710. The Terror: Death at the Guillotine (Part 4)

The execution was already underway when, having crossed the Twillary, I reached the gate opening onto the Place Louis Counts. From there I saw the condemned men appear one after another on the fatal stage, only to vanish once as the plank on which their eternal rest was to begin tip them from view. Dontor 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 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 Dontor'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 Vassot Arno of the execution of Georges Dontor on the 5th of April 1794 and it's a scene that's been immortalised 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, an abulliant 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, Dontor's fate I think. A lesson to us all, yeah and you're a particular marrant of the French Polish film, Dontor, came out during the solidarity confrontation, the trade union in Poland with the communist government and starred Gerard Depardieu as Dontor. I think Gerard Depardieu is an absolutely horrendous human being and he is brilliant at Dontor in this film. In the film, because it's a portrait, actually a brilliant film both by 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 it is, there is that kind of great sense of the binary isn't there? Because on the one hand you have Maximilian Robespierre tall, thin, cold, fanatical, obsessed by ideas of God and virtue and on the other side his old friends George Dontor charismatic, a man of bulk, the man who wants to stop the reign of terror, the people's friend and the dynamic of the kind of the chill, cold, thin person and the warm, jolly, fun, larger person. I mean, it's a kind of, it's archetypal. The sturdy man of the people and the desiccated lover of abstract nouns completely. 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 with them France, loads of nuances. So we might as well get straight into it. We'll get into it with our protagonist who is Dontor. So I think you're at dead rights of all the French Revolution's great characters. Dontor's probably the most magnetic. He's the one you'd go on a night out with, I think. And Depadur, shocking bloke, brilliant actor, does a really good job of capturing his appeal in that film, which I recommend to people it's on YouTube. So Dontor is a big man, you know, stocky, a famously ugly, but incredibly charismatic and energetic. He's a brilliant speaker. He's theatrical, he's generous. There's something slightly touchy in it, I think, about him. A man of tremendous flaws, but also great magnetic qualities. Listen, I may remember that I ventriloquized one of his most famous speeches and did it as Churchill. You did? Exactly. Dontor 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 RC 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 gourd by a bull and trampled by pigs. That's a battle-like, isn't it? Yeah, it's very unfortunate. So his lip was spitting, his nose was well mangled, and to make it matter's worse, he had smallpox. So his face is quite as 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, he's a funster, really, in the late 1780s. He has lots of sort of boozey 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 Cudillier, which is a real hotbed of militancy. So there's loads of people like him at young lawyers, there's artists and stuff like that. And he's prominent in the protests around the fall of the Bastille, December of 1789. He becomes a sort of leading light in the district. He's hanging out with Jean-Paul Marra, who we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and with a man called Camille de Moulin, who's a great friend of his, who we will come to later on. And because Dantoy's a really good speaker, because he's a big man, he's kind of alpha male, he becomes a B-Knock. Do you know what B-Knock is, Tom? A big name on campus. He's a big name on campus, yeah, exactly. He found the Cudillier Club in 1790, radical club, talking shop. He comes as first president, captain of sports teams. Completely. He's the big man. Everyone knows him on the campus, all of that. Yeah. And as the revolution escalates, he's Star Carazon rising. So when in the late summer of 1792, there was the great storming of the Twillary Palace by the kind of Suncoulotte, by the insurrectionary commune, Donald Trump was very much at the forefront of that. When the Gérardin were running France, they had him as their minister of justice. He wasn't really one of them, though. They was regards to him with a bit of suspicion. But, you mentioned a Chilean aspect, he gives this incredible speech. The Prussians are coming, France is at bay, and he says what we need is de l'udasse, a encore de l'udasse, a du jour de l'udasse, courage, more courage, and yet more courage, and we will win the day. And 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, when the doors 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 Gérardin a bit, and so he moves closer to the Montagnar faction. So that's Robespierre, Mara, and Co. And by, let's say, 1793, Donald is seen as one of the three big beasts of that camp. So you got Mara, Robespierre, Donald is all there. The three names that everyone knows. When Charlotte Corday wrote that manifesto about killing Mara, she mentioned Donald and Robespierre, didn't she? She did exactly. 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. Donald is a great laugh, and neither is Robespierre, but their relations are solid. Then there's no enmity between them. When Donald'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. Robespierre writes him a very sweet letter. It 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 an overall way that we would perhaps not do today. But genuinely, I think there's affection. There's a degree of affection between Donald and Robespierre. Well, I think it's important to for the tragedy of what's going to happen to recognise that Ross Pia does love Donald. Yeah. And indeed, love, they may laugh 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 rollercoaster for the long term. 