suggests that this report, false in form, was true in substance.
In drafting it, d'Antraigues had been able to rely on exact information.
1. Arch. nat., F7 4551 1.

2. At the Arches. nat., F17 4620.
3. An. hist. of the Rev. fr., 1951.

4. Fr. (na) 12947, 24136 and 24158.
5. See An. hist. of the Rev. fr., 1948, no . 3, p. 193, and 1951, no . 4, p. 321.
6. Arch. nat., F7 4436, pl. 4, fol. 132.

7. Note however that if the published text of the Fragments... advocates only schools "in each section, in each canton" for children from ten to sixteen
years of age, the handwritten note (Fr. (na) 24136) indicates that they are "primary schools".
These having been decreed by the Convention in December 1792, one can think that it was written during the first months of 1793. 8. Robespierrist study.
T. II: The
Foreign Conspiracy.
9. Attachment to the Courtois Report.
10. The Double Death of Louis XVII, Paris, 1951, p. 18.
11. Arch. pref. de police,

12. From May 30, 1794, in Verona
13. Bulletin no. 4 (November 25, 29, 30, 1793).
14. Who, he, is quoted there by mistake.

15. See A.-C. THIBAUDEAU, Memoirs on the Convention and the Directory, Paris, 1824, p. 96-103.
16. P. BASTID, Sieyès and his thought, Paris, 1939.
17. Arch. nat., W 432.
SOURCES
ARCHIVE PIECES
National Archives: AFII 85-122, 131-135, 143, 229-235, 47-48, 404.

W 434 (do. 975).
C 178 (no. 2), 277 (do. 734).
C* 112 (fol. 6).
F4435.
F7 4432, 4433, 4435 (pl 3), 4436A (pl. 13), 4443 (nos 32 and 35), 477479.
AA 50 (no. 1441).
BBe 30.
AD XVIII A 62.
D* XLII.
Aisne Archives: Blérancourt cat. E 825, 833, 668.
Quai d'Orsay archives: France 321, 322, 324, 342, 593, 611, 613, 617, 623, 628, 629, 631,
632, 634, 636, 638, 641, 643.
Police Department :
'
Manuscripts from the National Library; Fr. (na) 312, 12.947, 24.136.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The books are arranged according to the flow of the book. But of course, those which concern different chapters are
indicated only once. I thought it pointless to list the great comprehensive works known to everyone – from Lamartine or
Michelet to Jaurès or Gaxotte – on the revolution or the newspapers. In both cases, important references are indicated
by footnotes.
page.
It would take too long to draw up a complete list of the publications consulted. The books listed here are for their
documentary value or to show that no opinion current today has been discarded a priori.
FIRST PART : IN SEARCH OF A PURPOSE.
Minutes of the meetings of the administration of the Aisne (Laon, 1791).
O. BOUTANQUOI. – Conventional Saint-Just and his family (Compiègne, 1927).

JEAN HANOTEAU. – The Nivernais Ancestry of Saint-Just Nevers, 1935).
Archaeological Bulletin of Soissons, t. XV (1860), and 2nd series, t. VII (1876).

A. PATOUX. – Saint-Just and Mme Thorin (Saint-Quentin, 1878).
R. HENNEQUIN. – The formation of the department of Aisne in 1790 (Soissons, 1911).

HENRY MARTIN. – History of Soissons (1837).
SUIN. – History of Blérancourt (Soissons, 1853).
A. DEMASURES. – History of the Revolution in the Aisne (1869).
Ed. FLEURY. – A club in Chauny. History of the nobility of the department of Aisne (nd).
CHARLES VELLAY. – Unpublished letters from Saint-Just (Historical Review, 1911).
– Bibliography of Saint-Just (Historical Review, 1910).
– The First Political Letters of Saint-Just (Revue de Paris, 1906).

– A friend of Saint-Just: Gateau (An. Rév., 1908).
– The lawsuits against “ Organt ” (Revue Bleue, 1907).

– Saint-Just in 1790 (Revue historique de la Rév. fr., 1911).
– Harlequin Diogenes (Blue Review, 1907).

