The Terror: Death at the Guillotine (Part 4)

The Rest Is History

This episode explores the dramatic downfall and execution of Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins during the height of the French Revolutio

Key takeaways

• Georges Danton's charisma and perceived corruption became politically unfashionable compared to Robespierre's 'incorruptible' image.
• The execution of Jacques Hébert signaled the moment state authority successfully crushed ultra-radical street populism.

Main topics

• The execution of Georges Danton
• The ideological conflict between Dantum and Robespierre

Notable quotes

Don't forget to show my head to the people. It's worth seeing.

Conclusion

The episode illustrates how manufactured paranoia and political maneuv

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) you Speaker 2 (0:11) The execution was already underway when, having crossed the Tuileries, I reached the gate opening onto the Place Louis-Cannes. From there I saw the condemned men appear one after another on the fatal stage, only to vanish at once as the plank on which their eternal rest was to begin tipped them from view. Danton appeared last on that stage, drenched in the blood of all his friends. Day was fading. At the foot of the dreadful structure, standing out like a colossal silhouette against the sky, I saw this tribune rise up like a shade out of Dante, half lit by the dying sun, seeming as much to be emerging from the tomb as about to enter it. Nothing could match the boldness of this revolutionary athlete's bearing. Nothing could match the formidable set of that profile defying the axe, or the expression of that head which, about to fall, still seemed to be dictating the laws. A dreadful spectacle. Time could never erase it from my memory. Now I felt the whole force of the emotion behind Danton's last words. Terrible words, which people repeated afterwards, shuddering with horror and admiration. Above all, don't forget, he told the executioner, don't forget to show my head to the people. It's worth seeing. So that's one of the most famous scenes, not just in the history of the French Revolution, but in the entire history of France. It is the eyewitness account by Antoine-Vincent Arnault of the execution of Georges Danton on the 5th of April, 1794. And it's a scene that's been immortalized in novels, in plays, in operas and films. And unsurprisingly so, because it is... The spectacle of the French Revolution devouring one of its most memorable and I think probably attractive figures. And a bullion larger than life character, Dominic, who only a year earlier seemed at the peak of his popularity. A Speaker 1 (2:34) large Falstaffian man. A lesson to us all, Danton's fate, I think. A lesson to us all. Yeah. And you're a particular Speaker 2 (2:42) admirer, aren't you, of the Franco-Polish film Danton. which came out during the Solidarity confrontation, the trade union in Poland with the communist government and starred Gérard Speaker 1 (2:57) Depardieu as Danton. I think Gérard Depardieu is an absolutely horrendous human being and he is brilliant as Danton in this film. And in the film, because it's a portrait. It's actually a brilliant film, both about the French Revolution and about the crushing of the solidarity movement in Poland, the imposition of martial law. In the film, he is the champion of moderation against extremism. He is the champion of democracy against dictatorship, which is, of course, a little bit simplistic when you look at the story of the revolution. Speaker 2 (3:28) But Speaker 1 (3:28) there is that kind Speaker 2 (3:30) of great sense of the binary, isn't there? Because on the one hand, you have Maximilien Robespierre, tall, thin, cold. Speaker 2 (3:39) fanatical, obsessed by ideas of God and virtue. And on the other side, his old friend, Georges Danton, charismatic, a man of bulk, warm, the man who wants to stop the reign of terror, the people's friend. And that dynamic of the kind of the chill, cold, thin person and the warm, jolly, fun, larger person. I mean, it's a kind of... Speaker 1 (4:05) Almost archetypal. The sturdy man of the people and the desiccated lover of abstract nouns. Yeah, completely. So it's a duel for the ages, but obviously there's a lot more going on because we're at the sort of crisis moment for the revolution generally. War on the frontiers, war within France, loads of nuances. So we might as well get straight into it. We'll get into it with our protagonist, who is Danton. So I think you're dead right of all the French Revolution's great characters. Danton's probably the most magnetic. He's the one you'd go on a night out with, I think. And Depardieu, shocking bloke, brilliant actor, does a really good job of capturing his appeal in that film, which I recommend to people. It's on YouTube. So Danton is a big man, stocky, famously ugly, but incredibly charismatic, energetic. He's a brilliant speaker. He's theatrical. He's generous. There's something slightly Churchillian, I think, about him. A man of tremendous flaws, but also great magnetic qualities. Speaker 2 (5:05) Listeners may remember that I ventriloquized one of his most famous speeches and did it as Churchill. Speaker 1 (5:10) You did, exactly. Danton can be flippant, he can be greedy, he can be very, very corrupt, as we will see, but he's hard to dislike. And he was born in a place called Arcy in Champagne in 1759. So that means that he's about to turn 30. When the French Revolution breaks out, like so many of these people, he's a relatively young man. He has a very distinctive look because as a boy, he'd been both gored by a bull and Speaker 2 (5:34) trampled by pigs. That's bad luck, isn't it? Speaker 1 (5:37) Yeah, it's very unfortunate. So his lip was split and his nose was all mangled. And to make matters worse, he