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, Donald 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 institution's being set up, the mood of paranoia, the obsession with conspiracies. Donald 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, you know, 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. And that's not been there from the beginning, but it's become a lot more pronounced. And Donald'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. Donald has been taking bribes and has been buying up land in his native uxie with mysterious money. But the more that Robespierre becomes the b-knock, and he is the incorruptible. So the more Donald's corruptibility comes to seem a little bit out of fashion. Totally, but 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 R.C. 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 favor. 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. Sounds like I mean, actually, that's a very touchillion 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. Donald Ford's 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, you're conscious 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. He's always returned to his bath because he breaks out in pastures. Yeah. And we said, have a philosophy here is always taking to bed with kind of nervous frustration. 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 seaway, 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. Macron and Svenet has been executed. And the Girondat 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 Speer is kind of minimi. Louis Antoine de Saint-Juste. 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 Dominic, just to say, because people might think this is a cynical move. Yeah, I really don't think it is. Saint-Juste, with Rob Speer, 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 could say it doesn't 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 committee of 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 Rob Speer 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 Rob Speer and Saint-Jouist, because they've drawn it up. Of course. I don't think it is a cynical move to entrench that dictatorial power, which is somehow to how it's presented. You know, they're not Vladimir Putin or something. 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 to equate that to kind of revolutionary justice. So Saint-Jouist 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 control 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 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 well into the reign of Louis XVI, if not further back. You have a really high functioning machine now that is handing down ruthless, decisive edicts that is actually getting stuff done. The smacker firm government, completely. Within it, however, there are lots of tensions. So just to look at the committee of public safety, if you look about that, there are these blocs, 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 with themselves. So on one wing, you have two people who've talked about it already. You have Saint-Juste, and you have to spoke to Georges Couton, who's in his wheelchair, the sex addict. It came to be with paraphats, having too much sex. And you've got Rob Spear, who you've described already, pale, prim, glasses, wig, you know, all that, the corruptible moral authority. Rob Spear to be absolutely clear, it's really important, I think, that people dispel any sense of Rob Spear being a dictator. He is not a dictator. He has this great moral authority, but he's one of a committee. And actually, a lot of the decisions on the committee, and this will be really important to talk about the full of Rob Spear, a lot of the decisions on the committee are made by these kind of military bureaucrats. So this guy called Lazar Karnu, 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 Spear 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 raw fear of fire at all, not at all. And the differences between these men of Rob Spear over time will become more and more pronounced, especially as they're working so hard, they're all knackered, they're all drunk in 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. Yeah, basically. 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 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 a 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 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 way I know 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. So 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 to the revolution and outed yourself, therefore as a traitor, the chances are that you'd still come out with your heads on your shoulders. Unless I was an aristocrat. Yeah, that's true, or Mary Antoinette. So the official death toll of the Teterra, I mean estimates differ, Timothy Tacky gives us a figure, it says the official death toll is 17,000 people, which in the scale of the great slaughters of 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 Vonde and so on, you're hundreds and hundreds of thousands, but 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 think of 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 asseñé, and Paris is still getting supplied with just enough food to keep going. So 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 Anshut and Vattini. And then we talked a little bit about this last time. They've turned the tide against the Federalist rebels and against the Vondéans. So they recapture Leon on the 9th of October. And then a week later they won this big victory against the Vondéan rebels at Sholi. So at this point, let's say October. So this is about the point, when Dante was 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 rest so many people. We can give the sauce on and the people working on the guillotine can have a few days off. And actually, there are people saying that at this point, even, you know, there are people who have the courage to say it. So there's a writer and deputy called Louis Sebastien Mercier. And he said, I can't believe we're continuing with the terror. The Montenegro are men of blood and mud, stupid and ferocious beasts. So what happens to him? Of course, he's thrown into prison. Yes, not reasonable to say such things. This counter-revolutionary isn't it? And part of that is because Rob Speer and Sanjuist, 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, sort of almost utopian republic. And they are doing what they see as positive things as well as just guillotine people now. So to give you a couple of examples, they are encouraging lots of local Jacques-Amand 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, Rob Speer 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 time. 