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He had entire sway over the Jacobins, whom he admitted and ejected at pleasure; all important posts were occupied by his creatures; he had formed the revolutionary tribunal and the new committee himself, substituting Payan, the national agent, for Chaumette, the attorney-general; and Fleuriot for Pache, in the office of mayor.
A moment after, seeing a grenadier of the escort offer the Procureur de la Commune half a small loaf, Louis XVI. approached and asked him, in a whisper, for a piece. "Ask aloud for what you want," said Chaumette, retreating as though he feared being suspected of pity. "I asked for a piece of your bread," replied the King. "Divide it with me," said Chaumette. "It is a Spartan breakfast.
She asked whether I should be permitted to come up again; Chaumette assured her that I should. 'You may trust, said he, 'the word of an honest republican. "But in spite of my tears they still pressed their questions.
The royalists and aristocrats were hunted down in the name of liberty and equality; the Girondists in the name of indivisibility; Philippeaux, Camille Desmoulins, and the moderate party, in the name of public safety; Chaumette, Anacharsis Clootz, Gobet, Hebert, all the anarchical and atheistical party, in the name of virtue and the Supreme Being; Chabot, Bazire, Fabre-d'Eglantine, in the name of probity; Danton in the name of virtue and modesty.
The Revolutionary Tribunal heard several witnesses relative to the events on the Champ de Mars: amongst them I find Chaumette, Procurator of the Commune of Paris; Lullier, the Syndic Procurator General of the Department; Coffinhal, Judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal; Dufourny, manufacturer of gunpowder; Momoro, a printer.
Robespierre now stood between the two hostile parties Danton, Desmoulins, and their friends, on the side of a regular government; Hébert, Chaumette, and Collot, returned from a terrible proconsulate, wishing to govern by severities. The energy of Collot gave new life to his party, whilst Danton displayed no resource.
The latter is much the more correct account of the two, if we choose to call a man an intriguer who was honestly anxious to suppress what he considered a wicked faction, and yet had need of some dexterity to keep his own head upon his shoulders. In the winter of 1793 the Municipal party, guided by Hébert and Chaumette, made their memorable attempt to extirpate Christianity in France.
They were more eager to impose the new belief than to destroy the old. Indeed, they were persuaded that the old was hurrying towards extinction, and was inwardly rejected by those who professed it. While Hébert was an anarchist, Chaumette was the glowing patriarch of irreligious belief.
And so Chaumette went to the scaffold, and Servetus to the stake, on the one common principle that the civil magistrate is concerned with heresy. And Hébert was only following out the same doctrine in a mild and equitable manner, when he insisted on preventing the publication of a book in which the author professed his belief in a God.
The old names of the days and months and years were changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their stead. The would-be God, soi-disant Dieu, was banished from France. Clootz and Chaumette, who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras, celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason.
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