SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22081, 1 May 1937, Page 17

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

The Tragedy of Robespierre

Robespierre, First Modern Dictator. By Ralph Korngrold. Macmillan. 401 pp. (16/- net.) [Reviewed by R. G. C. McNAB.]

Robespierre was a demagogue who was always consistent, honourable, and unselfish. His tragedy was that of the idealist who is quite free from sentimentalism, and who is a realist only at times when his instruments are unreliable. He was neither a Csesar nor a Cromwell. History may find, some resemblances between Ropespierre and Hitler; but Hitler has built on foundations that have been longer tested, and his agents have neither the fears nor the opportunities of revolt that were hold by Robespierre's colleagues of the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre believed fanatically in the doctrines of Rousseau,'he never surrendered a shred of belief, and he died for his "stubborn belief in the inherent goodness, sense of justice, and righteousness of the common people."' The people were to be served by him, all else was dross. Inspired by him, the Jacobins became more and more proletarian, and his enemies more firm in militaristic or oligarchic tendencies. Voice of the People Robespierre's strength lay always with the people, first with the citizens of Arras, then with the Commune of Paris who exalted him as their idol, and then with the common people of France. He showed courage when, as a young deputy, he confronted the mob that had marched on Versailles and stood forth as the champion of democracy. This moment showed his attitude to the people. He looked at the bedraggled woman, at the faces that spoke of privation, and thought that it must go on and on until the living conditions of just such people as these had been greatly improved. When Maillard made his appeal to the Assembly and some of the deputies heckled him, he came to his aid. Incisive, deadly in earnest, he made himself the advocate of the populace. For the first time Pans and Robespierre looked each other eye to eye. Paris would not forget. This mob represented revolution, not because grievances were new, for taxes had been excessive before, times hard and bread scarce; but now grievances had men to speak them aloud and men were ready to propose alternatives. None was more passionate in conviction than Robespierre. But his work should have ended when the Constituent Assembly disbanded. After that event Robespierre was doomed, a theorist in power. His power came from the intensity of his beliefs, an intensity which the common people could feel, from his oratory which moved his hearers partly because it was planned so that every word could tell, partly because of the calm but ringing clearness of his voice. His prestige as voice of the people grew till Committees and Conventions had to bend to the forces summed up in his personality. The Jacobins were his, the Commune was his, and, after he had crushed the Girondins, it seemed that France was his. But Mr Korngold would find it hard to justify his title, "First Modern Dictator." Robespierre had little executive power, enemies frustrated his recommendations, his supremacy was brief, and it left its effect on the minds of posterity rather than on the government of France. The moment soon came when the Commune, so long strong, enough to overawe the Convention, could do so no longer, and Robespierre was dragged down. ■

