The Rest Is History - 710. The Terror: Death at the Guillotine (Part 4)

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

How did two of the French Revolution's leading figures, Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, differ in their views on how to further the cause? Which scandalous conspiracy was Danton accused of being involved in that would lead him to the guillotine? And, was it true? Or the betrayal of a former ally? Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the terrible destruction of one of the great titans of the Revolution, Georges Danton, and the connotations of his cataclysmic fall for the future of the Terror.   Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠ _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heat the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's going to dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

What would happen if I stop doing? You storm. You freeze to death. That's what? With great power. Comes great deniability. I'm not the first, Danny. Digger. See the trailer online.

Only in the year's October 2nd. The execution was already underway when, having crossed the tuileries, I reached the gate opening onto the Place Louis Cairns. From there I saw the condemned men appear one after another on the fatal stage, only to vanish at once as the plank on which their eternal rest was to begin tip them from view. Danton appeared last on that stage, drenched in the blood of all his friends. Day was fading, at the foot of the dreadful structure, standing out of the end of the dreadful structure, standing out like a colossal silhouette against the sky. I saw this tribune rise up like a shade out of Dante,

half lit by the dying sun, seeming as much to be emerging from the tomb as about to enter it. Nothing could match the boldness of this revolutionary athlete's bearing. Nothing could match the formidable set of that profile defying the axe, or the expression of that head, which, about to fall, still seemed to be dictating the laws. A dreadful spectacle. Time could never erase it from my memory. Now I felt the whole force of the emotion behind Danton's last words. Terrible words, which people repeated afterwards shuddering with horror and admiration.

Above all, don't forget, he told the executioner. Don't forget to show my head to the people. It's worth seeing. So that's one of the most famous scenes, not just in the history of the French Revolution, but in the entire history of France. It is the eyewitness account by Antoine Vassant Arnault of the execution of George Danton,

on the 5th of April 1794, and it's a scene that's been immortalized in novels, in plays, in operas and films, and unsurprisingly so, because it is the spectacle of the French revolution devouring one of its most memorable, and I think probably attractive figures, and a bulliont, larger-than-life character, Dominic, who only a year earlier seemed at the peak of his popularity, a large Falstaffian man. A lesson to us all, Dantan's fate, I think. A lesson to us all, yeah. And you're a particular admirer, aren't you, of the Franco-Polish film Dantant, which came out during the solidarity confrontation, the Trades Union in Poland, with the communist government, and starred Gerard Depard Depardieu as Dantan. I think Gerard Depard Depardier is an absolutely

horrendous human being and he is brilliant in this film. And in the film, because it's a portrait, it's actually a brilliant film both about the French Revolution and about the crushing of the solidarity movement in Poland, the imposition of martial law. In the film, he is the champion of moderation against extremism. He is the champion of democracy against dictatorship, which is, of course, a little bit simplistic when you look at the story of the revolution. But there is that kind of great sense of the binary, isn't there? Because of all the On the one hand, you have Maximilian Robespierre. Yeah.

Tall, thin, cold, fanatical, obsessed by ideas of God and virtue. And on the other side, his old friend, Georges Dantan, charismatic, a man of bulk, warm, the man who wants to stop the reign of terror, the people's friend. Yeah. And that dynamic of the kind of the chill, cold, thin person and the warm, jolly, larger person. I mean, it's a kind of almost archetypal.

A sturdy man of the people and the desiccated lover of abstract nouns. Yeah, completely. Yeah. So it's a jewel for the ages, but obviously there's a lot more going on because we're at the sort of crisis moment for the revolution.

Generally war on the frontiers, war within France, loads of nuances, so we might as well get straight into it. We'll get into it with our protagonist who is d'anton. So I think you're at dead right of all the French Revolution's great character.

characters, D'Anton's probably the most magnetic. He's the one you'd go on a night out with, I think. And Depodier, shocking bloke, brilliant actor, does a really good job of capturing his appeal in that film, which I recommend to people that's on YouTube. So D'Onton is a big man, you know, stocky, famously ugly, but incredibly charismatic, energetic. He's a brilliant speaker. He's theatrical. He's generous. There's something slightly Churchillian, I think, about. him, a man of tremendous flaws, but also great magnetic qualities. Listeners may remember that I ventriloquized one of his most famous speeches and did it as Churchill. You did, exactly.

Don'ton can be flippant. He can be greedy. He can be very, very corrupt, as we will see. But he's hard to dislike. And he was born in a place called Arci in Champagne in 1759. So that means that he's about to turn 30 when the French Revolution breaks out. Like so many of these people, he's a relatively young man. He has a very distinctive look.

because as a boy, he'd been both gored by a bull and trampled by pigs. That's bad luck, isn't it? Yeah, it's very unfortunate. So his lip was spitt and his nose was all mangled, and to make it matters worse, he had smallpox. So his face is quite a spectacle. Now, his father, who was a local prosecutor, sent him to boarding school, and then he went and settled on the left bank of Paris,

and he became a lawyer. He got married. He had a couple of sons. And he's a funster, really, in the late 1780s. He has lots of sort of boozy dinner parties. He's well known for them. He has lots of affairs. He's not a very good husband.

He lives life to the full. And then when the revolution breaks out, he's living there in the left bank in this district called the Coeur d'Aille, which is a real hotbed of militancy. So there's loads of people like him, young lawyers, there's artisans, stuff like that. And he's prominent in the protests around the fall of the Bastille, the summer of 1789. He becomes a sort of leading light in the district. He's hanging out with Jean-Bour-Marat, who we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and with a man called Camille de Moula, who's a great friend of his, who we will come to later on. And because D'Anne is a really good speaker, because this is a big man, he's kind of alpha male,

he becomes a b-nock. Do you know what a b-nock is, Tom? Big name on campus. He's a big name on campus. Yeah, exactly. He found the Cordulier Club in 1790, Radical Club. talking shop, becomes its first president, captain of sports teams. Completely.

He's the big man, you know, everyone knows him on the campus, all of that. And as the revolution escalates, his star Carazon rising. So when in the late summer of 1792, there was the great storming of the Twiliery Palace by the kind of Saint-Coulot, by the intersectionally commune. D'Anton was very much at the forefront of that. When the Girondins were running France, they had him as their Minister of Justice. He wasn't really one of them, though.

They always regarded him with a bit of suspicion. But, I mean, you mentioned the Churchillian aspect. He gives this incredible speech. You know, the Prussians are coming. France is at bay, and he says what we need is de loudasse, and encore de loudasse, and de judeau de l'Houderas. You know, courage, more courage, and yet more courage, and we will win the day.

And, you know, it works. Now, behind all that, he's not just a great speaker. He's also actually good at running things. He's pragmatic. He's one of those politicians, very common. He talks a brilliant game and he's very flamboyant. But actually, you know, when the door's shut, he's very smart, he's very pragmatic. He takes decisions. He's ruthless, all of this. Over time, though, he falls out with the Girondale a bit. And so he moves closer to the Montagnar faction. So that's Robespierre, Marra. and co. And by, let's say, 1793, Dantan is seen as one of the three big beasts of that camp. So you got Marat, Robespierre, Dantant there, the three names that everyone knows. When Charlotte Corday wrote that manifesto about killing Mara, she mentioned Dantan and Ropespierre, didn't she did, exactly, she did. And he gets on fine with both of those guys. I mean, he's not a tremendous fan of, you know, Mara is not a great laugh, Dantan is a great laugh, and neither is Robert Pierre, but their relations are solid. There's no enmity between them. When Danton's wife dies in childbirth,

he comes back, he's been at the front and he digs up the coffin and embraces her in a very gothic manner. Ross Pierre writes him a very sweet letter. He does. Yeah. You know, he says, oh, I love you until death. You're great. You're my best friend. All of this. Nothing will ever come between us. No, I mean, you could say, on the one hand, that is very much the literary formula of the day that people do write like this. They write in an overwrought way that we would perhaps not do today. But genuinely, I think there's affection. There's a degree of affection between Dant-on-Rabers-Pierre. Well, I think it's important for the tragedy of what's going to happen to recognize the Robespierre does love D'Onton and indeed loves D'Amoulin as well. So there's no sense

whatsoever that they are heading for a kind of great crash at this point. So we're in 1793. And the beginning of 1793, I think it would be reasonable to call it a roller coaster for Dantan. So, as you say, in February, his wife dies. She dies in childbirth. He's been away. He's been a massive womanizer. And I think his grief for her is perhaps slightly colored by guilt that he hasn't been the best husband in the world. Just weeks later, April 1793, as we heard in a previous episode, Dantan is one of the first people appointed to the new Committee of Public Safety. And actually at first, he's seen as the dominant figure on that committee. The only thing is, at this point, spring, summer 1793,

you know, we've talked before about how this is the beginning of the terror, the institutions being set up, the mood of paranoia, the obsession with conspiracies. Dantan is slightly losing touch with that mood, I think. He is too pragmatic. On the committee, he's sitting there and saying, well, you know, maybe we should look to make deals with some of our enemies. Could we detach the Prussians or the Austrians from the enemy coalition? could we talk to some of these

sort of provincial departments that are in revolt? We don't have to kill everybody. Let's find a way out of this. That's not what a lot of people want to hear. And he should have thought of that when he was busy setting all these institutions up. I mean, he clearly was not thinking through

what could be done with them. No, he wasn't. I don't think he was. At the same time, there is, of course, this mood in the summer of 1793, this absolute fixation on virtue, on Republican virtue. you. And that's been there from the beginning, but it's become a lot more pronounced. And Danton's

financial corruption, which is not unique. There are a lot of deputies taking money. This is a fairly corrupt political system, but he is well known for it. Dantan has been taking bribes and he's been buying up land in his native Auxi with mysterious money. But the more that Robespierre becomes the B-nog. and he is the incorruptible. So the more Danton's corruptibility comes to seem a little bit out of fashion. Totally.

