An older book, picked up used at a garage sale. Still, I thought I was pretty well up on the French Revolution yet a lot was new to me. (Among other things, I discovered The Scarlet Pimpernel’s nemesis Chauvelin – who I always thought was fictional – was based on an actual French diplomat, the Marquis de Chauvelin). It evokes some wonder that most of the American revolutionaries were pretty decent sorts, while the French collected a set of sociopaths and fanatics. Georges-Jacques Danton (who changed his surname from the aristocratic d’Anton as soon as it became a liability) was unfaithful to his wife, milked the Republic’s treasury for everything he could get, was simultaneously on the payrolls of William Pitt, Louis XVI and Philippe d’Orleans, traded escape for the guillotine for money and women’s favors – and was one of the best of the lot. Author Robert Christophe isn’t all that sympathetic to his subject – at one point expressing disgust at the corpulent Danton pressing his attentions on young girls by calling him a “bladder of lard” – but does a scholarly job of presenting the facts. He’s handicapped by Danton’s posthumous rehabilitation and fame as a hero of the Revolution – years later many of his acquaintances came up with various Danton anecdotes of dubious credibility. It probably didn’t help that most of the survivors were Danton’s enemies.


Danton came from a middle-class family in rural France, and chose the law as a career. He got himself appointed to the King’s Bench ( a court that judged the validity of titles of nobility and other royal issues, which made Danton’s subsequent career as a revolutionary that much more ironic) and married his landlord’s beautiful daughter, Gabrielle. During the early days of the Revolution, Danton displayed one of his best talents – never be anywhere near danger, but show up to make a speech afterward. He therefore missed the storming of the Bastille, the Massacre at the Champs d’Mars, the Massacre of the Swiss Guards, and miscellaneous other unpleasantness, but was always ready to mount the rostrum and orate. Here, Danton’s physical presence probably gave him an advantage; in the days before amplification his voice could reach all the way to the back of a crowd or assembly hall. (Christophe gives an interesting account of the way speeches were recorded before shorthand; scribes sat at a table below the speaker’s rostrum, each with a stack of numbered sheets. One would write as fast as possible and as his quill began to run out of ink he’d nudge the scribe to his right, who’d begin transcribing at that point. The second scribe would repeat the write-nudge process, and so on around the circle. When all was done the pages just had to be put in order and the overlaps edited out).


The evidence for Danton’s financial improprieties is all circumstantial – but the circumstances are pretty strong. On a legislator’s salary of 18 livres per session (for obvious reasons, he wasn’t getting any more King’s Bench clients), he managed to rent and lavishly furnish an elaborate Paris apartment plus purchase an extensive estate back in him home town of Arcis (where he installed all his relatives). A particularly intriguing incident – that I’ve never heard of anywhere else, so it may just be Christophe’s overactive imagination – was his orchestration of the theft of the French crown jewels to bribe the Duke of Brunswick. The story goes like this: the jewels were stored in the National Archives for safekeeping. Over a period of days, a group of over forty prisoners arrested for looting during the storming of the Tuileries “escaped” from La Force prison. “Escaped” is in quotes because as near as Christophe can tell they just walked out. Then the same men turned up at the National Archives, and by the simple expedient of going around the back and raising a ladder against a window, looted the Crown Jewels over a period of four nights. By the fourth night they were pretty brazen about it, hoisting picnic baskets up the ladder with them and having a dinner in the Jewel Chamber. On that night, a patrol of National Guards came across the ladder and thieves carrying food up and jewels down. Rather than arrest them, they marched all the way around to the front of the building and rang the bell until the porter responded. The porter – after getting dressed – woke the Curator – who also had to get dressed. They all went to the Jewel Chamber – which was still locked and sealed from their side. The seal was not supposed to be broken without a direct order of a Commissioner of the National Assembly, so they discussed the situation for a while, eventually deciding to break the seal; by then the thieves – and all the jewels – were gone.


