La Vendee by Anthony Trollope

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Honesty, moral conduct, industry, constancy of purpose, temperance in
power, courage, and love of country: these virtues all belonged to
Robespierre; history confesses it, and to what favoured hero does
history assign a fairer catalogue? Whose name does a brighter galaxy
adorn? With such qualities, such attributes, why was he not the
Washington of France? Why, instead of the Messiah of freedom, which he
believed himself to be, has his name become a bye-word, a reproach, and
an enormity? Because he wanted faith! He believed in nothing but
himself, and the reasoning faculty with which he felt himself to be
endowed. He thought himself perfect in his own human nature, and wishing
to make others perfect as he was, he fell into the lowest abyss of crime
and misery in which a poor human creature ever wallowed. He seems almost
to have been sent into the world to prove the inefficacy of human reason
to effect human happiness. He was gifted with a power over common
temptation, which belongs to but few. His blood was cool and temperate,
and yet his heart was open to all the softer emotions. He had no
appetite for luxury; no desire for pomp; no craving for wealth. Among
thousands who were revelling in sensuality, he kept himself pure and
immaculate. If any man could have said, I will be virtuous; I, of
myself, unaided, trusting to my own power, guarding myself by the light
of my own reason; I will walk uprightly through the world, and will shed
light from my path upon my brethren, he might have said so. He attempted
it, and history shows us the result. He attempted, unassisted, to be
perfect among men, and his memory is regarded as that of a loathsome
plague, defiling even the unclean age in which he lived.

At about five o'clock in the afternoon on an October day, in 1793,
Robespierre was sitting alone in a small room in the house of his
friend, Simon Duplay, the cabinet-maker. This room, which was the
bed-chamber, reception-room, and study of the arbitrary Dictator, was
a garret in the roof of Duplay's humble dwelling. One small window,
opening upon the tiles, looked into the court-yard in which were stored
the planks or blocks necessary to the cabinet-maker's trade. A small
wooden bedstead, a long deal table, and four or five rush-bottomed
chairs, constituted the whole furniture of the apartment.

A deal shelf ran along the wail beneath the slanting roof, and held his
small treasure of books; and more than half of this humble row were
manuscripts of his own, which he had numbered, arranged, and bound with
that methodical exactness, which was a part of his strange character.
He was sitting at a table covered with papers, on which he had now been
laboriously preparing instructions for those who, under him, carried on
the rule of terror; and arranging the measured words with which, at the
Jacobins, he was to encourage his allies to uphold him in the bloody
despotism which he had seized.

The weight upon his mind must have been immense, for Robespierre was not
a thoughtless, wild fanatic, carried by the multitude whether they
pleased: he led the people of Paris, and led them with a fixed object.
He was progressing by one measure deeply calculated to the age of
reason, which he was assured was coming; and that one measure was the
extermination of all who would be likely to oppose him. The extent of
his power, the multiplicity of his cares, the importance of his every
word and act, and the personal danger in which he lived, might have
ruffled the equanimity of a higher-spirited man than he is supposed to
have been; but yet, to judge from his countenance, his mind was calm;
the traces of thought were plain on his brow, but there was none of the
impatience of a tyrant about his mouth, nor of the cruelty of an
habitual blood-shedder in his eyes. His forehead showed symptoms of
deep thought, and partially redeemed the somewhat mean effect of his
other features. The sharp nose, the thin lips, the cold grey eyes, the
sallow sunken cheeks, were those of a precise, passionless,
self-confident man, little likely to be led into any excess of love or
hatred, but little likely also to be shaken in his resolve either for
good or evil. His face probably was a true index to his character.
Robespierre was not a cruel man; but he had none of that humanity, which
makes the shedding of blood abominable to mankind, and which, had he
possessed it, would have made his career impossible.

His hair was close curled in rolls upon his temples, and elaborately
powdered. The front and cuffs of his shirt were not only scrupulously
clean, but starched and ironed with the most exact care. He wore a blue
coat, a white waistcoat, and knee-breeches. His stockings, like his
shirt, were snow-white, and the silver buckles shone brightly in his
shoes. No one could have looked less like a French republican of 1793
than did Robespierre.

