The Execution of George Danton

Preface
This is a fictionalized account of the execution of Georges Danton based on memoirs and pamphlets from three different sources of the time as well as an invocation of the play, The Tragedy of Man by the Hungarian writer Imre Madach published in 1861 in which Danton is a character. I do not want to reveal much more about Danton’s role in the play, but I do feel it is necessary to make this known to clear up any confusion the reader may have.

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Part I: Danton’s Imprisonment According to Honore Riouffe

I am a writer, not a revolutionary. None of us here really are, revolutionaries by nature, merely men of conscious and ego, all with enemies and friends, hidden skeletons and embarrassing secrets. Danton is an actor though he was trained as an advocate, Desmoulins, a pugilist moonlighting as a journalist. Only Herault is quite at home being a beaurocrat. It is the madness of these times that has cast us in these impossible roles. Conspirators, Royalists, Decadants, and Spies. This is what we are accused of, but none of us are really any of these things at all. I should think it would be a great crime against nature for us to be remembered solely for false accusations hurled by cowards and the mad men they serve, but a great many crimes have been committed in France already, and isn’t that what this whole affair is really about? Crime and punishment?
I joined the Dantonists because it seemed safe. He was the closest thing to hero that this entire bloody debacle had spawned. Torn from the raw throats of the nobility and peasants alike in pieces to be stacked upon each other like shanks on a butcher’s block then brought to life with divine lightning to shock and awe any soul who heard this great wad of flesh talk. He would talk while the heads rolled, more and more each day, and those that were not yet severed would listen, mouths agape. I was foolish to think such a man was untouchable, that we, by proxy, would be safe. He was in a sense too great, not great like a hero, great like an actor. An ego to match his girth and fitted perfectly. He had already fornicated in the cell several times before he finally lost it, or came close to losing it from what I could see. They were scullery maids, brought down by sympathetic guards who wanted for only a few minutes to touch the beast, Danton the people’s champion, the sports man, the lion caged, but not tamed. This was to be his green room where he would sit before the final curtain call when he would meet his adoring public once more, though their attitudes had changed (the uneducated are so easily swayed). I should not be surprised if he becomes a saint in this new godless world, another Jean d’arc. I should not be surprised in the least should a man call from the audience “We have killed our own saviour!” and then be torn limb from limb, or thrown to the razor himself.
I began working on my memoirs and those of other notable figures who were charged with God knows what before I was arrested. I was allowed to write afterward, and obviously currently do still, although it seems a little pointless now. I had written already for Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the wife of M. Roland. There was much to say about her, so much. I wrote briefly but voluptuously, she inspired in me such sympathy and adoration, that the words simply tumbled from my pen.
But this Danton. I find it hard to write for him. For he is both actor, playwright, and director! His life is a false hood because he holds no secrets. He is naked always in speech, manners, and passion. But a hero nonetheless, and felicity is curious in her whims, and genius touches who it may; it shall forever be a mystery. That is why he is to die. Robespierre’s own jealousy. The man is no more a traitor than the man in the moon is to the Sun. He is too bald faced for treachery. He is a lion, and a lion hides from no beast or man. He does not stalk, he does not conspire, he has his prey brought to him by his sycophants and bitches. Of him I wrote little, but what an agony it was! I would much prefer to write about Madame Roland again, that sweet, doomed dark eyed woman, but this is not her story, and I owe it to posterity to explain what I have seen in this strange dressing room of the damned.
