Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton was a French politician and leading figure of the French Revolution. A modest and unknown lawyer on the eve of the Revolution, Danton became a famous orator of the Cordeliers Club and was raised to governmental responsibilities as the French Minister of Justice following the fall of the monarchy on the tenth of August 1792, and was allegedly responsible for inciting the September Massacres. He was tasked by the National Convention to intervene in the military conquest of Belgium led by General Dumouriez, and in the spring of 1793 supported the foundation of a Revolutionary Tribunal, becoming the first president of the Committee of Public Safety.
During the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, Danton changed his mind on the use of force and lost his seat in the committee afterwards, which solidified the rivalry between him and Maximilien Robespierre. In early October 1793, Danton left politics but was urged to return to Paris to plead, as a moderate, for an end to the Terror. His continual criticism of the Committee of Public Safety provoked further counter-attacks. Robespierre replied to Danton's plea for an end to the Terror on 25 December. At the end of March 1794, Danton made another speech announcing the end of the Terror. Within a week, Danton faced accusations of purported royalist inclinations, leading to his trial and subsequent guillotine execution on charges of conspiracy and venality.
Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed, especially during the era of the Third Republic ; many historians describe him as "the chief force in the overthrow of the French monarchy and the establishment of the First Republic".
Early life
Danton was born in Arcis-sur-Aube to Jacques Danton, a respectable, but not wealthy lawyer, and Madeleine Camus. As a baby, he was attacked by a bull and a few years later, came down with a bout of smallpox which resulted in the disfigurement and scarring of his face. He initially attended the school in Sézanne, but at the age of thirteen he left his parents' home to enter the seminary in Troyes before making a transition to a boarding school in the same area. While attending school, his classmate and friend Jules-François Paré was to have his hands rapped as punishment, but Danton defended his friend and spoke out against corporal punishment in class. Danton spoke so persuasively that the head of the school decided to ban the practice. In 1780, he settled in Paris, where he became a clerk under the Barrister Maître Vinot. In 1783, he passed the Barrister examination in Reims, and in 1787 he became a member of the Conseil du Roi. He began to frequent a cafe known as the Parnasse, which is where he met Antoinette Gabrielle Charpentier, whom he would marry on 14 June 1787 at the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. The couple lived in a six-room apartment in the heart of the Left Bank, and had three sons:- François, born in May 1788, died in infancy on 24 April 1789.
- Antoine, born on 18 June 1790, died on 14 June 1858.
- François Georges, born on 2 February 1792, died on 18 June 1848.
Revolution
His house in the Rue des Cordeliers was open to many people from the neighborhood. Danton, Desmoulins, and Marat, who lived around the corner, all used the nearby Cafe Procope as a meeting place. Danton protected Marat from legal proceedings, and in March 1790, LaFayette ordered Danton detained. Paris Commune was divided up into 48 sections and allowed to gather separately. Danton was removed from office by a redistricting of Paris, for which he was compensated.
On 27 April 1790, he became president of the Club de Cordeliers. On 2 August, Bailly became Paris' first elected mayor; Danton had 49 votes, Marat and Louis XVI only one each. In spring 1791, Danton suddenly began investing in property, in or near his birthplace, on a large scale.
Robespierre, Pétion, Danton, and Brissot dominated the Jacobin Club. On 17 July 1791, Danton initiated a petition. Robespierre went to the Jacobin club to cancel the draft of the petition, according to Albert Mathiez. Robespierre persuaded the Jacobin clubs not to support the petition by Danton and Brissot. After the Champ de Mars massacre, a series of repressive measures against the heads of popular societies forced him to take refuge in London for a few weeks. Since Jean-Paul Marat, Danton, and Robespierre were no longer delegates of the Assembly, politics often took place outside the meeting hall.
After the amnesty voted in the Assembly on 13 September 1791, Danton returned to Paris. He sought election to the new Legislative Assembly, but the opposition of the moderates in the electoral assembly of Paris led to his defeat. In December 1791, during the partial renewal of the municipality, there was significant abstention. This led to the defeat of LaFayette and the resignation of Bailly, which revealed the decline of the "constitutional" party which had until then dominated the Hôtel de Ville. Danton was elected second deputy procureur ''public'' of the Commune. The debate at the beginning of December 1791 on whether to go to war with neighboring powers opposing the Revolution, triggered conflict between Jacobins and led to the birth of the opposition between Montagnards and Girondins. Danton hesitated on the need for war. He leaned more towards Robespierre than the pro-war Brissot, but, overall, limited his participation in the dispute.
