and still they show no sign of abating popularity. The | in the business of the General Assembly. On the first masterly stage-craft is undoubtedly one of the elements in occasion when he spoke (in seconding a motion by John this remarkable conquest of the play-going public; the Home for the suspension of certain presbyters who had purity and generous morality of the plays another; the refused to take part in an unpopular settlement) he was dialogue-which is always bright and clever, without any listened to with great attention, but his words had so straining after or indeed much attaining to wit—a third; | little immediate effect on the assembly that on a division the humour, distinctness, and typical representativeness he was left in a minority of eleven against two hundred. of the characters a fourth. That there is more art and A young man might well have been daunted by such a individuality in the plays than critics at first were willing defeat, but his energy and self-reliance refused to yield. to admit is clear from the fact that none of Robertson's His great oratorical power, at once lucid, cogent, and pernumerous imitators have succeeded in catching his happy suasive, had made an impression on men's minds, and knack. Another proof of something like genius-dramatic within so short a period as one year, when he again genius if not literary genius-is the skill with which he advocated his principles in connexion with what is known repeats the same idea with such variations that each time as the Inverkeithing case, he carried the house completely it is as fresh as if it were new. Again and again his with him, and with the deposition of Thomas Gillespie situations owe their point to the contrast between generous secured a triumph for the policy he had adopted. From kindness of heart and sordid worldliness, or between the that moment his influence in the councils of the Scottish ardent trustful affections of youth and the cynicism of Church as leader of the "moderate party" was for many disenchanted middle age. Pleasant sunny brightness and years nearly supreme (compare PRESBYTERIANISM, vol. xix. ingenuity within a narrow range constitute Robertson's p. 685). The production of Home's tragedy of Douglas distinction rather than breadth or fertility or striking bril- on the Edinburgh stage (1757) afforded Robertson another liancy of wit. He knew his powers and worked steadily occasion for displaying that union of courage and caution within them, not striving to go beyond. With the excep- which formed a marked feature of his character. Altion of David Garrick and Home, written for the Hay- though the influence of moderatism was now visibly in market, and Dreams for the Gaiety, all his well-known the ascendant, there was still enough of the older spirit of plays were written for the Prince of Wales Theatre, with Scottish Puritanism left to take alarm and raise an outcry which his distinctive style of comedy is identified. Un- against a stage play written by a minister and witnessed happily he did not live long to enjoy his success, but died by many clergymen who were the author's friends. in London in February 1871. of these, the famous Dr Alexander Carlyle, was prosecuted before the synod for having gone to the theatre, and he tells us in his Autobiography that he purposely contrived to exclude Robertson from the post of moderator because "his speaking would be of more consequence if not in the chair." This testimony is the more noteworthy as Carlyle shows throughout his memoirs a grudging and unfriendly tone when speaking of Robertson. The latter, indeed, was able to render his incriminated colleague great service on this occasion, not only by his talent as a speaker, but by reason of the detached and unassailable position which his customary prudence had led him to take up. He never went to the play himself, he said, but that was not because he thought it wrong but because he had given a solemn promise to his father never to do so. He could not therefore join in censuring other clergymen who were held by no such vow as he had made: "it was sacred to him, but not obligatory on them." Carlyle was acquitted and Robertson had the credit which he perhaps somewhat too constantly aimed at and generally secured of standing well with all parties, of advocating the claims of culture and liberal sentiment without giving ground to their opponents for attacking his personal conduct and character. ROBERTSON, WILLIAM (1721-1793), an eminent Scottish historian, born at Borthwick, Midlothian, on the 19th September 1721, was the eldest son of the Rev. William Robertson and of Eleanor Pitcairn. He received his early education at the school of Dalkeith,-at that time one of the best in Scotland; but at the age of twelve he was removed to the university of Edinburgh, where he soon manifested that sustained ardour in the pursuit of knowledge which he preserved throughout his long life. On his commonplace books, written when he was a mere youth, he always inscribed the motto: Vita sine literis mors est. He was from the first intended for the ministry; when twenty-two years old he was presented to the living of Gladsmuir in East Lothian, and almost immediately afterwards he lost both his father and his mother, who died within a few hours of each other. The support and education of a younger brother and six sisters then devolved upon him, and, though his income was only £100 a year, he