Nasty subject, but...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the history books I've read have ever really gone into this, but - presumably, as originally intended, the Thermidor plot was to have Robespierre and co. arrested, imprisoned, and then, presumably, put on trial before the Tribunal. Could they have seriously been confident in a conviction? Some accounts of the day suggest that the Robespierristes were reluctant to be 'freed' because it appears they reckoned a trial was a better option for them, Marat style. It would also have given Robespierre's supporters more time to organise. So, what were the plotters thinking? Just 'it's now or never and we'll work the next bit out when we come to it'? Any thoughts on this?

Another bit of unpleasantness on the same subject - I recently came across an account that suggests there wasn't any lead in the wound in Robespierre's jaw, i.e., that it was a shot from a pistol charged with gunpowder but no lead bullet: that would still cause a fair bit of damage, specially if fired into your mouth, which is the suicide method, but wouldn't smash your skull...sorry, I've had toothache all week so that's the sort of thing I've been wondering about!

Comments

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

With regards to your first point, they were very nervous about the possibility of insurrection, as demonstrated by their uncertainty and paranoia about where to keep the prisoners (and the fact that there were, ah, popular protests).
The old addage that history is written by the winners may very well apply here: the opposition could have known a trial would be impossible from the start but could have still later implied that they intended to go ahead with one. In short, we can't be sure. However, I think the conviction of Danton did leave the deputies with the sense--whether it is right or wrong, I do not know--that, at this point, the only possible verdict the jury will return for a politician is a guilty one. In short, the Tribunal became so closely associated wiht execution and so much had happened since Marat's acquittal that they didn't really take into account that there could be another outcome. That fatalism combine with the blind certainty that can come out of taking a terrible risk may have colored their judgement.

As for the second bit, my guess is that Robespierre's wound wasn't examined that closely, seeing as by that point it was probably assumed he was less than fourty-eight hours away from the guillotine. And, as Scurr points out in Fatal Purity, if Robespierre himself was handling the gun, it should be remembered that he had little to no experience with fire arms, so god knows what he did. But the quesiton of the facial damage is an interesting one, if only because different sources discribe it differently. Some imply Robespierre's jaw was totally shattered, also implying the injury was such that speech was rendered impossible, but there are quotes attributed to him following his injury which implies slightly less--though still possibly severe--damage to his jaw.

A sort of related question: Augustin Robespierre requested to be arrested along with his brother. Had he kept his mouth shut, what do you think would have happened to him?

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Re: Augustin. Probably would have escaped for a day or two, then gotten thrown into prison as an afterthought. Whether or not he would have gotten guillotined depending on when he went to trial. Probably would have though.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Skimming through a book on Napoleon in a bookshop recently, I read something that suggested that Carnot was pissed off that the Robespierres were giving young Bonaparte a long leash (the papers on which were tactfully destroyed after Thermidor), and, as with the CPS arguments with Saint-Just over military matters, this may have helped stir the anger up. I haven't come across this anywhere else, though (but I haven't done much reading on this - as a friend of mine said, "Napoleon doesn't really do it for me" - nice uniforms, though!) - if there's any truth in it, I suppose Carnot would have it in for Augustin, too.

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

To my knowledge, Augustin didn't really do all that much, so part of me thinks they may have removed him from office, but they would have hesitated to kill him, if only because it would seem too much like the bad blood (guilt through blood relation) they criticized Robespierre of beginning to lean toward. Still, in a panicked situation, principles tend to go out the window, so they might have just seen something named "Robespierre" and viewed it as a danger.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think if you ever want to give schoolkids or students a masterclass in the unreliability of 'witness accounts', give them the mass of 'accounts ' of 8/9/10 Thermidor to sift some truth out of! It's 'Rashomon' stuff! I get the sense that in the hysteria the plotters were simply were thinking one step at a time, and the events - the opportunity to declare them outlaws and Robespierre being silenced but alive - just extraordinarily lucky for them. I keep reading accounts saying that animosity was caused by the various Revolutionary bodies being filled by Robespierre's supporters, but if that was really the case - and the accounts are obviously post-Thermidor - it would have been madness to try to get Robespierre held and convicted by them. At the same time, Elisabeth LeBas says her husband was considering suicide a few days prior to the 9th (how many days isn't clear from her account) so maybe their group position was a lot weaker even before the speech of the 8th than other accounts suggest?

