MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE:

HIS LIFE AND OPINIONS.*

BY PERCY B. ST. JOHN.

CHAPTER II-BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND EARLY LIFE OF ROBESPIERRE.

1759-1789.

FRANCOIS Maximilian Joseph Isidore de Robespierret was the eldest son of a lawyer of Arras. It has been stated, by almost every biographer, that his family was of Irish extraction,‡ having come over with the Cavaliers during the great revolution of 1640. I have not, however, found any authority for this supposition, while the name is certainly not Irish-the only historical name in any way resembling it, on which I have fallen, is that of Ribaupierre, a corruption of Pierre Roi des Ribauds.§ The origin of the assertion rests, as far as I can discover, on a most slender thread-that of the great republican's uncle having been a member of a masonic lodge at Arras, founded by Charles Edward Stuart, the pretender. One writer asserts "that he accompanied to France the last remnant of that royal house, and after accomplishing this duty, imposed on him by his religious and political faith, established himself in Artois. His tomb still exists in the church of Carvin, a village near Bethune." All this, however, is supposition, resting on no solid basis. The father of Maximilian married, against the will of his family, Marie Josephine Carreau, the daughter of a brewer, who, however, by her gentle virtues, soon won the affections of her husband's relatives. She died young, leaving four children, of whom Maximilian, the eldest, was but nine years of age. So great was the grief of the father, that throwing up his profession, he took to a rambling life in Germany, England, and America-keeping once a school at Cologne, and dying at Munich.

Maximilian, born in 1759, was thus left with an orphan brother and sister, one sister being dead, and early knew what it was to suffer and combat with the world. Their grandfather took charge of them, but he too dying, the children were protected by M. de Conzie, bishop of Arras, who placed Maximilian amongst the choir of his cathedral. Perceiving in him much promise, he used his influence with the Cardinal de Rohan, titular prelate of the abbaye of St.

* Continued from page 10.

+ Spelt Robertspierre in the Moniteur at first. The Biographie Universelle carps at his calling himself De; but it was his name, and his father's before him, as this writer ought to have known.

Charles Nodier; "Memoirs" (which I have found wholly apocryphal). Lamartine speaks of him as "of a poor, honest, and respected family, of English origin," which explains his puritanic character.

§ Jacob the Bibliophile.

The Biographie Universelle asserts that it was a species of secret society, as if it had been something political. Searching, however, two curious Masonic works, I find the fact clearly stated. In the "Acta Latomorum, ou chronologie de l'histoire de la Franche maconnerie," Paris, 1815, vol. 1, p. 61, I read: "France, April 15, 1747.-Charles Edouard Stuart, being at Arras, and wishing to testify to the artesian freemasons, as well as to the officers of the garrison of the town of Arras, how pleased and grateful he was for the kindness they had shown him, granted them a bulle d'institutions of a primordial chapter, under the distinctive title of the Ecosse Jacobite, of which he conferred the government on the lawyers Lagneau, De Robespierre, and others." See also " Histoire de la Fondation de la G. O. de France," p. 184. This Robespierre was either Maximilian's father or uncle.

¶ Let none learnedly compare Robespierre, son of a brewer's daughter, with Cromwell. The brewer story is exploded.

Wast, who had a purse at Louis le Grand in his gift, and obtained for him entrance to the college. The young Robespierre accordingly came to Paris in 1770, residing with an uncle, the Abbe de la Roche, canon of Notre Dame, who however, also died shortly after. Our youth's success at college was equal to the efforts which he made, he having carried off the first prizes in nearly every class. He was, moreover, a great favourite with the professors, particularly with M. Herivaux, a classic scholar, who imbued him with much of that classic lore which made him so Roman and Spartan in many of his ideas. So early did his predilections develop themselves, that at college he was known by the nickname of the Roman. On completing his studies, Robespierre waited on the Cardinal de Rohan to thank him, and begged that prince-so famous in the collar affair to give the vacant scholarship to his brother Augustin. The cardinal, after passing many compliments on the talents and assiduity of Maximilian, readily acquiesced.