1792
On 9 August 1792, Danton returned from Arcis. In the evening before the storming of the Tuileries, he was visited by Desmoulins, his wife, and Fréron. After dinner, he went to the Cordeliers and preferred to go to bed early. It seems he went to the Maison-Commune after midnight. Faced with the insurrectionary Commune which relied on the insurgent sections and which held Paris, the Legislative Assembly had no choice but to suspend Louis XVI and replace him with a provisional Executive Council of six members composed of former Girondin ministers. The Girondins, hostile to revolutionary Paris, needed a popular man committed to the insurgents to liaise with the insurrectional Commune and had Danton appointed to Minister of Justice the next day; he appointed Fabre and Desmoulins as his secretaries. More than a hundred decisions left the department within eight days. On 14 August, Danton invited Robespierre to join the Council of Justice, which Robespierre declined to do.Danton seems to have dined almost every day at the Rolands'. On 28 August, the Assembly ordered a curfew for the next two days. At the behest of Danton, thirty commissioners from the sections were ordered to search in every suspect house for weapons, munition, swords, carriages and horses. By 2 September, between 520 and 1,000 people were taken into custody on the flimsiest of warrants. The exact number of those arrested will never be known.
On Sunday 2 September, at about 13:00, Danton, as a member of the provisional government, delivered a speech in the assembly: "We ask that anyone refusing to give personal service or to furnish arms shall be punished with death". "The tocsin we are about to ring is not an alarm signal; it sounds the charge on the enemies of our country." He continued after the applause: "To conquer them we must dare, dare again, always dare, and France is saved!". His speech acted as a call for direct action among the citizens, as well as a strike against the external enemy. Many believe this speech was responsible for inciting the September Massacres. It is estimated that around 1,100–1,600 people were murdered. Madame Roland held Danton responsible for their deaths. Danton was also accused by the French historians Adolphe Thiers, Alphonse de Lamartine, Jules Michelet, Louis Blanc and Edgar Quinet. However, according to Albert Soboul, there is no proof that the massacres were organized by Danton or by anyone else, though it is certain that he did nothing to stop them.
He did intervene, however, in protecting Roland and Brissot from an arrest warrant from the Supervisory Committee of the Commune on 4 September, opposing Marat by having the mandates removed, and was complicit in the escape of Adrien Duport, Talleyrand, and Charles de Lameth. On 6 September, he was elected by his section, "Théâtre Français", to be a deputy for the convention, gathering on 22 September. Danton remained a member of the ministry, although holding both positions simultaneously was illegal. Danton, Robespierre, and Marat were accused of forming a triumvirate. On 26 September, Danton was forced to give up his position in the government; he stepped down on 9 October.
At the new National Convention on 4 October 1792, Danton proposed to declare that the fatherland was no longer in danger, asking only to renounce extreme measures. He measured the risks posed to the Revolution by fratricidal quarrels between Republicans. He preached conciliation and calls the Assembly several times to "holy harmony". “It was in vain that we complained to Danton about the Girondine faction", wrote Robespierre, "he maintained that there was no faction there and that everything was the result of vanity and personal animosities". But the attacks from the Girondins concentrated on him, Marat and Robespierre—the “triumvirs”—accused of aspiring to dictatorship. Danton defends Robespierre at the end of October by declaring that "all those who talk about the Robespierre faction are, in my eyes, either prejudiced men or bad citizens", but dissociates himself from Marat by pronouncing "I don't like the individual Marat. I say frankly that I have experiences his temperament: he is volcanic, cantankerous and unsociable." The Girondins attacked Danton for his management of the secret funds of the Ministry of Justice. Roland, Minister of the Interior, scrupulously gave his accounts but Danton would not. Harassed by Brissot, he only escaped through weariness of the Convention and for months the Girondins shouted “And the accounts?" to interrupt him at the podium. Meanwhile, his influence began to decline in favor of Robespierre as the real leader of the Mountain.
File:Alfred Loudet - Marat.jpg|thumb|Imaginary meeting between Robespierre, Danton and Marat by Alfred Loudet