sheltered them all in his house and "continued to educate his sisters under his own roof till they were settled respectably in the world" (Stewart). Robertson's inclination for study was never allowed to interfere with his duties as a parish minister, which he rather increased than diminished: "it was his custom during the summer months to convene on Sunday morning the youth of the parish of Gladsmuir half an hour before the commencement of the regular service of the church, and to employ that time in explaining to them the doctrines of the Catechism." His attention to his pastoral duties and his power and distinction as a preacher had made him a local celebrity while still a young man. His energy and decision of character were brought out vividly by the rebellion of 1745. When Edinburgh seemed in danger of falling into the hands of the rebels he laid aside the pacific habits of his profession and joined the volunteers in the capital. When the city was surrendered he was one of the small band who repaired to Haddington and offered their services to the commander of the royal forces. Such a man could not remain in obscurity, and in the year 1751, when not quite thirty years of age, we find him already taking a prominent part One But during all this period of prominent activity in the public life of Edinburgh Robertson was busy with those historical labours which have given him a permanent place in British literature. He had conceived the plan of his History of Scotland as early as the year 1753; in July 1757 he had proceeded as far as the Gowrie conspiracy, and in November of the following year David Hume, then residing in London, was receiving the proof-sheets from Strahan and making friendly but searching criticisms on the work in letters to the author. Till he had finished his book Robertson had never left his native country; but the publication of his history necessitated a journey to London, and he passed the early months of the year 1758 partly in the capital and partly in leisurely rambles in the counties of England. He returned on horseback in company with Alexander Carlyle and other Scotsmen, riding all the way from London to Edinburgh in about eighteen days. The success of the History of Scotland was immediate and splendid, and within a month a second edition was called for. Before the end of the author's life the book had reached its fourteenth edition; and in the opinion of some it remains Robertson's greatest work. It soon brought him other rewards than literary fame. In 1759 he was appointed chaplain of Stirling Castle, in 1761 one of His Majesty's chaplains in ordinary, and in 1762 he was chosen principal of the university of Edinburgh. Two years later the office of king's historiographer was revived in his favour with a salary of £200 a year. His income greatly surpassed the revenue of any Presbyterian minister before him and at least equalled that of some of the bishops when Episcopacy was established in Scotland. It is the more surprising therefore that this moment of exceptional prosperity should have been chosen by some of his most valued friends to advise him to forsake the Scottish for the English Church and try for preferment south of the Tweed; and the surprise becomes wonder when we learn that those friends were Sir Gilbert Elliot and David Hume. The imprudence, to say nothing of the questionable morality, of such a step would seem too glaring to allow of its recommendation by any honourable well-wishers. Perhaps no man was more fitted than Robertson to measure and reject such injudicious advice, and he probably never gave the matter a second thought. He remained at home among his own people. The rest of Robertson's life was uneventful to a degree even surpassing the proverbial uneventfulness of the lives of scholars. He was casting about for another historical subject in the very year in which his first work appeared, and he was wont to consult his friends on the choice of a period with a naiveté which shows how little the arduousness of historical research was then understood. Hume advised him to write a history of Greece or else lives in the manner of Plutarch. Dr John Blair urged him to write a complete history of England, while Horace Walpole suggested a history of learning. It must be recorded to Robertson's credit that he showed a preference from the first for the subject which he ultimately selected, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He took uncommon pains with the work and devoted to it ten consecutive years of labour. It appeared in three volumes quarto in 1769. In 1777 he published his History of America and in 1791 his Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India, which concluded his historical labours and appeared only two years before his death, which occurred near Edinburgh on the 11th June 1793. His fame had long been European, and he left no rival in the field of historical composition save Gibbon alone. For an adequate appreciation of Robertson's position in British literature, and more especially of his rank as an historian, we have to consider the country and the age in which he was born and his own personal qualities and limits. Considering the small size and poverty of the country, Scotland had made a more than creditable figure in literature in the great age of the Reformation and the Renaissance. Its scholars, civilians, and professors of logic and philosophy were welcomed wherever