454 Chapter XIX
Duke of Orleans. Why had this person’s son (the future King Louis- Philippe, who
later boasted of having fought at Valmy) been commissioned as a lieutenant-
general at the age of nineteen? What kind of officers were in this republican army
anyway? Brissot, according to Robespierre, now really wanted to make peace with
the foreign powers, with a restoration of monarchy in the Orleans line.^10
Anyone living in the democratized twentieth century knows that there can be
no public talk of peace in time of war. There could be no talk of peace for Robes-
pierre, especially if it meant a relapse into monarchy. He demanded the death pen-
alty for anyone suggesting compromise with the enemy. This proposal, amended in
the Convention by Danton, who favored private overtures to the enemy, turned
into a well- known decree, by which France was supposed (at least by historians) to
“renounce” the two Propaganda Decrees of 1792, which, as already explained, were
not really “propaganda” decrees at all. The Convention now declared that it would
not interfere with the government of other powers, but that these powers must not
interfere in the affairs of France and its constitution; and that anyone favoring
compromise with the enemy should be put to death, unless the enemy, in advance,
recognized “the sovereignty, independence, indivisibility and unity of the Republic,
founded on liberty and equality.”^11 This left matters not actually much changed,
since the powers had not yet made clear any such bland intentions.
Meanwhile the Convention, an incredible body, at war with all Europe, with its
commanding general in Belgium proved disloyal, with peasants in armed rebellion
in the West, with the currency out of control, the economy collapsing, and the
popular agitation in the Paris sections boiling over, found moments to engage in
its theoretically principal business, to “constitute” a regular government through a
new written constitution and declaration of rights. The committee on the constitu-
tion was dominated by Condorcet and other Brissotins or Girondists. There was
much on which they did not disagree with the Mountain, notably universal suf-
frage, universal schooling, public relief to the needy, and other attributes of a dem-
ocratic state. Robespierre, however, was convinced that the Girondists were unfit
to govern. He made an issue over their proposed Declaration of Rights. On April
24 he submitted and explained to the Convention a draft Declaration of his own.
Though never adopted, it is a key document to the understanding of his thinking
and his tactics.^12
10 Speeches of April 3 and 10, 1793, Robespierre, Oeuvres, X X: Discours, IV (Paris, 1958), 357–
68, 376–416.
11 Moniteur, XVI, 143.
12 Oeuvres, IX, 459–75, with the valuable editors’ notes. This speech of Robespierre’s has always
been a favorite with those publishing collections of his speeches, on which curious observations can be
made: The Speeches of Maximilien Robespierre in the Voices of Revolt series (New York, International
Publishers, 1927) simply deletes Robespierre’s remarks that “equality of wealth is a chimera,” and that
“it is more important to make poverty honorable than to proscribe opulence.” On the other hand,
Robespierre: pages choisies des grands républicains (Paris, 1907), published for patriotic purposes, simply
omits this “social- democratic” speech altogether. It was this sort of thing that understandably annoyed
Albert Mathiez. Mathiez, however, in expounding this speech, always emphasized its social democ-
racy while saying little of its international revolutionism, which Mathiez preferred to attribute to the
“Girondins.”