His style is unfashionable. So June 1793, I mean, only a few months after his wife died, he marries again. And he marries a girl called Louise. I mean, she is a girl. She's 16 years old and she's been looking after the kids.

And he takes her back to his hometown of RSI on a break. And while he's away, on the 10th of July, he is voted off the Committee of Public Safety by the Convention. Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be an immensely sinister thing. People are being rotated on and off the Committee of Public Safety fairly often. And he's not completely out of favour. So actually, in September, that people in the Convention say,

would you like to come back onto the committee? You know, the committee could use you. And he said, no, I don't really want to join any committee. I'd rather, I'll be a spur to them all. I mean, actually, that's a very Churchill thing to say. You can absolutely imagine Churchill doing that. I won't get involved, but I'll kind of be involved with all of them.

So that's September. Middle October, 1793, Dantan falls ill. This is such a theme of the revolution. As we talked about before, these blokes are young. They're under enormous pressure.

They're drinking a lot. They are, I mean, imagine the stress. You know, your country is at war. There's rebellions. plus you could lose your head if you manage things badly. I mean, you talked about the big three. Mara famously is always returning to his bath because he breaks out in postules. Yeah.

And we said Harrods Pierre is always taking to bed with kind of nervous prostration. It's a theme. Completely. They're leading a very unhealthy existence. And by the time he comes back, so he comes back about six weeks later from our sea where he's been kind of convalescing. He comes back in mid-November and things have changed. So two big things have happened that you described in the last two episodes. Macrientoinette has been executed and the Girondin have been executed.

And by now, the reign of terror is well institutionalized and is well underway, which brings us to the big picture. So to remind people, the Montagnar have been running the roost since the summer and their power is embodied now in these two committees. So you have the Committee of Public Safety, which directs policy, and the Committee of General Security. which controls the police and the revolutionary tribunal. Now, there is a new constitution.

There is a new democratic constitution, but it has been placed on hold. Effectively, there is a state of emergency in France for completely understandable reasons. So Rob Spierre's kind of minimi, Louis-Ontoine de Saint-Just, the kind of archangel of death, archangel of terror. He has moved a resolution on the 10th of October to make the provisional government of France revolutionary until the peace. Basically, we're not going to implement the new constitution. The committee of public safety is going to run things until we have peace and only then will we do it. And Dominant, just to say, because people might think this is a cynical move. Yeah, I really don't

think it is. Saint-Jouist, with Robespierre, had played a key role in writing up that constitution. And we're talking about this in the next episode. You know, they genuinely, and I think correctly see that this is not a time to be experimenting with new constitutions. Because France is in a state of crisis and maybe you can say it does need a firm hand. It's a complicated question actually and I mean we'll answer this to some extent in our very final episode, but I think a couple of things can be true at once. Number one, the institutions of terror, the committed public safety, do actually stabilize the situation. They do provide leadership and they do manage to, you know, they defeat the rebellions and they hold the line on the frontiers and indeed start to win the war. So to that extent, absolutely right. The only question is when you get to 1794, there is a definite question mark about whether, you know, Robespierre at that point, he will never be satisfied that France is a peace because there will always be corruption and vice to be fought.

Just to say that this constitution is precious to Robespierre and Saint-Jouc, because they've drawn it up. Of course. I don't think it is a cynical move to entrench that dictatorial power, which is sometimes how it's presented. Yeah, they're not Vladimir Putin or something. No. You know, they're not cold, cynical, just interested in power for its own sake. Absolutely not. And of course, going hand in hand with the rule of the Committee of Public Safety is the policy of terror.

Let's just say, just equate that to going to revolutionary justice. So Sanjouc says very clearly on the 10th of October, between the people and their enemies, there can be nothing but the sword. We must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice. So violence is a part of their sort of strategy. This is not, though, a dictatorship. It's not controlled by any one person. And the committees are still reporting to the convention. There are aspects in which it anticipates later dictatorships. So power controlled by a very small group of people. Opposition is treated as treason and dissent is punished with kind of state-sanctioned violence. So in all those ways, it definitely looks ahead to the 20th century and lots of historians have written about this. But I think the biggest thing is that the state-sanctioned violence. So in all those ways, it definitely looks ahead to the 20th century and lots of historians have written about this. But I think the biggest thing is that the biggest thing is that actually what it's done is the French Revolution has been very anarchic for the last couple of years, very chaotic. And actually under this new regime, the Committee of

Public Safety, at about this point, autumn 1793, central state government in France is stronger than it has been for years, probably going back, you know, well into the reign of Louis XVIth, if not but further back. You know, you have a really high functioning machine now that is handing down ruthless, decisive edicts that is actually getting stuff done. The smack-affirmed government. Completely. Within it, however, there are lots of tensions. So just to look at the committed public safety, if you look about that, there are these

blokes, there's 12 of them, and they're meeting in a kind of green room. They're working very hard, late at night, all of this. And they're spending a lot of the time arguing on themselves. So on one wing, you have two people who've talked about it already. You have Saint-Just, and you have this bloke called Georges-old. Putin, who's in his wheelchair, the sex addict. Claims he was paralyzed by having too much sex. Yeah.

And you've got Rob Speer, who you've described already, pale, prim, glasses, wig, you know, all that. The incorruptible moral authority. Rob Spier, to be absolutely clear, it's really important, I think, that people dispel any sense of Robespere being a dictator. He is not a dictator. He has this great moral authority, but he's worn of a committee. and actually a lot of the decisions on the committee, and this will be really important when we're talking about the fall of Robespier, a lot of the decisions on the committee are made by these kind of military bureaucrats.

So there's a guy called Lazarkano, who runs the army. There is Robert Lindy, who manages all the food supplies. These guys are like, their job is to win the war and to take all the decisions to manage the administration, to do all that. They're the people who are really keeping the show on the road. And when Rob Speer is talking at great length about the Republic of Virtue, these are men who are rolling their eyes and sort of surreptitiously signing requisition orders under the desk. Yeah. Military logistics is not Robespier's vibe at all.

Not at all. And the differences between these men and Robespier over time will become more and more pronounced, especially as they're working so hard. They're all knackered. They're all drunk, you know, all of this. However, the thing on which they're all united at this point is the policy of terror. So you described how they passed the thing called the law of suspects. The law of suspects allows them to arrest anybody. Yeah, that's basically it, isn't it, to arrest anybody.

Anybody, yeah. If basically your conduct associations, talks or writings identify you as an enemy of the people or an enemy of liberty, then you've committed a crime. So there's that. The Paris commune, I love this. The Paris commune has drawn up and published a list of characteristics that render people's suspect. These include speaking cryptically of the misfortunes of the revolution, spreading bad news, and this is the best one, affecting excessive severity in order to appear Republican. So in other

words, if you seem too keen on the revolution, you're probably a traitor. And they say very specifically, the list of enemies of the people includes those who, while not having done anything against liberty also haven't done anything for it. So if you've literally done nothing at all, you're probably a traitor and an enemy of the people. If you're against the revolution, then you're guilty. And if you seem like you're in favour of the revolution, then you're guilty. And there's not really much leeway in between those two categories. No, it's a very hard balance to strike.

And in his history of the revolution, the American historian, Jeremy Popkin, says, the great iron of this is a republic that is devoted to the rights of man. you know, the first, really the first state in history to be so explicitly devoted, even far more so than the American Republic, to this utopian greed, is running a prison system that is now on a scale without precedent in the Western world. So by the summer of 1794, by the time it's all over, about half a million people have been through the French prison system. Now, most of them do come out again. They obviously don't guillotine anything like a majority of these people. and even in Paris at the height of the terror, if you were accused of a capital offence, Tom,

for example, had you been too enthusiastic in your support of the revolution and outed yourself, therefore, as a traitor, the chances are that you'd still come out with your head on your shoulders. Unless I was an aristocrat. Yeah, that's true. Or Marie Antoinette.