There is nothing to write about the man which he has not already said himself. Oh how he talks! Endlessly! On and on until he’s contradicted himself in reverse. He was put in a cell next to Westermann, another of the accused, and he never stopped talking! He would curse Robespierre over and over again as if he were not a man, but an actor, or rather a character much like himself. As if he were Danton’s own feverous invention. As if this whole bloody mess was merely a play that he left to serendipity to manifest. A play that only Danton could star in, that only fate could write. Only he can be the tragic hero! Not Madame Roland, not the royal children, innocent in the whole matter, not the poor clown, nor the generous Madame du Barry whose screams and tantrums had swayed the sympathy of the crowd, nor Mademoiselle Corday who lived her own fantastic drama as only a woman can. They were all characters devised by Danton in a series of fever dreams and sleepless nights.
The next to fall of course would have to be the fox, Robespierre, the tiger, the villain, and the curtain would finally be allowed to close. It should not surprise me in the least, should I live to see the day, that on the eve of his own demise, the whole nation would sink into the earth to be devoured by demons, or rise up land and lake, province and bloody capital to be consumed by the sun. Robespierre had really hoodwinked him though. And his shame was obvious in quiet moments, when the railings ceased in the early hours before dawn. Looking through his bars, he said a great many things he may not have meant, all mixed together with oaths and foul language.
“It was a day like this I had the Revolutionary Tribunal set up, but I ask pardon for it from God and man; it was never meant to be the scourge of mankind. It was to avoid a repetition of the September massacres.” What a fool. There is no order in a slaughterhouse, only quotas. If the blade becomes dry, she must be wetted again before anyone can come to their senses.
All I could record of for his memoir were the words he spoke. For in the end, that is all he really is, talking animated meat thrilled at his own ability to speak. His curses were quite amusing though. The only time there was anything close to laughter in the prison was at the lash of his wit (which is copious to his credit).
“If I left my balls to Robespierre and my legs to Couthon (who is a cripple), that would help the Committee of Public Safety for a while.” If ever there were a god made man, an old testament Stone age God of fury, flawed like the Greeks, it was in Danton. I should like to see the sun put out, and the earth stopped on its axis when his severed head rails its last angry breath. If we have sacked God’s house, then why not guillotine him as well? He spoke so much of the events leading to his arrest as if they were written into a grand script. “I knew I was to be arrested! What proves that that bastard Robespierre is a Nero is that he never spoke so kindly to Camille Desmoulins as he did the night before his arrest!”
Now and then, he would meander to Rousseau, and spin his own abusrd impromptu philosophy of trees, the country and nature. He spoke of nature more so than of the Revolution. Of the garden occupied by man before his fall from grace which has landed us eons later in the sorry state we are now in. Should man have never found the courage to leave his caves and strike out into wilderness, a man such as this would be greater than a Ghengis Khan, Abraham, Muhammad, Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar combined. In a stinking stony escarpment such as the one we are in now, he would pour his drivel onto raw deer hide and tell those around him, as these ones around him are listening now, how the earth moves with his feet, how the ground quakes with his bowels, and how the sun sets when he becomes sleepy. But his paradise kingdom is lost, and so he laments it in the remote treacly manner he compliments strangers. I should stay up a while longer before the ink dries, but I dare not waste another drop on this fop. I think I heard a noise-



