strategic point in his attack.
Events helped him, or rather he had foreseen them. The Vendeans, moving
more like a mob than an army, were caught at Le Mans on the 13th of
December. On the 7th of December the genius of Bonaparte had driven the
English and Spanish from Toulon. On the 26th the news came to the army
of which Hoche had just been given the command, and, as though the name
Bonaparte brought a fate with it, the lines of Wissembourg were carried,
Landau was relieved, the Austrians passed the Rhine.
All these victories were the allies of the party of indulgence. The men
who said, “The Terror has no _raison d’être_ save that of the national
defence,” found themselves expressing what all France felt. After such
successes it only remained to add, “The nation is safe; the Terror may
end.” Already Danton had called up a reserve, so to speak, in the shape
of the genius of Desmoulins. The first issue of “Vieux Cordelier” had
appeared, and the journal was read by all Paris.
That club, in which we saw the origin of Danton’s fame, was now the
Hébertists, and nothing more. The pamphlets which Camille issued under
the leadership of Danton were given a name that might recall its position
and its politics of the old days. And indeed the two men most concerned
in the new policy of clemency had been, from their house in the Cour du
Commerce, the heart of the “République des Cordeliers.” There are not
in the history of the Revolution, in all the passages of its eloquence
and genius, any words that strike us to-day as do the words of these six
pamphlets which spread over the winter of the year II. It is a proof of
Danton’s clear vision, of his strong influence, that a distant posterity,
far removed from the passions of 1793, should find its own expression in
the appeals which his friend wrote, and which form the Testament of the
Indulgents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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