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Updated: May 3, 2025
The most horrible days in the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris were those which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Robespierre had then ceased to attend the meetings of the sovereign Committee; and the direction of affairs was really in the hands of Billaud, of Collot, and of Barère.
It was said by contemporaries that if Vadier was a hyæna, Barère a jackal, and Robespierre a cat, Billaud was a tiger. The cat perceived that he was in danger of not having the tiger, jackal, and hyæna, on his side.
The tumult was suppressed; and it was decreed that same evening that Collot, Billaud, and Barère should instantly be removed to a distant place of confinement. The next day the order of the Convention was executed. The account which Barère has given of his journey is the most interesting and the most trustworthy part of these Memoirs.
He described a person bearing little resemblance to Moreau, and added that he wore a braided French coat and the national cockade in his hat. I instantly perceived the whole was a mere scheme for getting a little money. I sent the fellow about his business. In a quarter of an hour after I had got rid of him M. la Chevardiere called on me, and introduced M. Billaud, the French Consul at Stettin.
It was then were invented the alleged conspiracies of the inmates of the prisons, crowded under the law des suspects, or emptied by that of the 22nd Prairial, which might be called the law des condamnes; then the emissaries of the committee of public safety entirely replaced in the departments those of the Mountain; and Carrier, the protege of Billaud, was seen in the west; Maigret, the protege of Couthon, in the south; and Joseph Lebon, the protege of Robespierre, in the north.
* The Jacobins were at this time headed by Billaud Varenne, Collot, Thuriot, &c. veterans, who were not likely to be deceived by temporizing. Supported by all the force of government, and intrinsically formidable by their union, the Clubs had long existed in defiance of public reprobation, and for some time they had braved not only the people, but the government itself.
These are pleas invented after the fact. All goes to show that Robespierre was really moved by nothing more than his invariable dread of being left behind, of finding himself on the weaker side, of not seeming practical and political enough. And having made up his mind that the stronger party was bent on the destruction of the Dantonists, he became fiercer than Billaud himself.
We learnt also by the cries of the newsman the death of the Duc d'Orleans. It was the only piece of news that reached us during the whole winter." Billaud Varennes said in the Convention: "The time has come when all the conspirators should be known and struck. I demand that we no longer pass over in silence a man whom we seem to have forgotten, despite the numerous facts against him.
To the edicts framed by that Committee the representative assembly did not venture to offer even the species of opposition which the ancient parliament had frequently offered to the mandates of the ancient kings. Six persons held the chief power in the small cabinet which now domineered over France Robespierre, Saint Just, Couthon, Collot, Billaud, and Barere.
Herault de Sechelles, allied with Danton, and accused of being indulgent, had just given guarantees, however, and applied the revolutionary regime in Alsace with a severity worthy of Billaud. They were regarded as a thousand times more criminal than Capet and his wife. Levasseur makes a similar statement.-Ibid., 570. Saint-Just says to Carnot: "You are in league with the enemies of the patriots.
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