Part II: Danton’s Execution as recorded by a man named Ruault for his brother, April 6, 1794

Danton was, of course, the first of the three to climb into the carts, which were to take the group to the Place de la Revolution. He had to wait until all three carts were loaded so that they could go to the execution together. He did not seem to mind too much though, although he never was a man who one wanted to keep waiting. The loading took over an hour because Camille Desmoulins struggled a long time with the executioner, and knocked him down twice. Desmoulins, like the rest, was a very proud and somewhat vain character, and it did not ennoble him to have his hands bound or his hair-cut at what could be his finest moment. He had resigned himself to his fate, like the man he was, and would have gladly stood in the cart unattended if he knew there were an opportunity on the ride over to be sketched by David. He knew he would be among the throng and that he would not pass up the opportunity to record the passing of at least two of the felled giants of the Revolution on their way to the Razor. This being the case Camille certainly wanted to look his best.
He was finally overcome when a group of gendarmes subdued him and held him, face to the wall, as the executioner tied his hands. Danton was laughing in the cart for most of the time and nodding and making jokes to the other condemned men in their carts to show that he was being kept waiting too long and that some one should be making bets on who got bound first, Desmoulins or the executioner. He chatted to Lacroix and Herault, who were next to him, saying in the hearing of the people beside the carriage near the palace courtyard rails, ‘What annoys me most is that I am dying six weeks before Robespierre.’ After a while, the commotion stopped, and Camille was deposited roughly into the cart, his shirt tattered, face bruised, panting, wrists bound and his hair sloppily cut so that the shears had grazed his scalp. He was gnashing his teeth on his knees baying like an animal or an angry child who has been denied a plaything. He cursed Robespierre and the Committee as he struggled to stand, “That rat will be consumed by this monster before the end of Thermidor! His treachery will be his undoing and he will be left alone to collect to slop without the use of the vessels he is now dashing! He does not know how to properly steer this beast! He hasn’t the stomach nor the heart! He will not ride the tiger too long before he is cast off of it’s back and his treacherous throat torn out so that this weary beast may be allowed finally to sleep!” He looked up to Danton nearly on the verge of tears but the shock of the great man’s gaze dried the tears before they fell and Camille came again to his senses. Then he spoke, “We have been fortunate enough to be given one last parade through the throng for whom we have so selflessly served. Do not let them see you waver now or everything we have worked for will be lost and the bastard and his sycophants will know they have acted against Justice with impunity. Make him envy our place; for I assure you my dear friend, his fall from grace will not be as soft as ours. There is a special place in hell for that kind of scoundrel that greets him before death and makes him beg for it all the more.” Desmoulins’ resolve returned, and with a nod from Danton, the carts were prompted out of the courtyard.
The condemned went to their deaths in the midst of a huge crowd of Republicans who were there to watch the original founders of their Republic lose their heads. Desmoulins and Danton looked proud and defiant on their way to the razor, two great men meeting an end that was really the only fitting way for two such characters to exit the drama that had made them who they were. As they came closer to the scaffold, the apprehension became more palpable and seemed to form an aura about them as if the earth around them would shudder and sink at any moment. They both scanned the high points of the crowd looking for the painter David, but it was the quiet and fastidious Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles alone who caught his gaze. They knew each other immediately, David for the tumor in his left cheek and the intense insect like gaze and Herault for the portrait David had seen painted by Laneuville. Herault felt a certain unease in his stomach upon being held fast by David’s stare but it passed once he saw the great artist look down upon his pad and begin sketching. He held that posture all the way to the scaffold not daring to move even an inch.
Seeing the procession pass, a woman in the Rue St-Honore looked at Danton and exclaimed. ‘How ugly he is!” He smiled that warm generous smile of his and said, ‘There’s no point in telling me that now, I shan’t be much longer.’ His face did in fact look like the head of a lion, while Robespierre’s is like that of a cat or a tiger.
When they reached the place of execution, they were made to get out of the carts at the foot of the scaffold; they climbed up one by one to be executed and watched as the others died under the blade.
Danton was the last; when he saw the executioner coming for him, a great fear washed over him and the sky turned the color of a bed sheet soaked in blood. He felt his body go numb, his head was the only thing that remained animated as the crowd and all sounds were stilled.

* * * * *

The executioner and Danton exchanged words briefly at the foot of the scaffold.
“It is safe now my friend, they cannot hear you.” A look of relief came over Danton’s face. The executioner resumed speaking, “I never left your side, not for a moment. I was there watching in court, I was there in the cell with you.” Danton paused before speaking, “I know you were, I saw you perched by Riouffe out of the corner of my eye. You were one of the Gendarmes briefly, the one that dealt him the final blow.” The executioner then asked, “Can you see Eve, your wife? I’ll give you a hint-” Danton politely interrupted, “no need, I heard her.” “She called you ugly didn’t she.” “No, not that time, she was praying when the first cart came in the morning yesterday, I realize it now, I could have said something to her, comforted her, let her know I was there with her, but I was blind again.” “She did not see you then either and you were next to her the whole time. She saw her fallen hero Danton, not her husband, not you, Adam. Now it’s too late. You never met in this life as you wished you would again until it was too late. What a pity.”

The condemned man took a moment to deliberate, then spoke in a great stream, “I have seen your dreams Morning Star, they are not dark, but bright. So bright that they blind hope and bind her hands, scorch her breasts to make her milk too hot for the babe to drink. Rest comes to you only in darkness. You are terrified of the open space that the creator has made and you torture me and me alone in the hope that I will one day collapse and bring his Love and enterprise down so that you may finally find peace.” Lucifer spoke very matter of factly to Adam clearly and plainly like a father repeating a lesson to his son for the thousandth time. “I have been many things for you my friend: Vizier, guardian, blood brother, squire, pupil and stranger. But I have never been your killer. I assure you, it gives me no more pleasure to perform the task as it does you to meet your end, and there will be pain. But this is not the end.” Adam reply came after scanning the crowd once more to find the poor crone who had become his wife, upon finding her, he held her in his gaze and he in hers, and without looking the Devil in the face asked a question that had never occurred to him before, “Let me ask you one thing. Will we ever return to the garden?” Lucifer paused and smiled at the question, then looked up, took a deep breath and the drum roll started. At the crescendo, there was a sudden crack and Danton again came to his senses.

