Danton - The Convention by Victor Hugo

Ceremony of the erection of a Liberty Tree

The Convention
(by Victor Hugo)

The Convention was the third parliament assembly, after the Constituante and Legislative assemblies, during the French Revolution. It lasted from 21 September 1972 to 26 October 1795. As the Convention is generally identified with the Terror period of the Revolution, during which there had been excesses and atrocities, it has acquired a rather dubious reputation. But the Convention has also been an assembly in which some eminent members did an enormous work of inventing and creating a new society. After the Convention, France had deeply changed at many levels, changes which would be later completed and consolidated by Napoleon. The famous French poet Victor Hugo, who was born only a few years after the end of the Revolution, was a great admirer of the Convention. We give below a few extracts of the inspired pages he dedicated to the Convention in his celebrated book Ninety-Three, pages in which he vividly recreates the special atmosphere of this assembly.

THE CONVENTION.

We approach the grand summit. Behold the Convention! The gaze grows steady in presence of this height.

Never has a more lofty spectacle appeared on the horizon of mankind.

There is one Himalaya, and there is one Convention.

The Convention is perhaps the culminating point of History.

During its lifetime — for it lived — men did not quite under­stand what it was. It was precisely the grandeur which escaped its contemporaries; they were too much scared to be dazzled. Everything grand possesses a sacred horror. It is easy to admire mediocrities and hills; but whatever is too lofty, whether it be a genius or a mountain — an assembly as well as a masterpiece — alarms when seen too near. An immense height appears an exaggeration. It is fatiguing to climb. One loses breath upon ac­clivities, one slips down declivities; one is hurt by sharp, rugged heights which are in themselves beautiful; torrents in their foaming reveal the precipices; clouds hide the mountain-tops; a sudden ascent terrifies as much as a fall. Hence there is a greater sensation of fright than admiration. What one feels is fantastic enough — an aversion to the grand. One sees the abyss and loses sight of the sublimity; one sees the monster and does not per­ceive the marvel. Thus the Convention was at first judged. It was measured by the purblind, — it, which needed to be looked at by eagles.

To-day we see it in perspective, and it throws across the deep and distant heavens, against a background at once serene and tragic, the immense profile of the French Revolution. [....]

Among these men full of passions were mingled men filled with dreams. Utopia was there under all its forms, — under its warlike form, which admitted the scaffold, and under its inno­cent form, which would abolish capital punishment; phantom as it faced thrones; angel as it regarded the people. Side by side with the spirits that fought were the spirits that brooded. These had war in their heads, those peace. One brain, Carnot, brought forth fourteen armies; another intellect, Jean Debry, meditated a universal democratic federation.

Amid this furious eloquence, among these shrieking and growling voices, there were fruitful silences. Lakanal remained voiceless, and combined in his thoughts the system of public national education; Lanthenas held his peace, and created the

Condorcet was a man of reverie and enlightenment. Robespierre was a man of execution; and sometimes, in the final crises of worn-out orders, execution means extermination. Revolutions have two currents, — an ebb and a flow; and on these float all seasons, from that of ice to flowers. Each zone of these currents produces men adapted to its climate, from those who live in the sun to those who dwell among the thunderbolts. [....]

The people had a window opening on the Convention, — the public tribunes; and when the window was not sufficient, they opened the door, and the street entered the Assembly. These in­vasions of the crowd into that senate make one of the most as­tounding visions of history. Ordinarily those irruptions were am­icable. The market-place fraternized with the curule chair; but it was a formidable cordiality, — that of a people who one day took within three hours the cannon of the Invalides and forty thousand

Delegates from the Sections arrived, bringing on hand-bar­rows, dishes, patens, chalices, monstrances, heaps of gold, silver, and enamel, presented to the country by this multitude in rags, who demanded for recompense the permission to dance the Carmagnole before the Convention. Chenard, Narbonne, and Valliere came to sing couplets in honour of the Mountain. The Section of Mont Blanc brought the bust of Lepelletier, and a woman placed a red cap on the head of the President, who em­braced her. The citizenesses of the Section of the Mail "flung flowers" to the legislators. "The pupils of the country" came, headed by music, to thank the Convention for having prepared the prosperity of the century. The women of the Section of the Gardes Francaises offered roses; the women of the Champs Elysees Section gave a crown of oak-leaves; the women of the Section of the Temple came to the bar to swear "only to unite themselves with true Republicans." The Section of Moliere pre­sented a medal of Franklin, which was suspended by decree on the crown of the statue of Liberty. The Foundlings — declared the Children of the Republic — filed through, habited in the na­tional uniform. The young girls of the Section of Ninety-two ar­rived in long white robes, and the "Moniteur" of the following morning contained this line: "The President received a bouquet from the innocent hands of a young beauty." The orators saluted the crowds, sometimes flattered them: they said to the multitude, "Thou art infallible; thou art irreproachable; thou art sublime." The people have an infantile side: they like those sugar-plums. Sometimes Riot traversed the Assembly: entered furious and withdrew appeased, like the Rhone which traverses Lake Leman,

Sometimes the crowd was less pacific, and Henriot was obliged to come with his furnaces for heating shot to the entrance of the Tuileries.