The young man now devoted himself to the study of law, while his leisure hours were consumed in the reading of philosophy and politics, particularly Rousseau, his favourite writer, whose "Contrat Social," in a measure, formed the character of this celebrated personage.* Having been at length received as an avocat by the Parliament of Paris, Maximilian returned to his native city, and took his sister from a convent to reside with him. His father's name at once opened up a connection for him in Arras, and very shortly he found himself fully employed, at an age when lawyers in general are briefless.

The life of the young lawyer was now happy and enviable, very different from that stormy career which afterwards made of his days and nights one continued fever. His time was divided between his legal business and the society of his sister and friends. Robespierre and a number of ardent spirits founded a club under the name of Rosatis, which, seemingly devoted to the song and wine-cup, to suppers and riotous meetings, was in reality a political association in which all the more important questions of the day were freely discussed. This society, had, no doubt, considerable influence on the career of our young advocate. But despite his duties, his studies, and his engagements, the indefatigable Robespierre accepted the offer which was made to him to become a member of the academy of Arras, into which he was received on the 15th November, 1783, being then twenty-four years of age-six years after he was its president.

In 1784, however, occurred an event which enables us to give an idea of the literary talents of Robespierre at this early stage of a life which was finally to terminate ere he had gained the full age of manhood. The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Metz offered during this year, a prize for the best article in answer to the following question:-"What is the origin of the opinion which extends to the individuals of a whole family a share of the shame which is attached to the infamy of the guilty? Is this opinion injurious or useful? If the first be decided, what measures can be taken to ward off the inconvenience which thence results ?" Robespierre sent in a paper, and though Lacretelle was declared to have won the prize, a medal of four hundred francs was awarded to Maximilian.† As the opinions of this celebrated man will explain his character as much as his actions, a fragment or two may not be out of place. The whole will repay perusal. The following view of prejudice will show the tendency of Robespierre's mind at five-and-twenty:

"In what place does it rule? In monarchies; it is there that, seconded by the nature of the government, upheld by manners, fed by the general spirit,

* Lamartine says: "The philosophy of J. J. Rousseau had profoundly moved his intellect, falling upon an active will, it remained not a dead letter; it became in him a dogma, a faith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectary, every conviction becomes a sect. Robespierre was the Luther of politics."

See, in the Mercure de France, 1785, an article by Lacratelle himself, reviewing the paper of Robespierre, which was published at Amsterdam in 1785, and in Paris the same year.

it seems to have established its empire on an immovable basis. Honour, as has often been before remarked, is the soul of monarchical government-not that philosophic honour which is nothing but the exquisite sentiment which a noble and pure mind has of its own dignity, which has reason for its basis, and is blended with duty, which would exist even far from the eyes of men, with no witness but Heaven, and no judge but conscience; but that political honour the nature of which is to aspire to exclusiveness and privileges, which causes us not to be satisfied with being estimable, but to seek to be esteemed, to be jealous of showing in our conduct more grandeur than justice, more eclât and dignity than reason; that honour which makes us value vanity more than virtue, but which in the body politic supplies the place of virtue, since, by the simplest of mechanisms, it compels the citizen to promote the public good, when he thinks he is serving but his own private passion; that honour, often as strange in its laws as grand in its effects, which produces so many sublime sentiments and so many ridiculous prejudices, so many heroic traits and extravagant actions; which piques itself generally on respecting the laws, and at others considers it a duty to break them; which imperiously requires obedience to the will of the prince, and yet induces any man who thinks another unjustly preferred to withdraw; which directs us to treat our enemies with generosity, and bids us cut the throat of an offending fellow countryman. In nothing else can we seek for the source of this prejudice in question."

