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Updated: June 1, 2025
It is natural that with pure Jacobins one notes the re-appearance of the pure Jacobinism, the egalitarian and anti-Christian socialism, the programme of the funereal year; in short, the rigid, plain, exterminating ideas which the sect gathers together, like daggers encrusted with gore, from the cast-off robes of Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois.
Nothing that relates to a man like Napoleon can be considered useless or trivial. "What, after all, was the result of this strange business which might have cost Bonaparte his head? for, had he been taken to Paris and tried by the Committee of Public Safety, there is little doubt that the friend of Robespierre the younger would have been condemned by Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois.
We have really no acceptable explanation of the ascendancy which the dictator finally obtained. Without influence in the National Assembly, he gradually became the master of the Convention and of the Jacobins. ``When he reached the Committee of Public Safety he was already, said Billaud-Varennes, ``the most important person in France.
The difference arose on the question when Terror should be considered to have done as much of its work as it could be expected to do. This difference again was connected with difference of conception as to the type of the society which was ultimately to emerge from the existing chaos. Billaud-Varennes, the guiding spirit of the Committees, was without any conception of this kind.
It was followed by yells and hootings; and, with dismay, he retired to the Jacobins, to deliver it over again as if to seek support among a more subservient audience. Next day, on entering the Convention, he was openly accused by Tallien and Billaud-Varennes of aspiring to despotic power.
Billaud-Varennes and Saint-Just openly maintained the policy of the committees. Desmoulins had said of the latter: "He so esteems himself, that he carries his head on his shoulders with as much respect as if it were the holy sacrament." "And I," replied Saint-Just, "will make him carry his like another Saint Denis." Collot- d'Herbois, who was on a mission, arrived while matters were in this state.
"The mask must be torn off," added Billaud-Varennes, "whatever face it may cover; I would rather my corpse should serve an ambitious man for his throne, than by my silence to become the accomplice of his crimes." Panis, Bentabole, Charlier, Thirion, Amar, attacked him in turn. Freron proposed to the convention to throw off the fatal yoke of the committees.
Billaud-Varennes presented the theory of popular government and the means of rendering the army always subordinate to the nation.
Fouquier Tinville, with sixteen revolutionary Judges and Jurymen, have been tried and executed, at the moment when the instigators of their crimes, Billaud-Varennes, Collot, &c. were sentenced by the Convention to a banishment, which is probably the object of their wishes.
The Club, divided at first, went over to him, gave him an ovation, and expelled Collot and Billaud-Varennes with violence and contumely. Robespierre, encouraged by his success, exhorted the Jacobins to purify the Convention by expelling bad men, as they had expelled the Girondins. It was his first appeal to the popular forces. Coffinhal, who was a man of energy, implored him to strike at once.
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