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, how streets, parks and things, after the virtues that they think the republic should celebrate. So in Orléans, for example, the different neighborhoods are renamed. They're given called things like Liberty, Egellite, Brutus, Russo, and so on and so forth. I mean, that's something we're very familiar with today. Was it similar? Birmingham had a diversity street, you know, integration, avenue, kindness, clothes, 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 heir to the revolution. A very disturbing thing, actually, probably the worst thing they're doing is designing the metric system. Yeah, it's very bad, isn't it? So plans have been a foot 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, chaotic imperial madness. Exactly. And talking about language, they want to eliminate the polite voo. So anyone who studied French at school will know there are two words for you. Du and voo. And they want to stop people saying voo because it is old-fashioned and formal. Although one person who cannot stop himself is Maximilian Robespierre because he's so prim and formal. And he automatically keeps saying voo when everyone else would be saying to you. In the same way that he's wearing his collot and his waistcage. 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, look and laugh. No need for it. So there's a lot going on. And yet there are some people who think they should go even further. And chief among them is a man we met last time. He's the editor of a newspaper called De Paix du Chien. He is the scatalogical pornographic ultra-populist Jacques Abert, the scourge of Marion Twinette. 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 neighbors for hoarding food. And we should be executing merchants and shopkeepers who are not selling cheap food." It's a blue sky. Yeah. Abert 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 a simple example. Abert and his allies, particularly in the sort of government of Paris, the commune, are really keen on this decrystionisation, anti-clirical agenda. They want to convert churches to temples of reason. They want priests to show their Republican commitment by abduring 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 Abert 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 missed Bishop Tim. He's encouraged to do this by Shomet and Abert who pay a visit to it 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, if they haven't really kick in with him, he goes five, whatever. He had a look at like the record of martyrs that he presumably been speaking about for decades. He said, actually, on balance, I probably won't give enough. Yeah. I actually wanted to get married anyway. And the irony is he ends up being guillotine does. Oh, no, that's terrible for having a better the terror. So they're holding bonfires of sacred you know, relics, investments and things Abert and co-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 new bar, young woman to come and play the goddess Liberty, very new bar, but apparently with bad teeth and scantily dressed. Very scantily dressed. And she's purged on what will be a bit of a theme of this whole decrystionisation movement, which is a papier mache mountain, which is placed in the middle of the nave and she, they put a Greek temple on it and she sits on the top. They carry her through the streets then into the convention and then store her in the convention next to the president of the convention, who presumably is delighted by this. So the thing is, I mean, obviously 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 takes, he thinks it's a serious business and that's maximally in Robespierre. He hates it. Robespierre is a dais, doesn't he? He believes in the supreme being. Robespierre 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 and Robespierre, whenever he sees somebody make a mistake or do something that he thinks could undermine their cause, his natural reactions and distinctive reactions to say, well, why would a bear do that? It's a bear being put up to this. It's 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 us speech. He attacks the atheist campaign 40 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 a bear throw you on the bonfire, so we're now above all at the beginning of December 1793. The convention passes, I think, called a law of free mayor, which reasserts the power out of the central government. This is under the pressure from the committees, the committees say, look, a bear, 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, we'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 Dongdong 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 a bear's campaign against Christianity and the terror is in full swing. Slide disappointingly, it's quite hard for us to know what Dongdong is thinking. Unusually, we have really few sources about Dongdong compared with other big figures of the revolution. But as far as we can tell, Dongdong 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 as 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, let's anglicise it, they're called the indulgence. So in other words, they are people who agree with him, we should calm down a bit. People should agree disagreeably. Agree disagreeably. No, exactly. Sorry, I should disagree. Hold on. No. On the rest of the politics, they agree disagreeably. They're me. And most of the people who associate with Dongdong, then the thing is they are 