Winter came and with it, hardship.
The cold and misery overshadowed only by the violence of the revolution – In Nantes,
Commissioner Carrier brutally repressed the royalist revolts by ordering the execution
by drowning of 4,000 civilians, mostly priests, women and children, in what he would describe
as “The National Bathtub”.
In Lyon, Commissioner Fouché also brutally repressed the federalist revolts by chaining
civilians together and firing at them with grapeshot at point blank range.
A grotesquely ineffective method of execution that resulted in heaps of mutilated, screaming,
half-dead men, who were finished off with sabers and musket fire by soldiers physically
sickened by the task.
Robespierre was outraged by their acts, or rather their inability to distinguish between
the instigators of the revolts and those who were dragged into it by them.
He demanded that both commissioners be called back to Paris and trialed but that amounted
to nothing as in February, Commissioner Carrier, who was deemed the greatest sinner of them
all, was amnestied by the national convention.
This meant that the faults of the other commissioners were pardoned too.
During that time, Robespierre was struck by illness and unable to argue his case in front
of the convention.
He later attempted to have Fouché kicked out of the Jacobin club but despite his prominent
position among the Jacobins, he was unsuccessful, and the attempt marked the beginning of Fouché’s
plot.
A plot that would eventually lead to Robespierre’s downfall.
On February 4th 1794, the National Convention abolished slavery in all French territories,
but Napoleon would reinstate it only 8 years later in 1802.
Meanwhile, Camille Desmoulins had started an inflammatory paper called “Le Vieux Cordelier”.
At first, the paper was dedicated to Robespierre and Danton, whom Desmoulins called his dearest
friends, and it focused on denouncing the excesses and bloodthirst of the ultra-radical
Hébertist faction.
This would turn out to be widely successful and Desmoulins, who had taken up the cause
of the 300,000 defenseless civilians that had been imprisoned by the republican government,
started to focus his attacks on Robespierre instead.
In doing so, he hoped to shift the Committee of Public Safety towards moderation as he
regularly compared Robespierre to the Roman Dictator Julius Caesar and asked for a “Committee
of Clemency” to put an end to the Reign of Terror.
Now, to his credit, Robespierre did attempt to offer clemency to some prisoners, but he
was shot down by other members of the Committee of Public Safety with Saint-Just accusing
Danton and his supporters of, “not being virtuous enough to be terrible.”
A direct attack to Danton’s appeal to violence that had led to the creation of the Committee
of Public Safety less than a year prior.
Finally, the Hébertists had only grown more extreme, going as far as creating their own
non-theistic religion, the Cult of Reason.
And while Robespierre did approve of Dechristianization, as Christianity was nothing more than a corrupt
and royalist religion, he was staunchly anti-atheist.
Furthermore, rumors had spread that their cult took part in “licentious affairs of
scandalous depravities.”
Thus, it was clear to Robespierre that this charade had to stop, the Hébertists had to
die.
Such an opportunity arose in early March when they attempted a coup against the Montagnards
much like the coup that had brought the downfall of the Girondins.
Following the recall of Commissioner Carrier in February, the Hébertists called for insurrection
by covering the declaration of rights of men with a black veil.
However, this time the sans-culottes did not answer their call as they had when they stormed
the National Convention on June 2nd, 1793.
The coup was a total failure and on March 13th, the Committee of Public Safety ordered
the arrest of Jacques Hébert, and 19 other conspirators.
They were trialed and sent to the guillotine only eleven days later.
Morbidly, their execution was rather light-hearted as the people mocked Hébert’s reluctance
to get guillotined, his constant screams as he was placed below the blade, his cowardness
towards the very end that many had been sent to by his own words.
The crowd laughed as the executioner adjusted the blade such that it stopped just above
his neck, and they laughed again as he did it two more times.
Each time, Hébert screaming hysterically until on the forth try, he screamed no more.
The downfall of the Indulgents, however, was much less enjoyable.
It wasn’t long before Robespierre walked back on his early support for clemency by
stating that, “To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is
barbarity.”
As such, Desmoulin’s attacks against the Committee of Public Safety and Robespierre
only further bolstered, and thus, the demands to do something about him.
Robespierre desperately tried to save his dearest friend by claiming that he was a “spoilt
child that others had led astray” only to see Desmoulins further antagonize himself
by doubling his attacks.
And when the Jacobin club attempted to expel him, Robespierre instead proposed publicly
burning the offending issues of “Le Vieux Cordeliers”, to which Desmoulins replied,
“burning is not answering”, words that echoed Rousseau’s own writings.
Writings that had shaped Robespierre’s ideals.
Writings that had shaped his vision of a Virtuous Republic.
Eventually, Robespierre could do no more as he was caught between Danton, whose popularity
had grown menacingly strong thanks to his triumphant speeches calling for the end of
the Terror, and Saint-Just who countered Danton’s words with just as much ardor by demanding
the end of the Indulgents and their royalist plots.
And when a supporter of Danton, Fabre D’Églantine, was embroiled in a financial scandal involving
the French East India Company, Robespierre had no choice but to agree with Saint-Just.
On March 30th, 1794, he reluctantly signed the papers that ordered their arrest, including
Desmoulins.
The trial started on April 3rd and lasted only two days.
Danton argued his case with such ferocity and fervor that the National Convention had
to pass a decree that forbade them from defending themselves in fear that Danton’s words would
turn the crowd in their favor.
The accused were also forbidden from summoning witnesses despite having asked for numerous
ones, including Desmoulins who had asked for Robespierre.
Finally, their conviction was done without their presence and on April 5th, the fifteen
Indugents were found guilty.
They were sent to the guillotine on the very same day.
On his way to the guillotine, as he saw Robespierre’s home, Danton screamed, anger whispering in
his ear prophetic words, “You are hiding yourself in vain, Robespierre!
You will follow me!
Your house will be burnt to the ground and its land sowed with salt!”
Desmoulins was the third to be executed.
At first, he showed an honorable calmness in the face of death only to be driven totally
mad by the news of his wife’s arrest.
It took several men to contain him but eventually, his fate was sealed.
Danton was executed last.
Before laying below the blade, he told the executioner, “Show my head to the people,
it is worth seeing.”
Robespierre had finally removed these two thorns that had pained him for so long.
But their executions only created a false sense of security as these acts largely estranged
the National Convention against the growing radicalism of the Committee of Public Safety
while the loss of the Hébertists to control the sans-culottes only meant that a volatile
and bloodthirsty group was now more unpredictable than ever.