* * * * *

He cried out, “My turn now!” and quickly climbed the fatal ladder. As they were tying him to the block, he looked calmly at the knife dripping with his friends’ blood, finally caught sight of David, and with an air of apprehension only slightly noticeable to those around him, bent his head saying, ‘It’s only a sabre cut’ (A phrase Desmoulins had once used to describe the new method of execution). The executioner strapped him to the board and allowed the Danton to utter his last great words before lowering him down. He addressed them to the executioner. He looked the man dead in the eyes and said, "I leave it all in a frightful welter, not a man of them has an idea of government. Robespierre will follow me; he is dragged down by me. Better to be a poor fisherman like Peter than meddle with the government of men. Don't forget to show my head to the people. It's well worth seeing." At that the executioner replied unsmilingly, “audacity, more audacity, and always audacity” and lowered the plank.
Danton is dead, Robespierre triumphant. The tiger has beaten the lion. But the triumph will not last, if we can believe Danton’s prediction on his way to the scaffold; and he was, if nothing else, a man who understood revolutions.


Part III An account of Danton at the Scaffold as described by The London Times from April 10,1794 as I came across it

I was in Paris a few months back, on tour. I had some down time, and decided to make a visit to Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore. I asked the girl working at the register if they had any interesting literary ephemera to boast of. She showed me a first draft of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and a number of other books I had never had the time nor the inclination to read. Then she showed me a cabinet of laminated newspaper clippings form around the world. One stood out in particular, it was an account of the execution of Georges Danton. I had always had a preternatural interest in the French Revolution since I was in grade school, so I took time to read it over and record of it what I could into my sketchbook. It read as follows:

“Danton, who suffered last, displayed to the last moment, all the audacity of a hardened conspirator; like Hebert, he was distinguished by his red collars…No spectacle can possibly be more horrid than that of the present state of this capital. The streets every where blocked up by beggars…A prodigious number of houses untentanted, and shops shut up. crowds besieging the doors of the bakers and butchers shops. Pits filled with victims who have found a termination of their miseries in the Place de la Revolution, and the police continually on foot for the purpose on new arrests.”

I was captivated by the words, and looked out to the now crowded streets outside the book shop, trying to imagine what it may have looked like in those terrifying, incredible days. Empty shops, and houses that were once bustling with the stench and giddiness of ancient Parisians who had been cut short by the guillotine. Orphans lining the streets, rape victims, mad men, and the sight of the tri-colour being hung from the houses that were still occupied like an offering of Ram’s blood to Yahweh to keep the specter of death passing over. I had the strong urge to write or draw and hopped in a cab over to the Place de la Concorde.
When I arrived, I took a seat on the Pont de la Concorde, which sits directly in front of the square so that everything lines up perfectly. In front was the Obelisk where the guillotine had once stood, behind it, the Rue Royale, the Church of the Madeleine, and the Hotel Crillon just as they had been some 200 years ago; the only witnesses left to account for the slaughter that happened there. I imagined what the place may have looked like before the Guillotine, before the Equestrian Statue of Louis XV, when noble men and women dined at the very spot I sat in to watch convicted criminals be dismembered alive.
I took my phone out of my pocket to take a picture, then got down to writing. As I began, I felt a cold wind push against me from behind, as if to push me closer to the Plaza. Closer to the place where countless of great characters in the vast script of Parisian history had met their ends: Louis XVI, then Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday, later Madame du Barry, Danton, Desmoulins, and finally Robespierre. I felt a great surge of fear and nausea suddenly rise after the wind passed, and decided it might be best to just go back to the Hostel and practice before the show.
As I stood to leave, I thought I heard a voice, then two voices, then a multitude of voices crying and praying all at once. I strained to hear closer, but soon lost focus. Their sounds had been drowned out by the din of traffic; lost to the ether as I allowed myself to become lost again in a crowd of living bodies on a sunny afternoon in Paris on April 6.


