Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot [1753-1823] was the military genius of the French Revolution, the real organizer of victory for the revolutionary armies. He was a sincere republican and fought vigorously against dictatorship and imperialism. The speech, reproduced in part here, was delivered by Carnot in the National Assembly in 1802.
I am far from desiring to diminish the praises accorded the first consul; if we owed him but the code civil, his name would worthily be immortalized to posterity. But whatever the services a citizen has rendered his country, he must expect honors but in the extent of the national recognition of his work. If the citizen has restored public liberty, if he has been a benefactor to his country, would it be a proper recompense to offer him. the sacrifice of that liberty? Nay! Would it not be an annulment of his own work to convert that country into his private patrimony?
From the very moment it was proposed to the French people to vote to make the consulate an office for life, each easily judged there was a mental reservation, and saw the ulterior purpose and end of the proposal. In effect, there was seen the rapid succession of a series of institutions evidently monarchical; but at each move anxiety was manifested to reassure disturbed and inquiring spirits on the score of liberty, that these new institutions and arrangements were conceived only to procure the highest protection that could be desired for liberty.
To-day is uncovered and developed in the most positive manner the meaning of so many of these preliminary measures. We are asked to declare ourselves upon a formal proposition to reestablish the monarchical system, and to confer an imperial and hereditary dignity on the first consul.
At that time I voted against a life consulate; I shall vote now against any reestablishment of a monarchy, as I believe it my duty to do. But it was done with no desire to evoke partisanship; without personal feeling; without any sentiment save a passion for the public good, which always impels me to the defense of the popular cause.
I always fully submit to existing laws, even when they are most displeasing. More than once I have been a victim to my devotion to law, and I shall not begin to retrograde to-day. I declare, therefore, that while I combat this proposition, from the moment that a new order of things shall have been established, which shall have received the assent of the mass of our citizens, I shall be first to conform my actions; to give to the supreme authority all the marks of deference commanded by the constitutional oligarchy. Can every member of society record a vow as sincere and disinterested as my own?
I shall not force into the discussion my preference for the general merits of any one system of government over another. On these subjects there are numberless volumes written. I shall charge myself with examining in few words, and in the simplest terms, the particular case in which present circumstances place us. All the arguments thus far made for the reestablishment of monarchy in France are reduced to the statement that it is the only method of assuring the stability of the government and the public tranquillity, the only escape from internal disorder, the sole bond of union against external enemies, that the republican system has been vainly essayed in all possible manners; and that from all these efforts only anarchy has resulted. A prolonged and ceaseless revolution has reawakened a perpetual fear of new disorders, and consequently a deep and universal desire to see reestablished the old hereditary government, changing only the dynasty. To this we must make reply.
I remark here that the government of a single person is no assurance of a stable and tranquil government. The duration of the Roman empire was no longer than that of the Roman republic. Their internecine troubles were greater, their crimes more multiplied. The pride of republicanism, the heroism, and the masculine virtues were replaced by the most ridiculous vanity, the vilest adulation, the boldest cupidity, the most absolute indifference to the national prosperity. Where was any remedy in the heredity of the throne? Was it not regarded as the legitimate heritage of the house of Augustus? Was a Domitian not the son of Vespasian, a Caligula the son of Germanicus, a Commodus the son of Marcus Aurelius? In France, it is true, the last dynasty maintained itself for eight hundred years, but were the people any the less tormented? What have been the internal dissensions? What the foreign wars undertaken for pretensions and rights of succession, which gave birth to the alliances of this dynasty with foreign nations? From the moment that a nation espouses the particular interests of one family, she is compelled to intervene in a multitude of matters which but for this would be to her of uttermost indifference. We have hardly succeeded in establishing a republic among us, notwithstanding that we have essayed it under various forms, more or less democratic.
After the peace of Amiens, Napoleon had choice between the republican and monarchical systems; he could do as he pleased. He would have met but the slightest opposition. The citadel of liberty was confided to him; he swore to defend it; and, holding his promise, he should have fulfilled the desire of the nation which judged him alone capable of solving the grand problem of public liberty in its vast extent. He might have covered himself with an incomparable glory. Instead of that, what is being done to-day? They propose to make for him an absolute and hereditary property of a great power of which he was made the administrator. Is this the real desire and to the real interest of the first consul himself? I do not believe it.
It is true the state was falling into dissolution, and that absolutism pulled it from the edge of the abyss. But what do we conclude from that? What all the world knows—that political bodies are subject to affections which can be cured but by violent remedies; that sometimes a dictator is necessary for a moment to save liberty. The Romans, who were so jealous of it, nevertheless recognized the necessity of this supreme power at intervals. But because a violent remedy has saved a patient, must there be a daily administration of violent remedies? Fabius, Cincinnatus, Camillus saved Rome by the exercise of absolute power, but they relinquished this power as soon as practicable; they would have killed Rome had they continued to wield it. Caesar was the first who desired to keep this power: he became its victim, but liberty was lost for futurity. Thus everything that has ever been said up to this date on absolute government proves only the necessity for temporary dictatorships in crises of the state, but not the establishment of a permanent and irresponsible power.
It is not from the character of their government that great republics have lacked stability; it is because, having been born in the breasts of storms, it is always in a state of exaltation that they are established. One only was the labor of philosophy, organized calmly. That republic, the United States of America, full of wisdom and of strength, exhibits this phenomenon, and each day their prosperity shows an increase which astonishes other nations. Thus it was reserved for the New World to teach the Old that existence is possible and peaceable under the rule of liberty and equality. Yes, I state this proposition, that when a new order of things can be established without fearing partisan influences, as the first consul has done, principally after the peace of Amiens, and as he can still do, it becomes much easier to form a republic without anarchy than a monarchy without despotism. For how can we conceive a limitation which would not be illusory in a government of which the chief had all the executive power in his hand and all the places to bestow?