GUSTAVE LAURENT. – Champagne revolutionary figures (1st series). – Étienne
Lambert, friend of Saint-Just (An. Rév., 1923).
– The Faculty of Law of Reims (An. hist. of the Rev. fr., 1929).
G. LENOTRE. – Old Houses, old Papers (1st series).
Mr. DOMMANGET. – Saint-Just, purchaser of national property (An. hist. de la Rév. fr., 1927).
AMEDEE VIALAY. – The Sale of National Assets (1908).
Count HERLAUT. – Villain d'Aubigny (An. hist. of the French Rev., 1934).
VILLAIN D'AUBIGNY. – Supporting memorandum (sd).
– Explanatory statement (sd).
– Address to all members of the Societies of Friends of the Constitution affiliated with that of Paris (1791).
– A. Philippeaux, deputy of the National Convention year (II).
Report on d'Aubigny to Robespierre.
A.MATTON . – Note on the archives of the Aisne.
A. MATHIEZ. – The Club des Cordeliers during the Varennes crisis (1910).
CHARLES BERNARDIN. – Summary of the Grand Orient (1909).
LIMOUSINE. – Summary of the history of French Masonry.

GASTON MARTIN. – Freemasonry and the Revolution.
A. LANTOINE. – Scottish Freemasonry and the Revolution (1930).
EJ and V. DESIRIEUX. – Occultist and Masonic Bibliography (1930).

P. VUILLIAUD. – Joseph de Maistre Freemason.
E. DERMENGHEM. – Joseph de Maistre mystic (1946).
E. DESORMES and A. BASILE. – Methodical Polylexicon (1897).
VAN RIJNBERK. – A thaumaturge in the 18th century .
J. BOURDIN. – People's Societies.
R. DUFAY. – Popular Societies and the Army (1913).
POUGET SAINT-ANDRE. – The Hidden Authors of the Revolution (1923).
C. JEANNET and D'ESTAMPES. – Freemasonry and the Revolution

(1884).
A. DE LUCHET. – Essay on the sect of the Illuminati (1789).
Gaston Michon. – The Society of Thirty.
BENJAMIN FABRE. – An initiate of the higher secret societies (1753-1814) Franciscus, eques a capite
galeato (1913).
THE COST OF CANTELEU. – Sects and secret societies
(Paris, 1863).
KLOSS. – History of Freemasonry in France (1846).
Father BARUEL. – Memoirs to serve the history of Jacobinism (Hamburg,

1803).
ROBERT AMADOU. – Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Martinism
(1946).
LOUIS-CLAUDE OF SAINT-MARTIN. – The Man of Desire (Lyon, 1790).

– Ecce Homo (1792).
– Letter to a friend on the Revolution (1796).
– Natural picture of the relationships that exist between God, man and the universe (1782).
FRIENDLY LOUIS . – Freemasonry in the 18th century .
E. LESUEUR. – Freemasonry in Artois.
ROGER PRIOURET. – Freemasonry under the lilies (preface by

Pierre Gaxotte, Paris, 1953).
SEBASTIEN MERCIER. – Paris during the Revolution or New Paris (1862).
Viscount DE GROUCHY and A. GUILLOIS. – The French Revolution told by a foreign diplomat (correspondence of the Bailli de
Virieu, Minister Plenipotentiary of Parma).
Collection of supporting documents of the commission of Twenty-one.
Collection of documents from the commission of twelve.
L. DE CARDENAL. – The Province during the Revolution (1929).
PHILIPPE ARIES. – History of the French populations and their attitudes towards life since the 18th century
century (1948).
CONDORCET. – Chart of the progress of the human spirit.

Boissy d'Anglas. – Notebook.
O.FESTY . – Agriculture during the French Revolution (Paris, 1947).