He had just completed a letter addressed jointly to Thurreau and
Lechelle, the commissioners whom he had newly appointed to the horrid
task of exterminating the royalists of La Vendee. Santerre had
undertaken this work, and had failed in it, and it was now said that he
was a friend and creature of Danton's; that he was not to be trusted as
a republican; that he had a royalist bias; that it would be a good thing
that his head should roll, as the heads of so many false men had rolled,
under the avenging guillotine. Poor Santerre, who, in the service of the
Republic, had not shunned the infamy of presiding at the death of Louis.
He, however, contrived to keep his burly head on his strong shoulders,
and to brew beer for the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire.

Thurreau and Lechelle, it was correctly thought, would be surer hands
at performing the work to be done. They had accepted the commission with
alacrity, and were now on the road to commence their duties. That duty
was to leave neither life nor property in the proscribed district. "Let
La Vendee become a wilderness, and we will re-populate it with patriots,
to whom the fertility of fields, rich with the blood of traitors, shall
be a deserved reward." Thus had Robespierre now written; and as he
calmly read over, and slowly copied, his own despatch, he saw nothing
in it of which he could disapprove, as a reasoning being animated with
a true love of his country. "Experience has too clearly proved to us
that the offspring of slaves, who willingly kiss the rod of tyrants,
will have no higher aspiration than their parents. In allowing them to
escape, we should only create difficulties for our own patriot children.
Hitherto the servants of the Convention have scotched the snake, but
have not killed it; and the wounded viper has thus become more furiously
venomous than before. It is for you, citizens, to strike a death-blow
to the infamy of La Vendee. It will be your glory to assure the
Convention that no royalist remains in the western provinces to disturb
the equanimity of the Republic." Such were the sentiments he had just
expressed, such the instructions he had given, calmly meditating on his
duty as a ruler of his country; and when he had finished his task, and
seen that no expression had escaped him of which reason or patriotism
could disapprove, he again placed the paper before him, to write words
of affection to the brother of his heart.

Robespierre's brother was much younger than himself; but there was no
one whom he more thoroughly trusted with State secrets, and State
services of importance; and no one who regarded him with so entire a
devotion. Robespierre the elder believed only in himself; Robespierre
the younger believed in his brother, and his belief was fervid and
assured, as is always that of an enthusiast. To him, Maximilian appeared
to be the personification of every virtue necessary to mankind. Could
he have been made to understand the opinion which the world would form
of his brother's character, he would have thought that it was about to
be smitten with a curse of general insanity. Robespierre's vanity was
flattered by the adoration of his brother, and he loved his worshipper
sincerely. The young man was now at Lyons, propagating the doctrines of
his party; and in his letters to him, Robespierre mingled the
confidential greetings of an affectionate brother with those furious
demands for republican energy, which flooded the streets of the towns
of France with blood, and choked the rivers of France with the bodies
of the French.

"I still hope," he wrote, slowly considering the words as they fell from
his pen, "for the day when this work will have been done--for the happy
day when we shall feel that we have prevailed not only against our
enemies, but over our own vices; but my heart nearly fails me, when I
think how little we have yet effected. I feel that among the friends
whom we most trust, those who are actuated by patriotism alone are
lukewarm. Lust, avarice, plunder, and personal revenge, are the motives
of those who are really energetic . . . It is very difficult for me to
know my friends; this also preys heavily on my spirits. The gold of the
royalists is as plentiful as when the wretched woman, who is now about
to die, was revelling in her voluptuous pride at Versailles. I know that
the hands of many, who call themselves patriots, are even now grasping
at the wages for which they are to betray the people. A day of reckoning
shall come for all of them, though the list of their names is a long
one. Were I to write the names of those whom I know to be true, I should
be unable to insert in it above five or six. . . . I look for your
return to Paris with more than my usual impatience. Eleanor's quiet
zeal, and propriety of demeanour, is a great comfort to me; but even
with her, I feel that I have some reserve. I blame myself that it is so,
for she is most trustworthy; but, as yet, I cannot throw it off. With
you alone I have none. Do not, however, leave the work undone; remember
that those who will not toil for us, will assuredly toil against us.
There can be none neutral in the battle we are now waging. A man can
have committed no greater crime against the Republic than having done
nothing to add to its strength. I know your tender heart grieves at the
death of every traitor, though your patriotism owns the necessity of his
fall. Remember that the prosperity of every aristocrat has been
purchased by the infamy of above a hundred slaves! How much better is
it that one man should die, than that a hundred men should suffer worse
than death!"

