Danton - Danton by Charles F Warwick

Danton's personality

(Extracts from Danton and the French Revolution 
by Charles F. Warwick)

With the exception of Mirabeau, Danton was the stron­gest character the Revolution produced. "He bore," says Mignet," a physical resemblance to that tribune of the higher classes. He had irregular features, a powerful voice, impetuous gesticulation, a daring eloquence, a lordly brow. Their vices too were the same, only Mirabeau's were those of a pa­trician, Danton's those of a democrat. That which there was of daring in the conceptions of Mirabeau was to be found in Danton, but in another way, because in the Revolution he be­longed to another class and another epoch." So much, in many ways, did they resemble each other that Danton was frequently alluded to as the "Mirabeau of the Sans Culottes."

In appearance Danton was impressive, picturesque. His mas­sive, herculean frame towered above his fellows; his head was surmounted by a heavy shock of black hair that resembled the mane of a lion; his shirt, open at the front, revealed the sinewy neck of a bull; his eyes were small, deeply set but piercing; his nose was crushed; his face scarred, and his features were pitted with the smallpox. His very homeliness seemed to add force, even dignity, to his presence, and when he arose to address the Assembly he displayed a vigor and exerted a power that not only riveted the attention of men but made his adversaries quail. As homely and as scarred in feature as Mirabeau, he followed

"His rugged face reminds us," said one of his contempo­raries, "of a caricature of Socrates." "He was marked," says a French author, "with the smallpox like Robespierre, but had a masculine countenance, broad nostrils, forward lips, and a bold air wholly unlike his." "The broad, rude features speak withal of wild human sympathies," says another. Carlyle, in his vividly descriptive style, pictures him as: "The huge, brawny figure; through whose black brows and rude, flattened face there looks a waste of energy as of Hercules not yet furibund." To appreciate the force of such a countenance one must study every detail, every feature, and then combine them. "Paint me as I am," cried Cromwell, "warts and all."

When animated in discussion Danton's face revealed every emotion of his soul. A distinguished French historian describing him says: "What a frightful visage has this Danton! Is this a cy­clop or some goblin? That large face, so awfully scarred by the smallpox, with its small, dull eyes, looks like a brooding volcano. No, that is not a man, but the very element of confusion swayed by madness, fury, and fatality! Awful genius, thou frightenest me! Art thou to save or ruin France?" Further on the same writer con­tinues: "What frightens me the most is that he has no eyes; at least they are scarcely perceptible. What! Is this terrible blind man to be the guide of nations? . . . And yet this monster is sublime. This face almost without eyes seems like a volcano without a crater — a volcano of horrors or of fire — which in its pent-up furnace is brooding over the struggles of nature... How awful will be the eruption... That face is like a nightmare from which one cannot escape, a horrible oppressive dream... We become mechanically attracted towards this visible struggle of opposite principles... It is a devoted Oedipus who, possessed with his own enigma, car-

It is always interesting to picture a man whose character we are studying as he appeared to his contemporaries in the ev­eryday walks of life. During his attendance upon the sessions of the Assembly, he wore a dark blue coat with full skirts cut in the fashion of the period, broad flaps at the pockets, and two rows of brass buttons; a colored vest or waistcoat, usually buff or yellow; culottes and top boots. If he had ever worn silk stockings and buckled shoes, he had long since discarded them. A stock and an expansive scarf or tie encircled his neck. He carried a watch and wore a fob. In the matter of attire it is certain he was not so par­ticular or fastidious as Robespierre, but there is sufficient proof that he was neither slouchy nor untidy, and that he did not affect that carelessness in dress that was the homage the demagogues paid to the rabble.

He was a whole-souled man of the world, fond of its plea­sures; he often gave offense to many of his colleagues because of his aristocratic taste and extravagance, which they thought were not consistent in one who professed the austere virtues of republicanism.