A. MATHIEZ. – The Expensive Life and the social movement under the Terror (1930).
– Girondins and Mountaineers (1930).
G. LEFEBVRE. – Agrarian questions in the time of the Terror (Paris, 1912).
DANIEL GUERIN. – The Class Struggle under the First Republic (Bourgeois and “bare arms”) (1946).
ALFRED COLLING. – The Prodigious History of the Stock Exchange (1949).
MARCEL- MARION. – Financial history of France since 1715 (1914-1931).
PAUL HAZARD. – European Thought in the 18th century ( from Montesquieu to Lessing, 1946).
CHARLES DE GAULLE. – France and its army.
BONNAL DE GANGES. – Representatives of the people on mission to the armies (4 vol., 1898).
HENRY WALLON. – Representatives of the people on mission, t. IV (1890).
Captain J. COLIN. – The Campaign of 1793 in Alsace and the Palatinate (1902).
STEFANE POL. – The Conventional Le Bas (1900).
L. HANNEQUIN. – Military justice and discipline in the Army of the Rhine.
VITROLS. – Memoirs (text established by Eugènes Fogueres, annotated by Pierre Féral, Paris, 1950).
A. CHUQUET. – The Revolutionary Wars.
– Hoche and the struggle for Alsace (1893).
R. JAQUEL. – Euloge Schneider in Alsace (An. hist. of the French Rev., 1931-1933).
MARC-ANDRE FABRE. – Hoche, the child of victory (1947).
NODIER. – Memories of the Revolution and the Empire.
PIERRE DUCLOS. – The Evolution of Political Relations since 1750 (Paris, 1950).
JACQUES GODECHOT. – The Institutions of France under the Revolution and the Empire (1951).
AUGUSTIN COCHIN. – The Revolution and Free Thought (1924).
JEAN-JACQUES CHEVALIER. – The Great Political Works (1949).
ALBERT MATHIEZ. – The Constitution of 1793 (Girondins and Montagnards, 1930).

B. DE JOUVENEL. – Of power (natural history of its growth, 1945).

DESLANDRE. – Constitutional history.
URANELT DE LEUZE (LAURENT OF ARDECHE). – Refutation of the “History of France ” by the Abbé de
Montgaillard.
Abbe MONTGAILLARD. – History of France, t. IV.
OF
GASTON DODU. – Parliamentarianism and parliamentarians under the Revolution (1911).

CHAUMETTE. – Memoirs on the Revolution of August 10 (with introduction by Aulard, 1893).
Barbaroux. – Memoirs (critical edition by Alfred Chabaud, 1936).

ROEDER. – Chronicle of fifty days.
Miss Rolland. – Memoirs (critical edition by Claude Perroud, 1905).
– Letters (with introduction and notes by CA Dauban, 1867).
C. DESMOULINS. – History of the Brissotins (1793).
– Le Vieux Cordelier (critical edition by Henri Calvet, 1936).

DURAND DE MAILLANE. – Memoirs (with historical fragment by Lanjuinais).
CHOUDIEU. – Memoirs and notes (1897).
Marquis DE FERRIERES. – Memoirs (1822).

LOUVET DE COUVRAY. – Memoirs (1823).
THIBAUDEAU. – Memoirs (1824).
GARAT. – Memoirs (nd).
ROBESPIERRE. – Letters to his constituents.
MONTJOY. – History of the conspiracy of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans (Paris, 1834).

Correspondence of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans (1800).
Memoirs of Sénar (Paris, 1824).
(RICHER SERISY ?). – The School of rebels of the peoples or the conspiracies of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans and
Robespierre (1800).
ANDRE CASTELOT. – Philippe-Égalité, the red prince (Paris, 1950).
– Marie Antoinette (Paris, 1953).
GEORGES LENOTRE. – The Captivity and Death of Marie-Antoinette (Paris, 1910).

– The True Knight of Maison-Rouge.
GERARD WALTER. – The Massacres of September 2 (preface by Louis Barthou, Paris, 1932).
– History of the Terror (Paris, 1936).
– History of the Jacobins (Paris, 1946).
– The French Revolution seen by its newspapers (Paris, 1948).

– Robespierre (1945).
– Marie Antoinette (1948).
VILLENEUVE. – Anarchy and the Committee of Public Safety in 1793 (Paris, 1885).
A. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC. – The History of the Girondins and the September massacres (Paris, 1866).
(L. PRUDHOMME). – General and impartial history of errors, faults and crimes committed during
the French Revolution (Paris, 1797).
ALBERT MATHIEZ. – Around Danton (Paris, 1926).
– Danton and peace (Paris, 1919).