When he had finished his letter, he read it accurately over, and then
having carefully wiped his pen, and laid it near his inkstand, he leant
back in his chair, and with his hand resting on the table, turned over
in his mind the names and deeds of those who were accounted as his
friends, but whom he suspected to be his enemies. He had close to his
hand slips of paper, on which were written notes of the most trivial
doings of those by whom he was generally surrounded; and the very spies
who gave him the information were themselves the unfortunate subjects
of similar notices from others. The wretched man was tortured by
distrust; as he had told his brother, there were not among the whole
body of those associates, by whose aid he had made himself the ruling
power in France, half-a-dozen whom he did not believe to be eager for
his downfall and his death. Thrice, whilst thus meditating, he stopped,
and with his pencil put a dot against the name of a republican.
Unfortunate men! their patriotism did not avail them; within a few
weeks, the three had been added to the list of victims who perished
under the judicial proceedings of Fouquier Tinville.

It had now become nearly dark, and Robespierre was unable longer to read
the unfriendly notices which lay beneath his hand, and he therefore gave
himself up entirely to reflection. He began to dream of nobler
subjects--to look forward to happier days, when torrents of blood would
be no longer necessary, when traitors should no longer find a market for
their treason, when the age of reason should have prevailed, and France,
happy, free, illustrious, and intellectual, should universally own how
much she owed to her one incorruptible patriot. He thought to himself
of living on his small paternal domain in Artois, receiving nothing from
the country he had blessed but adoration; triumphant in the success of
his theory; honoured as more than mortal; evincing the grandeur of his
soul by rejecting those worldly rewards, which to his disposition
offered no temptation. But before he had long indulged in this happy
train of thought, he was called back to the realities of his troubled
life by a low knock at his door, and on his answering it, a young woman,
decently, but very plainly dressed, entered the garret with a candle in
her hand; this was Eleanor Duplay; and when Robespierre allowed himself
to dream of a future home, she was the wife of his bosom, and the mother
of his children.

CHAPTER II

ROBESPIERRE'S LOVE.

Eleanor Duplay was not a beautiful young woman, nor was there anything
about her which marked her as being superior to those of her own station
of life; but her countenance was modest and intelligent, and her heart
was sincere; such as she was she had won the affection of him, who was,
certainly, at this time the most powerful man in France. She was about
five-and-twenty years of age; was the eldest of four sisters, and had
passed her quiet existence in assisting her mother in her household, and
in doing for her father so much of his work as was fitting for a woman's
hand. Till Robespierre had become an inmate of her father's house, she
had not paid more than ordinary attention to the politics of the
troubled days in which she lived; but she had caught the infection from
him, as the whole family had done. She had listened to his words as
though they fell from inspired lips: the pseudo-philosophical dogmas,
which are to us both repulsive and ridiculous, were to her invaluable
truths, begotten by reason, and capable of regenerating her
fellow-creatures. Robespierre was to her, what her Saviour should have
been; and he rewarded her devotion, by choosing her as the partner of
his greatness.

Robespierre's affection was not that of an impassioned lover; he did not
show it by warm caresses or fervid vows; but yet he made her, whom he
had chosen, understand that she was to him dearer than any other woman;
and Eleanor was prouder of her affianced husband, than though the
handsomest youth of Paris was at her feet.

As she entered his chamber, he was thinking partly of her, and he was
not sorry to be thus interrupted. She carried a candle in one hand, and
in the other a bouquet of fresh flowers, which she quietly laid among
his papers. Robespierre either had, or affected a taste for flowers,
and, as long as they were to be gotten, he was seldom seen without them,
either in his hand or on his coat.