They have spoken of institutions to produce all these good effects. But before we propose to establish a monarchy, should we not first assure ourselves and demonstrate to those who are to vote on the question, that these institutions proposed are in the order of possible things, and not metaphysical obstructions, which have been held a reproach to the opposite system? Up to this moment nothing has been successfully invented to curb supreme power but what are called intermediary bodies or privileges. Is it, then, of a new nobility you would speak when you allude to institutions? But such remedies—are they not worse than the disease? For the absolute power of a monarch takes but our liberty, while the institution of privileged classes robs us at the same time of our liberty and our equality. And if even at the commencement dignities and ranks were but personal, we know they would finish always as the fiefs of other times, in becoming hereditary.
To these general principles I shall add a few special observations. I assume that all the French give assent to these proposed changes; but it will be the real free will and wish of Frenchmen which is produced from a register where each is obliged to individually sign his vote. Who does not know what is the influence in similar cases of the presiding authority? From all parties in France, it would be said, springs a universal desire of the citizens for the reestablishment of the hereditary monarchy; but can we not look suspiciously on an opinion, concentrated thus far almost exclusively among public functionaries, when we consider the inconvenience they would have to manifest any contrary opinion; when we know that the liberty of the press is so enfeebled that it is not possible to insert in any journal the most moderate and respectful protests?
Doubtless there will be no making any choice of the hereditary chief, if they declare it necessary to have one.
Is it hoped, in raising this new dynasty, to hasten the period of general peace? Will it not rather be a new obstacle? Are we assured that the other great powers of Europe will assent to this new title? And if they do not, do we take up arms to constrain them? Or after having sunk the title of first consul in that of emperor, will he be content to remain first consul to the rest of Europe while he is emperor only to Frenchmen, or shall we compromise by a vain title the security and the prosperity of the entire nation?
It appears, therefore, infinitely doubtful if the new order of things can give us the stability of the present state. There is for the government one method of consolidation and strength. It is to be just; that no favoritism or bias be of avail to influence its services; that there be a guaranty against robbery and fraud. It is far from me to desire to make any particular application of my language or to criticize the conduct of the government. It is against arbitrary power itself I appeal, and not against those in whose hands this power may reside. Has liberty then been shown to man that he shall never enjoy it? Shall it always be held to his gaze as a fruit, that when he extends the hand to grasp he must be stricken with death? And Nature, which has made liberty such a pressing need to us, does she really desire to betray our confidence? No! I shall never believe this good, so universally preferred to all others—without which all others are nothing—is a simple illusion. My heart tells me that liberty is possible, that its regime is easier and more stable than any arbitrary government, than any oligarchy.
But, nevertheless (I repeat it), I shall be always ready to sacrifice my dearest affections to the interest of our common country; I shall be satisfied to have once more caused to be heard the accents of an independent mind; and my respect for the law will be so much the more sure, as it is the fruit of long misfortunes, and of this reason, which commands us imperiously at this day to reunite as one body against the implacable enemy of one party as well as the other—of this enemy, which is always ready to foment discord, and to whom all means are lawful provided he can attain his end, namely—universal oppression and tyranny over the whole extent of the ocean.
I vote against the proposition.
Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre [1758-1794], one of the
leaders and orators of the French Revolution, was one of the strongest
advocates of the Reign of Terror which used the guillotine to settle all
political differences. In the end Robespierre himself became the victim of
this policy when his political enemies gained control. The following speech was
made in 1794, shortly before he was condemned and led to the guillotine.
The day forever fortunate has arrived, which the French people have consecrated to the Supreme Being. Never has the world which He created offered to Him a spectacle so worthy of His notice. He has seen reigning on the earth tyranny, crime, and imposture. He sees at this moment a whole nation, grappling with all the oppressions of the human race, suspend the course of its heroic labors to elevate its thoughts and vows toward the great Being who has given it the mission it has undertaken and the strength to accomplish it.
Is it not He whose immortal hand, engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and justice?
He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery, and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.
It is He who implanted in the breast of the triumphant oppressor remorse and terror, and in the heart of the oppressed and innocent calmness and fortitude. It is He who impels the just man to hate the evil one, and the evil man to respect the just one. It is He who adorns with modesty the brow of beauty, to make it yet more beautiful. It is He who makes the mother’s heart beat with tenderness and joy. It is He who bathes with delicious tears the eyes of the son pressed to the bosom of his mother. It is He who silences the most imperious and tender passions before the sublime love of the fatherland. It is He who has covered nature with charms, riches, and majesty. All that is good is His work, or is Himself. Evil belongs to the depraved man who oppresses his fellow man or suffers him to be oppressed.
The Author of Nature has bound all mortals by a boundless chain of love and happiness. Perish the tyrants who have dared to break it!
Republican Frenchmen, it is yours to purify the earth which they have soiled, and to recall to it the justice that they have banished! Liberty and virtue together came from the breast of Divinity. Neither can abide with mankind without the other.
O generous People, would you triumph over all your enemies? Practise justice, and render the Divinity the only worship worthy of Him. O People, let us deliver ourselves to-day, under His auspices, to the just transports of a pure festivity. To-morrow we shall return to the combat with vice and tyrants. We shall give to the world the example of republican virtues. And that will be to honor Him still.
