ither the views or the audacity of a real
statesman.' The picture is instructive, for it shows us Robespierre's
invariable habit of leaving violence and iniquity unrebuked; of
conciliating the practitioners of violence and iniquity; and of
contenting himself with an inward hope of turning the world into a right
course by fine words. He had no audacity in Marat's sense, but he was no
coward. He knew, as all these men knew, that almost from hour to hour he
carried his life in his hand, yet he declined to seek shelter in the
obscurity which saved such men as Sieyes. But if he had courage, he had
not the initiative of a man of action. He invented none of the ideas or
methods of the Revolution, not even the Reign of Terror, but he was very
dexterous in accepting or appropriating what more audacious spirits than
himself had devised and enforced. The pedant, cursed with the ambition
to be a ruler of men, is a curious study. He would be glad not to go too
far, and yet his chief dread is lest he be left behind. His
consciousness of pure aims allows him to become an accomplice in the
worst crimes. Suspecting himself at bottom to be a theorist, he hastens
to clear his character as man of practice by conniving at an enormity.
Thus, in September 1792, a band of miscreants committed the grievous
massacres in the prisons of Paris. Robespierre, though the best evidence
goes to show that he not only did not abet the prison murders, but in
his heart deplored them, yet after the event did not scruple to justify
what had been done. This was the beginning of a long course of
compliance with sanguinary misdeeds, for which Robespierre has been as
hotly execrated as if he prompted them. We do not, for the moment,
measure the relative degrees of guilt that attached to mere compliance
on the one hand, and cruel origination on the other. But his position in
the Revolution is not rightly understood, unless we recognise him as
being in almost every case an accessory after the fact.

Between the fall of Lewis in 1792 and the fall of Robespierre in 1794,
France was the scene of two main series of events. One set comprises the
repulse of the invaders, the suppression of an extensive civil war, and
the attempted reconstruction of a social framework. The other comprises
the rapid phases of an internecine struggle of violent and short-lived
factions. By an unhappy fatality, due partly to anti-democratic
prejudice, and partly to men's unfailing passion for