Robespierre's injuries vary according to the animosity of the teller, it seems - I've read one where his jaw's hanging off by a few ligaments! Ditto, in some he's guillotined quickly, but in one account (a footnote in Thiers, I think) his bandages are removed so the executioner can show him to the crowd for a while - look, it's really him - not simply to provide a clean cut. I think there's a nerve in the lower jaw that if severed causes paralysis (at any rate, I had to sign a document on this when I had a jaw operation when I was a teenager - and my god there was a lot of blood, too!) so the account of him thanking the person who gives him some paper is an odd one - it's not hostile, unless his saying 'monsieur' is implying he's dodgy - though I've read other non-hostile accounts of him saying he carried on using 'monsieur' and 'vous' in speech, so...later on, he indicated he wanted pen and paper, though his head was bound up by then so even if he was capable of speech at this point he presumably couldn't because of the bandages.

Yes, I love speculating on that - I suppose by that point all the Robespierristes would have been doomed, as Elisabeth LeBas' suicide story suggests: Mathiez records regional Jacobins killing themselves in sorrow when the news reached them. I wonder what would have happened if Robespierre had been assassinated in the street beforehand? Would the left have survived, and Saint-Just etc. been able to stay in the CPS? Or if - as Napoleon commented later, he had been in Paris, as he had had the option of being, on the 9th? His political allegiances seem pretty flexible, but the comment suggests he'd have fought with the Robespierristes at that point (with what result? destruction of the Convention, chaos in Paris, civil war, and the foreign powers moving in to take advantage, I suppose?)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

It's been argued that Saint-Just came pretty close to smoothing things over between the Committees and the Convention, but a dispute with some colleagues and then a conversation with Robespierre made him change course--in the latter we don't know what was said--so one wonders what impact he could have had had he pursued his initial course of action. Furthermore, what were his thoughts when it all fell apart?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Ooh, the Saint-Just's silence on 9th Thermidor question! Sometimes it reminds me of a description in 'Titus Groan ' - when Steerpike is locked, trapped, in a room, he doesn't bother to rattle the doorhandle because he's clearly heard the key turn in the lock. Maybe the attack is a scenario he's already gone through in his mind, he's been through the outcomes, knows it's hopeless, so chooses a statuesque neoclassical stoicism. I like the interpretation that their relative inaction that evening is because they know that if they fight they'll have to destroy the democratic institutions they've fought for, so they choose death - but it could be simply that they're all so damn tired they're like sleepwalkers by this point: Saint-Just can't have had much sleep on the 8th, either, and his silence could simply be shock and inexperience in the Convention. They seem to have lost their 'political antennae' by this point.

On your earlier point - it's a shame they didn't have the concept of 'gardening leave' - it's the British term for a cooling off period where colleagues at each others throats are made to stay at home without losing their official position while others sort things out (much in the news yesterday because there's a big spat in the police)!

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

I think had there been some sort of official "gardening leave", the French Revolution could have run a quite different course. But then again, argueably Danton's mistake was ducking out of politics. But, had the respective leaders of the Mountain and the Brissotins been made to go calm down, things could have been rather different.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Even modern cabinets fight like rats in a sack - the revolutionary ones must have been living with a few hours sleep snatched in the committee rooms themselves, fuelled by coffee and alcohol, fighting wars on all fronts whilst trying to reshape a nation - I'm actually amazed they last as long as they do: I read accounts saying that days are like weeks and weeks like years. They must have been frazzled.

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

I think I've already said it...But every time I read about these last weeks at the Committee or watchs a movie about it, I get so nervous that I can't barely bear myself! The issues they were duscussing about were really very delicate, and these men were used after five Revolution's years. I think they all need a few days taking a good holiday at the mountains or the beach, but unfortunately, they couldn't. Too many troubles, too many people wanting to overthrown the Revolutionnary Governement, the war...It was impossible for them to take some rest. And there were not nerve pills!