So the official death toll of the terror, I mean, estimates differ. Timothy Tackett gives us a figure. It says the official death toll is 17,000 people, which in the scale of the great story, slaughter as the 20th century is not great. If you include in that deaths in prison from starvation and disease, you're probably looking at 40,000. And then if you look at the Vande and so on, you're hundreds and hundreds of thousands. But, you know, it's not as enormous as the 20th century

killings. Now, it's important to remember this is not senseless killing. It is killing with a purpose. I mean, that sounds a terrible thing to say, but they drew up the terror as this improvised response to the crises facing France in the summer of 1793. And basically, the terror does kind of do the trick. Yeah, it works. Yeah, they are back on their feet. So let's give you a couple of examples. The economy was in meltdown.

They have passed a thing called the Law of the General Maximum, which introduces the strict wage and price controls. And in the short time, it works. It props up the paper money, the Assignia. And Paris is still getting supplied with just enough food to keep going. that's fine. Obviously, they're winning the war. I mean, they've turned the tide in the war. So there are two big victories in the autumn against Britain and Austria at a place called Enchut and Vatigny. And then we talked a little bit about this last time. They've turned the

tide against the Federalist rebels and against the Vondayans. So they recaptured Lyon on the 9th of October and then a week later they won this big victory against the Vondayan rebels at Chorley. So at this point, let's say October. So this is about the point when Dantan is falling ill and going away. You might say, well, brilliant, the terror has worked. Why don't we ease off now? We don't need to arrest so many people. We can give the Sonson and the people working on the guillotine and have a few days off.

And actually, there are people saying that at this point. There are people who have the courage to say it. So there's a writer and deputy called Louis Sebastian Merci. And he said, I can't believe we're continuing with the terror. The Montagnan are men of blood and mud, stupid and ferocious beasts. So what happens to him? Of course, he's thrown into prison. Yeah, it's not reasonable to say such things.

It's counter-revolutionary, isn't it? And part of that is because Robespier and Sanjoust, I think in particular, have a vision of the terror that goes beyond just winning the war. They at this point see it as an essential tool to transform France into this virtuous, to an almost utopian republic. and they are doing what they see as positive things as well as just guillotining people now. So to give you a couple of examples, they are encouraging lots of local Jacaband clubs in the provinces. They're saying, you know, it's your job to go out there and to convert France, to start again, sing patriotic songs, have rallies, have readings, do all this stuff, educate the people.

Well, don't forget, Rosfier had been to a Jesuit educational foundation. And the Jesuits are very keen on, you know, give me the child and I will give you the man. Exactly that. Education is a huge part of this, Tom. Yeah. Education, education, education, as another great revolutionary said. They have a plan for free education to the age of 13 and they have a new curriculum which will inculcate Republican virtues. They're very interested in a very 21st century way in language and in the names of things.

So they want to rename whole towns, whole streets, parks and things after the virtues that they think. think the republic should celebrate. So in Orleans, for example, the different neighborhoods are renamed. They're called things like Liberté, Egalite, Brutus, Rousseau, and so on and so forth. I mean, that's something we're very familiar with today. Was it somewhere like Birmingham had a diversity street, you know, integration avenue, kindness, close, or whatever? Diversity Street, I think, was the name of a song sung by David Brent. Well, that says it all, doesn't it? The true air to the revolution.

A very disturbing thing, actually probably the worst thing they're doing is designing the metric system. Yeah, that's very bad, isn't it? So plans have been afoot for that for a little while. The convention is still working on it. The convention says the metric system is a symbol of the equality and a gauge of the fraternity that should unite all men. Because, of course, it's rooted in rationality rather than in organic tradition. tradition. Chaotic imperial madness. Exactly. And talking about language, they want to eliminate

the polite vu. So anyone who studied French at school will know there are two words for you, Tew and Vue. And they want to stop people saying Vue because it is old-fashioned and formal. Although one person who cannot stop himself is Maximilier-Robsbier, because he's so prim and formal, and he automatically keeps saying Vue when everyone else would be saying Tew. in the same way that he's wearing his colotte and his waistcoats. I mean, it's good to know that they want to make French more like English. Yeah, exactly. Get rid of the genders.

I think that would be the key thing. No, no need for it. So, there's a lot going on. And yet, there are some people who think it should go even further. And chief among them is a man we met last time. He is the editor of a newspaper called a Père Duchet. He is the scatological, pornographic, ultra-reau. populist Jacques Ebert, the scourge of Mariantoinette, a man who I'm guessing that most people

who listened to our last episode will not have a positive view of this bloke. And Abert presents himself. He says, I am the champion of the working classes and of the streets. People are angry about high prices and food shortages, and the government should do something about it. They should be regulating the economy. They should be ensuring cheaper food. They should be having more surveillance to stop all the aristocrats who are clearly behind all this. People should be informing on their neighbours for hoarding food. And we should be executing merchants and shopkeepers who are not selling cheap food. It's blue sky.

Yeah. Yeah. A bear is really going for it. So there's that. He's really going for the shopkeepers. But he's all really going for the Catholic Church. We'll be talking more about the sort of religious side of the revolution in the next episode. But for now, just to simplify it, Abert and his allies, particularly in the sort of government

of Paris, the commune, are really keen on this de-Christianisation, anti-clerical agenda. They want to convert churches to temples of reason. They want priests to show their Republican commitment by abjuring their vows, getting married, giving up the church. And they get a fair bit of momentum towards the end of 1793. So of about 60,000 priests in France, some 18,000 of them, under pressure from Ebert and his cronies, abandoned their status as priests,

including the Bishop of Paris. Hey, Dominic, the Archbishop of Paris to you. The Archbishop of Paris. I can't believe I've mis-bishoped him. He's encouraged to do this by Schomet and Ebert, who pay a visit to him. and say that unless you do it tomorrow, you will be sentenced to death as an enemy of the people. And the whole being a martyr thing doesn't really kick in with him.

He goes, fine, whatever. He had a look at the record of martyrs that he presumably been speaking about for decades. He said, actually on balance, I probably will give it up. Yeah. I actually wanted to get married anyway. And the irony is he ends up being guillotined. Oh, no. That's terrible for having abetted the terror.

So they're holding bonfires of sacred. relics, investments and things, Abe and Co. And most famously in Notre Dame on the 10th of November, they hold this festival of reason. And it's a deliberately kind of sacrilegious festival. So, Ebert, in place

of the altar, which he calls a stage for charlatans, he puts up a throne of liberty, and he gets a very nubile young woman to come and play the goddess liberty. Very newbile, but apparently with bad teeth. And slightly scantily dressed. Very scantily dressed. And she's perched on what will be a bit of a theme of this whole de-Christianisation movement, which is a papia-mache

mountain, which is placed in the middle of the nave, and they put a Greek temple on it, and she sits on the top. They carry her through the streets, down there into the convention, and they install her in the convention next to the president of the convention, who presumably is delighted by this. So the thing is, I mean, obviously there are a lot of people in France who are good Catholics, and a lot of people who take religion quite seriously, and who are shocked by this. And one of these people. I mean, he's not necessarily good Catholic, but he thinks it's a serious business. And that's Maximiliel Robespierre. He hates it. Robespier is a daist, isn't he? Yeah. He believes in the supreme being. Robespier is not a man for a satirical joke, or indeed any form of joke. No.

And he is horrified by all this. I think in two levels, I think as a believer in the deity, but also he sees it as mad to needlessly offend Catholics. What's the point? I think you're absolutely right. He thinks it's wrong, but he thinks it's politically wrong as well. And Rob Speer, whenever he sees somebody make a mistake or do something that he thinks could undermine their cause, his natural reactions, instinctive reactions to say, well, why would Abe do that? Has Haybert been put up to this? Why would he do something that will help our enemies? So there's a seed of something in his head, I think, from this point.

Anyway, 21st November, so just a few days after this, Robespierre gives a speech. He attacks the atheist campaign for what he calls its exaggerated zeal. And actually, thanks to his encouragement, the convention then votes a couple of weeks later to uphold and protect freedom of worship. In other words, if you are a good Catholic, don't worry, carry on. We won't let Abear throw you on the bonfire, so we're. Now, above all, at the beginning of December 1793, the convention passes a thing. called a law of Freemeyer, which reasserts the power of the central government. This is under

the pressure from the committees. The committees say, look, A-Beir, radicals, people on the streets, all of this. They should not be directing the revolution. We should. And the convention votes that basically the convention and the committees will control what happens. We are not going to let other people do this. And this is really important because the trend of the revolution has been so anarchic for basically decentralization, giving power away. And now they're turning back and they're saying, actually, you've gone far too far down this road. We need a proper efficient government.