Trial of the Girondins (BUCHEZ and Roux, Parliamentary History, t. XXVI, XXVII and XXVIII).
CHARLES VATEL. – Charlotte Corday and the Girondins (1864-1872).
MORTIMER-TERNALS. – History of the Terror (1863-1869).
SECOND PART : THE PLOTS, THE COMMITTEE, DEATH.
H. CALVET. – An instrument of Terror in Paris: the surveillance committee of the Paris department
(Paris, 1941).
ALBERT MATHIEZ. – Parliamentary Corruption under the Terror (Paris, 1927).

– The Foreign Conspiracy (Paris, 1918).
– Robespierre terrorist (1921).
– Around Robespierre (Paris, 1925).
– The Victory of Year II (Paris, 1916).
– The East India Company affair.

DEFORGED. – To his fellow citizens (30 Thermidor Year III).
FREDERIC MASSON. – The Department of Foreign Affairs during the Revolution.
LEONCE PINGAUD. – A secret agent under the Revolution and the Empire: the Count of Antraigues (1894).
EMIL DARD. – General Choderlos de Laclos (1920).
– Hérault de Séchelles (1907).
MEHEE-LATOUCHE. – Alliance of the Jacobins of France with the English ministry, followed by the stratagems of
Fr... Drake (Paris, germinal year XII).
A. LEBON. – England and emigration.
The Scourge of Tyrants or Reflections on the French Revolution (Lausanne, 1797).
Collection of correspondence seized from Lemaître (brumaire year IV).
COUNT OF PUISAYE. – Memoirs, t. IV, V and VI (London).
Father BROTTIER. – Presentation to the war council of the 17th military division (Paris, 12 germinal year V).
Petition for P.-J. Lemaître (nd).
Lemaître, prisoner at the Conciergerie: Address to the 48 sections (1793).
The Manuscripts of JB Fortescue esq. presv. Dropmore (London, 1894).
PIERRE CARON. – Paris during the Terror. Reports by secret agents of the Minister of the Interior, t. I, II, III and IV
(Paris, 1910-1949).
Trial of the conspirators Hébert, Ronsin, Vincent and accomplices (4 germinal year II).
Trial heard and judged at the Revolutionary Court against Hébert and others (year II).
GERARD WALTER. – Hébert (Paris, 1945).
CHAUMETTE. – Papers (with introduction and notes by F. Bruesch, 1908).

GEORGE COUTHON. – Correspondence (1791-1794) (preface by Francisque Mège, Paris, 1872).
A. AULARD. – The American Debt to France (Revue de Paris, 1925).
HENRY WALLON. – The Revolutionary Court (1900). Emile
Campardon. – The Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris (1866).
A. DUNOYER. – Two jurors of the revolutionary tribunal (Vilate and Trinchar) (Paris, 1909).
GEORGES LENOTRE. – The Revolutionary Tribunal.
OF PROUSSINABLE (SA ROUSSEL). – Secret History of the Revolutionary Tribunal (1815).
FRANCOIS DESCOTE. – The French Revolution seen from abroad: Mallet du Pan in Bern and London
(Tours, 1897).
MALLET DU PAN. – Unpublished correspondence with the Emperor of Austria (Paris, 1884).
BARON DE BATZ. – The Life and Conspiracies of Jean, Baron de Batz (1745-1793).
– The Conspiracies and the end of Jean, Baron de Batz (1793-1822).
GEORGES LENOTRE. – A royalist conspirator during the Terror: Baron de Batz (1896).
CLEMENT DE LACROIX. – Memories of the Comte de Montgaillard, agent of secret diplomacy (1895).
PAUL BASTID. – Sieyès and his thought (1939).
HERMAN WENDEL. – Danton (preface by Pierre Caron, 1932).
ANTOINE HADENGUE. – The Red Guards of Year II (preface by Louis Madelin, 1930).
LOUIS JACOB. – Robespierre seen by his contemporaries (1938).
– Fabre d'Églantine, leader of the rascals (1944).
– The Suspects during the Revolution (1952).
A.-E.-C. OF SAINT-ALBIN. – Documents relating to the Revolution.
PH. CHASLES. – Memoirs (Paris, 1876).
LEFEVRE. – The Rivalry of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security (Historical Review,
July-August 1933).
Le Procès Pâche (excerpts from the file) (with introduction and notes by Adrien Sée, Paris, 1911).
LOUIS HASTIER. – The Double Death of Louis XVII (Paris, 1951).
G. CAUDILLIER. – The Treason of Pichegru and the royalist intrigues in the East before Fructidor (Paris,
1908).
GEORGES LENOTRE. – King Louis XVII or the enigma of the Temple (Paris, 1920).
MAURICE BOY. – Louis XVII or the false enigma (Paris, 1952).
PAUL-SAINT-CLAIRE DEVILLE. – In Search of Louis XVII (Paris, 1946).
– The Commune of Year II (Paris, 1946).
SCHMIDT. – Paris during the Revolution (4 vol., Paris, 1880-1894).

