If such bourgeois families as these had to make do with tallow rather than wax candles, they seem to have suffered few other deprivations. On the anniversary of the King’s death Ziguette and her mother went to dinner with a Madame Houzeaux. They had soup, cold beef with gherkin and beetroot salad, skate with browned butter, stewed mutton and potatoes, fried sole, cheese and fruit. After dinner they sat by the fire to talk about the latest fashions, and on their way home they went into a shop in the Rue du Bac and bought ‘a ravishing frock’ for twenty-two livres. For families such as this the Terror was not of overriding concern, nor was Robespierre mentioned much in conversation.
Those more intimately concerned with politics, however, knew that Robespierre was now having difficulties with his colleagues. Differences of opinion had arisen in the Committee of Public Safety over a project, favoured by Robespierre, for the free distribution to impoverished patriots of estates confiscated from ‘suspects’, and over the speeding up of the procedures of the Revolutionary Tribunal, as well as over Robespierre’s devotion to the religious ideas of Rousseau as exemplified by his inauguration of festivals such as those of the Supreme Being. At the same time there was growing rivalry between the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security. Robespierre, backed by Couthon and Saint-Just, had usurped many of the latter’s powers, particularly those concerning the police. This added to the numbers of Robespierre’s enemies among the members of the Committee of General Security without mollifying those who were jealous of his preeminence in the Committee of Public Safety. Even more dangerous for Robespierre was his gradual loss of control of the Convention. The radical members strongly disapproved of his recall to Paris of their representatives en mission in the provinces, while the more moderate members, still angry with the Jacobins for their destruction of the Girondins and appalled by the merciless manner in which the Revolutionary Tribunal had taken advantage of the law of 22 Prairial, had begun openly to condemn the continuance of the Terror at a time when the French armies’ victories were making it inexcusable. On 26 June General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, once a silk merchant’s apprentice in Lyons, overwhelmed the Austrians at Fleurus and a fortnight later Brussels was occupied. Toulon had already been retaken and some sort of order had at last been restored in the Vendée. There being no longer any danger of invasion by foreign troops or any serious threat from either federalists or royalists, the continued dictatorship of Robespierre and his associates became increasingly insupportable.
For his part, Robespierre seems to have had little doubt that, with the help of the Commune and of the faithful members of the Jacobin Club, he could survive all attempts to defeat him. By carrying out further purges not only of the Convention but also of both Committees he could ensure himself of sufficient support in all of them. His confidence evidently restored after the doubts that had assailed him on the evening of the Festival of the Supreme Being, he quarrelled with Carnot, with Vadier and with Billaud-Varenne. After one particularly violent altercation with Billaud-Varenne, who described the dictatorship of Couthon, Saint-Just and himself as ‘grotesque’, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him and shouting, ‘All right then, save the country without me.’ Thereafter he stopped attending Comittee meetings.
Some of his critics, more cautious than their colleagues and afraid of losing their lives if they failed to overthrow him, attempted to bring about a reconciliation. Paul Barras and Louis Stanislas Fréron who had been jointly responsible for the excesses of the Terror at Toulon and had been recalled to Paris at Robespierre’s instigation, called upon him at the Rue Saint-Honoré. Fréron had been at school with him, and hoped that, at least ‘for old times’s sake’, Robespierre would receive them sympathetically.
Having passed through ‘a long alley which led to an inner yard full of planks, the owner’s stock in trade’, they found Robespierre in his dressing-gown just returned from one of his regular visits to his hairdresser.
He was not wearing his spectacles and his eyes turned on us with a fixed look [Barras recorded]. He seemed quite amazed at our appearance…and did not reply to our greeting. He turned first towards a mirror that hung on the window, then to a smaller mirror, taking his toilet knife, scraping the powder that covered his face and minutely inspecting the arrangement of his hair. He then took off his dressing-gown, putting it on to a chair near us so that we were dusted with the powder that flew off it. He did not apologize, nor show any sign that he had even noticed our presence. He washed himself in a bowl that he held in his hand, brushed his teeth, spat several times on the floor by our feet as though we had not been there…Thinking that he detected a frown on Robespierre’s face and that his continued silence might be due to our use of the revolutionary tu, Fréron substituted vous in the hope of appeasing this haughty and touchy man. But Robespierre’s expression did not alter. He remained standing…and still said nothing. I have seen no expression as impassive on the icy marble faces of statues or on those of corpses.