"There have been few stronger men than this Danton," says Watson. His natural endowments were great. They would have been great in any period, but in stirring times, that is in a revo­lution, they were of the highest order. His courage and daring were superb; when others quailed in the face of disaster, when the armies of allied Europe threatened France, and the prov­inces were in revolt, he never wavered. It may be said of him, as Livy said of a celebrated Roman: "He never despaired of the Republic." Carlyle asserts that the French Revolution did pro­duce some original men among the twenty-five millions, at least one or two units. Some reckon, he says, as many as three and then names them in the following order: Napoleon, Danton, and Mirabeau. Whether more will come to light he cannot say, but in the meanwhile he advises the world to be thankful for these three, well knowing how rare such men are. That indeed is a great group, and it may be said that without Danton, Napoleon, per-

There were periods in the Revolution when he made its events, when he stamped his personality upon its character. He stood for its purposes, its principles. In him were concentrated its vigor, its force, its energy; he was the embodiment of its violence. When it wavered he gave it an impetus; when its advance column halted or recoiled, he seized the standard and led the way. He had the superb qualities of leadership — those qualities that are not ac­quired by time, labor nor even experience, but are innate.

Lord Brougham, who knew personally many of the patriarchs that survived the Revolution, said that they were all of one mind in declaring that Danton was unquestionably its principal leader. There was not one of his contemporaries, in the later period of the Revolution, that was his equal. It can almost be said that during a portion of 1793 he was the Revolution.

Such men as Danton make revolutions and reach results that weaklings could not encompass. They are made to fit conditions and they become instruments in the hands of Providence to ef­fect those changes that are for the betterment of the human race in the eternal struggle for the ideal. They fill up large spaces in the exciting and transforming periods of the world's history. Without fear themselves, audacious and defiant, they inspire the confidence and the courage of other men by their conduct and example. Their bravery is contagious and infectious.

Danton was the man for his times. He was possessed of the spirit of the Revolution, he loved to breathe its atmosphere. He

Joyous departure of army volunteers, Gouache by the Lesueur brothers

This man in his passion was as savage as a tiger, and yet natu­rally in disposition he was as affectionate as a child and as tender as a woman. "One sees those fire-eyes ... fill with the water of tears." He presented a mixture of the most opposite qualities. "He had impulses of humanity as he had of fury; he had low vices but generous passions — in a word he had a heart."

"They say best men are molded out of faults," Lord Macaulay in describing him says: "He was brave and resolute, fond of plea­sures, of power, and of distinction, with vehement passions, with lax principles, but with some kind and manly feelings, capable of great crimes, but capable also of friendship and of compassion."

In the opinion of Morley, "He was one of the men who strike deep notes. He had that largeness of motive, fullness of nature, and capaciousness of mind which will always redeem a multitude of infirmities."

He was ardently fond of his mother; he was a faithful hus­band, a devoted father, and a loyal friend. "No man was truer to his friends or more dangerous to his foes." The love he had for his first wife was ideal and the affection he had for Camille was that of Jonathan for David. By nature he was a man of sentiment and deep emotions; he had fine taste and was passionately fond of books, music, and flowers. He was open-hearted, generous, of a most forgiving disposition, too big to harbor a grudge, and no one would accept an apology more quickly, if sincere and offered in a proper spirit.

His religious faith was not well defined; it is very evident he was not hampered in his conduct by the influence of any creed; even the principles of Christianity did not restrain him. Religion was not fashionable nor popular during the Revolution. The Church itself, for a century or more, had been honeycombed with scepticism and because of the corruption and extravagance of the upper clergy it had fallen into disfavor. There may, how­ever, have been lingering in the heart of Danton, as there is in the heart of almost every man, the sweet influence of that early religious training at the mother's knee.

When Danton was married the second time, which was in July, 1793, at the very height of the Revolution, the ceremony was performed by an orthodox or non-juring priest. This may have been at the suggestion of the bride, for her mother was a very religious woman, and a man like Danton, who was not in any sense of the word a bigot, would be likely to treat such matters with an utter disregard. So far as he personally was con­cerned, it would not have made much difference to him who officiated, provided the ceremony was legal; yet Lamartine says that he retired to an inner room and made confession just before he was married. ... it is said that when he was upon the platform of the scaffold, a priest in the crowd, whom he recognized, gave him absolution. [.. .]

At his trial he said in answer to one of the charges: "You say that I have been paid, but I tell you that men made as I am cannot be paid, and I put against your accusation, of which you cannot furnish a proof, nor the shadow, nor the beginning of a witness — the whole of my revolutionary career." This is a bold denial and does not sound like the language of a guilty man. [...]

On December 3, 1793, when attacked by the Hebertists, he uttered the following emphatic denial : "You will be astonished, when I lay bare to you my private affairs, to see the colossal fortune which my enemies and yours have charged me with, re­duced to the little amount of property which I have always had. I defy my opponents to furnish the proof of any crime whatever to me." He demanded that a committee be appointed to examine into the charges, but after a speech by Robespierre it was consid­ered not at all necessary.