However, that doesn't mean they want to dismantle the terror. What they want to do is to centralize the terror, to institutionalize it as the guiding principle of government into 1794. It's not going to end before 794. That's clear. It probably isn't going to end in 1794. In fact, is the terror. ever going to end at all. Well, so this is the context for Dantan to return to Paris from the

countryside where he has been ill. And he comes back around the 19th of November. So that is the peak of Ebert's campaign against Christianity and the terror is in full swing. Slightly disappointingly disappointingly, it's quite hard for us to know what Dantan is thinking. Unusually, we have really few sources about Dantan compared with other big figures of the revolution. But as far as we can tell, Danton is tired of the relentless radicalization. He thinks the terror should probably start to be wound down. He thinks we can't wage war against all these enemies forever. Some sort of deal is going to have to be made with the Austrians and the Prussians. And ultimately, we've got our republic now. Let's enjoy it. Let's settle down and have some

stable, sensible government. Have a massive dinner. Yeah. He's becoming a little bit rest is politics, isn't he? He's becoming a little bit sort of sensible government. So in the next few weeks, he gathers this little group of supporters and they're called the, this anglicise it, they're called the indulgence. So in other words, they are people who, you know, agree with him. We should calm down a bit. People should agree disagreeably. Agree disagreeably, exactly. Sorry, should disagree. Yeah. Hold on. No. On the rest is politics. They agree disagreeably, don't they?

Yeah. And most of the people who associate with Dantantan, then, I mean, the thing is they're at this point, because he's slightly unfashionable, they are not the absolute big name top dogs. They're slightly second rank figures. He's been dropped from the football team. He's on the bench. Yeah, he has been. And the people who's hanging out with that the people who can't even get into the first team. So to give an example, there's somebody will come back to who's a former actor and poet called Philippe Fabre de Glantine. And this bloke Fabre, he designed the new revolutionary calendar. But the one really interesting person at Dantan associates with, an old friend of his actually, is someone we've met before. Back in the year, I mean, about 17 years ago when we started the French Revolution, he's a young man called Camille de Moulin. If listeners can remember, just before the fall of the Bastille, there was this scene of this young man, pale, long-haired, standing up in the Palais-Royal in the centre of Paris,

on a table in a cafe, exhorting everybody to rise up against Louis the 16th. And this was one of the great triggers of the whole revolution. And this guy, Camille de Moulin, he's now 33 years old. But people always treat him like he's about 10, don't they? They do. They completely infantilise him.

They don't call him Desmoulin. They always call him Camille by his first name, because they see him as immature. Rob Spierre and Camille had been at school together. They had been to the same Lise Lue Leucon, De Moulin was two years younger than Robespierre, but they were great friends. They read Cicero, they read Tacitus, they read Rousseau, all of this. Rob Spier was a witness at De Moulin's wedding.

He married a very sparky, clever young woman called Lucille, who also was very invested in the revolution. God, I hope nothing bad happens to her. Yeah, I mean, I hope I haven't introduced her, only to kill her off. De Moulin is much more excitable than his friend Maximilia. He is more sentimental. He becomes a Montagnar deputy, but no one ever gives him a proper job. And as you say, he's always seen as a bit of a one historian calls him an immature lightweight. So, you know, he's unreliable.

He's a bit babyish, all of this. Camille de Moulin has been shocked by the turn towards the terror. and he was reportedly horrified by the execution of the Girondé. It was claimed later that he had cried out in horror when the death sentence was handed down. And by the time the Anton comes back, Daimoula has started to publicly call for particular acts of clemency, for example, because of a sort of xenophobia of the revolution in some ways, of the terror anyway.

They are clamping down on foreign citizens and Daimula says, oh, this is really unfair, you know, leave them alone. Now he's a useful ally to Dantan for two reasons. Number one, because D'emelan is friends with Rob Speer, childhood friends, so useful to have him. But also because D'emelat, for all his supposed immaturity, he is a very talented journalist. And two weeks after D'Onton's return,

and almost certainly with D'Onton's encouragement in connivance, he launches a new newspaper. It's called Le Vieux Cordilliers, the old Cordellier. and it's sort of looking back to the early days of the revolution. You know, remember the old days when we were full of idealism, you know, at the Cordillet club, in the Cordillet district, all of this. The first issue of this comes out on the 5th of December, and it's a blistering attack on Abert and his faction.

And D'Emolyne says, you know, Abert takes public money to produce this newspaper and he fills it with the language of the charnel house. A bear talks about how he loves the revolution, yet when I was giving speech, you know, beaches encouraging people to march on the Bastille. What was Abert? He was collecting tickets in the variety theatre, which he was. He was a ticket collector. The second edition five days later, Damon Olaude goes for Aetherism. He says, this campaign against Christianity is undermining the revolution. It's doing the foreigners work for them. And both of these issues have been read and approved by Robespier. Robespier is fine with them because Robespier thinks Abe's getting a kicking.

Brilliant. You know, Rosbya, sick of a bear. But then the next two issues, which come out on the 15th and the 20th of December, go much further. So the 15th, which is issue three, Damila prints an attack on the terror, and he disguises it as a sort of fake translation from Tacitus. Yeah. So it's basically Roman emperors, you know, swapped liberty for tyranny. they change simple glances, sadness, compassion, size, even silence into crimes. So there's that. And then issue number four is a really direct challenge to the government.

Damien-Lin says, we have lost sight of what this revolution was meant to be about. It was meant to be about happiness, reason, equality, justice. He says, we've got two committees, public safety and general security. We should have a committee of clemency because we've got 200,000 people in prison. and I think we should let a lot of these people go. They've done nothing wrong. Be kind to them. Yeah.

And he addresses Robespier directly his old friend and he says, you want to remove all your enemies by means of the guillotine. Has there ever been such great folly? These two issues are an absolute sensation. So government agents reports the committees that they are selling out. People are reading them out in the cafes. People are applauding what they're hearing. And why have they struck such a chord?

Why they've struck such a chord goes back to something outside Paris. Obviously, there are always people who don't like a police state. So there are lots of people who don't like the terror, never liked it. But also, there are, I think, specific reasons of timing. First of all, these issues come out at precisely the point when the French have just had an amazing victory. They have retaken the crucial naval base at Toulon from the British, not least, from the British. thanks not least to a young man called Napoleon Bonaparte. So the war is now going really quite well.

But at the same time, news is reaching Paris around about Christmas, 1793, and then the early days of 1794, about the reprisals that are taking place where they've already defeated the rebels. So we'll be hearing more about these in the next episode. But Lyon, thousands of people blown up by cannons or bayoneted or shot. Nantes, 2,000 people drowned, forcibly drowned in boats that were towed out into the Loire

and then deliberately sunk and then of course the Vande so in the Vondei thousands of people executed entire towns wiped out children, women forced to dig their own mass graves one junior officer

I mean this quote repeated a couple of times in general history of the revolution I mean it really jumps out at you one junior officer wrote we will use steel and flames, a rifle in one hand, a burning torch in the other. Men and women, all of them must die except the small children. But the bonkers thing about that, he wrote it to his mother.

Yeah. That was just letter, dear mummy, just to fill you in on what's going on. Anyway, even in Paris, there are a lot of people who think this is actually going much too far. This is bonkers. Like, we can't kill everybody. Rob Spear is not one of them. Rob Spier doesn't like the arbitrary use of terror. No.

But Rob Spier does believe in terror as a guiding principle. He does believe that violence must go hand in hand with virtue because otherwise virtue is powerless. It must be virtuous. Yes, exactly. But he's not in favour of random atrocities to the degree that some of the revolutionaries are, I think. Exactly. We will see. He falls out with people who he thinks are just being sadists.

But Rob Spier thinks if it's properly planned. And if these people are enemies, the people, sure they've got to go. Yeah. So when Damoulin is attacking the terror, Robsier thinks, well, this is just stupid and childish from Damila, he's not serious. When Dantan attacks the terror, Robespierre thinks, this is typical Dantan. He's corrupt. He's too lax. He's worldly.

Again, he's unserious about protecting what we've got. So on Christmas Day, which is now a working day for the convention, there's the fifth day of Niveos, as they call it, under their new calendar. Robespier gets up and he gives a big speech in the convention and he says, you know, I'm going to explain the principles of our revolutionary government. Robespier says, we are fighting for liberty against its enemies and the war's not over. Robespier sets out his theory of what becomes known as the foreign plot. So this is, of course, something that has been brewing since the beginning of the revolution. But Austria says, you know, I know that Britain, Austria and Prussia have a secret network inside France. They have agents in the clubs.

They have agents in the ministries. They have agents here in the convention among the people I'm talking to. There are people who are working with the British. They know all about us. They caress our passions. They try to sway our opinions. They turn our own resolutions against us. And Dominic, they have his brother, Augusta, have been to do.