Epilogue: 9 Thermidor, Sic Semper Tyrannus

Danton’s prediction came true on 9 Thermidor (July 27) 1794. Robespierre led the Revolution to its’ bloody climax, The The Great Terror, with lasted for 49 days. During that time, approximately 1400 men and women were executed, on average 200 per week (during the Reign of Terror, that number had been a mere 22). Robespierre’s execution of the Dantonists, along with other parties, had thrown the culture of the Revolution into disarray and Robespierre entered an intense state of paranoia and self delusion. On one particular holiday devoted to the supreme being of Reason, he had a massive float resembling a mountain erected in Paris and emerged from a false grotto at the top dressed in the attire of a Roman philosopher and delivered a harried and grandiose speech to the people of Paris that revealed his loss of touch with reality and convinced, except his closest of confidants in the committee of public safety, that he had crossed the threshold of mere self obsession into madness.
Attempts were made against his life as well as other members of the committee and tribunal, and heads rolled day and night. Georges Couthon, a timid deputy from the Auvergne region and one of Robespierre’s closest confidants drew up a new law in response, Couthon’s Law of 22 Prairial that reduced cross-examination, denied the accused defense counsel, and allowed judgement to be passed only by moral proof rather than tangible evidence. The trials, which were at worst circuses before, became just another nauseating temporary stop before immediate execution. People were tried and sentenced by the dozens simultaneously as well as those whose identity was completely mistaken.
By 9 Thermidor, Robespierre’s golem finally began to crack as personal animosities began dividing the committee. Robespierre’s stunt at the Festival of the Supreme Being a month earlier had angered many in the Paris Commune respectively. A conspiracy from all sides began fomenting that was by no means cohesive, and when Robespierre accused members of The Committee of Public Security as well as the Committee of Public safety of conspiracy, he was shouted down by both sides of the Commune as the left and right-handed sides of the revolutionary body came together to cleave Robespierre out of control and ultimately into the Guillotine.
He and his followers were arrested and taken to the Hotel De Ville where he attempted to return to power by appealing to the left-overs of various groups whose leaders he had sent to the guillotine. In the late hours between 9-10 of Thermidor, Robespierre and his allies were recaptured to await execution. Knowing that their time was soon to be up, three of the four men, Maximillian Robespierre, his younger brother Augustin Robespierre and Georges Couthon attempted to take their own lives. The following is an account from a pamphlet that recorded his capture.

‘They went to the Hotel de Ville and found Robespierre in a room near the session chamber. He was lying on the ground, a pistol shot through his jaw. They picked him up, and some of the sans-coulottes carried him by his feet and his head…Meanwhile, a gendarme found Couthon who had thrown himself from his wheel chair to end up bleeding from a gaping wound to the skull at the bottom of a stone stair-case. The gendarme fired a pistol into his body…Robespierre was taken to the committee of Public Safety, still carried by the same men the same way. He hid his face with his right arm. The procession paused briefly at the foot of the main stairs; inquisitive people joined the crowd; several of the nearest lifted his arm to look at his face. One said, ‘He isn’t dead, he’s still warm.’ Another said, “Isn’t that a fine king?’ Another: ‘And Suppose it was Caesar’s body! Why hasn’t it been thrown on the rubbish dump?’
The men carrying him did not want him touched and the ones at his feet told the others at his head to keep it well up, so as to save what little life he had left. They carried their load up at last to the main committee chamber and put it down on a large table opposite a window; they laid his head on a box full of moldy ration bread.
He did not move, but he was breathing heavily, and put his right hand on his forehead; clearly he was trying to hide his face; dis-figured as he was, he still showed signs of vanity. Sometimes his forehead contracted and he frowned. Although Robespierre seemed half conscious, his wounds were clearly causing him great pain.
Among those who brought him in there were a gunner and a fireman, who never stopped talking to him; they made jokes constantly. One would say, “Sire, your majesty is in pain,’ and the other, ‘Well, I think you have lost your tongue, you haven’t finished your proposal, and it began so well. Ah, the truth is, you utterly deceived me, you scoundrel.’ Another citizen said, ‘I only know of one man who understood the art of tyranny, and that is Robespierre.’
Soon afterwards Elie Lacoste of the Committee of General Security arrived; they showed him the prisoners and he said “They must be taken to the Conciergerie…” They were removed. Next he spoke to a surgeon and told him to dress Robespierre’s wounds and make him fit for punishment’. The surgeon said that the lower jaw was broken. He put several wads of linen into his mouth to soak up the blood which filled it; several times passed a probe through the hole the ball had made, bringing it out through the mouth; then he washed his face and put a piece of lint on the wound; on this he placed a bandage which went round his chin. During this operation, everyone offered his comments: when they put the bandage round his head, a man said, “Now they are crowning his majesty.’ He must have heard all this, for he still had some strength and often opened his eyes.
When the wound was dressed, they laid him down again, taking care to put the box under his head as a pillow, they said, ‘until it was time for him to put his head through the little window’ (the guillotine).