At Danton's death his estate was sequestered, and he left just about what he could honestly have made and saved in his profes­sional and public career. These matters have been most carefully investigated and considered by M. Bougeart and Dr. Robinet, and they acquit Danton of every charge of venality.

One of the greatest lawyers England ever produced, Lord Brougham, in commenting upon this question, writes: "A charge of corruption has been brought against Danton, but upon very inadequate grounds. The assertion of royalist partisans that he had stipulated for money and the statement of one that he knew of its payment and had seen the receipt (as if a receipt could have passed) can signify nothing when put in contrast with the

Stephens and Aulard both favor this view of the case. The former author says in his French Revolution: "Mirabeau declares openly in a letter ... that the triumvirate and Orleanists had in­trigued with Danton and had bribed him with a large sum, but all such stories have been proved to be false by the careful examina­tion of his monetary affairs during the Revolution."

As a politician Danton was original, ingenious, resourceful, and possessed to a high degree the arts of the demagogue — we mean by this a demagogue in the best sense of that word, a leader of the people. He was not of the type of John Wilkes. Danton was denominated "the Alcibiades of the Rabble," but this des­ignation was not altogether apposite; he was of the people and loved their cause and never flattered or cajoled simply to mis­lead them. His patriotism was unquestioned; he was devoted to France and every inch of her soil was dear to him. He was a par­tisan or a party man in the full meaning of the term. Mignet goes so far as to say: "The welfare of his party was in his eyes superior to the law and even to humanity."

His ambition was not personal; he would willingly have sacri­ficed himself for the Republic or his party. "Que mon nom soit fletri" — "Let my name be blighted if but the cause succeed," he cried out in one of his heated harangues. At times he was not particular in the choice of the methods he employed to attain an object; he believed in the dangerous doctrine, "the end justi­fies the means," and so was not always governed by high moral principles.

Revolutionists cannot be saints nor be expected, perhaps, to practise a fine code of ethics in so fierce a conflict as was being waged in France. "He deemed," says Mignet, "no means censur­able so they were useful." Thiers writes of him: "Prompt and de­cisive, not to be staggered either by the difficulty or by the nov­elty of an extraordinary situation, he was capable of judging of the necessary means and had neither fear nor scruple about any." Citing from Lamartine, "Danton's revolutionary principles were

Every man with a virtuous strain, who in order to win when in a contest ignores or offends moral considerations, always tries to satisfy his conscience by making a promise to reform after the conflict. That cold, crafty politician, Louis XI, worked the two ends of the line, for he fumbled his relics and mumbled his prayers both before and after the commission of his political crimes. Even Marat was wont to say that if he lived long enough to witness the triumph of the Republic he would take refuge in the sphere of his scientific and literary studies. Danton persis­tently contended that everything he did was for the welfare of his country and the restoration of order; he always had a reason for his action and even excused his conduct in reference to the September Massacres¹ (which by many is considered the greatest blot upon his character) by declaring that the slaughter of the aristocrats was to insure peace and the safety of the Republic and that the security and perpetuity of the nation were paramount to all other considerations. It is the same argument advanced as an excuse for war when both sides are praying to the one God for victory, but what may be justified as a necessity in a nation is denounced as a crime in an individual.

Whatever else may be said of Danton, he was not mean nor contemptible in his methods. "His vices," declares a distinguished

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1. The September Massacres were a wave of mob violence which overtook Paris in late summer 1792. By the time it had subsided, half the prison population of Paris had been executed: some 1,300 trapped prisoners, including many aristocrats.

Danton was a good reader of human nature, he could "see quite through the thoughts of men," but he was at times too con­fiding and trustful and placed faith and reliance in those whom he ought to have known would betray him. Like a man who al­ways fights in the open, he often expressed himself too freely.

As a politician he was not cunning, in a low sense, and he therefore in this particular was no match for his wily adversary, Robespierre; so at last this great leader of almost superhuman power, this giant, was like Samson shorn of his strength and bound with thongs, falling an easy prey to his crafty and relent­less foe.

In diplomacy Danton was clever and keen; he was shrewd in negotiation and well equipped to further and protect the interest committed to his care. Dumouriez was an intriguer and a dip­lomat of the first order, but Danton saw through his plans with an unerring eye and measured exactly the purposes of his ambition.