had smallpox. So his face is quite a spectacle. Now, his father, who was a local prosecutor, sent him to boarding school. And then he went and settled on the left bank of Paris. And he became a lawyer. He got married. He had a couple of sons. And he's a funster, really, in the late 1780s. He has lots of sort of boozy dinner parties. He's well known for them. He has lots of affairs. He's not a very good husband. He lives life to the full. And then when the revolution breaks out, he's living there in the left bank in this district called the Cordilliers, which is a real hotbed of militancy. So there's loads of people like him, young lawyers, there's artisans, stuff like that. He's prominent in the protests around the fall of the Bastille, summer of 1789. He becomes a sort of leading light in the district. He's hanging out with Jean-Paul Marat, who we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and with a man called Camille Desmoulins, who's a great friend of his, who we will come to later on. And because Danton is a really good speaker, because he's a big man, he's kind of alpha male, he becomes a beanoch. Do you know what a binoc is, Tom? Big name on campus. He's a big name on campus. Yeah, exactly. He founds the Cordulier Club in 1790, radical club, talking shop, becomes its first president. Captain of sports teams. Completely. He's the big man. Everyone knows him on the campus, all of that. And as the revolution escalates, his star carries on rising. So when, in the late summer of 1792, There was the great storming of the Tuileries Palace by the kind of sans-culottes, by the insurrectionary commune. Danton was very much at the forefront of that. When the Girondins were running France, they had him as their Minister of Justice. He wasn't really one of them, though. They always regarded him with a bit of suspicion. But, I mean, you mentioned the Churchillian aspect. He gives this incredible speech. You know, the Prussians are coming. France is at bay. And he says, what we need is de l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace. You know, courage, more courage and yet more courage. And we will win the day. And, you know, it works. Now, behind all that, he's not just a great speaker. He's also actually good at running things. He's pragmatic. He's one of those politicians, very common. You know, he talks a brilliant game. and he's very flamboyant. But actually, when the door's shut, he's very smart, he's very pragmatic, he takes decisions, he's ruthless, all of this. Over time, though, he falls out with the Girondins a bit, and so he moves closer to the Montagnard faction. So that's Robespierre, Marat, and Co. And by, let's say, 1793... Danton is seen as one of the three big beasts of that camp. So you've got Marat, Robespierre, Danton there. The three names that everyone knows. When Charlotte Corday wrote that manifesto about killing Marat. Yeah, she mentioned Danton and Robespierre, didn't she? She did, exactly. She did. And he gets on fine with both of those guys. I mean, he's not a tremendous fan of, you know, Marat is not a great laugh. Danton is a great laugh and neither is Robespierre. But their relations are... solid then there's no enmity between them when danton's wife dies Speaker 2 (9:04) in childbirth yes he comes back he's been at the front and he digs up the coffin and embraces her in a very gothic manner rospierre writes writes him a very sweet letter he does yeah you know he says oh i love you until death you're great you're my best friend all of this nothing will ever come between us no Speaker 1 (9:22) i mean you could say on the one hand that is very much the literary formula of the day that people do write like this. They write in an overwrought way that we would perhaps not do today. But genuinely, I think there's affection. There's a degree of affection between Danton and Robespierre. Well, I think it's important for the tragedy of what's going to happen to recognize Speaker 2 (9:42) that Robespierre does love Danton. Speaker 1 (9:44) Yeah. And indeed loves Desmoulins as well. So there's no sense whatsoever that they are heading for a kind of great crash at this point. So we're in 1793. And the beginning of 1793, I think it would be reasonable to call it a roller coaster for Danton. So as you say, in February, his wife dies. She dies in childbirth. He's been away. He's been a massive womanizer. And I think his grief for her is perhaps slightly colored by guilt that he hasn't been the best husband in the world. Just weeks later, April 1793, as we heard in a previous episode, Danton is one of the first people appointed to the new Committee of Public Safety. And actually, at first, he's seen as the dominant figure on that committee. The only thing is, at this point, spring, summer 1793, we've talked before about how this is the beginning of the terror, the institutions being set up, the mood of paranoia, the obsession with conspiracies. Danton is slightly losing touch with that mood, I think. He is too pragmatic. On the committee, he's sitting there and saying, well... Maybe we should look to make deals with some of our enemies. Could we detach the Prussians or the Austrians from the enemy coalition? Could we talk to some of these provincial departments that are in revolt? We don't have to kill everybody. Let's find a way out of this. That's not what a lot of people want to hear. And he should Speaker 2 (11:05) have thought of that when he was busy setting all these institutions up. I mean, he clearly was not thinking Speaker 1 (11:09) through what could be done with them. No, he wasn't. I don't think he was. At the same time, There is, of course, this mood in the summer of 1793, this absolute fixation on virtue, on republican virtue. And that's been there from the beginning, but it's become a lot more