Toulon. He'd been a kind of agent on the scene at Toulon. And so he had been there and seen for himself the collaboration in Toulon with the British. So he's paranoid about the British. And the very facts that people are arguing in Paris is for Opspier proof. Pitz gold. Exactly, British gold. So he says, you know, we in your committees, are we going to ignore the voices on the one side that are saying that are fanatical and overzealous. And on the other side, the voices have kind of weakness and moderation, we're going to stick to our course and do the right thing. And there's this great torrent of applause from the convention and Robespierre breathes a sigh of relief. However, this does not solve the issue of Dantantantin and D'emoulin, because what does he do about them?

His friends. Two weeks later, Robespier goes to the Jacquemann Club, and it's a very fever on mood in the Jacqueline Club, because of course they are Chocomans too. And Robespier actually starts the meeting in quite a conciliatory style. He says, look, what I'm going to say to tonight is enough of the factions. I see no factions anymore. I see only Frenchmen. You know, there's just us, the French people against our enemies.

This is what the Kaiser said, by the way, at the beginning of the First World War. I see only Germans. Is there anything that would join all French people in the common cause, Dominic, that they could rally behind? I mean, you think you've heard some bad things in this episode with the Dres. drownings and the shootings, but now it gets worse. I should warn listeners, if you're driving, pull over, because Robsey is going to say something very, very incendiary. This is a massive trigger warning.

He says, for tonight's debate, I propose the following subject, The Crimes of the English Government and the Vices of the British Constitution. Monstrous. That's insane from Robespier. He's really let himself down. He deserves everything he gets. So they're about to embark on this demented debate, slacking off the British.

And then DeMoulinand turns up. He turns up late. And as he makes his way in, there's a bit of heckling. You know, some of the hardliners are shouting at Daimilar. You know, I hate your newspaper. And there's an argument that breaks out about the newspaper. And some people start shouting at Robespierre, you know, are you going to condemn this? He's your friend.

And Robespierre tries to play this cleverly because he is still very fond of deemler. And he says, I agree. Kami should renounce his political heresies. His writings are dangerous. have hope to our enemies. And then Rob Spears says, however, we should distinguish between the person and his works. I mean, this is so patronising.

Cammy is a thoughtless child. He's 33, who has good inclinations, but he's been led astray by bad company. And the bad company is Dantor, is it? Dantan and people like that. Exactly. So let's not expel him from the club. Let's burn his newspaper in front of the members of the club.

So Rob Spears' horror, Damonelan does not take this. This is the gift of Robesprier intense. Damonelan's like, what? Burn the newspaper, are you mad? And Damien-Lan says, I reply in the words of Rousseau. Burning is not an answer. So that's a famous phrase from Rousseau.

And Rousseau is Robespier's great hero and political lodestar. Imagine how, you know, how provocative that is for Robespier. This huge argument breaks out. Robespieres basically issues a threat to D'Mila. He says, you must learn Camille that if you were not Camille, you would not be treated so lightly. In other words, watch your head. And actually, of all people, the person who jumps in to try to say, come on, let's leave it. Let's leave it.

It's Donton. So Don'ton jumps in, managed to calm it down. But what Don'ton does not know is that Robespier is now in possession of a secret that could destroy him. Because in the last few weeks, informants have been coming to Robespier and. and Saint-Just, with bombshell revelations about this foreign conspiracy to undermine the revolution. And these are revelations that for Danton will be literally fatal. Blimey, what could these revelations be? Only one way to find out. Join us after the break. The great game. Strategic struggle between Britain and Britain and

And Russia? We assess a Prime Minister. With high confidence, it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister.

You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. and disseminated into an operation order, or Fragow. A Fragor that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy. An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action thriller. where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt.

Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest is history. So Dominic, at the end of part one, you were promising bombshell revelations. What are these bombshell revelations? Okay. So one day in the middle of October, 1793, one of Dantan's friends,

the bloke who designed the new calendar, Philippe Fabre de Glantin. He sounds a wrong in. Yeah, a terrible name. He asked to see Robespierre and Saint-Just, and they met him, and they met him along with the Committee of General Security, the police committee.

And Fabre said to them, I have sensational information about the foreign plot to undermine the revolution. He said, I have uncovered this network of spies and basically financiers, speculators, Spanish, Belgian, Austrian, Czech, Prussian, loads of different names. It's this big web of very shady characters,

and a lot of these people are posing as foreign friends of the revolution. And they are being funded by the worst people in the world, the British, by William Pitt. They have infiltrated our clubs. They've infiltrated the convention. They have even infiltrated the ruling committees. And it is these people who are funding the factions, criticising the government, for example, Ebert, and his ultra-radical campaign, they are the spearhead of this.

And Rob Speer and St. Joust listened to this, and they are shocked, of course, they're poor by it, but they are not surprised. Because, of course, they've always believed there was a foreign plot. This is just confirming everything they had suspected. Is there really a foreign plot? No. No, this is the crazy thing. This bloke Fab has made all this up.

So basically, this isn't an absolutely bonkers story. Fab has made this up to hide his own corruption. So what Fab has been doing is, we mentioned in the first half, there's been a lot of corruption. There's a lot of money changing hands, bribes and all of this. Fabb and some of his pals have been extorting and embezzling vast sums of money from banks, from life insurance companies, and above all from a company called the French East India Company,

which is in the process of being wound up by government order. Fabra's been taking all this money, and Fabry's worried that Abert is going to expose him. So what he thought he'd do is he thought, well, I'll denounce Abert as a tool of a foreign conspiracy. I'll tell Robespierre what he wants to believe. I'll bring down Abert before he can expose my corruption. Because that's the key, isn't it? That he's telling Robespierre what he knows.

Robespier will want to hear completely. Exactly. Now, at first, Robespier and Coe don't do anything with this information. They sort of sit on it. But clearly people are talking because rumours start to spread. And the rumours spread around the convention. There's talk of corruption. There's talk of foreign bankers and embezzling and the plot and all this.

And at this, another deputy who's called Francois Chabot, he's also worried about being exposed for quite separate. corruption. So he goes to see Rob Spierre with a different conspiracy. He says, I have evidence that foreigners and royalists are behind a plot to embezzle money from the East India Company. Got it. I mean, if you had shares in the East India Company, you'd be getting them out with all this talk going around. You would. So that's the company that Fab has been embezzling from. So at this point, Rob Speer has information from two different people about basically two different plots. Both of them are kind of fictional, but both of them are inspired by real corruption,

by people trying to cover up their own corruption. And Rob Speer, when he sits down and looks at these plots, he says, well, it's pretty obvious that both of these plots are real. And they're both part clearly of the same conspiracy. There's this massive spider's web of foreign financiers, corrupt deputies, and the East India Company. And as Robespier sits and thinks about it, he thinks, this explains everything. This explains Ebert and his attack on the Christian church. It explains all the faction fighting, the criticism that we've been getting about the terror and the convention. All of this is being funded by the British. That flipping William Pitts is behind the whole thing. And Fabb, remember his friends with Dantan. And Dantor is famously corrupt. Dantan is incredibly corrupt.

Both Fab and Dantan have been criticizing the terror. So at this point, does Rob Spierre, seriously think that Dantan is part of a foreign conspiracy. I think it's very hard to say because we have a window into Robespier's mind. But what is definitely true is that if Robespier wanted to think that, he could. He now has the ammunition to do it. There's also all that the chat of the fact that Dantan had been making over to his to Mary Antoinette and the Austrians in the summer. So this is all part of the swirl of... Right.

Conspiracy theory. There's a lot of chat about Dantan generally, isn't there? I think there's been, for months there has been taught that Dantan is not quite as pure. He's not as dedicated. Well, he's not incorruptible. No, exactly. So, Robespier doesn't rush into action. I think if Robespier had genuinely been burning with hatred for Dantan, he would have used this straightaway.

He doesn't. What he does, though, is he prepares the ground. So all through January in 1794, they've had this row at the Jacquemann Club, which we had before the break. In the next few weeks, he's talking to the enforcers of the Revolution, the Committee of General Security, who run the police and the Revolutionary Tribunal. And a lot of the people on the Committee of General Security hate Dantan, because they quite enjoy running the terror. And one of these guys is called Vadier. And Vadier says when they're talking about Dantant, Vadier says, has this extraordinary line, I'm looking forward to gutting that. fat turbot.

And when word of this reaches Dantan, if you forgive my language, it's Dantan's language, not mine. He says, if Vadier touches me, I will eat his brains and shit in his skull. It's just like Cicero. Yeah, it's like the dying days of the Kirstama government.