As a statesman Danton had a constructive intellect, but he left to smaller men the carrying out of his plans; he had no spe­cial aptitude for details. "He was the most constructive mind of all the public men of the Revolution, as constructive as it was

It was he that, in the spring of 1793, proposed and had car­ried a measure abolishing imprisonment for debt. It was he that favored the abolition of slavery in all the French possessions. "By sowing liberty in the new world," he said, "we shall cause it to bear abundant fruit and shoot profound roots there." This was at a time when slavery was an established institution in the American Republic. He advocated the pensioning of maimed sol­diers. "Would it not be well," he urged, "to grant land in the sub­urbs of Paris to those worthy citizens who have been mutilated in the defense of the Republic, and also give them beasts and thus start, under the very eyes of the Convention, a colony of patriots who have suffered for the fatherland?" This suggestion led to the appropriation of large sums of money for the pensioning of vet­erans. A decree providing that the husband should not dispose of the common property without the consent of the wife received his warm approval. He believed children belonged to the State rather than to their parents, and ... strongly favored compulsory education, especially did he endorse a system of manual training.

"When you sow the vast field of the Republic," he said, "do not, I beg you, count the cost of the seed. Next after bread, ed­ucation is the first necessity of the life of the people. ... After giving France liberty and conquering her enemies, nothing will be more glorious than to secure to coming generations an educa­tion worthy of our liberty."

It was on Danton's motion that the Convention decreed, on April 2, 1793, that "in every section of the Republic, when the price of corn is not in a just proportion to wages paid, the trea­sury shall levy a contribution on the rich, out of which shall be defrayed the difference between such price of corn and the wages of the needy." This smacks of Socialism, but under an orderly condition and outside of a revolutionary period Danton would

The law of Forty Sous, proposed by him in September, 1793, provided that "the sections of Paris shall assemble in regular ses­sions every Sunday and Thursday, and every citizen so attending shall be paid forty sous for each and every session." This was a sop to the multitude.

One of the most remarkable features of the French Revolution was the eloquence that suddenly burst forth from every quarter; it seemed as if the thoughts of men, so long imprisoned, when freed, broke out into triumphant song. It was the renaissance of liberty; the minds of men were aflame and their tongues but expressed their joy in the liberation. No period in history ever produced a greater number of orators. Vergniaud stands in the very front rank; he would have stood high in any age. He had the soul, the emotion, the imagination of the bon orator. His flights were into the empyrean, his imagery was beautiful, his figures strong, his allusions apt, his logic clear, and his argument cogent and convincing. Mirabeau's eloquence was in many respects un­surpassed. He stood in a class by himself. Isnard's impassioned utterances thrilled the heart of France. "He was the most ardent of them all." Barnave, who coped even with Mirabeau, was an orator of marvelous power; and so we could go on through a long list of names.

Many of the orators of the Convention, unless they spoke extemporaneously, revealed in their finished orations the care taken in their preparation; their speeches had the smell of the lamp about them. Not so with Danton; in his "eloquence there appears no preparation, no study, nothing got up for mere ef­fect." His speeches were harangues; they were nearly all short. They came red-hot from his soul and carried the truth home to the hearts of men; in their vehemence they bore down all oppo­sition. He had the faculty of expressing a thought in a flash. In a few living words he could weave a vivid epigram. He was always

His argument was a succession of blows dealt quickly upon vital spots. Some one has said: "Eloquence with Danton was an explosion of the Soul." A well-known French author calls him "the Pluto of Eloquence." Another says: "His eloquence was like the loud clamor of the Mob." His oratory had a simplicity, a beauty, a rugged strength all its own. What can be finer than his defiant challenge, after the death of Louis, to the allied kings of Europe, at whose feet he threw down "as gage of battle the head of a king."

Sometimes, from a rhetorician's point of view, his figures were unrefined, coarse, exaggerated, and defective in taste. For example, in a speech of remarkable power in answer to an attack made upon him in the Assembly, he closed with the following metaphor: "I have entrenched myself in the citadel of reason. I shall sally forth with the artillery of truth and I shall crumble to dust the villains who have presumed to accuse me." Such metaphors may be unpardonable in the opinion of a schoolman, but the action of Danton was so strong, his expression so ener­getic that under the spell of his eloquence his auditors did not stop to criticise his figures of speech. Language so bombastic, had it come from a little man or a speaker with a weak voice, or one without strong emotions, would have set the Assembly in a roar. A most distinguished British orator in commenting on this speech says: " Such violent metaphors, of a vulgar class, Danton could venture upon from his thundering voice and over­powering action. In another they would have excited the ridicule from which those physical attributes rescued them in him." In pure declamation Danton must have been magnificent.