pronounced. And Danton's financial corruption, which is not unique. There are a lot of deputies taking money. This is a fairly corrupt political system, but he is well known for it. Danton has been taking bribes and he's been buying up land in his native Aix-en Speaker 2 (11:46) -Ciel Speaker 1 (11:46) with mysterious Speaker 2 (11:47) money. But the more that Robespierre becomes the BNOC and he is the incorruptible, so the more Danton's corruptibility comes to seem a little bit out of fashion. Speaker 1 (12:00) Totally. His style is unfashionable. So, June 1793, I mean, only a few months after his wife died, he marries again. And he marries a girl called Louise. I mean, she is a girl. She's 16 years old, and she's been looking after the kids. And he takes her back to his hometown of Assi on a break. And while he's away on the 10th of July, he is voted off the Committee of Public Safety by the convention. Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be an immensely sinister thing. People are being rotated on and off the Committee of Public Safety fairly often. And he's not completely out of favour. So actually in September, people in the convention say, would you like to come back onto the committee? You know, the committee could use you. And he said, no, I don't really want to join any committee. I'd rather I'll be a spur to them all. I mean, actually, that's a very Churchillian thing to say. You can absolutely imagine Churchill doing that. I won't get involved, but I'll kind of be involved with all of them. So that's September. Middle October 1793, Danton falls ill. This is such a theme of the revolution. As we talked about before, these blokes are young. They're under enormous pressure. They're drinking a lot. They are, I mean, imagine the stress. You know, your country's at war. There's rebellions. Plus, you could lose your head if you manage things Speaker 2 (13:22) badly. I mean, you talked about the big three. Marat, famously, is always returning to his bath because he breaks out in pustules. Yeah. And we said how Robespierre is always taking to bed with kind of nervous prostration. It's a theme. They're Speaker 1 (13:35) leading a very unhealthy existence. And by the time he comes back, so he comes back about six weeks later from RC, where he's been kind of convalescing. He comes back in mid-November and things have changed. So two big things have happened that you described in the last two episodes. Macron-Antoinette has been executed and the Girondins. have been executed. And by now, the reign of terror is well institutionalized and is well underway, which brings us to the big picture. So to remind people, the Montagnards have been running the roost since the summer, and their power is embodied now in these two committees. So you have the Committee of Public Safety, which directs policy, and the Committee of General Security, which controls the police and the Revolutionary Tribunal. Now, there is a new constitution. There is a new democratic constitution, but it has been placed on hold. Effectively, there is a state of emergency in France for completely understandable reasons. So Robespierre's kind of mini-me, Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just, the kind of archangel of death, archangel of terror, he has moved a resolution on the 10th of October to make the provisional government of France revolutionary until the peace. Basically, We're not going to implement the new constitution. The Committee of Public Safety is going to run things until we have peace, and only then will we do it. And Dominic, just Speaker 2 (14:57) to say, because people might think this is a cynical move. I really don't think it is. Saint-Just, with Robespierre, had played a key role in writing up that constitution. And we'll be talking about this in the next episode. They genuinely, and I think correctly, see that this is not a time to be experimenting with new constitutions because... France is in a state of crisis, and maybe you could say it does need a firm hand. Speaker 1 (15:21) It's a complicated question, actually. And I mean, we'll answer this to some extent in our very final episode, but I think a couple of things can be true at once. Number one, the institutions of terror, the committed public safety, do actually stabilize the situation. They do provide leadership, and they do manage to, you know, they defeat the rebellions, and they hold the line on the frontiers and indeed start to... to start to win the war. So to that extent, absolutely right. The only question is when you get to 1794, there is a definite question mark about whether Robespierre at that point, he will never be satisfied that France is at peace because there will always be corruption and vice to be fought. Just to say that Speaker 2 (16:02) this constitution is precious to Robespierre and Saint-Just because they've drawn it up. Of course. I don't think it is a cynical move to entrench that dictatorial power. which is sometimes how it's presented. Speaker 1 (16:15) Yeah, they're not Vladimir Putin or something. No. You know, they're not cold, cynical, just interested in power for its own sake. Absolutely not. And of course, going hand in hand with the rule of the Committee of Public Safety is the policy of terror. Let's just say, just equate that to kind of revolutionary justice. So Saint-Just says very clearly on the 10th of October, between the people and their enemies, there can be nothing but the sword. We must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by... So violence is a part of their sort of strategy. This is not, though, a dictatorship. It's not controlled by any one person. And the committees are still reporting to the convention. There are aspects in which it anticipates later dictatorships. So power control by a very small group of