So the 17th of January, to 10 days after the row at the Jacquemann, the Committee of General Security made their first move. They arrest Fabre and they arrest Shabo. So these are two inform. and there rest a few of Dantan's other friends. Now, meanwhile, the tension between Dantan and Robespierre is growing almost day by day. Dant is still giving speeches saying, you know, we should not go to extremes.

If anything, we should err on the side of liberty. And when he says about erring on the side of liberty, that seems to send a coded message that he's against the terror. There's then a sort of pause for 10 days, which is dominated by arguments about the revolt in what's now. Haiti in Saint-Doming and ultimately the abolition of slavery. A huge, huge issue, huge deal. We don't really have time for it. Today we'll have to do it in a separate series, I think. But the day after the abolition of slavery, which is the 5th of February, Robespierre gives another of these landmark speeches, clearly aimed at Danton. It's a banger of a speech, this.

It's a big speech. What's the point of the revolution? What's the point of the terror? and he borrows from Cicero, of course, who they've all read. They're all obsessed with Cicero. And he paints this picture of this Republic of Virtue in which, you know, vices will become virtues and all of this. And he says, we want France to be the model to the nations, the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the universe. That is our ambition. That is our aim. You know, a wonderful vision.

but we cannot have that without the terror. Without terror, virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice. Famous, chilling words. Yeah. And he says, you know, the critics of the terror say the terror is falling on ordinary people, but it isn't. Because if you're a virtuous patriot and you're a citizen, you have nothing to fear. if you are against us, you have no rights because you cannot be a citizen.

You're putting yourself outside the Republic. So as long as you stay in the tent, the terror will never fall on you. You'd have anything to worry about. Now, as R. R. R. Palmer says in his great book 12, who ruled, the thing about this is basically it's kind of a recipe for permanent terror because Rob Spear is saying the terror will fall on you if you ever step outside the tent. But basically he's saying if you ever criticize or if you ever disagree, you are not a citizen. You are not a patriot.

You are not a Frenchman. And therefore, you know, there's only one way you're headed. And that's, you're getting on your tumbril. This is the kind of blueprint for the 20th century totalitarian states. But I guess to defend Robespierre, he doesn't know that. He is still negotiating the contour. of this kind of new dispensation, which is something very novel and potentially chilling, as you said. But I think you have to believe in Ross-Pierre's incorruptibility.

He does think he's doing the right thing. But that's the chilling thing, though, isn't it, about Rosspere? He's totally sincere. Yeah. If he was here now, he would say, you don't understand. I am going to build a better world. I genuinely am interested in virtue, because virtue without terror is nothing. That's exactly what he thinks.

That is exactly what he thinks. It's telling, I think, people keep falling ill so often in this series. It's a sign of how overwrought Rob Speer is that he gives the speech and he immediately falls ill, overworked, stressed. He seems, I mean, everybody has it, but he does seem especially prone to burnout. And he retreats for almost a month to the DuPlai family's house,

which is where he lodges, which you described before. Now, while he's away, the pressure carers on building, France is now mobilising meritorily on an unprecedented scale in European history. 700,000 men in uniform. The whole economy is basically being put to work to feed and supply the army. And that means that everything else is deteriorating. So on the 23rd of February, government agents report to the committees. The situation in Paris is really alarming.

There are shops that are completely empty. The butchers are all closed. People are fighting in the streets for food. And when merchants arrive in the city with supplies in the countryside, they're being attacked by mobs of women who are scrabbling to get all this bread or vegetables or whatever. So it's like 1789 all over again. It is like 1789 or over again. But the committee are very unsympathetic.

So the committee actually say, well, if the public, you know, they're winging about no bread, they must cultivate Spartan virtues. George Couton says, what are they complaining about? All they need is a single scrap of me today. If I had the police power in my hands, I would make privation, the order of the day. Slogans for a happier France.

Of course, the person who's benefiting from this is Abert on the ultra-radical wing. Because by early February, Abert has turned his rhetoric up to 11. He is running these absolutely ferocious editorials saying, you know, Tavern, keepers, butchers, grocers, farmers, get them all to the guillotine. If they can't provide for the people at Paris, we will, you know, punish them until they do. There are protests in the streets.

There's this sort of sense that we've had so often the revolution of momentum, of tension, of moving towards an inevitable showdown. And that moment seems to come on the 4th of March 1794. Abert goes to the Cordilliers Club, founded ironically by Dantan, and he says, You know, heads have got a roll. I've got a list here of 73 deputies. These are people who supported the Girondas. They've got to go. Damien's got to go.

There's a load of moderates and weaklings. They're traitors. They've got to go. And at the end of this meeting, they take a black veil and they put it over the framed picture of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And they say, we are not going to withdraw it until the people have recovered their sacred rights. And everybody understands, this is the cue.

the signal for a new insurrection, a new attack on the convention, effectively, a new son-coulot coup. But the difference between this and previous ones is that this one fizzles out almost immediately. Because they call to the sections of Paris, the neighbourhoods, but only one of them, the Cordilliers' home one, is the only one that answers the call. The Paris Commune, the city government doesn't call out the National Guard, there is a sense, I think, that Paris is exhausted. That basically people are sick of grabbing their halberds or whatever and, you know, taking to the streets. Is this the first time that an attempt to outflank the kind of establishment on the left fails?

Yes, it is. That radicalism up till now has always seemed to have the wind in its sails. And this is the first time that the wind doesn't blow the sails. Yes, it is. That's what Abe's fate. absolutely denotes. It's like this far and no further. The radical energies of the revolution have reached their kind of natural limit, I would say. So amid all this, amid all this kind of chaos, the convention votes to renew the powers of the Committee of Public Safety for another month.

And that same evening, Robespier returns from his sickbed for the first time in weeks. And he goes to the Committee of Public Safety. It's a momentous sort of late-night meeting. San Joust has brought along a big report on the rival factions, a denunciation of the factions. So I want to read this to the convention tomorrow. The rest of the committee say, fine, go for it. So the next day, the 13th of March, Sanjust gets up in the tribune of the convention, and he reads out what he calls, a report on the factions of foreign inspiration and on the conspiracy plotted by them to destroy representative government by corruption and to starve Paris.

And San Jose says to the convention, Sanjutor is a very compelling speaker. People are frightened of Sanjutor as a speaker because he's so good at it. He says all of this that we see on the streets right now, the food shortages, the political opposition, the sense of mounting chaos. This is part of a vast conspiracy masterminded from London, a conspiracy so vast that it's penetrated the clubs

and it's working through the factions, people who are moderates, people who are extremists, they're all pretending, they are working for our enemies. Every faction is criminal because it works to divide our citizens. And as Palmer says in his book, it's not the voice of revolution.

It's not the voice of rebellion. This is the language of men in power. So it's the language of authority stamping out dissent. And that evening, the committee makes its move. Ebert and his key collaborators are arrested and taken off to prison. alongside, and this is a very reign of terror trick, this bizarre collection of people

that they will just throw in to try to give the appearance of a conspiracy. So to quote Palmer on this, the people arrested included a Dutch banker, a French general, a hairdresser, a bookseller, a tobacconist, a doctor, a surgeon's apprentice, an ex-peasant woman,

and someone described as a man of letters. String up the man of letters. Definitely. Someone described as a man of letters is a very nice touch. It's like in the old days, like in the old days of my mid-market newspaper, tub thumping, when I used to refer to people,

I disapproved of self-styled intellectuals. Anyway, these people are all dragged in front of the tribunal. They're accused of being a foreign conspiracy. The trial begins on the 22nd of March. A bear is accused of trying to undermine the economy, but there's a tax on shopkeepers. Abe can't believe this. Yeah.

He's the toast of the streets. He's a friend of the people. Yeah. Abeau is completely stunned by this. And he doesn't take it seriously, I think. He thinks the streets will rise and rescue him. And this doesn't happen at all. And when he's proclaimed guilty on the 24th of March and his sentence to death,

Abeau is stunned. He can't believe it. Don't you know who I am? Exactly. He's taken away. He's taken straight to the guillotine. There's a massive crowd. and people are so excited about this.

I mean, A-Bear, the man who wanted to guillotine everybody else, he's getting killetons. And he disgraces himself. He's a shambles. He's no Marion Twinnett. So he does not behave with, yeah, the dignity of the ex-Queen. No. So one man in the crowd, the government agents reported to the committee is what was said.

So there's brilliant quotes. One man in the crowd apparently said of Abe and his collaborators, they died like cowards without balls. And another one sounding very Trumpy, And I have to say, said, we thought that A bear would have more courage, but he died like a loser. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Yeah, he died like a dog. Anyway, that's the end of ABA.

Now, as you said, Tom, this is a very significant moment in the revolution, because it's the first time you've had authority versus the streets, and authority has definitively won. And there's a sense, I think, now, okay, it's clear that where the revolution is, you know, is not going to go. You know, it's not going to tip over into this sort of ultra-populism. However, the other implication of this, the committees wanted to hold what they saw as the line between the two factions. They've basically crushed one. What are they going to do about the other, which is Dantan and his allies?