learning flourished, except, perhaps, in England. All Europe could not show a more brilliant writer and publicist than Buchanan, and "the best romance that ever was written" (the words are Cowper's) was produced by a Scottish contemporary of Shakespeare, viz., the once famous Argenis of John Barclay. But the early triumphs of Scottish genius were all won in a foreign if familiar idiom, the common language of the learned; and when Latin retreated before the growing importance of modern tongues the Scots had no literary vernacular on which to fall back. For a century and a half (1600-1750) a Scottish writer to be read was forced to use a foreign language, Latin, English, and even occasionally French. As Burton has well remarked, this alone was sufficient to account in a large measure for the literary barrenness of the country. There was unquestionably another cause at work, the fervent religious zeal with which the principles of the Reformation had been embraced: neither science, literature, nor art could obtain much attention from men who regarded them all as "deceitful vanities," leading the mind away from the one thing needful. In a small and sparsely peopled country, without wealth, commerce, or even politics in the larger sense, theology became a too absorbing and unique mental stimulus. This was, we may say, proved by the fact that as soon as the union with England opened a wider scope for Scottish energy and enterprise the theological temperature immediately fell,-a change witnessed with natural alarm by the more zealous clergy. "The rise of our too great fondness for trade," writes the Rev. Robert Wodrow in 1709, "to the neglect of our more valuable interests, I humbly think, will be written on our judgment" (Buckle, vol. ii. p. 301). The growth of wealth stimulated the growth of the. other great factor of civilization, that of knowledge, and by the middle of the 18th century, just at the time when Robertson was planning his History of Scotland, a wide spirit of inquiry was abroad. Scottish intellect had risen from the tomb in which it had lain entranced for more than a hundred years. The Scottish contribution to British literature in the last half of the century is distinctly superior to that produced in the southern portion of the island. In philosophy and political and economic science the balance is immensely in favour of Scotland. Robertson was therefore no inexplicable prodigy-an "obscure Scotch parson" writing "like a minister of state," as it pleased Walpole and the London fops to regard him. He lived in a society far more propitious to high literary work than could be found in London or the English universities. The connexion between philosophy and history is closer than appears at first sight. The study of man and his faculties, even ontological speculations as to the nature and origin of the universe, lead by a logical sequence to a consideration of human evolution in time, that is, to history. The coincidence of philosophical speculation with historical achievement so repeatedly manifested cannot be accidental. The topic cannot be developed here; but from the days of the Attic historians, who lived in an atmosphere electric with speculation, to the Hegelian historical school of Germany, the higher planes of history are found in near proximity to loftier peaks of philosophy. Hume, wonderful in all things, was perhaps most wonderful in this, that in him the two characters of the philo sopher and the historian were completely united. He did not only, like Kant and Hegel, speculate about history; he wrote it. Again, we must admire the peculiar fortune of Robertson: he lived during many years in close contact and intimacy with the greatest philosophic genius of his age, perhaps of modern times. Of the three great British historians of the 18th century two were Scotsmen. The exact place of Robertson with regard to his two friends Hume and Gibbon, and to such historians as the rest of Europe had to offer, presents a question of some nicety, because it is complicated by extraneous considerations, so to speak, which should not weigh in an abstract estimate, but cannot be excluded in a concrete and practical one. If we regard only Robertson's potential historic power, the question is not so much whether he was equal to either of his two friends as whether he was not superior to both. The man who wrote the review of the state of Europe prefixed to the 1 Hist. of Scotland, vol. viii. p. 544. History of Charles V., or even the first book of the History of Scotland, showed that he had a wider and more synthetic conception of history than either the author of the Decline and Fall or the author of the History of England. These two portions of Robertson's work, with all their shortcomings in the eye of modern criticism, have a distinctive value which time cannot take away. He was one of the first to see the importance of general ideas in history. He saw that the immediate narrative of events with which he was occupied needed a background of broad and connected generalizations, referring to the social state of which the detailed history formed a part. But he did more than this. In the appendix to the view of Europe called "Proofs and Illustrations" he enters into the difficult and obscure question of land tenure in Frankish times, and of the origin of the feudal system, with a sagacity and knowledge which distinctly advanced the comprehension of this period