be a political reformer and become a revolutionist. His persistence was unreasonable and self-destructive. He must go on and drive through every obstacle to maintain his own theories. Only through his conception of the people's will lay safety. It may be, although there is scarcely any evidence to support the theory, that he was convinced that his decisions and his alone must be right. Hitherto he had had the people with him, he had quelled opposition, and, in procuring the recognition of a Supreme Being by the State, the most worshipped idea and fact in that curious ceremony was the personality of Robespierre. From the early days of his power, he had, when necessary, been ruthless. When the Third Estate had been prepared to weaken and ally itself with nobility and clergy, Robespierre had held out for independence. Robespierre had in his most famous speech commended the enactment of a bill to decree the King's death without the process of the law; and now that more blood must be shed, he might be reluctant, but he would go on. Downfall Such a man would not be understood by ordinary associates, nor congenial to them. To the ambitious he was a perpetual obstacle, to the corruptible a perpetual object of fear, and to the merely dull a monster of coldness and severity. Too many men were rebuked by his genius and feared his being. The worst of them destroyed him. By disposition and experience he found it hard to trust men. As early as 1791 he had shown a jealous 'suspicion of his colleagues of the Constituent Assembly and had forced the decision that no deputy who had sat in that assembly should sit in the next. He had crushed the power but' not the lives of the Girondins, because he feared the use of militarism—how rightly, history showed —and because some ol them plotted with the Queen, Gradually the enemies he had raised up combined and at last, though meanly, attacked in the open. Or the Committee of Public Safety there sat with him always sever men of action —there were 12 members in all—who were implacably opposed to him. At first their plots failed. They could attach neither disgrace nor ridicule to their enemy; but they could not be resisted for ever. They were desperate as they realised that France was in fad about to be transformed, that the Revolution was now economic as well as political; and they struck. Robespierre was too tired to resist as he had done before. After five years of strain that affected both mind and body, he had lost some of his power of leadership, and he was never the man for a coup d'etat. The miserable Fouche was the chief agent—Fouche, who had begun- as a village schoolmaster and was to become a duke; Fouche, whc hated Robespierre as a radical and feared that he himself might be carried away by Robespierre's purge. The end was brutal and cruel; but Robespierre kept controJ of his body and his will. The first great attempt in history to rule a, State in the interests oi human beings without care foi rights of property had failed. Bui the verdict on Robespierre had not yet been pronounced. Barere, once a Girondin, then a Robespierrist, deserted his leader on the day before the end. He was imprisoned after the Terror, escaped, served Napoleon, turned Royalist, and was exiled in 1815 as a regicide. He died in bed in 1841. A strange man to sum up the character of Robespierre, but, except for one word, his estimate is true: "Don't forget Robespierre! There was a man without a blemish, noble to the core, a true republican! What caused his downfall was his vanity, his irascibility, his unjustifiable distrust of his colleagues. It was a great misfortune." This long and intricate history has been carefully studied and set out by Mr Korngold. It is hard to imagine a writer more scrupulous in measuring evidence, and making conclusions. His portrait is consistent and his account of the last few crowded months skilful and clear. Where alternative theories have been held, Mr Korngold describes them and gives good reason for the retention of his own beliefs.

The Terror ; • Robespierre, like many men _of one idea, was cold and austere. His childhood was cheerless and even with his sisters he was not on easy terms. His brother Augustin was always loyal and was one of the four men—the others were St. Just, Couthon, and Lebas —who stood by him and accompanied him to the scaffold. But even in early life Robespierre did not attract friends; he devoted himself to the law and was an unwearied, wearying talker, with no thought of personal gain. His human weaknesses, if they are weaknesses, were a fondness for birds and a grave preoccupation with neatness of dress and bearing; but if he was fastidious about hairpowder, he cared nothing for refinements of food and drink and little for female society. Unlike some of his colleagues he was, in these regions as in others, incorruptible. His self-control and reserve were not studied; they were the expression neither of intellectual arrogance nor of his conscious purity. This coldness seems to have arisen from a real timidity ingrained through the memory of his uncherished youth and through the fancied disgrace of his erratic father, who had left his children to the care of relatives. His coldness was certainly not part of the nature of a bloodthirsty man. He had resigned judicial functions lo avoid passing a sentence of death, he often condemned the wanton use of terror, he saved the lives of Girondins, and the intensification of the Terror with which he was charged narrowed the range of executions by confining them to Paris, where he could know all that was taking place. Robespierre's attitude to the Terror is evidence of his consistency. In 1792 he demanded the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal and the summoning of the Convention to deal with those who were acting independently. People's courts must, he thought, do right. Robespierre was not the inventor of the Terror and its methods, but he sustained it by his eloquence as it expressed, he believed, the people's will, and his oratory led the Jacobins and his other followers to believe that they were supporting a virtuous, laudable institution. The Terror, despite its slaughter, has loomed too large in the history of the French Revolution. Carlyle was the first to declare that this revolution had been regarded with such horror because it was directed against the privileged classes and not against "the voiceless millions." Mr Korngold reports that the total executions under the Terror amounted to between 18,000 and 20,000, whereas 17,000 executions followed the Paris Commune. Unofficial figures give double the latter number. Robespierre continued to support the Reign of Terror, believing end" would mean a loss of his own and his followers' to bring about the ideals of Rousseau. Then came the action which has brought infamy upon him, the law of 22nd Prairial, which made the tribunal merely a condemnatory board, admitting no witnesses. By this time Robespierre had ceased to