Were we to look for a specimen of his manner, perhaps none more characteristic could be found than his reply to an attack made upon him by Lasource, who charged him with his known partiality for Dumouriez (whose treason at this time was laid bare). ... Stung and incensed by so foul an accusation, the great

Another fine example of his style, perhaps even more char­acteristic than the foregoing, is the speech he made in reply to Gensonne, the Girondin, who had as usual been theorizing and at the same time reflecting upon the political supremacy as­sumed by Paris: " What are your laws and theories to us, when the only law is to triumph and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of existence? Let us first save ourselves; we can dis­cuss matters afterwards. France at this moment is neither at Lille nor Marseilles, nor at Lyons, nor at Bordeaux, but is everywhere where men think or act or fight for her. We have no longer de­partments nor separate interests, lines are obliterated between the provinces, all is France. Geography is at an end; there is but one people — there should be but one republic! Was it at Lyons they took the Bastille? Did Marseilles effect the 20th of June? Do we owe to Bordeaux the 10th of August? Everywhere, wher­ever she has been saved, wherever her flag floats, wherever her

Danton haranguing ladies of the food market (Bas relief on the statue of Danton at Tarbes, France)

Danton's voice was of immense scope and volume: he could tone it down to the soft and tender chirps of a cooing dove, or could bellow like a Stentor. When angry or emphatic he could be heard an incredible distance. Michelet describes him as shaking the windows while addressing the Club of the Cordeliers. At his trial he was distinctly heard by a vast multitude of people that had gathered outside of the court house.

The energy of Danton in the days of his activity was prodi­gious; his labors were titanic, no task was impossible, and yet we marvel that in the time allotted to him he accomplished so much. His entire political career extended over a comparatively short period, three years at the most; but in that brief space he made his reputation. It was not a slow ascent to fame by years of preparation and service under a settled government, but an im­mediate, a sudden rise to power, to be cut short in the heyday of his manhood, for he went to the scaffold in the thirty-fifth year of his age, even before he had reached the real prime and vigor of his life. [. ..]

It was not until the death of Mirabeau that he took a promi­nent part in the politics of the nation. Before that his reputation was local, virtually confined to the section of the Cordeliers, so that his political career covered a period of perhaps less than three years; but it was a most strenuous period, for in those three years history was made faster than it is in a decade under a settled government in time of peace.

A superficial glance at the French Revolution is apt to give the impression that it was but a saturnalia of crime. A closer inspection, however, will prove that this was not the case. It had a meaning and a purpose; it was a dreadful reckoning with the

"The nation was worn out with long wars and exhausted by supplying the extravagance of its rulers, who gave themselves up alternately to a fondness for pleasure and for arms." The leaders of the Revolution saw in man, irrespective of his position in so­cial and political life, a human being entitled to the sympathies of his fellows and the protection of government, not a creature to be oppressed but to be elevated, not to be deprived of his rights but to be secure in their enjoyment.

The energies of the Revolution may have been misdirected by vicious and ambitious men, in its excesses it may have disgraced and dishonored humanity, it may not have accomplished all that it should have attained, but it must be admitted that it did mod­erate the power of the tyrant and if it did nothing more than effect the abolition of feudalism that was worth all the blood that was shed. It was a tremendous burst of energy, agitating all France and every state in Europe. It was like a seething volcano that had been accumulating its force for centuries, and when it broke forth it overwhelmed and submerged everything in its pathway and shook the earth with its vibrations. Paris was the crater of this volcanic eruption.

The French Revolution was a war of ideas, and, although the ideas at times were confused, out of all this chaos were at last evolved the principles of law, justice, equality, and humanity. Judge it not alone by its excesses but also by its results; for not­withstanding its terrors, its horrors, its crimes, it was a blessing to mankind, overthrowing many vile institutions and reforming many others which it did not destroy. In the life of the civi­lized world today are to be traced its principles, its purposes, its philosophy.

from Charles F. Warwick, Minton and the French Revolution,
George W Jacobs Publishers, Philadelphia, 1908,
ch. XXXIII, pp.423-450

Danton on the scaffold