The monster which the genius of kings had vomited over France has gone back into nothingness. May all the crimes and all the misfortunes of the world disappear with it! Armed in turn with the daggers of fanaticism and the poisons of atheism, kings have always conspired to assassinate humanity. If they are able no longer to disfigure Divinity by superstition, to associate it with their crimes, they try to banish it from the earth, so that they may reign there alone with crime.
O People, fear no more their sacrilegious plots! They can no more snatch the world from the breast of its Author than remorse from their own hearts. Unfortunate ones, uplift your eyes toward heaven! Heroes of the fatherland, your generous devotion is not a brilliant madness. If the satellites of tyranny can assassinate you, it is not in their power entirely to destroy you. Man, whoever thou mayest be, thou canst still conceive high thoughts for thyself. Thou canst bind thy fleeting life to God, and to immortality. Let nature seize again all her splendor, and wisdom all her empire! The Supreme Being has not been annihilated.
It is wisdom above all that our guilty enemies would drive from the republic. To wisdom alone it is given to strengthen the prosperity of empires. It is for her to guarantee to us the rewards of our courage. Let us associate wisdom, then, with all our enterprises. Let us be grave and discreet in all our deliberations, as men who are providing for the interests of the world. Let us be ardent and obstinate in our anger against conspiring tyrants, imperturbable in dangers, patient in labors, terrible in striking back, modest and vigilant in successes. Let us be generous toward the good, compassionate with the unfortunate, inexorable with the evil, just toward every one. Let us not count on an unmixed prosperity, and on triumphs without attacks, nor on all that depends on fortune or the perversity of others. Sole, but infallible guarantors of our independence, let us crush the impious league of kings by the grandeur of our character, even more than by the strength of our arms.
Frenchmen, you war against kings; you are therefore worthy to honor Divinity. Being of Beings, Author of Nature, the brutalized slave, the vile instrument of despotism, the perfidious and cruel aristocrat, outrages Thee by his very invocation of Thy name. But the defenders of liberty can give themselves up to Thee, and rest with confidence upon Thy paternal bosom. Being of Beings, we need not offer to Thee unjust prayers. Thou knowest Thy creatures, proceeding from Thy hands. Their needs do not escape Thy notice, more than their secret thoughts. Hatred of bad faith and tyranny burns in our hearts, with love of justice and the fatherland. Our blood flows for the cause of humanity. Behold our prayer. Behold our sacrifices. Behold the worship we offer Thee.
Jean Paul Marat, fiery leader of the French Revolution, saved his head from the guillotine through his great gift of oratory. Arrested in 1793, he delivered the following speech in his defense before the Convention which tried him the same year. He was acquitted in triumph, only to be assassinated a few weeks later by Charlotte Corday, a woman who favored those opposed to him.
Citizens, Members of the Revolutionary Tribunal: If Roland the patron of the clique of the Girondists had not wasted the public property in misleading the people and perverting the public mind; if the faction of statesmen had not flooded the whole republic with infamous libels of the Commune, the municipality, the sections, the committee of surveillance, and, above all, directed against the deputation of Paris; if they had not so long laid their heads together to defame Danton, Robespierre, and Marat; if they had not ceaselessly represented me as a factionist, an anarchist, a drinker of blood, an ambitious man, who looked for supreme power under the title of tribune, triumvir, and director; if the nation, completely undeceived, had recognized the perfidy of these impostures; if their guilty authors had been branded, I would have resisted the arbitrary
acts brought against me under the title of “Decree and Act of Accusation,” by a perfidious faction, which I had so often denounced as almost wholly composed of royalists, traitors, and plotters. I would moreover have waited till the constitution had been reinforced by the return of patriotic deputies, before presenting myself at the tribunal, and thus have overwhelmed the vile wretches who are persecuting me to-day with such odious rancor.
If, therefore, I appear before my judges, it is only to rise triumphant and confound imposture; it is to unseal the eyes of that part of the nation which is already led astray on my account; it is to go out a conqueror from this imbroglio, to reassure public opinion, to do a good service to the fatherland, and to strengthen the cause of liberty.
Full of confidence in the enlightenment, the equity, and the civic spirit of this tribunal, I myself urge the most rigorous examination of this affair. Strong in the testimony of my own conscience, in the rectitude of my intentions, in the purity of my civic spirit, I want no indulgence, but I demand strict justice.
I am ready to answer my judges. Nevertheless, before being examined I ought to place before you, citizens, a series of observations, which will put you in a position to judge of the crass ignorance, the absurdity, the iniquity, the perfidy, the implacableness, and the atrocity of my vile accusers.
The decree of accusation brought against me was carried without discussion, in violation of law and in contradiction of all the principles of order, liberty, and justice. For it is a principle of right that no citizen shall be censured without having first been heard. This decree of accusation was brought against me by two hundred and ten members of the faction of statesmen, contrary to the demand of ninety-two members of “the Mountain.” That is to say, by two hundred and ten enemies of the country against ninety-two defenders of liberty. It was issued amid the most scandalous uproar, during which the patriots covered the royalists with opprobrium, reproaching them with their lack of civic spirit, their baseness, their machinations. It was issued in spite of the most marked manifestation of public opinion, amid the noise of continuous hootings throughout the tribunes. It was issued in a manner so revolting that twenty members who had been deceived by this faction of statemen refused to vote for it, the decree not having been discussed, and while one of them, yielding to the movement of an honest friend, cried out: “I do not vote, and I greatly fear, after all I have seen, that I have been the dupe of a perfidious cabal.”
