Danton
A STUDY
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC, B.A.
LATE BRACKENBURY SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE,
OXFORD
New York
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1899
TO
ANTHONY HENLEY
An historian of just pre-eminence in his university andcollege, in a little work which should be more widelyknown, has summed up the two principal characters ofthe Revolution in the following phrases: “the cold andferocious Robespierre, the blatant Danton.”[1] The judgmentis precipitate and is tinged with a certain bias.
An authority of still greater position prefaces his notebookon the Revolution by telling us that he is goingto describe the beast.[2] The learned sectarian does notconceal from his readers the fact that a profound analysishad led to a very pronounced conviction. So certain ishe of his ground, that he treats with equal considerationthe evidence of printed documents, of autograph letters,and of a chance stranger speaking in a country inn ofa thing that had happened forty years before.
The greatest of French novelists and a principal poethas given us in “Quatre-vingt-treize” a picture movingand living. Yet even in that work much is admitted, forthe sake of contrast and colour, which no contemporarysaw. The dialogue between Danton and Marat, with itspicturesque untruths, is an example.[3]
If facts so conflicting be stated as true by men ofsuch various calibre, it would seem a very difficult taskto write history at all. Yet there is a method which[viii]neither excludes personal conviction, nor necessitates theart of deceit, nor presupposes a primitive ignorance.
It is to ascertain what is positively known and can beproved, and with the facts so gathered—only with these—topaint a picture as vivid as may be; on a series oftruths—with research it grows to respectable proportions—tobase a conviction, general, wide, and capable of constantapplication, as to the character of a period or of a man.
Such was the method of Fustel de Coulanges, and onhis model there has arisen from the minute, the sometimespedantic accuracy of French scholars, a schoolwhich is the strongest in Europe.
The method I have been describing has also thisadvantage, that the least learned may enter upon such apath without confusion and may progress, and that abook of no pretensions can yet, by following these rules,at least avoid untruth. With inferior tools, and on anover-rough plan, I shall yet attempt in this life of Dantonto follow the example.
The motto which is printed at the head of this book,and which is borrowed from the most just of biographers,must give a note to the whole of my description. Whatwas the movement which founded our modern society?what were its motives, its causes of action, its materialsurroundings? And what was the man who, above allothers, represented that spirit at