Of all the major figures of the Reign of Terror, Georges-Jacques Danton is probably the easiest to sympathize with. He, unlike many of his comrades, emerges from the pages of history as a normal human being---albeit with an abnormal amount of courage and intelligence. But as Camille Desmoulins notes in Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety "I used to think that he wasn't a very complicated person. But he is-very complicated, very subtle, in himself. Its only what he wants that is simple. Power, money, land...."Although he may not have been a casebook study in paranoia like many of his colleagues, Danton still poses some very critical questions in the ethics of politics and the meaning of history itself.
The character and posthumous image of Georges-Jacques Danton has been distorted as much of that as his erstwhile friend and deadly nemesis, Maximilien Robespierre to whom he is usually contrasted. As Marie-Helene Huet notes in Mourning Glory "Robespierre's deadly sphinx was contrasted with a being who, in his appetite for life and unequivocal human desires, both counteracted and amplified the funereal qualities of his enemy." Robespierre in Stanislawa Przbysweska's The Danton Case described the mythic appeal of Danton as follows:
We have not killed Danton. We have multiplied, disseminated him. His blood has already begun to yield its crop. Like the blood of a mythical hero, it breeds an avenger from its every drop.
When we fall-you and I, Antoine-quicklime will swallow and consume us, our thought will be blown away like a breath; only our names will remain as prey for historians. [lifts himself up] But Danton cannot be killed. For Danton is the colossus of life-the first-born son of Nature, the immortal beast in man.
[he is more and more excited]
Until man outgrows this beast in himself, he will time after time rebel and bleed-in vain. Revolution will not survive to achieve its aim this time, or the second, or the fifth time. Danton's corruption, Danton's lie will after a while outweigh the upward momentum...
Certain characteristics that would later be embellished in later depictions seem to have been true to life; Danton was an immensely courageous and resourceful man, but both of these traits were more often than not applied to self-aggrandizement than any greater goal. In stark contrast to the sometimes outlandishly idealistic Robespierre, Danton was pragmatic, earthy and realistic. He defined virtue as "something I do with my wife every night." (Of course, equally true to character Robespierre recorded this in a little notebook labeled DANTON) He enjoyed the good life-he was a well-educated man, able to read five languages (he wooed his first wife, Gabrielle Charpentier, in Italian). He liked good food , good wine, good books (his favorite author was the earthy Rabelais) and the money to pay for these things. He did take bribes. Whether he took bribes from everyone he was accused of taking bribes from is another matter. It is difficult to call Danton corrupt when he was too proud to follow anyone else's advise. Mantel described Danton's corruption in the following conversation between his wife Gabrielle and his best friend Camille Desmoulins:
Danton was said to be a notorious womanizer, despite his savage and ugly appearance, but there is little proof that he was anything but a devoted family man. The legend of his philandering may be yet another facet in the depiction of Danton as the "masculine" as opposed to the "feminine" asexuality of Robespierre.
"I used to think he wasn't a very complicated person. But he is-very complicated, very subtle, in himself. it's only his wants that are simple. Power, money, land."
"Women," Gabrielle said.
"Why did you say, just now, that he was destroying himself?"
"I'm not sure now what I meant. But at the time-when he was so angry and sneering and insulting-I saw it very clearly. This view he has of himself-he thinks, people may call me corrupt, but I'm just playing the system, I'm still my own man, nothing touches me. But it doesn't work like that. He's forgotten what he wanted. The means have become the end. He doesn't see it, but he's corrupt all through." She shivered, swirled her glass with the last half-inch of wine settling red tick . "Oh," she said, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Georges-Jacques Danton was born in 1759 in Arcis-sur-Aube, the only son of a father who died when he was two. He grew up to be a wild, pugnacious child, who seemed to have a particularly unpleasant time with barnyard animals. Encounters with a bull and then a herd of pigs (don't ask...you probably don't want to know...that's what we're thinking....) left him with a host of scars across a face that hadn't started off too prepossessing in the first place. As if things couldn't get worse, the boy contracted small pox along the line. And you wonder where he grew up to be such a fighter. Bright but lazy, Georges learned quickly what he wanted to learn but was not concerned about anything that didn't interest him. He got his law degree at Rheims and then traveled to Paris to set up a practice.
Georges was fairly successful as a lawyer, especially one from the middle-class, and seemed on his way to a stable and uneventful future. He married Gabrielle Charpentier, the daughter of restaurant-owner, who proved a devoted wife and the mother of their two sons, Francois-Georges and Antoine. (Gabrielle was actually inclined towards royalism though, it is said she cried over the death of the King) Georges made friends with a somewhat disreputable young barrister by the name of Camille Desmoulins during this interim as well.
Danton showed an early interest in the Revolution, although not a deputy to either the Estates-General or the National Assembly, he became a local leader in his district, a captain in the National Guard and helped set up a political club that would become of utmost importance in the days to follow, the Cordeliers Club. He was known as "The Man of August 10" for his part in inciting the Tuileries uprising. By the time Danton was elected a deputy to the National Convention, he has already allied himself with the far Left, the Montagnards. He was supposedly on the pay roll of the Duc d'Orleans, Mirabeau, England, Austria, and the King at one time or another. But as he was to claim at his trial, "No one has enough money to buy a man like me." He became Minister of Justice in the Girondin Cabinet, the only Montagnard member, and it was he who rallied Paris after the Brunswick Manifesto in a famous speech in which he asked for "Audacity, again audacity, and always audacity!" He virtually saved Paris in 1792 (although some say that he sold the Crown Jewels in order to buy the victory at Valmy). He permitted the September Massacres to occur, although it is said that afterwards he suffered recurrent nightmares about them. After a trip inspecting the armies in Belgium in 1793, he came home to find that his beloved wife Gabrielle had been dead for three days. According to Michelet, Danton "roaring with pain, reopened the earth" to kiss his wife in her grave. Robespierre, empathizing, sent him a letter in which he said that "you and I are one." It is much debated how Danton reacted to this declaration of faith from the Incorruptible. It is known that a year after it was sent, Robespierre had Danton beheaded.
Although Danton was the man chiefly responsible for many of the accouterment of the Terror, such as the new Revolutionary Tribunal, he became sick of politics shortly after his wife died. He remarried his 15-year-old babysitter and neighbor Louise Gely in a ceremony conducted by a non-juring priest, and left for the country in Sievres. When he returned, he began asking for clemency....whether to hide his own corrupt dealings or out of genuine compassion is still a matter of debate. Refusing to believe that Robespierre would ever "have the balls" to arrest him, Danton refused to flee and was arrested at 2 am. His trial was a notoriously unfair procedure; seven jurors were picked instead of the normal twelve, witnesses for the defense were not allowed to be called, and, eventually, even the accused themselves were not allowed to speak. Danton and his accomplices were declared guilty in absentia. To the end, Danton retained his earthy good humor. Sitting next to Fabre, who was complaining that he would never finish his poems (vers), Danton punned on the French word for worms vers saying, "In a few days, you'll be making some great vers. He also said that "Everything might go on fine if I could give my legs to that cripple Couthon and my balls to Robespierre. "As the tumbrel rode by Robespierre's house, Danton said "Infamous Robespierre! The scaffold is calling for you! Your house shall be razed! You shall follow me!" His last words, to the executioner, were "Show my head to the people. It will be worth it."
Novels