So now we come back to the issue of Dantan and Robespierre. As you said at the beginning, it's seen as this kind of titanic duel between these two completely different personalities, struggle for the soul of the revolution, all of this, a struggle for power between two implacable antagonists. But that's really not right. Rob Spierre, I think, does not want to kill Dantan. That's why it takes so long to do it. And he genuinely, I think, hopes that Dantan will come round.

So if you've seen the film, in the film from the 1980s, this is very celebrated scene where Dantan and Robespier have a kind of reconciliation. dinner. Organised by Dantan in the film, which I think is not correct. And Dantan is like stuffing himself with oysters. He's like a man at the rest of his history as Christmas dinner. Wine, port, foie gras, you name it. It's all flower.

Exactly. But Robert Sparrow is just sitting there, chilly, doesn't want to eat anything. Actually, in the written sources, most of them say that they had this meeting, Dantan was very emotional, and some of them say Dantan burst into tears. Those sources tend to come from the later 19th century. And I think what historians think is they probably, what probably happened was it might not have been a dinner. It might have been a dinner, we don't know.

But they must have had one or more meetings in the last week in March. Robespierre saying to Dantan, could you give us your support? Could you back the committees? You know, surely we can find a way through this. And Dantantan not playing ball, saying, no, I don't agree with you. I think the terror has to end. I think, I mean, I remember that Rob Spier, the stories that Dantan cried, that Robespier saw this as a maligned tactic on the part of Dantan to make him feel bad.

Yeah, exactly. But they're so emotional. They're always crying, aren't they, the French revolutionary leaders? I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable by Dantan. Anyway, the truth is, the sources on this are so vague. It's impossible to know. What we do know is that by the end of March, Rob Spierreier has made up his mind that Dantan has to go. It is clear to Robespier, Dantéier,

Dantant is not going to abandon his campaign against the terror. And actually, D'Amoulin has prepared a new issue of the Vue d'Aulé and it's seen as so damning about the Committee of Public Safety that the printers are refusing to touch it. So, as Robespier sees it, I mean, people always tell the story from D'Anthor's perspective, completely understandably and not Robespier's, but just from Robespier's perspective. Robespier's perspective is D'Onton is going to destroy the revolution. The terror is what's keeping the revolution going and Dantan is going to destroy it

and he's surrounded himself with a load of kind of total mediocrities and actors. Plus, he's massively corrupt and he's always taking bungs. Yeah. And you can't have that in a virtuous republic. No.

So the last days of March, Robespier and Saint-Jus to prepare the indictment. The case, as we've said, writes itself, right, the corruption. We know that Dantan took dodgy money. Robespier has all these allegations of massive conspiracies and things. And, you know, Dantan has been unguarded and he has said things to Robespierre that most people would laugh off, but Robespierre, you know, he's not a funster.

So when Dantan said to him, they were talking about virtue, and Dantan said to Robespierre, I know no virtue greater than that which I practice every night with my wife. Yeah. Robespier does not smile at this. He thinks this is disgraceful. And Saint-Ju thinks it's disgraceful as well. and in the speech that he will give against Dantan, he cites that specifically and clearly does not take it as a joke in the slightest. And I think the lesson is it's dangerous to make jokes when Rosfiel and San Jusseuzeuze are on the scene. Completely. So late on the evening of the 29th of March, the drama is set in train.

So there's a joint meeting of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security. Sanjoust presents them with his indictment. He says, I'm going to read this in the convention tomorrow. and then I'm going to call for Dantan's arrest. And the men from the General Security Committee, basically the political police, Vardier and Amar, they say, are you mad?

Dantan is a brilliant speaker. If you read this out in the convention, Dantan will reply, he will destroy you, and then you'll look like a fool. You arrest him first, get him safely locked up, then denounce him. Saint-Just is very offended by this,

by the thought that they don't rate his rhetorical ability, compare with Dantons. He basically has a strop. He throws his hat in the fire and then storms out. That is a strob. Yeah, it's a massive sulk. So he storms out. And actually, all the other members of the Committee of Public Safety say,

say, do you know what, you're right? We probably should arrest him first. So they agreed they'll do that. They drew up the warrant. One by one, they sign it. You can see this in the film, very famous scene. One member of the Committee of General Security says he won't sign it. And also a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Robert Lindy,

who's in charge of supplying the army. And Lindy says, my job is to provide for our citizens not to execute our patriots. And that little hint there of a fracture within the Committee of Public Safety between the people who are getting stuff done, Lindy, Kano and people like that,

and then the people who love talking about virtue and organizing executions, that's going to become more pronounced in a couple of months. Anyway, this meeting breaks up. So it's now the early hours the 30th of March. I think it's pretty clear that in the next few hours, rumours spread and somebody tipped d'Anne and de Malin off.

There were various accounts of what was said. Dantant supposedly, one version said that he was told flee the city, and he said, no, they won't move against me, they wouldn't dare. D'Onton was cocky. Another version he's told to emigrate, and he said, no, I will never leave France. You cannot carry your homeland on the soles of your shoes, a nice line.

and there are stories that de Milan went to see his old classmate, Maximilian Rospier, went to his house but was turned away from the door and said, I am lost. If he won't see me, I am lost. Anyway, that night, the 30th, they are arrested, they're taken to the Luxembourg prison, they're going to face trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal. We don't have any accounts of the scene when they were arrested, unfortunately. But we do know that the next day, the 31st, the news spread very much. quickly. It was a massive sensation. A police agent reported, people are stunned and don't know what to think. And in the convention, a scene of total chaos. So one of Dantons' allies

rushes into the convention. He says, unbelievable. Dantan's been arrested. Citizens, I declare that Dantons is as pure as I am. That's an unwise thing to say. Yeah, I know. God. I mean, else for trouble, why don't you? Risky. So there's Tumel in the hall. This guy who broke the news, he's called Lejeant. he says, they should bring in the prisoners, bring in Dantan Damiena, let them face their accusers, bring in the committee, let's have this out. And Rob Spier forces his way through the shouting throng of people. He is described as pale with anger and seemingly impelled by the sense of a great danger.

And he gets up there and he says to the convention, from his perspective, not unreasonably, we've arrested so many people. Why does Dantan get special treatment? You know, we should treat the people we arrest equally. And he says to them, do you not have the courage to break a false idol? And then he is followed onto the tribunal by Saint-Just. The archangel of death, icy kind of recital of the charges. Danton was working with the foreign plot.

Dantan was taking money. And if you doubt it, look what's happening to France. Look at the shortages. Look at the collapse of that currency. Look at the hoarding of goods. Look at the unrest in the provinces. This is all the foreign plot. the men we are denouncing were never patriots.

They were aristocrats more adroit and cunning than those at Koblenz, i.e. the emigres. Yeah, their maxims were those of Cataline. Exactly. So they've gone from being Cicero, they've become Cataline. So this does the trick. The Robs-Piers-S-S-Just combo, which often works, the convention fall into line. And so it is that two days later, on the 2nd of April, Dantant and Desmilae are led into the Pallé de Justice for trial by the tribunal. And as with Ebert, the committee have mudded the waters by throwing in a load of random people,

bankers and things. There's a Dutchman, the Belgian, there's two Moravians, there's a Dane and there's a Spaniard. I mean, to be fair, everyone hates a foreign banker. They do, exactly. I thought you were going to say everyone hates a Dutchman. No, I love a Dutchman. You love the Dutch. And Fabre and Chabot, they're also there. So the two blocs had gone to Robespier to save themselves with their plot stories. Yeah. They failed to do so. And the point, of course, is throwing so many people in this to create the sense of conspiracy. And from the start, Dantan's in great form.

He says to his fellow prisoners, provided they let us speak at length, I am sure of routing my accusers. I don't think he thinks he's going to get away. He thinks he's just going to humiliate them and they will execute him, but he will go down fighting and history will reward him. He'll leave a name to posterity. Completely. At this point, I think, I do have to say,

Dantan is very confused in my mind with Winston Churchill because I think this is exactly how Churchill would have behaved. You know, the sort of the bumpuousness, the arrogance. Looking to history as his judge. Completely. Yeah. I mean, this is so Churchillian. They ask him, the trial, yeah, when he's sort of checking into the prison or something,

what's your name and address? And he says, I will soon be living nowhere. As for my name, you'll find it in the pantheon of history. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah. But de Moulat is even less modern. is, isn't he? Yes, he is. I mean, Damon, to be fair, who's often described as this sort of immature weakling. They ask him for his age, and he says, I'm 33, the same age as the

Soncoulot Jesus Christ when he stood before Pontius Pilots. I mean, you can see how, basically, if you were standing next to Donsoe, you'd be, you'd raise your game, wouldn't you? You'd raise your repartee game. And actually what follows, the trial. The trial is one of the great set pieces in all French history. So it's held in the palidogistis. It's packed. The Galleries are rammed with spectators. Massive anticipation. The prosecutor, I mean, you couldn't make this up. The prosecutor is Damonland's distant cousin.

