( 191 )

ART. XI.-Mémoires de B. BARÈRE. (Memoirs of B. BARRÈRE.) Publiés par MM. HIPPOLYTE CARNOT, Membre de la Chambre des Députés, et DAVID (d'Angers), Membre de l'Institut. Vols. I. and II. Paris. 1842.

UNDER the name of "Mémoires," a number of fragments from the papers of Barère have been collected by MM. Hyppolyte Carnot and David, with the view of throwing some additional light on the all-important history of the French Revolution.

Barère, who always had the notion of publishing his memoirs, composed an immense mass of materials; but the existence of the "Mémoires" as a book seems entirely owing to the gentlemen, who with great industry had performed the task of arranging the rudis indigestaque moles into something like order. A series of manuscript sheets, containing about 800 pages, closely written, and with marginal notes on almost every page; a large number of loose sheets, intended to be brought in; and six bulky bundles of fragments: such were the materials which MM. Carnot and David had to work upon, and which they enumerate in terms almost pathetic. It was necessary to compare the loose sheets; to avail themselves of some, and reject others, according to their completeness; and the pièces justificatives, which were found in the bundles, were worked into the narrative where it was possible. The two editors appear to have entered zealously upon their labours, and it is only to be regretted that after all their toil the organization that has resulted is not very perfect. As different papers often relate to precisely the same period, there is a return to the same events, which often becomes tedious: especially as the substance of the whole work, which is to be completed in four volumes, is anticipated by an historical notice of Barère, written by M. Carnot as an introduction. This historical notice is exceedingly well done; and having waded through the portion of disjointed autobiography (if indeed so it can be called), which is already published, we cannot help lamenting that M. Carnot, instead of reprinting a number of loose sheets, did not take upon himself the task of writing the life of Barère, of course introducing freely the more important pages of the manuscript. On the admission of the editors, it was necessary to make a choice; the papers of Barère could not be reproduced just as he had left them; and they need only have gone a trifle further to have composed a book infinitely more readable than the one before us.

Nevertheless the opinions of one who, like Barère, was in such close contact with all the principal personages of the Revolution, are highly valuable; and MM. Carnot and David certainly deserve the thanks of those who would observe from a new point the working of events, which are rendered obscure by their very

modernness, by their immediate connexion with the thoughts of the present day, and by the consequent partiality of every one who has come forward as an informant on the subject. Not that we would trust more to the impartiality of Barère than to that of any one else. On the contrary, his testimony is to be received with great caution, as his work is profoundly justificative of himself and the Committee of Public Safety. Still, as all these partial writers will supply the source from which a real history of the French Revolution must be derived, in more impartial times than the present, when contending narrations and feelings will be dispassionately weighed, every new witness who has had an opportunity of extended observation is to be heard with attention.

Barère was not one of the great figures of the Revolution. He has an unfortunate reputation, as something excessively unprincipled and sanguinary, but he is not remembered as a monster on a grand scale, like Robespierre and Danton. An expression that he once dropped, "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas," is repeated in the popular histories of the Revolution, and has become appended to him, just as in old caricatures an unlucky speech was attached to the mouth of the speaker, as his characteristic. The leading persons in the Revolution have, above all others, been handed down to us by means of some piquant phrase, which they uttered in the heat of debate. But they are not alone in this particular. Hundreds of persons know Chancellor Oxensteirn, as the utterer of that famous opinion on the amount of wisdom that governed the world, who never knew a single act that he performed, or even the date of his existence. Another misfortune for the fame of Barère was, that he happened to be President of the Convention, at the trial of Louis XVI., and had to undergo all the odium of sitting in judgment on that weak but amiable monarch. He himself seems to consider this as a kind of evil destiny, which always placed him on the unpopular side. "By what fatality," says he, "was it under my presidency that Louis XVI. had to be examined?"

This circumstance was of course sufficient to draw upon him all the hatred of the royalists, and his words "Louis asseyez vous!" are mentioned with execration by Madame de Staël.

But the hatred did not remain with the royalists. Barère was successively hated by those of every shade of opinion. In June 1791, when a republic was proposed by the Jacobins, Barère was called a Jacobin; in 1793, when the Girondists were arrested, he was called a Girondist; after the reaction of the Thermidor he was called a Terrorist; he was exiled as a Robespierist, having been the leader of those who crushed the dictator; under the Directory he was branded as an Anarchist; under the Consulate as a Republican; and under Louis XVIII.

proscribed as a Bonapartist! Whatever party was uppermost, poor Barère seems to have been considered one of the opposite side, and to have suffered accordingly. M. H. Carnot, his biographer, confesses that he expected to find him a mad demagogue, a fierce and sanguinary tribune; in short one of those monstrosities with which ancient nurses occasionally frighten their infant charges; but was pleasantly disappointed at finding a lively agreeable man, of a literary turn, and with the elegant manners of the ancien régime. That a man so buffeted should fill up with his cramped writing those sheets which afforded such work for MM. Carnot and David, in the hope of justifying himself, is not to be wondered at: nor is it a subject for marvel that when, as M. Carnot says, a system has been constructed to exalt the Girondists, a system to justify Danton, a system to deify Robespierre, and Barère remained without a defender, an apologizing editor should at last have been found.

