A Pseudo-Hero Of The Revolution

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Title:     A Pseudo-Hero Of The Revolution
Author: Evelyn Baring [More Titles by Baring]

A PSEUDO-HERO OF THE REVOLUTION[88]

_"The Spectator," July 5, 1913_

If it be a fact, as Carlyle said, that "History is the essence of innumerable biographies," it is very necessary that the biographies from which that essence is extracted should be true. It was probably a profound want of confidence in the accuracy of biographical writing that led Horace Walpole to beg for "anything but history, for history must be false." Modern industry and research, ferreting in the less frequented bypaths of history, have exposed many fictions, and have often led to some strikingly paradoxical conclusions. They have substituted for Cambronne's apocryphal saying at Waterloo the blunt sarcasm of the Duke of Wellington that there were a number of ladies at Brussels who were termed "la vieille garde," and of whom it was said "elles ne meurent pas et se rendent toujours." They have led one eminent historian to apologise for the polygamous tendencies of Henry VIII.; another to advance the startling proposition that the "amazing" but, as the world has heretofore held, infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barère, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." Biographical research has, moreover, destroyed many picturesque legends, with some of which posterity cannot part without a pang of regret. We are reluctant to believe that William Tell was a mythological marksman and Gessler a wholly impossible bailiff. Nevertheless the inexorable laws of evidence demand that this sacrifice should be made on the altar of historical truth. M. Gastine has now ruthlessly quashed out another picturesque legend. Tallien--the "bristly, fox-haired" Tallien of Carlyle's historical rhapsody--and La Cabarrus--the fair Spanish Proserpine whom, "Pluto-like, he gathered at Bordeaux"--have so far floated down the tide of history as individuals who, like Byron's Corsair, were

Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

Of the crimes there could, indeed, never have been any doubt, but posterity took but little heed of them, for they were amply condoned by the single virtue. That virtue was, indeed, of a transcendent character, for it was nothing less than the delivery of the French nation from the Dahomey-like rule of that Robespierre who deluged France in blood, and who, albeit in Fouché's words he was "terribly sincere," at the same time "never in his life cared for any one but himself and never forgave an offence." Moreover, the act of delivery was associated with an episode eminently calculated to appeal to human sentiment and sympathy. It was thought that the love of a fair woman whose life was endangered had nerved the lover and the patriot to perform an heroic act at the imminent risk of his own life. Hence the hero became "Le Lion Amoureux," and the heroine was canonised as "Notre Dame de Thermidor."

M. Gastine has now torn this legend to shreds. Under his pitiless analysis of the facts, nothing is left but the story of a contemptible adventurer, who was "a robber, a murderer, and a poltroon," mated to a grasping, heartless courtesan. Both were alike infamous. The ignoble careers of both from the cradle to the grave do not, in reality, present a single redeeming feature.

Madame Tallien was the daughter of François Cabarrus, a wealthy Spaniard who was the banker of the Spanish Court. The great influence which she unquestionably exerted over her contemporaries was wholly due to her astounding physical beauty. Her intellectual equipment was meagre in the extreme. At one period of her life she courted the society of Madame de Staël and other intellectuals, but Princess Hélène Ligne said of her that she "had more jargon than wit." As regards her physical attractions, however, no dissentient voice has ever been raised. "Her beauty," the Duchess d'Abrantès says in her memoirs, "of which the sculptors of antiquity give us but an incomplete idea, had a charm not met with in the types of Greece and Rome." Every man who approached her appears to have become her victim. Lacretelle, who himself worshipped at her shrine, says, "She appeared to most of us as the Spirit of Clemency incarnate in the loveliest of human forms." At a very early age she married a young French nobleman, the Marquis de Fontenay, from whom she was speedily divorced. It is not known for what offence she was arrested and imprisoned. Probably the mere fact that she was a marquise was sufficient to entangle her in the meshes of the revolutionary net. It is certain, however, that whilst lying under sentence of death in the prison at Bordeaux she attracted the attention of Tallien, the son of the Marquis of Bercy's butler and _ci-devant_ lawyer's clerk, who had blossomed into "a Terrorist of the first water." He obtained her release and she became his mistress. She took advantage of the equivocal but influential position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic. She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The venal lenity shown by Tallien to aristocrats rendered him an object of suspicion, whilst the marked tendency displayed by Robespierre to mistrust and, finally, to immolate his coadjutors was an ominous indication of the probable course of future events. Robespierre had already destroyed Vergniaud by means of Hébert, Hébert by means of Danton, and Danton by means of Billaud. As a preliminary step to the destruction of Tallien, he caused his mistress to be arrested, probably with a view to seeing what evidence against her paramour could be extracted before she was herself guillotined.