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 a bit. And the people who's hanging out with the people who can't even get into the first team. So to give an example, the somebody will come back to his former actor and poet's called Philippe Fabric Deglontien. And this book Fab, he designs the new revolutionary calendar. But the one really interesting person that Dongdong associates with, an old friend of his actually, somewhere 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 head standing up in the Palais Royale in the centre of Paris on a table in the cafe, exhorting everybody to rise up against Louis XVI. And this was the kind of 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 de Moulin. They always call him Camille by his first name because they see him as immature. Robespierre and Camille had been at school together. They've been to the same Lise Lulicon. De Moulin was two years younger than Robespierre, but they were great friends. They read Cicero, they read Tacitus, they read Russo, all of this. Robespierre was a witness at Demoulin'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, that's so if I haven't introduced her, I need to kill her off. De Moulin is much more excitable than his friend, Maximilia. He is more sentimental. He becomes a Montennoide 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 Jérôde. 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, Demoulin has started to publicly call for particular acts of clemency, for example, because of the sort of xenophobia of the revolution in some ways, of the terror anyway. They're clamping down on foreign citizens, and Demoulin has said, oh, this is really unfair, you know, leave them alone. Now, he's a useful ally to don't offer two reasons. Number one, because Demoulin's friends with Rob Speer, childhood friends, so useful to have him. But also because Demoulin, for all his supposed maturity, he's a very talented journalist. And two weeks after Don Tors return, and almost certainly with Don Tors' encouragement in connivance, he launches a new newspaper. It's called le vieux cordelier, the old cordelier, 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 cordelier club, in the cordelier 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 Demoulin now says, you know, Abert takes public money to produce this newspaper, and he fills it with the language of the channel house. Abert talks about how he loves the revolution, yet when I was giving speeches and 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, Demoulin goes for Abert's atheism. 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 Rob Speer. Rob Speer is fine with them, because Rob Speer thinks Abert is getting a kicking, brilliant. You know, Rob Speer is sick of Abert. 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, Demoulin 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 that, and then issue number four, it's a really direct challenge to the government. Demoulin 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 a thousand people in prison. And I think we should let them out a lot of these people go. They've done nothing wrong. Be kind to them. Yeah. And he addresses Rob Spear 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 report the committees that they are selling out. People are reading them out in the cafes. People are applauding what they're hearing. And why are they struck such a cord? Why they've struck such a cord 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 for timing. First of all, these issues come out precisely the point when the French have just had an amazing victory. They have retaken the crucial naval base too long 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 bid defeat to the rebels. So we'll be hearing more about these in the next episode. But Lyon, thousands of people blown up by cannons or bayonetted or shot, Nantes, 2000 people drowned, forcibly drowned in boats that were towed out into the Loire and then and then deliberately sunk. And then of course the Vonde. So in the Vonde, thousands of people executed entire towns wiped out children, women forced to dig their own mass graves. One junior officer, I mean this quote, repeat to a couple of times in general, this is the revolution. I mean, it really jumps out at you. Once 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 let's do 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 spear doesn't like the arbitrary use of terror. No, but Rob spear 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 favor of random atrocities to the degree that some of the revolutionaries are. Exactly. We will see. He falls out with people who he thinks are just being sadists. Yeah, but Rob spear thinks if it's properly planned and if these people are enemies, the people sure they've got to go. Yeah. So, when Daniela is attacking a terror, Rob spear thinks, well, this is just stupid and childish from Daniela. He's not serious. When Dauntan attacks the terror, Rob spear thinks this is typical Dauntan. 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 nivos, as they call it, under their new calendar. Rob spear 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. Rob spear says, we are fighting for liberty against its enemies. And the war is not over. Rob spear 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. Rob spear 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 swear opinions. They turn our own resolutions against us. And Dominic, they have, his brother, Augustna, been to Toulon. He'd been a kind of agent on the scene at Toulon. And so, he had been there and seen to 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 obviously a proof, pit's gold, exactly British gold. So, he says, you know, we, 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 of 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 of Rob spearbreed society relief. However, this does not solve the issue of don't talk and demula because what you do about them, his friends. Two weeks later, Rob spear goes to the Jacquemant club. And it's a very fever on mood in the Jacquemant club because of course they are Jacquemants too. And Rob spearbre actually starts the meeting in quite a conciliatory style. He says, look, what I'm going to say to you 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 any, is there anything that would join all French people in the common course? Dominic that they could rally behind? I mean, you think you've heard some bad things in this episode with the drownings and the shootings, but now it gets worse. I should warn listeners if you're driving pullover because Rob sees something very, very incendiary. It's 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. That's insane from Rob spear. 