ERNEST MELLIE. – The Sections of Paris during the Revolution (1876).
J.-F.-E. CHARDAILLOT. – Notes by Topino-Lebrun (Paris, 1875).
THAT. DUABIN. – Demagogy in 1793 in Paris or History, day by day, of the year 1793,
accompanied by rare or unpublished documents (Paris, 1868).
THAT. DAUBIN. – Paris in 1794 and 1795..., according to unpublished documents, particularly police reports (Paris, 1869).
J. WILLIAM. – The staff of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security (Revolution
French, 1900).
Lieutenant-Colonel HENRI CARRE. – The Grand Carnot (Paris, 1947).
MARCEL REINHARD. – Carnot, t. II (Paris, 1952).

H. CARNOT. – Memoirs on Carnot.
Historical and military memoirs on Carnot.
Unpublished documents for the centenary of the death of Carnot (La Sabretache, 1923).
CARNOT. – Letters of 10 Thermidor (An. hist. de la Rev. fr., IX, 1932).
– Correspondance (historical and biographical notes by Étienne Charuvay) (4 vol., Paris, 1892-1907).
FOUCHE. – Memoirs (introduction and notes by Louis Madelin, Paris, 1945).
LEVASSEUR. – Memoirs (4 vol., 1829-1831).
BARERE. – Memoirs (4 vol., Paris, 1842).
MARK. A. BAUDOT. – Historical notes.
ROBERT LAUNAY. – Barère de Vieuzac (the Anacreon of the guillotine) (Paris, 1929).
BARRAS. – Memoirs (4 vol., Paris, 1895).
Dictionary of Living Jacobins (Hamburg, 1799).
G. LENOTRE. – Robespierre and the Mother of God (Paris, 1926).
A. SERIEYES. – The Death of Robespierre.
– Historical interviews.
A. TASCHEREAU-FARGUES. – To Maximilian in the Underworld.
J. LEBLANC. – Secret and political lives of Couthon, Saint-Just and Robespierre.
LAMOTHE-LANGON. – The After-dinners of Cambacérès (4 vols., Paris, 1837).

E. LOUDUN. – Saint Just.
H. DE RUFFI. – The Contemporaries: Saint-Just.

FOUCHE. – Memoirs (edit, by Louis Madelin, 1945).
GEORGES IZARD. – Behind the scenes of the Convention (Paris, 1938).
GEORGES LEFEBVRE. – Studies on the French Revolution (Paris, 1954).

LOUIS MADELIN. – The Men of the Revolution (Paris, 1928).
OCTAVE AUBRY. – When France was waiting for Napoleon (Paris, 1952).
ARNAUD DANDIEU. – About the exhibition of the French Revolution (Mercure de France,
February 15, 1928).
VILATE. – Secret causes of the day from 9 to 10 Thermidor Year II or the Mysteries of the Mother of God
unveiled (1825).
THAT. MEDA. – Accurate history of the events that took place on the evening of 9 Thermidor.
DUVAL. – Thermidorian Memories.
GALART DE MONTJOYE. – History of the conspiracy of Maximilien Robespierre (Paris, 1795).
BILLAUD-VARENNE. – Memoir (Historical Review of the French Rev., 1910).
Responses and Memoirs of the Thermidorians (Historical Review of the Rev. Fr., 1898).
LAURENT LECOINTRE. – To the French people (11 Thermidor Year II).
– The Crimes of the seven members of the former Committees of Public Safety (year III).
SALADIN. – Report to the commission of the XXI (12 ventôse year III).
COURTEOUS. – Report made on behalf of the commission responsible for examining the papers found at Robespierre, Saint-
Just.
– Report on the events of 9 Thermidor (year III).
– Ma Catilinaire... or Following my report of 16 Nivôse Year III.
– Notes et souvenirs, published by Dr. Robinet (French Revolution, 1887, t. XII).
– Response to critics of 9 Thermidor (floréal year IV).