Robespierre thus writes upon the consequences of a man of rank and respectability being in his day accused of crime:

"What will take place, when families have not had recourse to a fatal precaution, and the crime of an individual shall have awakened the attention of the police? Then shall we see all who are linked in any way to the guilty one leaguing together to tear him from the punishment with which he is threatened. All that can be done by influence, favour, riches, friendship, good-will, zeal, courage, and despair, is put in practice; every human passion, magnified by the most powerful of all interests, is lavished to silence the law; in presence of every fault it would suppress it finds leagued against it a new conspiracy, more or less to be feared, according to the credit and consideration enjoyed by the family of the criminal. And who can blame these unfortunate beings for uniting their whole strength to escape such a disaster? Public commiseration is theirs. What a strange contrast! The interest of society demands the punishment of the guilty, and yet society feels compelled to wish for his escape. A host of irreproachable citizens are placed between the judges and the accused; to strike him they must plunge the sword with which they are armed into the bosom of crowds of innocent beings. I pity a judge reduced to this cruel position, in which he cannot use the just severity of his office, without immofating also virtue, innocence, beauty, and talent."

In another place he supposes a far distant traveller speaking after the following manner :

"I have seen countries where there exists a curious custom. Every time a criminal is condemned to punishment, a number of citizens must also perish with him. It is not that they are reproached with any fault; they may be just, beneficent, generous; they may possess a thousand talents and a thousand virtues; but they are none the less des gens infames."

This is not the production at five-and-twenty of a person wholly without native power and information, as his detractors pretend. In the following year he wrote for the academy of Amiens an Eloge on Gresset, which contains some really fine passages. He says:-"The true eulogium of a great man are his actions and his works; every other praise is futile for his glory; but still it is a magnificent spectacle to see a nation rendering solemn homage to those who have made it illustrious; contemplating, so to speak, with just pride the monu

Robespierre might have added that we do morally what the Chinese do physically. We shun the relatives of criminals; they execute them with the guilty.

ments of its splendour, the title-deeds of its nobility, and awakening a salutary emulation in the heart of its citizens, by the public praises bestowed on the virtues and talents of those who have honoured the land."

I make no excuse for the following extracts; they show Robespierre as no mean writer and critic, and will, I think, somewhat surprise those who have hitherto considered him as a mere dry demagogue. The first is a comparison between Voltaire and Gresset; and though the former be popular and the latter almost forgotten, that is no proof that Robespierre's judgment was erroneous. It must be recollected that this Gresset, so much praised, was almost universally ridiculed, because he had become sincerely pious in the latter part of his life:"A contemporary poet seemed to offer Gresset a more formidable rival. Drawn by ardent ambition towards every species of glory, Voltaire had striven in every literary field; but of all the styles in which he was practised, the lighter kind of poetry was that in which he had gained most success and displayed the most decided talent. Victorious over all who had preceded him in the same career, he had attained a degree of reputation most hopeless-for who would contend with him?-when Gresset stood forth to dispute the prize. This young writer, whom his own amusement and the instinct of genius rather than ambition seemed to lead to glory, was perhaps himself astonished to partake with his brilliant rival the attention and suffrages of the public. It would perhaps be bold to decide between these two great poets, whose productions are distinguished by a different character. Perhaps we may find in Voltaire more wit, more finesse, more correctness; in Gresset more harmony, richness, and nature; we feel in him more of that amiable negligence, that happy abandon, which is the charm of this style of poetry. The graces of Voltaire will appear more brilliant, more adorned, more lively, more sparkling; those of Gresset more simple, more naïves, more gay, more touching. The one amuses, enchants, and surprises my mind; the other yields a soft voluptuous delight. If I may be allowed to paint by sensible images the impressions produced on me by the works of these two great poets, I would say that the fugitive pieces of Voltaire yield me a pleasure like that of the aspect of a delicious garden, adorned by the taste of an opulent proprietor; I would compare the sensation excited in me by Gresset to the gentle emotion derived from the sight of those enchanting landscapes where nature has lavished all her charms, and wafted to our very soul the sentiment of her touching beauty."

It is difficult to believe that those who describe Robespierre as lowly and meanly ambitious, devoured by jealousy and hate of genius, can have read this passage, which is the production of a generous mind, warmly appreciating the talents of his fellows the more that Robespierre was a poet himself. But when calumny has degenerated into system, writers have no leisure to inquire minutely into truth. It is enough to search for the dark side, without troubling themselves about the bright. I conceive that the above is not without talent, while his view of dramas is very clever :

"We have, in our day, seen the domain of the theatre enlarged by the birth of productions called dramas. But I know not what mania induces a host of critics to declaim against this new style with a species of fanaticism. These fiery censors, persuaded that nature only knows tragedy and comedy, take every dramatic work not coming within one or other of these categories, for a literary monster, which must needs be crushed at its birth, as if that inexhaustible variety of interesting tableaux which man and society present to us must necessarily be confined within these narrow limits; as if nature had but two tones, and there were no medium for us between laughter and the transports of furious passion."