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 Demolar turns up. He turns up late. And as he makes this way in, there's a bit of heckling. You know, some of the hardliners are shouting at Demolar, you know, I hate you on newspaper. And there's an argument that breaks out about the newspaper. And some people start shouting Rob spear, you know, are you going to condemn this? He's your friend. And Rob spear tries to play this cleverly because he is still very fond of Demolar. And he says, I agree. Camille should renounce his political heritage, his writings are dangerous. They give hope to our enemies. And then Rob spear says, however, we should distinguish between the person and his works. I mean, this is so patronizing. Camille is a thoughtless child. It's 33 who has good inclinations, but he's been led astray by bad company. And the bad company is don't or is it don't or 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 spear's horror. Demolar does not take this as the gift. From here. It sends. Demolar is like, what? Burn the newspaper you mad. And Demolar says, I reply in the words of Russo. Burning is not an answer. So that's a famous phrase from Russo and Russo is Rob spear's great hero and political load star. Imagine how it, you know, how provocative that is for Rob spear. This huge argument breaks out. Rob spear basically issues a threat to Demolar. He says, you must learn Camille that if you are 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, that's let's let's leave it. Let's leave it. Is don't on. So don't on jumps in, manage to calm it down. But what don't on does not know is that Rob spear is now in possession of a secret that could destroy him. Because in the last few weeks, informants have been coming to Rob spear and sans use with bombshell revelations about this foreign conspiracy to undermine the revolution. And these are revelations that for don't on will be literally fatal. Blimey, what could these revelations be? Only one way to find out. Join us after the break. We are getting in statement from the 10th of that flight with 350 passengers on board. The great gain, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian. Holden the Russians accountable is world war story. 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 are the Prime Minister. If 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 Frago. And a Frago 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 Top of Duffy? An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy. They are our most valuable weapons. devised as the technically rigorous geopolitical action forever. We're Britain plays its strongest arm against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Defe! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest of the history. So Dominic, at the end of Part 1, you were promising bomb shell revelations. What are these bomb shell revelations? Okay. So one day in the middle of October 1793, one of Donald's friends, the bloc who designed the new calendar, Philippe Fabre de Gauntien, he sounds a wrongen. Yeah, a terrible name. He asked to see Robespierre and San 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 undivine 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 have 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, a bear and his ultra radical campaign, they are the spearhead of this." And Robespierre and San Just listened to this and they are shocked. Of course, they were 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. This is the crazy thing. This bloke Fab was 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 the first half, that there's been a lot of corruption. There's a lot of money changing hands, bribes and all of this. Fab and some of his pals have been extorting and embezzling far 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. Fab has been taking all this money and Fab is worried that a bear is going to expose him. So what he thought he'd do is he thought, well, I'll denounce a bear as a tool of a foreign conspiracy. I'll tell Robespierre what he wants to believe. I'll bring down a bear before he can expose my corruption. Because that's the key, isn't it? That he's telling Robespierre what he knows. Robespierre will want to hear completely. Exactly. Now, at first, Robespierre and Code 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 Chabo, he's always worried about being exposed for quite separate corruption. So he goes to see Robespierre 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." God, 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 he has been embezzling from. So at this point, Robespierre 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 Robespierre, 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 Robespierre sits and thinks about it, he thinks, "Well, this explains everything. This explains A-Bear 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 Pitt is behind the whole thing. And fab remembers friends with Donald and Donald is famously corrupt. Donald is incredibly corrupt. Both fab and Donald have been criticizing the terror. So at this point, does Robespierre seriously think that Donald is part of a foreign conspiracy? I think it's very hard to say because we don't have a window into Robespierre's mind. But what is definitely true is that if Robespierre wanted to think that, he could, he now has the ammunition to do it. And there's also all that, the chat of the fact that Donald had been making