beyond the point at which it had been left by Du Bos, Montesquieu, and Mably. He was fully acquainted with the original documents, many of them, we may conjecture, not easy to procure in Scotland. It must have been a genuine aptitude for historical research of a scientific kind which led Robertson to undertake the labour of these austere disquisitions of which there were not many in his day who saw the importance. Gibbon, so superior to him for wide reading and scholarship, has pointedly avoided them. It need hardly be said that many, perhaps the majority, of Robertson's views on this thorny topic are out of date now. But he deserves the honour of a pioneer in one of the most obscure if also important lines of inquiry connected with European history. On the other hand, it must be admitted that he showed himself only too tame a follower of Voltaire in his general appreciation of the Middle Ages, which he regarded with the mingled ignorance and prejudice common in the 18th century. In this particular he was not at all in advance of his age. The neglect and gradual oblivion which are now overtaking the greater part of Robertson's historical work are owing to no fault of his. He had not and could not have the requisite materials: they were not published or accessible. Justice requires that we should estimate his performance in view of the means at his command, and few critics would hesitate to subscribe to the verdict of Buckle, "that what he effected with his materials was wonderful." His style, whether of narrative or disquisition, is singularly clear, harmonious, and persuasive. The most serious reproach made against it is that it is correct to a fault and lacks idiomatic vigour, and the charge is not without foundation. But there can be no doubt that, if Robertson's writings are less read than they formerly were, the fact is to be attributed to no defects of style but to the growth of knowledge and to the immense extension of historical research which has inevitably superseded his initiatory and meritorious labours. (J. C. MO.) ROBERVAL, GILLES PERSONNE DE (1602-1675), French mathematician, was born at the village of Roberval near Beauvais in 1602. His name was originally Gilles Personne, that of Roberval, by which he is known, being taken from the place of his birth. Like Descartes, he was present at the siege of La Rochelle in 1627. In the same year he went to Paris, where he was appointed to the chair of philosophy in the Gervais College in 1631, and afterwards to the chair of mathematics in the Royal College of France. A condition of tenure attached to this chair was that the holder should propose mathematical questions for solution, and should resign in favour of any person who solved them better than himself; but, notwithstanding this, Roberval was able to keep the chair till his death, which occurred at Paris in 1675. Roberval was one of those mathematicians who, just before the invention of the calculus, occupied their attention with problems which are only soluble, or can be most easily solved, by some method involving limits or infinitesimals, and in the solution of which accordingly the calculus is always now employed. Thus he devoted some attention to the quadrature of curves and the cubature of surfaces, which he accomplished, in some of the simpler cases, by a method of his own, called by himself the "Method of Indivisibles"; but he lost much of the credit of the discovery as he kept his method for his own use, while Cavalieri published a similar method of his own. Another of Roberval's discoveries was a very general method of drawing tangents, by considering a curve as described by a moving point whose motion is the resultant of several simpler motions. His own description of his method may be translated as follows:- -"General rule. By means of the specific properties of the curve, which will be given, examine the different motions of the tracing point at the place where you wish to draw the tangent; the direction of the tangent is that of the resultant of these motions." He also discovered a method of deriving one curve from another, by means of which finite areas can be obtained equal to the areas between certain curves and their asymptotes. To these curves, which were also applied to effect some quadratures, Torricelli gave the name of Robervallian lines. Between Roberval and Descartes there existed a feeling of ill-will, owing to the jealousy aroused in the mind of the former by the criticism which Descartes offered to some of the methods employed by him and by Fermat; and this led him to criticize and oppose the new geometry which Descartes introduced about this time. As results of Roberval's labours outside the department of pure mathematics may be noted a work on the system of the universe, in which he supports the Copernican system and attributes a mutual attraction to all particles of matter; and also the invention of a special kind of balanco which goes by his name (see BALANCE, vol. iii. p. 266). ROBESPIERRE, MAXIMILIEN MARIE ISIDORE (17581794), the most fanatical and most famous of the republican leaders of the French Revolution, was born at Arras on 6th May 1758. His family was of Irish descent, having emigrated from Ireland at the time of the Reformation on account of religion, and his direct ancestors in the male line had been notaries at the little village of Carvin near Arras from the beginning of the 17th century. His