LINDET. – Proclamation (year III).
ARMAN MONTIER. – Lindet (Paris, 1898).
D'HERICAULT. – The Thermidor Revolution (Paris, 1876).
A. GODARD. – The Trial of 9 Thermidor (Paris, 1876).
ERNEST HAMEL. – 9 Thermidor (1893).
LOUIS BARTHOU. – 9 Thermidor (1929).
GEORGES MICHON. – 8 and 9 Thermidor at the Jacobins (An. de la Rév. fr., 1924, t. 1).
COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
BUCHEZ and Roux. – Parliamentary history of the French Revolution, t. XIV to t. XXXV (Paris, 1835-
1837).
BACON. – Collection of acts of the Committee of Public Safety, t. IV to XV.
– Collection of documents for the history of the Jacobins club in Paris (6 vols., Paris, 1889-1897).
Monitor (reprinted), t. XIV to t. XXVIII, Barthélémy
Papers, published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1886-1889), t. I to IV.
TUETEY. – General directory of manuscript sources of the history of Paris during the French Revolution
(Paris, 1890-1914).
KUSINSKY. – Conventional Dictionary (1920).

STUDIES AND BOOKS DEDICATED TO SAINT-JUST
A. BEGIS. – Saint-Just and his imprisonment under Louis XVI.

– Saint-Just and the general police offices (1896).
SAINTE-BEUVE. – Monday Talks, t. v.
Complete Works of Saint-Just (introduction and notes by Charles Vellay, Paris, 1908).
Saint-Just theoretician of the Revolution (introduction and notes by Charles Vellay, Monaco, 1946).
Ed. FLEURY. – Saint-Just and the Terror (Paris, 1851).
ERNEST HAMEL. – History of Saint-Just (1859).
MARIE LENERU. – The Life of Saint-Just (preface by Maurice Barrès, Paris, 1922).
EM. ÆGERTER. – The Life of Saint-Just (Paris, 1928).
ALBERT SOBOUL. – Political and social ideas of Saint-Just (1936).

– Republican Institutions according to manuscripts (An. hist. de la Rév., 1948).
– Unpublished notes by Saint-Just (An. hist. de la Rév. 1949).
– An unpublished manuscript by Saint-Just (An. hist., 1951).
IN. CURTIS. – Saint-Just, colleague of Robespierre (1935).
O. CENTORE-BINEAU. – Saint-Just (Paris, 1936).
DROCLES. – Saint-Just, his political and social ideas (1937).

RALPH KORNGOLD. – Saint-Just (fr. ed., 1937).
A. IKOR. – Saint-Just (Paris, 1937).
JEAN GRATIEN. – Works of Saint-Just (Paris, 1946).
JACQUES GAUCHERAN. – Introduction and notes for “ the revolutionary government until peace ”
(1946).
C.-J. GIGNOUX. – Saint-Just (Paris, 1946).
A.CAMUS . – The rebellious man (Paris, 1951).
A. ROUSSEAU. – The heart of Saint-Just (The Classical World, t. III, Paris, 1951).
HENRI CALVET. – Introduction and comments to selected pieces by Saint-Just (Monaco, 1950).
GALLIMARD
5, rue Gaston-Gallimard, 75328 Paris cedex 07

www.gallimard.fr
All reproduction, translation and adaptation rights reserved for all countries.
© Éditions Gallimard, 1954. For the paper edition.

© Éditions Gallimard, 2016. For the digital edition.
FROM THE SAME AUTHOR
THE COMMUNE.
THE EIGHTEEN BRUMAIRE.