In justifying Barère from atrocity of character, the compilation and the biography before us, seem perfectly successful: though whether he is equally to be exculpated from the charge of timeserving, seems rather doubtful. Indeed, M. Carnot, who is very impartial for a panegyrist, cannot help admitting a certain weakness of character, which will serve to gloss over many little irregularities. Barère was really a man deeply attached to no party; and consequently, while he could avail himself of the benefits of more than one change, it was but natural he should come in for his full share of hatred. Naturally a goodnatured and benevolent man, he consented to the king's death; brought up with feelings of provincial freedom, and detesting Paris and centralization, he nevertheless was one of the persecutors of federalism; hating Robespierre and Saint Just, he was associated with them in the Committee of Public Safety. He was one of those men whose real character seems in perpetual contrast with their official functions, and who are obliged to sustain all the odium of the latter, while the former remains a secret from the world.

As for the two unfortunate circumstances which have chiefly caused Barère to be looked upon with a horror that his character did not merit, their effect will be removed by a glance at these "Mémoires." The expression "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas, seems terrible indeed when applied, as it has been by historians, to the victims of the Revolution and feeling that his character is principally stained by this phrase, Barère displays more than ordinary anxiety to explain its import. It seems, according to his own account, that when he learned that General Houchard had, at the battle of Hondscoote, spared the lives of some English soldiers, who afterwards in the capture of Valenciennes insulted the French representatives and officers, he

VOL. XXX. NO. LIX.

uttered the indignant sentence, which was destined to cleave to his name with such tenacity: meaning that if Houchard had not spared the English troops, these insults would never have been given. "I would rather," says he, "have broken my pen for ever, and my voice should rather have ceased to be heard at the tribune, than those words should have been uttered in the frightful sense which my enemies and the journalists have given them." His conduct on the occasion of the King's trial he not only excuses, but takes great credit to himself for the humanity which he displayed, and which, he says, Louis himself acknowledged. On the King's entrance into the hall of the convention, many disrespectful voices were raised, but they were checked by Barère. "You owe respect," he said, in his character of president, "to august misfortune, and to an accused who has descended from the throne. The eyes of France, the attention of Europe, and the judgment of Posterity are upon you. If, as indeed I do not expect nor imagine, any signs of disapprobation, any murmurs, are heard in the course of this long sitting, I shall be forced at once to clear the tribunes, for national justice ought not to receive any foreign influence." These words had the desired effect, and the trial was conducted with great decorum. The King stood at the bar of the Convention; and the spectacle, it seems, so deeply moved the president, that he ordered two ushers to bring in a chair for the illustrious prisoner. The King still standing, Barère pressed him by means of the ushers to be seated; and the intercourse thus carried on excited the indignation of the more violent republicans against the president. In the interrogatories which had been formally drawn up, and on which Louis was to be examined, he was addressed as "Louis Capet." Barère knew that the word " Capet," the sobriquet given to the founder of the dynasty, was displeasing to the ears of the fallen monarch, and he therefore suppressed it. If these circumstances are true, it is indeed hard that Barère should be branded with cruelty for his conduct at the trial; and that the "Louis asseyez vous" should be recorded with such peculiar horror. And that they are true, there is every reason to believe; for whatever doubts the "Mémoires" may leave as to the political character of the man, there is not a fact that would even lead us to suppose a stern, much less a cruel nature.

It was by his capacity of Reporter to the Committee of Public Safety, that Barère was chiefly distinguished. Of the first committee, which was formed in April 1793; and of the second, which was formed in July of the same year, and which lasted till the Thermidorian reaction in 1794; he was a most indefatigable member. It was his business to read over the letters received from the different armies, and to digest them into a report;

His opinions of Robespierre.

195

which he read to the Convention, and that with such eloquence, that his fame reached the frontiers, and "Barère à la tribune!" was the word uttered to excite the French soldiers. Next to the defence of himself, the defence of the Committee is the object of his writings. He would prove that it was the friend of order, the most formidable obstacle to the atrocities of the Commune of Paris, the patron of the arts, the saviour of France. The military genius of the famous Carnot, exercised in that committee, directed the energies of the French army; the embellishment of the city was among the objects of its consideration; and the zeal it showed to encourage the arts was sufficient to redeem it from the charge of vandalism which has been brought against it. Indeed, Barère observes that of all the persons who received benefits at his hands, and many it seems owed their lives to him, the artists alone evinced their gratitude. With the committee Barère existed, and expelled from it he fell. Having distinguished himself in his native province of Bigorre, where he was born in 1755, as an advocate and a savant, his importance had commenced with the assemblage of the states-general, whither his province had sent him; and it ended with the Thermidorian reaction, which he had strenuously assisted, in the final struggle against Robespierre in the Convention. The result of this was his banishment to the island of Oleron. After eight months' imprisonment he managed to escape, but still lived in concealment, and devoted his time to the composition of a work on the "Liberty of the Seas" directed against England. His efforts to induce the Directory to recall him failed; and Bonaparte, as consul, first restored him to freedom. Again proscribed on the occasion of the restoration, the revolution of 1830 brought him back to Paris; and he died on the 13th of January, 1841, at his native place, Tarbes: having passed his last days in writing a paper on the future prospects of Europe, which breathes the bitterest animosity against this country.

The opinions of so experienced a man on his contemporaries are necessarily highly interesting: but at the same time they are often so utterly irreconcilable, that it is difficult to suppose they represent any thing, but the angry feeling of a moment. Barère's character was any thing but a firm one; and if this is shown by his public life, it is shown still more by the record of his impressions. In his hatred of Danton, of Marat, and of the Commune of Paris, which he believes was connected by a "thread of gold" to the cabinet of St. James's, he is consistent enough. But of Robespierre he talks in the most opposite terms. In 1795 he had said of him :

"What kind of tyrant was this--without genius, without courage, without military talent, without political knowledge, without real eloquence, without esteem for his colleagues, without the confidence of a