"I thought you would want a light, M. Robespierre," said she, for though
she hoped to be closely connected with him, she seldom ventured on the
familiarity of calling him by his Christian name. Had she been a man,
her democratic principle would have taught her to discontinue the
aristocratic Monsieur; but, even in 1793, the accustomed courtesy of
that obnoxious word was allowed to woman's lips. "I thought you would
want a light, or I would not have interrupted you at your work."

"Thanks, Eleanor: I was not at work, though; my brain, my eyes, and
hands were all tired. I have been sitting idle for, I believe, this half
hour."

"Your eyes and hands may have been at rest," said she, sitting down at
the end of the table, "but it is seldom that your thoughts are not at
work."

"It is one of the high privileges of man, that though his body needs
repose, the faculties of his mind need never be entirely dormant. I know
that I have reasoned in my sleep as lucidly as I have ever done awake;
and though, when awake, I have forgotten what has passed through my
mind, the work of my brain has not been lost: the same ideas have
recurred to me again, and though in the recurrence, I cannot remember
when I have before employed myself with arranging them, still they come
to me as old friends, with whom I am well acquainted. The mind will
seldom complain of too much labour, if the body be not injured by
indulgence or disease."

"But too much labour will bring on disease," said Eleanor, in a tone
which plainly showed the sincerity of the anxiety which she expressed.
"We never get a walk with you now; do you know that it is months since
we were in the Champs Elysees together; it was in May, and this is
October now."

"Affairs must be greatly altered, Eleanor; many things which are now
undone must be completed, before we walk again for our pleasure: a true
patriot can no longer walk the streets of Paris in safety, while
traitors can come and go in security, with their treason blazoned on
their foreheads."

"And yet do not many traitors expiate their crimes daily?"

"Many are condemned and die; but I fear not always those who have most
deserved death. Much blood has been shed, and it has partly been in
compliance with my counsel. I would that the vengeance of the Republic
might now stay its hand, if it could be so, with safety to the people.
I am sick of the unchanging sentences of the judges, and the verdicts
of juries who are determined to convict. I doubt not that those who are
brought before them are traitors or aristocrats--at any rate, they are
not at heart republicans, and if so, they have deserved death; but I
should be better pleased, if now and then a victim was spared." He
paused for a while, and then added, "The blood of traitors is very
sickening; but there are those Eleanor, in whose nostrils it has a sweet
savour: there are butchers of the human kind, who revel in the horrid
shambles, in which they are of necessity employed. Such men are to me
accursed--their breath reeks of human blood."

Eleanor shuddered as she listened to him: but it was not the thought of
all the blood, which he whom she loved had shed, which made her shudder:
she had no idea that Robespierre was a sanguinary man: she sympathized
with the weakness of humanity which he confessed, and loved him for the
kindness of his heart--and he was not a hypocrite in his protestation;
he believed that there was nothing in common between himself and the
wretches who crowded round the last sufferings of the victims whom he
had caused to ascend the scaffold. He little thought that, in a few
years, he would be looked upon as the sole author of the barbarities of
which he now complained.

It was seldom that Robespierre had spoken so openly to Eleanor Duplay
of his inmost thoughts. She was flattered and gratified to think he had
thought her worthy of his confidence, that he had chosen her to listen
to the secrets of his heart, and she felt that, if she had influence
with him, it would become her as a woman to use it on behalf of those
whom it might be in his power to save from a fearful death.

"And are there many more who must die?" said she. "When I hear the
wheels of that horrid cart, as it carries the poor creatures who have
been condemned, on their last journey, my heart, too, sickens within me.
Will these horrid executions go on much longer?"

"There are still thousands upon thousands of men in France, who would
sooner be the slaves of a King, than draw the breath of liberty,"
answered he.

"But they can be taught the duties and feelings of men, cannot they?
They think, and feel now only as they have been brought up to think and
feel."

"Had they not been too stubborn to learn, they have had a lesson written
in letters of blood, which would have long since convinced them--if it
be necessary, it must be repeated I for one will not shrink from my
duty. No though I should sink beneath the horrid task which it imposes
on me."