This decree, far from being the desire of the majority of the convention, as it is the work of a part of the members not making one-third of the assembly, can be regarded only as resulting from the implacable spirit of this faction of the statesmen. You will see that it is the outcome of a criminal plot, for it started after the reading of a certain address to the Jacobins which I had signed as president of the society. This patriotic address, however, was no longer to be attributed to me as a crime, when nearly all my colleagues of “the Mountain” hastened to the desk to sign it. The address was truly republican, and has just been signed by all sections of Paris, and will very soon be signed by all good citizens of France.
Leaving the denunciation of this address which suggested the call for the decree of accusation, the decree naturally came to naught; but it was revived with fury by our enemies when they saw me mount the tribune to renew the proposition to hale Louis Philippe D’Orleans before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to put a price on the heads of the rebellious and fugitive Capets; a proposition which brought despair to the statesmen, forcing them to place a cord about their own necks if they adopted it, or to confess themselves the partisans of D’Orleans and the Capet rebels, the supporters of royalism, and the accomplices of Dumouriez, if they rejected it. You know with what violence they opposed it. Such a decree, therefore, is only an act of tyranny. It calls for resistance against oppression; and it cannot fail to prove revolting to all good citizens when once it shall be as well known in the departments as it is in Paris.
I pass to the act of accusation. Originating with a committee of legislation almost entirely composed of my most mortal enemies, all members of the faction, it was drawn with such want of reflection that it bears on its face all the characteristics of dense ignorance, falsehood, madness, fury, and atrocity. That act, at a glance, may be seen to be filled with glaring inconsistency, or we should rather say with the spirit of contradiction to the “Decree of Accusation” of which it served as the basis; for it makes no mention of the address drawn up by the Jacobins, the signing of which they attributed to me as a crime; yet this address was what caused the Decree.
When I show how ridiculous and destitute of foundation this act is I feel ashamed of the committee. As the address of the Jacobins contains the sentiments of true republicans, and as it has been signed by nearly all of my colleagues of “the Mountain,” the committee, forced to abandon the fundamental count in the accusation, was reduced to the expedient of citing some of my writings which had lain neglected for many months in the dust of their cases, and it stupidly reproduced the denunciation of some others of my writings, a subject which the assembly refused to pursue, passing to the order of the day, as I shall prove in the sequel.
Let us prove now that that act is illegal. It rests wholly, as you have seen, on some of my political opinions. These opinions had almost all been enunciated from the tribune of the convention before being published in my writings. For my writings, whose constant aim is to reveal plots, to unmask traitors, to propose useful measures, are a supplement to what I cannot always explain in the midst of the assembly. Now, article number seven of the fifth section of the “Constitutional Act” states in express terms:—
“The representatives of the nation are inviolable: they cannot be sought, accused, nor judged at any time for what they have said, written, or done in the exercise of their functions as representatives.”
The “Act of Accusation” is, therefore, null and void, in that it is diametrically opposed to the fundamental law, which has not been and which cannot be repealed. It is null and void in that it attacks the most sacred right that belongs to a representative of the people.
I am quite aware that this right does not include that of plotting against the state, of attempting any enterprise against the interests of liberty, of attacking the rights of citizens, or of compromising public safety, but it certainly allows a citizen to say, write, or do anything which accords with the sincere purpose of serving the country, of procuring the general welfare, and causing the triumph of liberty. It is so essentially inherent in the functions of the nation’s representatives that without it it would be impossible for the faithful to defend the fatherland and themselves against the traitors who would oppress and enslave them.
The patriots of the Constituent Assembly so thoroughly felt the necessity of making the representatives inviolable and unassailable, capable of struggling with impunity against the despot and completing the revolution, that they hastened to consecrate this right by the famous decree of June 23, 1789, before they had even constituted themselves the National Assembly.
They felt so thoroughly that this right was inherent in every public function, that they stretched it to cover every judicial body, every administrative body, and even all citizens united in a primary assembly.
Without this inalienable right could liberty maintain itself a moment against the machinations of its conspiring enemies? Without it, how, in the midst of a corrupt senate, could a small number of deputies, invincibly attached to the fatherland, unmask the traitors who seek to oppress it or put it in fetters?
Without that essential right, how could a small number of far-seeing and determined patriots foil the plots of a numerous faction of schemers? One may judge of this by what happens to us. If the faction of statesmen can under false pretext attack me, expel me from its convention, hale me before a tribunal, hold me in captivity, cause me to perish; to-morrow under other pretexts it will attack Robespierre, Danton, Callot-d’Herbois, Panis, Lindet, Camille, David, Audoin, Laiguelit, Meaulle, Dupuis, Javougues, Granet, and all the other courageous deputies of the convention. It will restrain the others by terror. It will usurp the sovereignty. It will call to its side Dumouriez, Cobourg, Clerfayt, its accomplices. Supported by Prussians, Austrians, and “Emigrants,” it will reestablish despotism in the hands of a Capet who will cut the throats of all the known patriots, and it will endow the first employments with the treasures of the state. The decree of accusation issued against me for my political opinions is therefore an attack on national representation, and I do not doubt that the convention, with its quota filled by the return of patriotic commissaries, will soon feel its dangerous consequences, its ill-boding results, and will blush that it should have been decreed in its name, and will hasten to repeal it as destructive of all public liberty.