Fouché, who had also been recalled to Paris on Robespierre’s orders and knew that he too stood in the shadow of the guillotine, went to see Robespierre and was rebuffed in a different way. His overtures were, it seems, furiously rejected; his activities at Lyons were violently condemned; he was then abruptly told to leave the house. For a time Fouché went into hiding, emerging occasionally to spread rumours about Robespierre, persuading other members of the Convention that their lives were in as much danger as his own, uniting rivals by a common fear. Robespierre would have had him arrested, but the wily Fouché–like Talleyrand, a born trimmer and survivor – could not be found, and Robespierre had for the moment to be content with using his influence with the Jacobins to have him expelled from the Club.
Elsewhere Robespierre’s influence was waning fast. The moderates in the Convention were growing daily more outspoken in their condemnation of the continuing Terror, no longer justified by the war; and towards the middle of July plans were laid for Robespierre’s overthrow.
On 22 July (4 Thermidor) he was persuaded to attend a joint meeting of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security. He appeared there in a far from repentant or conciliatory mood, pacing about the room as he charged both Committees with all manner of misdemeanours and betrayals of the trust that the people reposed in them. After he had left, the Committees agreed to Saint-Just’s issuing a statement indicating that some sort of understanding with Robespierre had been reached and that, as Couthon assured the Jacobin Club, while there might be differences of personality there was ‘none of principle’. But, if Couthon and Saint-Just were prepared to compromise with their colleagues, Robespierre was not. He declined ‘to adjust his principles for the sake of the Committees’ and he refused to discuss them privately with the leaders of the Plain. He made up his mind to deliver a speech to the Convention in which he would clearly set forth his views and denounce all his enemies, all those ‘perfidious rogues’ who were responsible for the ills of the nation. He did not discuss his speech with either Couthon or Saint-Just. In long and solitary walks through the woods at Ville d’Avray and in contemplation, sometimes in tears, of the tomb of Rousseau, whose Contrat social was always by his bedside, he composed his stinging indictment. And on 26 July (8 Thermidor) he marched in to confront the deputies resplendent in nankeen silk breeches, white cotton stockings and the sky-blue coat which he had worn for the Festival of the Supreme Being six weeks before. He mounted the rostrum and remained there speaking for over two hours. Without actually naming any of them except Pierre Joseph Cambon, the Superintendent of Finance, he characterized and anathematized his opponents on the Committees, referring in particular and unmistakably to Billaud-Varenne and Carnot. He attacked Fouché, Collot d’Herbois and Vadier as well as Jean Lambert Tallien, who, while representative en mission at Bordeaux, had fallen in love with one of his prisoners, the divorced wife of the Comte de Fontenay, and who was consequently, despite his protestations of revolutionary zeal, suspected of having come under her moderating influence. Robespierre castigated Tallien with particular vehemence before turning upon all the deputies who had derided the Festival of the Supreme Being. He spoke darkly of purifying the Committee of Public Safety and dismissing the members of the Committee of General Security. He accused those responsible for military affairs of having dealings with the enemy, and Cambon of ruining the poor, depriving the people of national assets and disrupting the economy. He described himself, as he so often did when elaborating upon his own virtues, as ‘a slave of freedom, a living martyr to the Republic, the victim as well as the enemy of crime’. ‘Every scoundrel insults me,’ he cried in growing indignation and sequential confusion. ‘Let them prepare hemlock for me. I will wait for it on these sacred seats. I have promised to leave a formidable testament to the oppressors of the people. I bequeath to them truth…and death.’