In the meantime, an invading army of Prussians, Austrians, and émigrés under the Duke of Brunswick was about two days march from Paris, at Valmy. The result of the battle of Valmy was a considerable surprise to both sides, with Brunswick and his army retreating after a desultory artillery duel. Christophe’s inference is Brunswick was paid off with a share of the Crown Jewels. His evidence is again circumstantial – the timing allows it (the jewels were stolen on the nights of September 13-16 and the battle took place on September 20, 1792) and at this time Danton was Minister of Justice and de facto dictator. Most of the jewels were eventually recovered in various odd places around Paris; the thieves were caught and five were guillotined but the remainder inexplicably received light sentences and then pardons – at a time when you could be guillotined for just about anything. However, the 115 carat Blue Diamond of the Golden Fleece remained missing – until 1806, when a 75 carat stone identified as part of the Blue Diamond turned up in an inventory of the Duke of Brunswick’s possessions after his death. In 1820, the remaining 40 carats appeared in the crown of George IV –who had married the Duke’s daughter, Caroline of Brunswick. As it happened, the jewel actually belonged to Caroline and was returned to her by Parliament after her marriage to George collapsed; she sold it and, after changing hands a number of times it eventually made its way to the Smithsonian where it is on display as the Hope Diamond. Could be; a little research discloses a number of alternate theories.


At any rate, Danton continued to be at the center of things (despite resigning as Minister of Justice to take a seat in the National Convention. You really need a chart to explain the various governing bodies of France during the Revolution; the was a National Constituent Assembly, then a Legislative Assembly which was in turn replaced by the National Convention; however significant power was held by the unelected Cordeliers Club and Jacobin Club (the founders deliberately used the English word “club” rather than French société to carry the double meaning of a bludgeon). In response to the defection of the hero of Valmy, General Dumouriez, the National Convention then spun off two competing committees, the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security, which essentially had dictatorial powers. The only real limit on the committees’ power was the limited term of membership – the Convention had to reconfirm the members every few weeks. It was the rivalry of the two committees that provoked the Terror, with each trying to outdo the other in revolutionary fervor. Eventually the inevitable happened and the Revolution began to eat its own young. By now, Danton’s first wife had died in childbirth – he was heartbroken despite his infidelities – but not that heartbroken, since he quickly remarried, to a fifteen-year-old girl who had assisted in caring for his children, Louise Gély (he was 35 at the time). By now, he had lost his seat on the Committee of Public Safety due to the machinations of his former friend Maximilien Robespierre. Christophe theorizes that Danton wanted to end the excesses of the Terror – he made a couple of speeches advocating mercy. Robespierre was not necessarily opposed, but wanted the role of savior for himself – to be seen as delivering France from the Terror. He therefore engineered Danton’s trial and execution for “indulgence” and “financial manipulation”. Christophe is puzzled by Danton’s lassitude in the days before his arrest; he was warned of the plot against him but seemingly didn’t believe it. He allows that Danton had semi-retired to his estate and his young wife, but also speculates Danton may have planned to use his oratorical skill to turn opinion toward him and against Robespierre during the trial, but the court operated in a fashion that would have embarrassed Stalin. It was a mass trial, with Danton and a couple of his friends group with various financial speculators; only seven jurors were used even though the law required twelve; and the prosecutor didn’t allow defendants to call witnesses or even speak in their defense – in fact, the defendants were expelled from the courtroom because of claims of a “conspiracy” to free them.


As a final cruelty, Danton was sent to the guillotine last of the fifteen codefendants. Reportedly he went quite bravely, asking the executioner to “show his head to the people, as it is worth looking at”.


I definitely need to read another, newer, biography here, especially since some of Christophe’s suggestions – the Crown Jewels theft, for example – are pretty speculative. ( )

1322. Danton A Biography, by Robert Christophe (read 6 Apr 1975) 181 years ago have passed since Georges-Jacques Danton was guillotined in the Place de la Concorde in Paris--exactly 181 years before I finished reading this bio of him. This book loses no chance to show Danton in a bad light, and does not denigrate Robespierre This is an absorbing book, though footnoteless. It clearly is well-researched. ( )