They both then sat silent for a while; though Robespierre had ventured
to express to the girl, whom he knew to be so entirely devoted to him,
a feeling somewhat akin to that of pity for his victims, he could not
bear that even she should appear to throw a shadow of an imputation on
the propriety and justness of his measures, although she only did so by
repeating and appealing to the kindly expressions which had fallen from
himself. He had become so used to the unmeasured praise of those among
whom he lived, so painfully suspicious of those who, in the remotest
degree, disapproved of any of his words or deeds, so confident of
himself, so distrustful of all others, that even what she had said was
painful to him, and though he himself hardly knew why, yet he felt that
he was displeased with her. Eleanor, however, was altogether unconscious
of having irritated his sore feelings; and relying on the kind tone of
what he had said, and the confident manner in which he had spoken to
her, she determined to obey the dictates of her heart, and intercede for
mercy for her fellow-creatures. Poor girl! she did not know the danger
of coming near the lion's prey.

She had heard much of the Vendeans, and though those who had spoken in
her hearing of the doings of the royalist rebels were not likely to say
much to excite sympathy on their behalf still she had learnt that they
were true to each other, faithful to their leaders, generous to their
enemies, and brave in battle. The awful punishment to be inflicted on
the doomed district had also been partially discussed in her hearing;
and though the Republic had no more enthusiastic daughter than herself,
her woman's heart could not endure the idea that even the innocent
children of a large province should be condemned to slaughter for their
fathers' want of patriotism. What work so fitting for the woman whom a
ruler of the people had chosen for a wife, as to implore the stern
magistrate to temper justice with mercy? In what way could she use her
influence so sweetly as to ask for the lives of women and children?

And yet she felt afraid to make her innocent request. Robespierre had
never yet been offended with her. Though he had given her counsel on
almost every subject, he had never yet spoken to her one word of
disapprobation still she knew that he had inspired her with fear. She
made some attempts to begin the subject, which he did not notice, for
he was still brooding over the unpleasant sensation which her words had
occasioned; but at last she gathered courage, and said:

"The soldiers of the Republic have at last overcome the rebels of La
Vendee--have they not, M. Robespierre?"

"It is not enough to conquer traitors," answered he, "they must be
crushed, before the country can be safe from their treachery."

"Their treason must be crushed, I know."

"Crimes between man and man can be atoned for by minor punishments:
crimes between citizens and their country can only be properly avenged
by death. You may teach the murderer or the thief the iniquity of his
fault; and when he has learnt to hate the deed he has committed, he may
be pardoned. It is not so with traitors. Though the truest child of
France should spend his life in the attempt, he would not be able to
inspire one aristocrat with a spark of patriotism."

"Must every royalist in La Vendee perish then?" said Eleanor.

Robespierre did not answer her immediately, but leaning his elbow on the
table, he rested his forehead on his hand, so as nearly to conceal his
face. Eleanor thought that he was meditating on her question; and
remembering that he had declared that he should be pleased if now and
then a victim might be spared, again commenced her difficult task of
urging him to mercy.

"They talk of shedding the blood of innocent children--of destroying
peasant women, who can only think and feel as their husbands bid them.
You will not allow that this should be done, will you?"

"Is the life of a woman more precious to her than that of a man? It is
a false sentiment which teaches us to spare the iniquities of women
because of their sex. Their weakness entitles them to our protection,
their beauty begets our love; but neither their weakness or their beauty
should be accepted as an excuse for their crimes."

"But poor innocent babes--it is not possible that they should have
committed crimes."

"In the religion of Christ it is declared, that the sins of the fathers
shall be visited on the children, to the third and fourth generation.
The priests who made these laws, and handed them down to their flocks,
as the very words of their God, had closely studied human nature. I do
not believe that an Almighty Creator condescended to engrave on stone,
with his own finger, these words, as they would feign that he did do;
but the law is not the less true; the children must expatiate, to the
third and fourth generation, the sins of their fathers. Nature, which
is all benignant, wills that it should be so."

"If this be so, will not nature work out her own law. Will it not be
punishment enough that so many women should lose their husbands; so many
children their fathers? You, I know, are averse to shedding blood; you
would spare life whenever your sense of duty would allow you to do so.
Try what clemency will do in La Vendee. Try whether kindness will not
put a stop to the bitterness of their enmity. Do, dearest, for my sake."

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