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

I wonder if things would have been better off had the National Assembly stayed at Versailles. True, they would be in less immediate control of Paris and he who loses Paris loses France. But, in Paris, to control Paris, they let it control them, so perhaps some physical distance between themselves and the angery sans-culottes would have been a healthy thing?
It's hard to govern rationally when you know radicals, enemies, etc are beating on the door demanding that you listen to them or there'll be an insurrection. When the sense of imediate physical danger is that real, decisions are bound to be more motivated by panic and fear of things falling apart than rationality. Had the deputies not felt so imediately threatened by the crowds gathering outside, would they have expelled the Girondins? Would a lot have happened?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I think the Assembly would have been nipped in the bud, the left marginalised out of existence and a settlement nice for maybe the upper echelons of the middle classes arrived at, but that'd be it. Paris gives it a sort of fortified protection from the court and without that, I think the court/nobility would have won, by force of arms if need be. Catch 22 - then Paris becomes what (depending on your political point of view!) could be seen as the Convention's jailer (no, that's not the right term - arm twister, maybe, bouncer), not just for the Girondins but also the Montagnards on 5th September etc. The very thing they need to survive is the thing that threatens it...I think a lot of things in the Revolution are like that, though - viz, Robespierre's temperament: without that extraordinary, inflexible drive ("above all, tenacious") the project would never have got so far, but sadly I think politicians need flexibility, compromise, etc. to survive in the long term (Vetinari, the benign tyrant in the Discworld books, was described by Terry Pratchet as a cross between Robespierre and Machiavelli - that sort of thing's what you need!) I also think, though, the bourgeois Convention members don't really comprehend the fears of the working classes over various issues until they have snowballed (I really need to get a good book on the Enrages and co.!)

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Yes. But in that case, the French revolution would stayed in the "moderate" face...And if you read my username, you'll understand that I'm not precissely against the Girondins being expelled from the Convention...*cough*

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

It depends on how we define the moderate phase. In the early days of the National Assembly, the leaders of what would later become the Girondin/Brissotin and Montagnard/Jacobin factions shared a lot of the same ideas of radical social reform--even total moderates like Lafayette did--and what drew a number of politicians away from liberalism (including the Montagnards, when you consider their later support of sensorship, etc) was, aside from fear of invading armies which nothing could have helped, fear of the power of the mob.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

But there's also the influence of the right - the influence of pressure and bribery from the aristocracy/court undermining many (willingly or just going with the flow). The third estate are new to politics, and as they're finding their feet (forgive tortured metaphor here!) they keep having the rug pulled from under them by discovering betrayal after betrayal (Mirabeau etc.). Trust and confidence in your presumed colleagues vanish very quickly in that atmosphere.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Something I'd forgotten - the British House of Commons chamber is designed so that the rival seats are two-swords-lengths apart, and there are lines painted on the floor you are not allowed to step over, so you can't kill each other (in the chamber, at least!).

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

The disconnect you mention between the bourgois deputies and the working class parisians is extremely important. Lenin said something to the effect of "the people need bread and justice, but there cannot be justice without bread" (sorry for my terrible paraphrase!) and I think the mistake many revolutionaries and radical reformers(Lenin included)have made is that they somehow combined the two in their rhetoric in a way that resulted in the political classes considering bread an abstraction and the poor expecting justice to bring bread. It's well discribed in Buchner's "Danton's Death" when one of the sans-culottes says something about how the politicians convinced us that killing the King would end our poverity, and then that death of the Girondins would do so, so now maybe killing Danton will do it. It's an over-simplification, of course, but it does illustrate the problem of letting political agendas be confused with basic needs, etc.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

There's another irony that Robespierre is brought on to the CPS to provide a connection with the Jacobins and sansculottes, but by spending his hours and energy there, rather than at the Jacobins, he loses touch at a vital time...(well, that's how I read some of autumn 1793, anyway!)