The following passages are too full of noble sentiments to be omitted:—

"It is not for me to decide between those philosophers who have condemned the stage and those who have praised it; neither will I examine if Gresset was right when he composed able dramatic works, or when he repented having written them. The lover of literature may regret the productions with which

N

he might have enriched us; the citizen will sigh to see the stage so often per verted into a public school of corruption..... The eulogium of many writers ends with the list of their works, those of Gresset are his least merit. Why can this not be said of all who have shone by their great talents? Are not genius and virtue destined to be united in an immortal alliance? Have not one and the other their common source in the elevation, in the pride, and in the sensibility of the soul? By what fatality, then, have we so often seen genius declaring war on virtue? Writers, more celebrated for your disorders than your talents, you were born to lighten the evils of your fellow creatures, to strew flowers on the passage of human life, and you have come to empoison its flow; you have made it a cruel game to let loose on us all the terrible passions which make up our miseries and our crimes. Dearly have we paid your vaunted masterpieces! They have cost us our morals, our repose, our happiness, and that of all our posterity, to whom they transmit from age to age the licence and corruption of ours."

Never were the men who then, as now, in France, made literature a vehicle of corruption more pitilessly and ably scourged. But we must leave our young author to follow the career of the lawyer and politician.

When Benjamin Franklin came to France, he brought with him his splendid invention of lightning conductors, or paratonnerres, as they were called. They were immediately adopted in various parts of France, but not without a rude struggle. Ignorance and superstition was hard at work to prevent their introduction. It was represented to the credulous countrymen that it was an invention of the devil, that it was outraging the Almighty to seek protection against his thunders, and that, moreover, the conductors were dangerous, as tending to draw the both upon the devoted district in which one existed. A Monsieur Vissery de Boisvallé, a rich landowner of St. Omer, erected one on his property; the people took alarm, amongst others, one whom Robespierre thus describes "In a subterraneous cavern, which receives the light of day through an airhole, dwells a man well known in St. Omer as Bobo, who has, for a long time, with honour and credit, carried on a trade in salad, which has not enriched him. The paratonnerre of M. Vissery has troubled the repose of this honest citizen, who fears that the thunder will come and crack his humble penates at the very bottom of his asylum." But Bobo and others succeeded in inducing the echevins of St. Omer to order the demolition of the rod. In this predicament M. Vissery applied to young Robespierre, who undertook to appeal to the superior court. We shall see that our lawyer is not a bad hand at a story.

"Nature and education had inspired the sieur Vissery de Boisvallé with a decided taste for the study of science; a considerable fortune gave him the means of carrying out his ideas . . . . . . Every public journal announced to him some new miracle of electricity; he saw, above all, with pleasure, the use of paratonnerres justified by experience and spread over all Europe. He then conceived the idea of arming his house with this salutary preservative. As a savant it was to him a prospect of delight to see his dwelling become a monument to the power and utility of the sciences he so loved; as a citizen, he rejoiced in setting an example of adopting one of his brightest inventions. In the month of May, 1779, this idea was executed...... But soon a formidable conspiracy was organised against it. A lady of St. Omer, whose name I will not mention, recollected that the sieur de Boisvallé had defended several actions against her about a party-wall, and at once conceived the great design of overthrowing the machine which frowned upon her chimney; she proposed to herself to league the whole neighbourhood against it, and even to arm justice itself. To carry out this bold plan, she first had a petition manufactured, a masterpiece of good sense, reasoning, and erudition, in which it was set forth that the sieur de Vissery had erected on his chimney a machine to draw down thunder on his own house, and the fire of Heaven on the whole locality; it was therein decided that the invention of rods is pernicious, and, to prove the assertion, we have quoted the tragic end of the celebrated Bernouilli, who died a natural death.