The act of accusation is not only absurd in that it violates all constitutional liberty and attacks national representations, it is still more so in that the committee, contrary to all principle, turns the convention into a criminal tribunal, for it makes it pronounce without shame an iniquitous judgment, in deciding, without preliminary examination of a single document, without even having placed in question if such writings are mine, that I am found to have provoked murder and pillage, to have called up a power that threatens the sovereignty of the people, dishonored the convention, incited its dissolution, etc.
But what will appear incredible is that the committee calls down, without ceremony, without shame, and without remorse, capital punishment on my head, and cites articles of the penal code, which, according to it, condemned me to death. I doubt not that such is the object they have in view. How many statesmen have been tormented with despair of keeping me in prison, smothering my voice, and restraining my pen? Did not one of them, the atrocious Lacaze, have the impudence to ask the convention, as Dumouriez and Cobourg asked of the faction, that I should be outlawed? So that the act of accusation is a veritable “verdict rendered,” which has only now to be executed.
Finally, this act is a tissue of lies and fabrications. It accuses me of having incited to murder and pillage, of setting up a “Chief of State,” dishonoring and dissolving a convention, etc. The contrary was proved by the simple reading of my writings. I demand a consecutive reading of the denounced members; for it is not by garbling and mutilating passages that the ideas of an author are to be learnt, it is by reading the context that their meaning may be judged of.
If after the reading any doubts remain, I am here to remove them.
Probably the greatest orator of the French Revolution—and there were many great ones—was Georges Jacques Danton [1759 – 1794]. It was Danton who inflamed the mob that stormed the Bastille. It was Danton who inspired the National Assembly and the people to fight the enemies of the Revolution who were marching on Paris. A radical advocate of the Reign of Terror, he later became appalled by its ceaseless flow of blood. For this he became suspect, was tried and condemned to the guillotine. This speech was delivered in the National Assembly in 1793.
The general considerations that have been presented to you are true; but at this moment it is less necessary to examine the causes of the disasters that have struck us than to apply their remedy rapidly. When the edifice is on fire, I do not join the rascals who would steal the furniture; I extinguish the flames. I tell you, therefore, you should be convinced by the despatches of Dumouriez that you have not a moment to spare in saving the republic.
Dumouriez conceived a plan which did honor to his genius. I would render him greater justice and praise than I did recently. But three months ago he announced to the executive power, your general committee of defense, that if we were not audacious enough to invade Holland in the middle of winter, to declare instantly against England the war which actually we had long been making, that we would double the difficulties of our campaign, in giving our enemies the time to deploy their forces. Since we failed to recognize this stroke of his genius, we must now repair our faults.
Dumouriez is not discouraged; he is in the middle of Holland, where he will find munitions of war; to overthrow all our enemies, he wants but Frenchmen, and France is filled with citizens. Would we be free? If we no longer desire it, let us perish, for we have all sworn it. If we wish it, let all march to defend our independence. Your enemies are making their last efforts. Pitt, recognizing he has all to lose, dares spare nothing. Take Holland, and Carthage is destroyed, and England can no longer exist but for liberty! Let Holland be conquered to liberty, and even the commercial aristocracy itself, which at the moment dominates the English people, would rise against the government which had dragged it into despotic war against a free people. They would overthrow this ministry of stupidity, who thought the methods of the ancien régime could smother the genius of liberty breathing in France. This ministry once overthrown in the interests of commerce, the party of liberty would show itself; for it is not dead! And if you know your duties, if your commissioners leave at once, if you extend the hand to the strangers aspiring to destroy all forms of tyranny, France is saved and the world is free.
Expedite, then, your commissioners; sustain them with your energy; let them leave this very night, this very evening.
Let them say to the opulent classes, the aristocracy of Europe must succumb to our efforts, and pay our debt, or you will have to pay it! The people have nothing but blood—they lavish it! Go, then, ingrates, and lavish your wealth! [Wild applause.] See, citizens, the fair destinies that await you. What! you have a whole nation as a lever, its reason as your fulcrum, and you have not yet upturned the world! To do this we need firmness and character; and of a truth we lack it. I put to one side all passions. They are all strangers to me save a passion for the public good.
In the most difficult situations, when the enemy was at the gates of Paris, I said to those governing: “Your discussions are shameful; I can see but the enemy. [Fresh applause.] You tire me by squabbling, in place of occupying yourselves with the safety of the republic! I repudiate you all as traitors to our country! I place you all in the same line!” I said to them: “What care I for my reputation? Let France be free, though my name were accursed!” What care I that I am called “a blood-drinker”? Well, let us drink the blood of the enemies of humanity, if needful; but let us struggle, let us achieve freedom. Some fear the departure of the commissioners may weaken one or the other section of this convention. Vain fears! Carry your energy everywhere. The pleasantest declaration will be to announce to the people that the terrible debt weighing upon them will be wrested from their enemies or that the rich will shortly have to pay it. The national situation is cruel. The representatives of value are no longer in equilibrium in the circulation. The day of the working man is lengthened beyond necessity. A great corrective measure is necessary! Conquerors of Holland, reanimate in England the republican party; let us advance France, and we shall go glorified to posterity. Achieve these grand destinies: no more debates, no more quarrels, and the fatherland is saved.
Probably the greatest orator of the French Revolution—and there were many great ones—was GeorgesJacques Danton [1759 – 1794]. It was Danton who inflamed the mob that stormed the Bastille. It was Danton who inspired the National Assembly and the people to fight the enemies of the Revolution who were marching on Paris. A radical advocate of the Reign of Terror, he later became appalled by its ceaseless flow of blood. For this he became suspect, was tried and condemned to the guillotine. The speech given here was delivered in the National Assembly in 1792.