He's a guy called Fouquier-Tanville. And he's always described as the villain of the piece, that one of Stalin's prosecutors. But actually, I think that's a bit unfair. Most historians say Fouquier is actually quite a conscientious lawyer and a stickler for details, methodical, serious and stuff. and he completely fails to keep order. So people are shouting all the time from the galleries.

Danton, who's a very big man, is just treating this as a stage. He's like a kind of bull tossing dogs left, right and center. Completely. And he's so loud, everyone says he's got this Karen's voice. He's so loud that people are standing in the street outside, outside the building and they can still hear him. He says this on day one.

men like me cannot be bought. On their brows are imprinted in in a faceable characters, the seal of liberty, the genius of republicanism, and I am accused of having crawled at the feet of vile despots. And the court president tries to cut him off by tinkling this little bell. And Dantan says, The voice of a man who has to defend both his life and honour must vanquish the sound of your little bell.

So that's day one. He's warming up. Day two is the turn of the defence. So Foucair's presented the indictment. At this point, Don't I is just an absolutely titanic form. He doesn't bother looking at the jury or at the judges. He does all of his remarks to the spectators. And he says, my friends, you will judge me when you have heard me.

My voice will be heard, not just by you, but by all of France. And the world. And the world, exactly. He says, you know, where are my accusers? Where is Rob Spear? Where are the committees? that cowards who slander me but do not dare to attack me to my face. And at the end of the day, he ends with these absolutely magnificent lines.

If ever I'm on trial for some driving offence or something, I'd like to think I'd go down like this. During the last two days, the court has got to know Danton. Tomorrow, he hopes to sleep in the bosom of glory. He has never asked for pardon. You will see him fly to the scaffold with his usual serenity and the calm of a clear conscience. Do you know, I almost want you to be arrested for a traffic offence.

Thanks. I can hear you deliver that peroration. Do you? The reality would be so banal. I'm so sorry. I'm a bit tired. So, for the authorities, this is a terrible embarrassment. And it's actually getting worse because at the beginning of day three,

Dantan says, I would like to call a long list of witnesses in my defense. And he has a huge list of deputies from the convention and even members of of the Committee of Public Safety. And the judges say, no, you can't call all of these people. And the crowds start hooting and shouting at them. And Fouquet-Tanville, the prosecutor, who is described by one witness's affolet, which means panicked, he scribbles and notes the Committee of Public Safety. And he says, look, this is totally out of control now.

If we don't change the rules, I cannot guarantee that we will get Danton's conviction. And Sanjoust rushes to the convention, and he says, we have a national emergency. I have to say this is shameless from Saint-Just. We've all been talking about his, you know, their rigid principles and their belief in their own virtue and they really sincere and all this. But this, I cannot be sincere. This is cynical. San Jus says, Dantan's allies in the prisons are planning a mass breakout and they're going to murder members of the convention. And actually, Daminglein's wife, Lucille, is in on it. She's one of the organizers. That's not gallant, is it? It's not good from Sajus. And Sanjouin,

just goes on to say, look at the way Dantan is behaving in the courtroom, shouting, dominating all of this. Doesn't that prove he's guilty? What innocent man ever revolted against the law? I mean, a chilling sentiment. Basically defend yourself. It proves you're guilty. And the Convention approves an emergency decree that the prosecutors can remove defendants from the courtroom if their behavior insults the justice of the nation. That same day, by the way, the Committee of General security issues of warrant for Lucille de Moulin's arrest as well, to DeMille's wife. Now, she in the interim had written Rob Spierre a very moving letter, reminding him of their old friendship and how important he'd been to their family.

She said to him, do you think the people will respect you for destroying your friends? Do you think they will bless somebody who doesn't care about a widow's tears or an orphan's plight? And she even went to Rob Spire's house that Robespier refused to see. I mean, the thing is that for Robespierre, this is the index of his virtue, because he is genuinely distraught at the thought of them dying. Yeah, I'm such a kind person, I'm killing my friends. Well, but, you know, who would you betray your friends or your country? He's betraying his friends. Yeah, exactly. So in the meantime, Fouquet-Tanville now has what he needs. The next morning,

the 5th of April, Danton and Coe are removed from the court. They're dragged out, and as they're dragged out, Dantantz shouts furiously. He says, we're going to be judged without being heard. And then he says very mockingly, you know, go on, take us to the scaffold. Fugier says to the jury, I believe you've heard all you need to. Can you make your decision? The sentence is, of course, death. As they're waiting in the Luxembourg prison, Dantan seems rueful. He's actually quite wry. He says, funny thing is none of those people know anything about government. If I left my balls to Rob Spierreau and my legs to coot on. the Committee of Public Safety might last a bit longer.

I think that's a very good line. Damoulin, however, is crushed at the thought of parting from his wife Lucille. He doesn't know at this point that she has been arrested. And he writes to this last letter, very affecting, one of the most well-known letters in French history. My Lucille, my darling, despite my torment, I believe there is a God. One day I will see you again. Adieu, lulu. Adieu, my life, my soul, my goddess on earth.

I feel the shores of life receding before me. I see you again, Lucille. I see my arms around you. My tied hands embrace you. My severed head rests its eyes on you. But she never actually gets to read it because she has now been locked up as well. So late that afternoon, they are taken to the guillotine. Dusk is falling.

You described the scene, the eyewitness account. Des Molyne, just before he was executed, was told that his wife had been arrested and he was devastated. He fought with the executionist on the scaffold until the shirt had almost been ripped from his body and they have to force him into the guillotine. And then d'Anton goes last. He cuts this incredibly defiant figure, that amazing last line.

Don't forget to show my head to the people. It'll be worth it. You know, a very fitting epitaph. And finally, Lucille de Milance, she was guillotined a week later and she wrote a very affecting last letter to her mother before she died. Good night, dear Mamma.

A tear falls from my eyes. It is for you. I am going to sleep in the tranquility of innocence. So that's that. Danton's dead and Robespierre and the committees have won. And on the face of it, Robespierre now appeals unassailable. And he and his allies have crushed their critics

and they've sent a clear message that basically any challenge will not be tolerated. However, inside the committees, it's clear there is now a mood of deep suspicion. So the army guy, Carnot, later said that spring, so let's say March, April, we had to move our meetings to a different room so that people would not be able to observe the storms that agitated us. And of course, in the convention, if you're one of the deputies, and you've just seen Ebert on, as it were, the left go to the guillotine, and you've seen Dantton on the more moderate wing go to the guillotine. you know, if they can both go, anyone can. Who's to say you're safe?

And actually, even at this point, with Rob Spierre, apparently at his peak, there are signs that this cannot last and people who think this can't last. And there's a story that when Danton was on his way to the guillotine in the tumbril, he looked up as they went past Robespier's house, and he said almost to himself, you will soon be following. us. They will tear your house down and they will sow the ground with salt. And as we will see, he was not wrong. Thank you, Dominic. The stage is now set for the climax of this series, the dramatic final weeks of the reign of terror. So next week, two episodes to finish this series.

First of all, the apotheosis of Robespierre as he climbs yet another Papier-Mashe mountain to celebrate the festival of the Supreme Being, a very, I mean, kind of one of the most bizarre episodes in the whole of the French Revolution. And then the last episode, it's the final showdown as the convention turns on Robespierre and the revolution destroys its favorite son. And club members, of course, you can go ahead, hear those episodes right away. And if you are not a member of the club and you'd like to join them, then sign up at the rest of history.com. And on Wednesday, very excitingly, club members will get a very special bonus, a discussion about the French Revolution with one of its best-known chroniclers. The great historian, Simon Sharma.

Ovoire. Avoir. Is history anything more than the story of heroes and villains? Of course it is, but not in our brand new The Rest is History book, a history of the world in 51 heroes and villains. Now in this book, we have picked out some of our very favourite characters from the last few years of The Rest is History. So we've got Genghis Khan, we have Cyrus the Great,

we have Marianne Tuanette, and obviously we have Brian Jones. of the Rolling Stones. Now, some of these people are friends of the show, some of them are unwanted acquaintances, some of them are downright foes of the show. But we had one rule. They had to be interesting, and there had to be interesting stories about them. So, now is your chance to pick aside, to polish your armour, to don your very best First World War General's moustache, and to decide whether you are on the side of the heroes or the villains. A history of the history. A of the world in 51 heroes and villains is available now. It makes a wonderful Christmas present. I cannot recommend it to you more highly. If you don't buy a copy, you will probably regret it

until the day you die. Goodbye.