grandfather, being more ambitious, established himself at Arras as an avocat; and his father followed the same profession, marrying Mademoiselle Josephine Carraut, daughter of a brewer in the same city, in 1757. Of this marriage four children were born, two sons and two daughters, of whom Maximilien was the eldest; but in 1767 Madame Derobespierre, as the name was then spelt, died, and the disconsolate widower at once left Arras and wandered about Europe until his death at Munich in 1769. The children were taken charge of by their maternal grandfather and aunts, and Maximilien was sent to the college of Arras, whence he was nominated in 1770 by the bishop of his native town to a bursarship at the Collége Louis-le-Grand at Paris. Here he had for fellow-pupils Camille Desmoulins and Stanislas Fréron. Completing his law studies with distinction, and having been admitted an avocat in 1781, Robespierre returned to his native city to seek for practice, and to struggle against poverty. His reputation had already preceded him, and the bishop of Arras, M. de Conzié, appointed him criminal judge in the diocese of Arras in March 1782. This appointment, which ho soon resigned, to avoid pronouncing a sentence of death, did not prevent his practising at the bar, and he speedily became known as a careful and painstaking advocate. His argument in the question of the legality of paratonnerres or lightning-conductors, which was widely reported and translated into both English and German, raised his fame as an advocate to its height, and with this success his struggles against poverty were over. He now turned to the pleasures of literature and society and came to be esteemed as one of the best writers and most popular dandies of Arras. In December 1783 he was elected a member of the academy of Arras, whose meetings he attended regularly; and, like all other young Frenchmen with literary proclivities, he began to compete for the favour of the lower clergy and laboured to get their pensions increased. When he instinctively felt that his doctrines would have no success in the assembly, he turned to the Jacobin Club, which had consisted originally of the Breton deputies only, but which, after the assembly moved to Paris, began to admit among its members various leaders of the Parisian bourgeoisie. As time went on, many of the more intelligent artisans and petits commerçants became members of the club, and among such men Robespierre found the hearers he sought. They did more than listen to him: they idolized him; the fanatical leader had found fanatics to follow him, and their ultimate supremacy became merely a question of time. As the wealthier bourto the club of '89 the influence of the old leaders of the Jacobins (Barnave, Duport, Charles de Lameth) diminished; and, when they themselves, alarmed at the progress of the Revolution, founded the club of the Feuillants in 1791, the followers of Robespierre dominated the Jacobin Club. The death of Mirabeau strengthened Robespierre's influence in the assembly; but in May 1791 he proved his lack of statesmanlike insight and his jealous suspicion of his colleagues by proposing and carrying the motion that no deputies who sat in the constituent could sit in the succeeding assembly. The flight of the king on 21st June and his arrest at Varennes excited Robespierre's suspicions, and made him declare himself at the Jacobin Club to be "ni monarchiste ni republicain." But the vigorous conduct of Lafayette and the National Guard on the Champ de Mars on 17th July 1791 terrified him, for he believed that he was a predestined victim, until he was succoured by Duplay, a cabinetmaker in the Rue St Honoré, and an ardent admirer of his, in whose house he lived (with but two short intervals) till his death. At last came his day of triumph, when on 30th September, on the dissolution of the constituent assembly, the people of Paris crowned Pétion and himself as the two incorruptible patriots. prizes offered by various provincial academies. In 1784 | necessity of a religion, is that he spoke several times in he obtained a medal from the academy of Metz for his essay on the question whether the relatives of a condemned criminal should also be punished; but the prize was awarded to Lacretelle aîné, an avocat and journalist at Paris, who triumphed again over his provincial antagonist in the Parisian press, and who in after days when Robespierre was all-powerful was surprised that he was not sent to the guillotine. An éloge on Gresset, the author of Vert-Vert and Le Méchant, written for the academy of Amiens in 1785, was not more successful; but Robespierre was compensated for these failures by his great popularity in the society of the Rosati at Arras,—a little society whose members prided themselves on being men of fashion and wit, and spent one evening a week in conviviality and in read-geois of Paris and deputies of a more moderate type seceded ing poems, epigrams, and vers de société. There the sympathetic quality of Robespierre's voice, which afterwards did him such good service in the Jacobin Club, always caused his indifferent verses to be loudly applauded by his friends. Such had been the life of the future republican leader up to 1788, when he took part in the discussion as to the way in which the states-general should be elected, showing clearly and forcibly in his Adresse à la Nation Artésienne that, if the former mode of election by the members of the