It seems a satisfaction for the ministers of a free people to announce to them that their country will be saved. All are stirred, all are enthused, all burn to enter the combat.
You know that Verdun is not yet in the power of our enemies, and that its garrison swears to immolate the first who breathes a proposition of surrender.
One portion of our people will guard our frontiers, another will dig and arm the entrenchments, the third with pikes will defend the interior of our cities. Paris will second these great efforts. The commissioners of the Commune will solemnly proclaim to the citizens the invitation to arm and march to the defense of the country. At such a moment you can proclaim that the capital deserves the esteem of all France. At such a moment this national assembly becomes a veritable committee of war. We ask that you concur with us in directing this sublime movement of the people, by naming commissioners to second and assist all these great measures. We ask that any one refusing to give personal service or to furnish arms shall meet the punishment of death. We ask that proper instructions be given to the citizens to direct their movements. We ask that carriers be sent to all the departments to notify them of the decrees that you proclaim here. The tocsin we shall sound is not the alarm signal of danger, it orders the charge on the enemies of France. [Applause.] To conquer we have need to dare, to dare again, ever to dare! And the safety of France is insured.
One of the foremost orators of the French Revolution was Gabriel Honoré Victor Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau [1749-1791]. Like the other revolutionary leaders he had to face sooner or later the charge of treason. Here is part of Mirabeau’s stirring speech in his own defense, which he delivered before the National Assembly in 1790. His eloquence overcame the opposition, but a year later he died from overwork and dissipation.
I am not speaking here in order to humor popular malice, to excite bursts of hatred, to bring about fresh divisions. No one knows better than I do that the salvation of everything, and of everybody, lies in harmony and in the destruction of all party spirit; but I cannot help adding that to set on foot infamous arraignments, to change the administration of justice into a weapon of attack which slaves would regard with loathing, is a poor way of effecting that reunion of hearts which alone is wanting for the achievement of our undertaking. I beg permission to resume my argument.
The indictment describes me as an accomplice; there is, then, no charge against me excepting that of complicity. The indictment does not describe me as an accomplice in any specific act of violence, but of a certain person alleged to be the prime mover in such an act. There is, then, no charge against me unless it be proved, first of all, that there was an arch-conspirator; unless it be proved that the charges of complicity implied that I played a secondary part to a principal part; unless it be established that my conduct has been one of the main springs of the act, the movement, the explosion, whose causes are being sought for.
Finally, the indictment does not simply describe me as the accomplice of any specific arch-conspirator, but as the accomplice of Mr. Somebody or other. There is, then, no charge against me unless it be at the same time proved that this prime mover is the chief culprit, and that the charges of which I am the object involve him, and imply a common plot springing from the same causes, and calculated to produce the same effects.
Now, of all that it would thus be indispensable to prove, nothing has been proved.
I forbear to inquire whether the events upon which the evidence is based are to be called calamities or crimes; whether these crimes are the result of conspiracy, a want of caution, or a turn of chance; whether the hypothesis of a single arch-conspirator does not render them a hundredfold more inexplicable.
I am content to remind you that amongst the acts laid to my charge, some cannot be connected with each other excepting by the logic of tyrants or their tools, because they were committed many months either before or after the insurrection, and others which are contemporaneous with the indictment are evidently neither causes nor effects of it, nor have they had any influence upon it, but are of such a character as quite excludes the idea of their being performed by an agent, a conspirator, or an accomplice, and unless I am supposed to be in the number of those who were culprits in will, though not in deed, and not chargeable with anything beyond that, neither exercise of influence nor incitement, my so-called complicity is a delusion.
I am content to draw your attention to the fact that the charges which are laid against me, so far from proving that I was in collusion with the arch-conspirator concerned, would imply that my relations were of an entirely opposite character; that in denouncing the “fraternal banquet” I was not the only one to style it “an orgy”; that I merely echoed two of my friends, who had adopted the expression before me; that if I had rushed through the ranks of the Flanders regiment I should have done nothing more, according to the indictment itself, than follow the example set by many members of this Assembly; that if the remark, “What does it matter whether it be Louis XVII.?” was made as reported, not only did I have no thought of a change of dynasty, but my ideas, as stated in a letter to a member of this Assembly, did not even turn in the possible contingency of a regent to a brother of a king.
What, then, is the prominent part that I am supposed to have played in the events with which the indictment deals? Where are the proofs of the complicity which is thrown in my teeth? What is the crime concerning which it can possibly be said, “He is either the author or the cause of it”? But I forget that I am adopting the tone of an accused man, when in truth I ought to take that of an accuser.
What is this indictment, supported as it is by evidence which could not be gone through, whose compilation required a whole year for its completion; this indictment which the crime of high treason apparently required, and which fell into the hands of an incompetent tribunal utterly destitute of authority, excepting in the cases of treason against the nation? What sort of an indictment is this, which, threatening in the space of a single year twenty different persons, is now suspended, now resumed, according to the interest and the views, the fears and hopes of its wirepullers, and has never been anything else during that long period but a weapon of intrigue, a sword suspended over the head of those who are to be ruined or intimidated, cast off or won over; which, finally, after searching heaven and earth for evidence, has not reached any conclusion until one of those who were accused by it either lost faith in or learned to despise the dictatorial power that was keeping him in banishment?