overtures to marry Antoinette and the Austrians in the summer. So this is all part of the swirl of conspiracy theory. There's a lot of chat about Donald generally, isn't there? I think there's been for months there has been talk that Donald is not quite as pure. He's not as dedicated. Well, he's not incorruptible. No, exactly. So Robespierre doesn't rush into action. I think if Robespierre had genuinely been burning with hatred for Donald, he would have used this straight away. He doesn't. What he does though is he prepares the ground. So all through January into 1794, they've had this rower at the Jacumen 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 revolution in tribunal. And a lot of the people on the Committee of General Security hate Donald, because they quite enjoy running the terror. And one of these guys is called Vadiay. And Vadiay says, when they're talking about Donald, Vadiay says, "Here's this extraordinary line. I'm looking forward to gutting that fat turbot." And when word of this reaches Donald, if you forgive my language, it's Donald's language, not mine. He says, "If Vadiay touches me, I will eat his brains and shit in his skull." It's just like this, right? Yeah. It's like the dying days of the Keir Starmer government. So the 17th of January to 10 days after the rower at the Jacumen, the Committee of General Security made their first move. Their rest fab and their rest shabbo. So these are the two informants. And their rest a few of Donald's other friends. Now meanwhile, the tension between Donald and Rob Spear is growing almost day by day. Donald 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 urring 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 ten days, which is dominated by arguments about the revolt in what's now Haiti and Sandalming. 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, Rob Spear gives another of these landmark speeches, clearly aimed at Donald. It's a banger of a speech. 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 don't have anything to worry about. Now, as 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 Stair 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 tumbrel. This is the kind of blueprint for the 20th century totalitarian states. But I guess to defend Rob's Pierre, he doesn't know that. He is still negotiating the contours of this. kind of new dispensation, which is something very novel and potentially chilling, as you've said. But I think you have to believe in Ross Piers' incorruptibility. He does think he's doing the right thing. But that's the chilling thing, though, isn't it, about Ross Piers? 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 overall Ross Piers 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 duplay family's house, which is where he lodges, which you've described before. Now, while he's away, the pressure carries on building. France has now mobilizing, militarily, 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 in the 23rd of February, government agents reports the committees. The situation in Paris is really alarming. There are shops that are completely empty. The butcher's are all closed. People are fighting in the streets of 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 all 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. Georges Couton says, what are they complaining about? Or they need just a single scrap of me today? If I had the police power in my hands, I would make privation the order of the day. Logan's 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 of Paris, we will, you know, punish them until they do. For 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 Cordelia club. I found it ironically by Donald. And he says, you know, heads have got a role. I've got a list here of 73 deputies. These are people who supported the Giron d'Art. They've got to go. Demolands got to go. There's a load of moderates and weaklings, their 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 soncoilot 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 neighborhoods, but only one of them, the Cordelia, their own one, Abert's a 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. The basically people are sick of grabbing their palbards or whatever and 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 sales. And this is the first time that the wind doesn't blow the sales. Yes, it is. That's what Abert's fate absolutely denotes. It's like this far and no further. The radical energies of the revolution have reached that kind of natural limit, I would say. So, amid all this, amid all this chaos, the convention votes to renew the powers of the Committee of Public Safety for another month. And that same evening, Robespierre turns 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. Sans Just 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, Sans Just 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. The Sans Just says to the Convention yet. Sans Just is a very compelling speaker. People are frightened of Sans Just 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 voice, the language of men in power. So, it's the language of authority stamping out dissent. And that evening, the Committee makes this move. Abert 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 tobaccoist, 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. Well, the 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, a tub of themping, 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. Abert is accused of trying to undermine the economy, but there's attacks on shopkeepers. Abert can't believe this. Yeah. He's the toast of the streets. He's the friend of the people. Yeah. Abert is completely stunned by this, and he keeps, he doesn't take it seriously, I think. He thinks the streets will rise. Yeah. 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, Abert is stunned. He can't believe it. Don't you know who I am? 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, Abert, the man who wanted to guillotine everybody else, he's going to guillotine. And he disgraces himself. He's a shambles. He's no marion to anette. 