provincial estates was again adopted, the new statesgeneral would not represent the people of France. Necker also perceived this, and therefore determined to make the old royal bailliages and séné-chaussées the units of election. Under this plan the city of Arras was to return twentyfour members to the assembly of the bailliage of Artois, which was to elect the deputies. The corporation claimed the right to a preponderating influence in these city elections, and Robespierre headed the opposition, making himself very conspicuous and drawing up the cahier or table of complaints and grievances, for the guild of the cobblers. Although the leading members of the corporation were elected, their chief opponent succeeded in getting elected with them. In the assembly of the bailliage rivalry ran still higher, but Robespierre had already made his mark in politics; by the Avis aux Habitants de Campagne (Arras, 1789), which is almost certainly by him, he secured the support of the country electors, and, though but thirty years of age, poor, and without influence, he was elected fifth deputy of the tiers état of Artois to the states-general. When the states-general met at Versailles on 5th May 1789, the young deputy of Artois already possessed the one faculty which was to lead him to supremacy: he was a fanatic. As Mirabeau said, "That young man believes what he says; he will go far." Without the courage and wide tolerance which make a statesman, without the greatest qualities of an orator, without the belief in himself which marks a great man, nervous, timid, and suspicious, Robespierre yet believed in the doctrines of Rousseau with all his heart, and would have gone to death for them; and in the belief that they would eventually succeed and regenerate France and mankind he was ready to work with unwearied patience. While the constituent assembly occupied itself in drawing up an unworkable constitution as the grand panacea, Robespierre turned from the assembly of provincial avocats and wealthy bourgeois to the people of Paris. However, he spoke frequently in the constituent assembly, and often with great success, and was eventually recognized as second only to Pétion de Villeneuve-if second to him—as a leader of the small body of the extreme left, the thirty voices, as Mirabeau contemptuously called them. It is hardly necessary to examine minutely Robespierre's speeches and behaviour before 1791, when the death of Mirabeau left the way clear for the influence of his party; but what is noteworthy, as proving the religious cast of his mind and his belief in the On the dissolution of the assembly he returned for a short visit to Arras, where he met with a triumphant reception. In November he returned to Paris, and on 18th December made a speech which marks a new epoch in his life. Brissot, the ame politique of the Girondin party which had been formed in the legislative assembly, urged vehemently that war should be declared against Austria, and the queen was equally urgent in the hope that a victorious army might restore the old absolutism of the Bourbons. Two men opposed the projects of the queen and the Girondins,-Marat and Robespierre: Marat opposed them for statesmanlike reasons (see MARAT), and Robes pierre on humanitary grounds and because as a follower of Rousseau he disliked war. This opposition from those whom they had expected to aid them irritated the Giron dins greatly, and from that moment began the struggle which ended in the coups d'état of 31st May and 2d June 1793. Guadet accused Robespierre of superstition in be lieving in a providence, and declared that, as the people's idol, he ought to ostracize himself for the good of his country. Robespierre persisted in his opposition to the war, and the Girondins, especially Brissot, attacked him so violently that in April 1792 he resigned the post of public prosecutor at the tribunal of Paris, which he had held since February, and started a journal, Le Defenseur de la Constitution, in his own defence. It is noteworthy that during the summer months of 1792, in which the fate of the Bourbon dynasty was being sealed, neither the Girondins in the legislative assembly nor Robespierre took any active part in overthrowing it. Stronger men with practical instincts of statesmanship, like Danton and ་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་་ preached insurrection at the Jacobin Club; and on 31st May and 2d June the commune of Paris destroyed the Girondin party. For a moment it seemed as if France would avenge them; but patriotism was stronger than federalism. The defence of Lyons only exasperated the men who were working for France, and the armies who were fighting for her, and on 27th July 1793, when the struggle was practically decided, the convention elected Robespierre to the committee of public safety. Billaud-Varenne, who were not afraid of blood, and who | Isnard declared that Paris must be destroyed; Robespierre On the meeting of the convention the Girondins immediately attacked Robespierre; they were jealous of his popularity and knew that his single-hearted fanaticism would never forgive their intrigues with the king at the end of July, and would always be opposed to their plans for raising the duke of Orleans to the throne. As early as 26th September the Girondin Lasource accused him of aiming at the dictatorship; afterwards he was informed that Marat, Danton, and himself were plotting to become triumvirs; and