What sort of an indictment is this, which is occupied with individual transgressions concerning which there is no evidence, transgressions whose remote causes are, nevertheless, to be eagerly sought for, without throwing any light upon their proximate causes? What procedure is this, which investigates events easily to be explained without any idea of a conspiracy, and yet has only conspiracy for its basis of investigation— whose first aim has been to conceal real faults, and to replace them by imaginary crimes? It has from the first been guided by vanity, its rage since then has been whetted by hatred, it has been carried by its party spirit, infatuated by its ministerial authority, and, after thus being the slave of many influences in turn, it has ended in an insidious denunciation of your decrees, the king’s freedom of choice, his journey to Paris, the wisdom of your deliberation, the nation’s love for the monarch.
What sort of an indictment is this, which the most deadly enemies of the Revolution would not have framed in a better way, even if they had been the sole promoters of it, as they have been almost its sole executors; whose tendency has been to set ablaze the most furious party spirit, even in the bosom of this Assembly, and to raise witnesses up in opposition to judges, both throughout the whole kingdom in the provinces, by calumniating the intentions of the capital, and in each town by rendering odious the liberty which was real enough to bring in question the life of the monarch; and in all Europe, by painting the situation of a free king in false colors, as that of a king captive and persecuted; and in depicting this august Assembly as an assembly of factionists? Yes, the secret of this infernal procedure is at last discovered. It is to be found in its full completeness there. It is to be found in the interests of those whose testimony and calumny have woven its tissue; in the weapons it has furnished to the enemies of the republic; this secret lurks, yes, it lurks in the heart of the judges, as it will soon be engraven on the page of history, by the most just and most implacable vengeance.
Camille Benoit Desmoulins [1760-1794] was one of the greatest orators of the French Revolution although his speaking was impaired by a painful stammer. His violent speeches inflamed the masses and often influenced the National Convention. Finally he fell into disfavor and was guillotined. Desmoulins delivered the following speech before the National Convention in 1793.
It is no use for Necker to pretend that there is a contract between Louis XVI. and the nation, and to defend it by the principles of civil law. What does he gain by this, and according to these principles in how many ways will this contract not be nullified? Nullified, because it was not ratified by the contracting party; nullified, because Louis XVI. could not release himself without releasing the nation; nullified by the violence, the massacre of the Champ de Mars, and by that death-flag under which the revision was closed; nullified by default of cause and default of bond, in that the obligation rested on the nation, which gave all and received nothing in the way of “consideration,” Louis XVI. entering into no obligation on his side, but being left free to commit all crimes with impunity.
But I am ashamed to follow the advocates of Louis XVI. in this discussion of civil law. It is by the law of nations that this trial ought to be regulated. The slavery of nations during ten thousand years has not been able to rescind their indefensible rights. It was these rights that were a standing protest against the reigning of the Charleses, the Henrys, the Frederics, the Edwards, as they were against the despotism of Julius Caesar. It is a crime to be a king. It was even a crime to be a constitutional king, for the nation had never accepted the constitution. There is only one condition on which it could be legitimate to reign; it is when the whole people formally strips itself of its rights and cedes them to a single man, not only as Denmark did in 1660, but as happens when the entire people has passed or ratified this warrant of its sovereignty. And yet it could not bind the next generation, because death extinguishes all rights. It is the prerogative of those who exist, and who are in possession of this earth, to make the laws for it in their turn. Otherwise, let the dead leave their graves and come to uphold their laws against the living who have repealed them. All other kinds of royalty are imposed upon the people at the risk of their insurrection, just as robbers reign in the forests at the risk of the provost’s punishment befalling them. And now after we have risen and recovered our rights, to plead these feudal laws, or even the constitution, in opposition to republican Frenchmen, is to plead the black code to negro conquerors of white men. Our constituents have not sent us here to follow those feudal laws and that pretended constitution, but to abolish it, or rather, to declare that it never existed, and to reinvest the nation with that sovereignty which another had usurped. Either we are truly republicans, giants who rise to the heights of these republican ideas, or we are not giants, but mere pigmies. By the law of nations Louis XVI. as king, even a constitutional king, was a tyrant in a state of revolt against the nation, and a criminal worthy of death. And Frenchmen have no more need to try him than had Hercules to try the boar of Erymanthus, or the Romans to try Tarquin, or Caesar, who also thought himself a constitutional dictator.
But it is not only a king, it is a criminal accused of crimes that in his person we have to punish.
You must not expect me to indulge in undue exaggeration, and to call him a Nero, as I heard those do who have spoken the most favorably for him. I know that Louis XVI. had the inclinations of a tiger, and if we established courts such as Montesquieu calls the courts of manners and behavior, like that of the Areopagus at Athens, which condemned a child to death for putting out his bird’s eyes; if we had an Areopagus, it would have a hundred times condemned this man as dishonoring the human race by the caprices of his wanton cruelties. But as it is not the deeds of his private life, but the crimes of his reign that we are judging, it must be confessed that this long list of accusations against Louis which our committee and our orators have presented to us, while rendering him a thousand times worthy of death, will nevertheless not suggest to posterity the horrors of the reign of Nero, but the crimes of constituents, the crimes of Louis the King, rather than the crimes of Louis Capet.