Albert Olivier
Saint-Just and the force of things
Before the storming of the Bastille, Saint-Just, a young law student, demonstrates in a long satirical poem, Organt,
“the general analogy of morals with madness”. The Revolution will be for him a questioning not only of the political world,
but of the human condition. His ultimate reason for being, he will deliver it a few days before dying in these famous
sentences: "I despise the dust that composes me... But I defy anyone to tear me away from this independent life that I
gave myself in centuries and under the heavens. »
How did Saint-Just come to this? What paths did he follow, what battles did he fight, to
no longer to find hope except in the hereafter?
Freemasonry at the time seems to have influenced his thinking and served his accession to power.
(But this rigorist was also a sentimentalist: the rupture which put an end to his first love was to inspire him to sketch an
autobiographical novel which is revealed to us here.)
Recently deciphered documents establish the merits of the indictments of the king's accuser,
de Hébert, de Danton, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety.
The divergence noticed by Albert Ollivier between Robespierre and Saint-Just, in the last quarter, sheds new light on
9 Thermidor and destroys the legend of a triumvirate dominating the Committee to the end.
Thus released from the pro or anti-revolutionary images of Épinal, the history of the Terror around
of a young man who believed in his ideas seems even more pathetic.
It is perhaps an exaggeration to say: “There are no great men, there are only great conflicts. »
But it is true that the value of a man lies in his way "of feeling, of expressing a great conflict, and of responding to it".
From the point of view he expresses with these words, Albert Ollivier has highlighted unknown – and fascinating –
aspects not only of the “Archangel of Terror”, but of the revolution itself. He did a work of philosophy at the same time
as a historian.
This electronic edition of the book Saint-Just et la force des choses by Albert Ollivier was produced on August 23, 2016 by Éditions
Gallimard.
It is based on the paper edition of the same work (ISBN: 9782070247899 - Edition number: 26399).
Sodis code: N08484 - ISBN: 9782072084713 - Edition number: 189593
This digital book was originally converted to EPUB format by Isako www.isako.com from the paper edition of the same
work.

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Machine Translated by Google

Machine Translated by Google

“I don't like this extravagant. He wants to bring France a republic

Word attributed to DANTON.

justified than has generally been believed .

are called into question.

1. To avoid confusion, all long or important quotations will be found in italics.

DESCENT INTO HELL

Madness is foolish; yes but she is pretty

Sows everywhere a spirit of vertigo.

Fixed his chariot, and the spirit of madness

Had gained Ministers, Magistrates,

They were mad, but according to their wealth

According to their rank, their power, their nobility

And lamented his petty folly; The

was stupid enough as he pleased: All

Here and there some astrogot spirit Saved

The conquerors, under the impostor names Of

Rather than conquering a social position, it is a question of overcoming a “necessity”, of escaping

He's just the first beast

Master of the world, slave to himself

He digs everything, does not know

... is only a black compound Of

Forty spirits, not evil spirits; But I don't know

Climbed up towards the sad assembly.

Then I had a fit of impetuous wisdom,

Oh ! if ever I had the power I would soon

have avenged antiquity And swept away

the divine Apogee Of Angels,

of Saints in frocks or white or black.

And if there is a divine power, it is:

That God is nothing but wisdom itself And that

without the seal of baptism.

I have lost everything, my supreme dignity,

Which ruled the powers of heaven; But, in

spite of everything, I am still myself Independent of

And yet the reins of the Earth Wandered

without guide and floated haphazardly.

I want to sin, me; nothing prevents me And what

makes you, bluebelly, that I sin?

I want to roast with these famous people

Worthy perhaps, and more than you, of the heavens.

Ah! happiness is only an illusion

... if I have to cry my fault one day, And

So what if life is a dream?

Linde was dying of pleasure and rage

And sometimes forgot his virtue

And in spite of oneself burn and answer him.

The rushing waves of his noisy breath

He was biting her, wanting to fuck her

His awful and furiously tender tongue,

And our Sister, who took him for God,

When the sheep, after this sweet kiss

She understood that was the mystery;

Growing warmer in his heart.

There I see tanned courtesans

Sell people the death that feeds them Playing

Alinde had a magic ring

Returned everything to its natural state

Linde would perhaps have loved the

bourique Her heart experiences a friendly

struggle: But her voice she feared the

brilliance Let's change her head; she touches, she

changes How many kisses given, then confused,