eventually on 29th October Louvet attacked him in a studied and declamatory harangue, abounding in ridiculous falsehoods and obviously concocted in Madame Roland's boudoir. But Robespierre had no difficulty in rebutting this attack (5th November). All personal disputes, however, gave way by the month of December 1792 before the great question of the king's trial, and here Robespierre took up a position which is at least easily understood. These are his words spoken on 3d December: "This is no trial; Louis is not a prisoner at the bar; you are not judges; you are you cannot but be statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have not to pass sentence for or against a single man, but you have to take a resolution on a question of the public safety, and to decide a question of national foresight. It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth; Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die, that the country may live." This great question settled by the king's execution, the struggle between Robespierre and the Girondins entered upon a more acute stage, and the want of statesmanship among the latter threw upon the side of the fanatical Robespierre Danton and all those strong practical men who cared little for personal questions, and whose only desire was the victory of France in her great struggle with Europe. Had it been at all possible to act with that group of men of genius whom history calls the Girondins, Danton, Carnot, Robert Lindet, and even Billaud-Varenne would have sooner thrown in their lot with them than with Robespierre, whom they thoroughly understood; but the Girondins, spurred on by Madame Roland, refused to have anything to do with Danton. Government became impossible; the federalist idea, which would have broken France to pieces in the very face of the enemy, grew and flourished, and the men of action had to take a decided part. In the month of May 1793 Camille Desmoulins, acting under the inspiration of Robespierre and Danton, published his Histoire des Brissotins and Brissot dévoilé; This election marks an important epoch, not only in the life of Robespierre, but in the history of the Revolution. Danton and the men of action had throughout the last two years of the crisis, as Mirabeau had in the first two years, seen that the one great need of France, if she was to see the end of her troubles without the interference of foreign armies, was the existence of a strong executive government. The means for establishing the much-needed strong executive were found in the committee of public safety. The success of this committee in suppressing the Norman insurrection had confirmed the majority of the convention in the expediency of strengthening its powers, and the committee of general security which sat beside it was also strengthened and given the entire management of the internal police of the country. When Danton, who had been a member of the committee from April to 10th July 1793, left it Robespierre was elected; and it was not until then that he became one of the actual rulers of France. Indeed the committee was not finally constituted until the 13th of September, when the last two of the "great" twelve who held office until July 1794 were elected. Of these twelve at least seven, Čarnot, Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois, Prieur (of the Marne), Prieur (of the Côte d'Or), Jean Bon Saint-André, and Robert Lindet, were essentially men of action, all of whom despised rather than feared Robespierre owing to his supposed timidity, and were entirely free from his influence. Of the other four Hérault de Séchelles was a professed adherent of Danton; Barère was an eloquent Provençal, who was ready to be the spokesman to the convention of any view which the majority of the committee might adopt; and only Couthon and Saint-Just shared Robespierre's political enthusiasm for the regeneration of France by the gospel of Rousseau. It is necessary to dwell upon the fact that Robespierre was always in a minority in the great committee in order to absolve him from the blame of being the inventor of the enormities of the Terror, as well as to deprive him of the glory of the gallant stand made against Europe in arms. After this examination of Robespierre's position it is not necessary to investigate closely every act of the great committee during the year which was pre-eminently the year of the Terror; the biographer is rather called upon to examine his personal position with regard to the estab lishment of the Terror and the fall of the Hébertists and Dantonists, and then to dwell upon the last three months in which he stood almost alone trying to work up an effective counterbalance to the power of the majority of the great committee. The Terror was the embodiment of the idea of Danton, that it was necessary to have resort to extreme measures to keep France united and strong at home in order to meet successfully her enemies upon the frontier. This idea was systematized by the committee of public safety, or rather by two members of it acting for the majority, Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois, without much consideration as to who were to be the victims. With the actual organization of the Terror Robespierre had little or nothing to do; its two great engines, the revolutionary tribunal and the absolute power in the provinces of the representatives on mission, were in existence before he |