That which makes the former king justly odious to the people is the four years of perjuries and oaths, incessantly repeated into the nation’s ear before the face of heaven, while all the time he was conspiring against the nation. Treason was always with every nation the most abominable of crimes. It has always inspired that horror which is inspired by poison and vipers, because it is impossible to guard against it. So the laws of the Twelve Tables devoted to the Furies the mandatary who betrayed the trust of his constituent, and permitted the latter to kill the former wherever he should find him. So, too, fidelity in fulfilling one’s engagements is the only virtue on which those pride themselves who have lost all others. It is the only virtue found among thieves. It is the last bond which holds society—even that of the robbers themselves—together. This comparison, it is, which best paints royalty, by showing how much less villainous is even a robbers’ cave than the Louvre, since the maxim of all kings is that of Caesar: “It is permissible to break one’s faith in order to reign.” So in his religious idiom, spoke Antoine de Levre to Charles V.: “If you are not willing to be a rascal, if you have a soul to save, renounce the empire.” So said Machiavelli in terms very applicable to our situation. For this reason it was, that many years ago in a petition to the National Assembly I quoted this passage: “If sovereignty must be renounced in order to make a people free, he who is clothed with this sovereignty has some excuse in betraying the nation, because it is difficult and against nature to be willing to fall from so high a position.” All this proves that the crimes of Louis XVI. are the crimes of the constituents who supported him in his position of king rather than his crimes, that is to say, of those who gave him the right by letters patent to be the “enemy of the nation” and a traitor. But all these considerations, calculated as they may be to soften the horror of his crimes in the eyes of posterity, are useless before the law, in mitigating their punishment. What! Shall the judges forbear to punish a brigand because in his cave he has been brought up to believe that all the possessions of those who pass his cave belong to him? Because his education has so depraved his natural disposition that he could not be anything but a robber? Shall it be alleged as a reason for letting the treason of a king go unpunished, that he could not be anything but a traitor, and as a reason for not giving the nations the example of cutting down this tree, that it can only bear poisons?
In two words, by the declaration of rights, by that code eternal, unchangeable (that provisional code which in all states precedes their complete organization, when special laws shall have modified general laws), the articles of which, effaced by the rust of centuries, the French people adopted with joy, and by the enactment (consecrated as the basis of its constitution) that the law is the same toward all, either for punishment or for protection, reestablished in all their purity, Louis XVI. was divested of his chimerical inviolability.
He can henceforth be regarded only as a conspirator. Followed by the people, he came on the tenth of August,—that famous “Commune”— came to seek an asylum among us, at the foot of the throne of national sovereignty, in the house which was found full of evidences of his plottings and of his crimes. We placed him under arrest and imprisoned him in the Temple, and now it only remains for us to pass sentence upon him.
“But who shall judge this conspirator?” It is astonishing and inconceivable what trouble this question has given to the best heads of the Convention. Removed as we are from Nature and the primitive laws of all society, most of us have not thought that we could judge a conspirator without a jury of accusation, a jury of judgment, and judges who would apply the law, and all have imagined necessary a court more or less extraordinary. So we leave the ancient ruts only to fall into new ones, instead of following the plain road of common sense. Who shall judge Louis XVI.? The whole people, if it can, as the people of Rome judged Manlius and Horatius, nor dreamt of the need of a jury of accusation, to be followed by a jury of judgment, and that in turn by a court which would apply the law to judge a culprit taken in the act. But as we cannot hear the pleas of twenty-five millions of men we must recur to the maxim of Montesquieu: “Let a free people do all that it can by itself and the rest by representatives and commissioners!” And what is the National Convention but the commission selected by the French people to try the last king and to form the constitution of the new republic?
Some claim that such a course would be to unite all the powers—legislative functions and judical functions. Those who have most wearied our ears by reciting the dangers of this cumulation of powers must either deride our simplicity in believing that they respect those limits, or else they do not well understand themselves. For have not constitutional and legislative assemblies assumed a hundred times the functions of judges, whether in annulling the procedure of the Chatelet, and many other tribunals, or in issuing decrees against so many prisoners on suspicion whether there was an accusation or not? To acquit Mirabeau and P. Equality,” or to send Lessart to Orleans, was not that to assume^ the functions of judges? I conclude from this that those Balancers, as Mirabeau called them, who continually talk of “equilibrium,” and the balance of power, do not themselves believe in what they say. Can it be contested, for example, that the nation which exercises the power of sovereignty does not “cumulate” all the powers? Can it be claimed that the nation cannot delegate, at its will, this or that portion of its powers to whom it pleases? Can any one deny that the nation has cumulatively clothed us here with its powers, both to try Louis XVI. and to construct the constitution? One may well speak of the balance of power and the necessity of maintaining it when the people, as in England, exercises its sovereignty only at the time of elections. But when the nation, the sovereign, is in permanent activity, as formerly at Athens and Rome, and as now in France, when the right of sanctioning the laws is recognized as belonging to it, and when it can assemble every day in its municipalities and sections, and expel the faithless mandataries, the great necessity cannot be seen of maintaining the equilibrium of powers, since it is the people who, with its arm of iron, itself holds the scales ready to drive out the ambitious and the traitorous who wish to make it incline to the side opposite the general interest. It is evident that the people sent us here to judge the king and to give them a constitution. Is the first of these two functions so difficult to fulfill? And have we anything else to do than what Brutus did when the people caused him to judge his two sons himself, and tested him by this, just as the Convention is tested now? He made them come to his tribunal, as you must bring Louis XVI. before you. It produced for him the proofs of their conspiracy as you must present to Louis XVI. that multitude of overwhelming proofs of his plots. They could make no answer to the testimony of a slave, as Louis XVI. will not be able to answer anything to the correspondence of Laporte, and to that mass of written proofs that he paid his bodyguard at Coblentz and betrayed the nation. And it only remains for you to prove, as Brutus proved to the Roman people, that you are worthy to begin the Republic and its constitution, and to appease the shades of a hundred thousand citizens whom he caused to perish in pronouncing the same sentence: “Go, lictor, bind him to the stake.”