At the same time that it threw off revolution, this Assembly produced civilization. Furnace, but forge too.

In this caldron, where terror bubbled, progress fermented. Out of this chaos of shadow, this tumultuous flight of clouds, spread immense rays of light parallel to the eternal laws, — rays that have remained on the horizon, visible forever in the heaven of the peoples, and which are, one, Justice; another, Tolerance; another, Goodness; another, Right; another, Truth; another, Love.

The Convention promulgated this grand axiom: "The liberty of each citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen com­mences," — which comprises in two lines all human social law. It declared indigence sacred; it declared infirmity sacred in the blind and the deaf and dumb, who became wards of the State; maternity sacred in the girl-mother, whom it consoled and lifted up; infancy sacred in the orphan, whom it caused to be adopted by the country; innocence sacred in the accused who was acquitted, whom it indemnified. It branded the slave-trade; it abolished slavery. It proclaimed civic joint responsibility. It de­creed gratuitous instruction. It organized national education by the normal school of Paris; central schools in the chief towns; primary schools in the communes. It created the academies of music and the museums. It decreed the unity of the Code, the unity of weights and measures, and the unity of calculation by the decimal system. It established the finances of France, and caused public credit to succeed to the long monarchical bank­ruptcy. It put the telegraph in operation. To old age it gave en­dowed almshouses; to sickness, purified hospitals; to instruction, the Polytechnic School; to science, the Bureau of Longitudes; to human intellect, the Institute. At the same time that it was na­tional it was cosmopolitan. Of the eleven thousand two hundred and ten decrees which emanated from the Convention, a third

Immense place! All types were there, — human, inhuman, superhuman. Epic gathering of antagonisms. [....]

Spirits which were a prey of the wind. But this was a miracle-working wind. To be a member of the Convention was to be a wave of the ocean. This was true even of the greatest there. The force of impulsion came from on high. There was a Will in the Convention which was that of all, and yet not that of anyone person. This Will was an Idea, — an idea indomitable and im­measurable, which swept from the summit of heaven into the darkness below. We call this Revolution. When that Idea passed, it beat down one and raised up another; it scattered this man into foam and dashed that one upon the reefs. This Idea knew whither it was going, and drove the whirlpool before it. To as­cribe the Revolution to men is to ascribe the tide to the waves.

The Revolution is a work of the Unknown. Call it good or bad, according as you yearn toward the future or the past, but leave it to the power which caused it. It seems the joint work of grand events and grand individualities mingled, but it is in reality the result of events. Events dispense, men suffer; events dictate, men sigh. The 14th of July is signed Camille Desmoulins; the 10th of August is signed Danton; the 2nd of September is signed Marat; the 21st of September is signed Gregoire, the 21st of

1. The Vendee was a province near Britanny where a large anti-revolutionary insur­rection lasted for years.
2. All the kings of Europe allied against France

The Revolution is a form of the eternal phenomenon which presses upon us from every quarter, and which we call Necessity. Before this mysterious complication of benefits and sufferings arises the Wherefore of history. Because: this answer of him who knows nothing is equally the response of him who knows all.

In presence of these climacteric catastrophes which devas­tate and revivify civilization one hesitates to judge their details. To blame or praise men on account of the result is almost like praising or blaming ciphers on account of the total. That which ought to happen happens; the blast which out to blow blows. The Eternal Serenity does not suffer from these north winds. Above revolutions Truth and Justice remain as the starry sky lies above and beyond tempests.

Such was the unmeasured and immeasurable Convention, — a camp cut off from the human race, attacked by all the powers of darkness at once; the night-fires of the besieged army of Ideas; a vast bivouac of minds upon the edge of a precipice. There is nothing in history comparable to this group, at the same time senate and populace, conclave and street-crossing, Areopagus and public square, tribunal and the accused.

The Convention always bent to the wind; but that wind came from the mouth of the people, and was the breath of God.

And to-day, after eighty-four years have passed away, always when the Convention presents itself before the reflection of any man, whosoever he may be, — historian or philosopher, — that man pauses and meditates. It would be impossible not to remain thoughtfully attentive before this grand procession of shadows.

From Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three,
Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York 1998