From this point in the narrative history is merged into legend. The legend would have us believe that on the 7th Thermidor the "Citoyenne Fontenay" sent a dagger to the "Citoyen Tallien," accompanied by a letter in which she said that she had dreamt that Robespierre was no more, and that the gates of her prison had been flung open. "Alas!" she added, "thanks to your signal cowardice there will soon be no one left in France capable of bringing such a dream to pass." Tallien besought Robespierre to show mercy, but "the Incorruptible was inflexible." Then the "Lion Amoureux" roared, being, as the legend relates, stricken to the heart at the appalling danger to which his beloved mistress was exposed or, as his detractors put the case, being in deadly fear that the untoward revelations of the Citoyenne might cost him his own head. The next act in this Aeschylean drama is described by the believers in the legend in the following words: "Tallien drew Theresia's dagger from his breast and flashed it in the sunlight as though to nerve himself for the desperate business that confronted him. 'This,' he cried passionately, 'will be my final argument,' and looking about him to make sure he was alone he raised the blade to his lips and kissed it."

The result, it is alleged, was that Tallien provoked the episode of the 9th Thermidor (July 22, 1794). The few faltering sentences which Robespierre wished to utter were never spoken. He was "choked by the blood of Danton," and hurried off to the guillotine which awaited him on the morrow.

History, which in this instance is not legendary, relates that on the death of the tyrant a wild shout of exultation was raised by the joyous people who had for so long wandered in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. To whom, they asked, did they owe their liberty? What was more natural than to assume that it was to the brave Tallien and to the loving woman who armed him to strike a blow for the freedom of France? Tallien and his mistress became, therefore, the idols of the French people. The Chancellor Pasquier relates their appearance at a theatre:

The enthusiasm and the applause were indescribable. The occupants of the boxes, the people in the pit, men and women alike, stood up on their chairs to look at him. It seemed as though they would never weary of gazing at him. He was young, rather good-looking, and his manner was calm and serene. Madame Tallien was at his side and shared his triumph. In her case also everything had been forgiven and forgotten. Similar scenes were enacted all through the autumn of that year. Never was any service, however great, rewarded by gratitude so lively and so touching.

It would be impossible within the limits of the present article to summarise the arguments by which M. Gastine seeks to destroy this myth. Allusion may, however, be made to two points of special importance. The first is that neither Tallien nor the lovely Spaniard languishing in the dungeon of La Force had much to do with the episode of the 9th Thermidor. "Tallien was a mere super, a mere puppet that had to be galvanised into action up to the very last." The man who really organised the movement and persuaded his coadjutors that they were engaged in a life and death struggle with Robespierre was he who, as every reader of revolutionary history knows, was busily engaged in pulling the strings behind the scenes during the whole of this chaotic period. It was the man whose iron nerve and subtle brain enabled him, in spite of a secular course of betrayals, to keep his head on his shoulders, and finally to escape the clutches of Napoleon, who, as Lord Rosebery tells us,[89] always deeply regretted that he had not had him "hanged or shot." It was Fouché.

In the second place, there is conclusive evidence to show that, to use the ordinary slang expression of the present day, the celebrated dagger letter was "faked." When Robespierre fell, Tallien never gave a thought to his mistress. He still trembled for his own life. "His sole aim was to make away with Robespierre's papers." It was only on the 12th Thermidor--that is to say, two days after Robespierre's mangled head had been sheared off by the guillotine--that, noting the trend of public opinion, and appreciating the capital which might be made out of the current myth, he hurried off to La Force and there concocted with his mistress the famous letter which he, of course, antedated.

The subsequent careers of Tallien and his wife--for he married La Cabarrus in December 1794--are merely characterised by a number of unedifying details. The hero of this sordid tale passed through many vicissitudes. He went with Napoleon to Egypt. He was, on his return voyage, taken prisoner by an English cruiser. On his arrival in London he was well received by Fox and the Whigs--a fact which cannot be said to redound much to the credit either of the Whig party or its leader. He gambled on the Stock Exchange, and at one time "blossomed out as a dealer in soap, candles, and cotton bonnets." After passing through an unhonoured old age, he died in great poverty in 1820. The heroine became intimate with Josephine during Napoleon's absence in Egypt, was subsequently divorced from Tallien, and later, after passing through a phase when she was the mistress of the banker Ouvrard, married the Prince of Caraman-Chimay. Her conduct during the latter years of her life appears to have been irreproachable. She died in 1835.

[Footnote 88: _The Life of Madame Tallien._ By L. Gastine. Translated from the French by J. Lewis May. London: John Lane. 12s. 6d. net.]

[Footnote 89: _The Last Phase_, p. 203.]

[The end]
Evelyn Baring's essay: A Pseudo-Hero Of The Revolution

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