people. Opposition is treated as treason. And dissent is punished with kind of state-sanctioned violence. So in all those ways. It definitely looks ahead to the 20th century, and lots of historians have written about this. But I think the biggest thing is that actually what it's done is the French Revolution has been very anarchic for the last couple of years, very chaotic. And actually, under this new regime, the Committee of Public Safety, at about this point, autumn 1793, central state government in France is stronger than it has been for years. Probably going back, you know. well into the reign of Louis XVI, if not further back. You have a really high-functioning machine now that is handing down ruthless, decisive edicts, that is actually getting stuff done. The smack of firm government, completely. Within it, however, there are lots of tensions. So just to look at the Committee of Public Safety, if you think about that, there are these blokes, there's 12 of them, and they're meeting in a kind of green room. They're working very hard late at night, all of this. And they're spending a lot of time arguing among themselves. So on one wing, you have two people we've talked about already. You have Saint-Just, and you have this bloke called Georges Couton, who's in his wheelchair. The sex addict. He claims he was paralyzed by having too much sex. Yeah. And you've got Rob Spierre, who you've described already. Pale, prim, glasses, wig, you know, all that. The incorruptible moral authority. Robespierre, to be absolutely clear, it's really important, I think, that people dispel any sense of Robespierre being a dictator. He is not a dictator. He has this great moral authority, but he's one of a committee. And actually, a lot of the decisions on the committee, and this will be really important when we talk about the fall of Robespierre. A lot of the decisions on the committee are made by these kind of military bureaucrats. So there's a guy called Lazar Karno who runs the army. There is Robert Linde who manages all the food supplies. These guys are like, their job is to win the war and to take all the decisions, to manage the administration, to do all that. They're the people who are really keeping the show on the road. And when Rob Spear is talking at great length, about the Republic of Virtue. These are men who are rolling their eyes and sort of surreptitiously signing requisition orders under the desk. Military logistics is not Robespierre's vibe at all. Not at all. And the differences between these men and Robespierre over time will become more and more pronounced, especially as they're working so hard, they're all knackered, they're all drunk, you know, all of this. However, the thing on which they're all united at this point is the policy of terror. So you described how they passed the thing called the law of suspects. The law of suspects allows them to arrest anybody. Yeah, that's basically it, isn't it? To arrest anybody. Speaker 2 (19:48) Anybody, yeah. Speaker 1 (19:49) If basically your conduct associations, talks or writings identify you as an enemy of the people or an enemy of liberty, then you've committed a crime. So there's that. The Paris Commune, I love this, the Paris Commune has drawn up and published a list of... Characteristics that render people suspect. These include speaking cryptically of the misfortunes of the revolution, spreading bad news, and this is the best one, affecting excessive severity in order to appear Republican. So in other words, if you seem too keen on the revolution, you're probably a traitor. And they say very specifically, The list of enemies of the people includes those who, while not having done anything against liberty, also haven't done anything for it. Speaker 2 (20:40) So Speaker 1 (20:41) if you've literally done nothing at all, you're probably a traitor and an enemy of the people. If Speaker 2 (20:45) you're against the revolution, then you're guilty. And if you seem like you're in favour of the revolution, then you're guilty. And there's not. really much leeway in between those two categories. No, Speaker 1 (20:54) it's a very hard balance to strike. And in his History of the Revolution, the American historian Jeremy Popkin says, the great iron of this is a republic that is devoted to the rights of man. You know, the first, really the first state in history to be so explicitly devoted, even far more so than the American Republic, to this utopian creed is running a prison system that is now on a scale without precedent in the Western world. So by the summer of 1794, by the time it's all over, about half a million people have been through the French prison system. Now, most of them do come out again. They obviously don't guillotine anything like a majority of these people. And even in Paris, at the height of the terror, if you were accused of a capital offence, Tom, for example, had you been too enthusiastic in your support of the revolution and outed yourself, therefore, as a traitor, The chances are that you'd still come out with your head on your shoulders. Unless Speaker 2 (21:50) I was an aristocrat. Speaker 1 (21:51) Yeah, that's true. Or Marie Antoinette. So the official death toll of the terror, I mean, estimates differ. Timothy Tackett gives a figure. It says the official death toll is 17,000 people, which in the scale of the great slaughters of the 20th century is not great. If you include in that deaths in prison from starvation and disease, you're probably looking at 40,000. And then if you look at the Vendee and... So on your hundreds and hundreds of thousands. But, you know, it's not as enormous as the 20th century killings. Now, it's important to remember this is not senseless killing. It is killing with a purpose. I mean, that sounds a terrible thing to say, but they drew up the terror as