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 committees what was said. So this brilliant quote, one man in the crowd apparently said of Abert and his collaborators, they died like cowards without balls. And another one, sounding very Trumpian, I have to say, said, we thought that Abert 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 Abert. 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's 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 Donald and his allies? So now we come back to the issue of Donald and Robespierre. As you said at the beginning, it's seen as this kind of titanic dual between these two completely different personalities, struggle for the soul of the revolution or of this, a struggle for power between two implacable antagonists. But that's really not right. Robespierre, I think, does not want to kill Donald. That's why it takes so long to do it. And he genuinely, I think, hopes that Donald will come round. So if you've seen the film, in the film from the 1980s, this is a very celebrated scene where Donald and Robespierre have a kind of reconciliation dinner, organized by Donald and the film, which I think is not correct. And Donald 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 awful, exactly. But Robespierre is just sitting there. Chile doesn't want to eat anything. Actually, in the written sources, most of them say that they had this meeting, Donald was very emotional, and some of them say Donald 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 more and more meetings in the last week in March. Robespierre saying to Donald, could you give us your support? Could you back the committees? No, surely we can find a way through this. And Donald not plainball saying no, I don't agree with you. I think the terror has to end. I think, I mean, I remember that Robespierre, the stories that Donald cried, that Robespierre saw this as a malign tactic on the part of Donald to make him feel bad. Yes, 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 Donald. 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, Robespierre has made up his mind that Donald has to go. It is clear to Robespierre, Donald is not going to abandon his campaign against the terror. And actually, Demoulin has prepared a new issue of the Vehicle d'Ulier, and it's seen as so damning about the committee of public safety that the princes are refusing to touch it. So as Robespierre sees it, I mean, people always tell the story from Donald's perspective completely understandably not Robespierre's, but just from Robespierre's perspective. Robespierre's perspective is Donald is going to destroy the revolution. The terror is what's keeping the revolution going, and Donald 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 virtue through public. No. So the last days of March, Robespierre's use prepared the indictment. The case, as we've said, writes itself, right, the corruption. We know that Donald took dodgy money. Robespierre has all these allegations of massive conspirators and things. And, you know, Donald has been unguarded, and he has said things to Robespierre that most people would laugh off, but Robespierre, yes. He's not a funster. So when Donald said to him, they were talking about virtue, and Donald said to Robespierre, "I know no virtue greater than that which I practice every night with my wife." Yeah. Robespierre does not smile at this. He thinks this is disgraceful. And Sajou thinks it's disgraceful as well. And in the speech that he will give against Donald, 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 Robespierre and Sajou 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. Sajou 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 Donald's arrest." And the men from the General Security Committee based at the political police, Vardier and Amar, they say, "Are you mad?" Donald's a brilliant speaker. If you read this out in the convention, Donald 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. Sajou is very offended by this, by the thought that they don't rate his rhetorical ability compare with Donald's. He basically has a straw. He throws his hat in the fire and then storms out. That is a straw. Yeah, it's a massive sulk. So he storms out. And actually, all the other members of the Committee of Public Safety say, "Do you know what you're right? We probably should arrest him first." So they agreed that 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 Lindey, who's in charge of supplying the army. And Lindey 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, Lindey can't know 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 of the 30th of March. I think it's pretty clear that in the next few hours, rumours spread and somebody tipped Donald and Demela off. There were various accounts of what was said. Donald supposedly, one version said that he was told flee the city and he said, "No, they don't move against me, they wouldn't dare." Donald 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 souls of your shoes." A nice line. And there are stories that Demela went to see his old classmates, Maximilian Rossby, I went to his house but was turned away from the door and said, "I am lost if you 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 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 Donald's allies rushes into the convention. He says, "Unbelievable, Donald's been arrested. Citizens, I declare that Donald's as pure as I am." That's an unwise thing to say. Yeah, I mean, God. I mean, that's a trouble, why don't you? Risky. So there's two militants in the hall, this guy who broke the news is called Le Jean. He says, "Yeah, should bring in the prisoners, bring in Donald and Demela. Let them face their accusers, bring in the committee. Let's have this out." And Rob Speer forces his way through the shouting throng of people. He is described as pair 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 Donald 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 Sajust. The Archangel of Death. I see kind of recital of the charges. Donald was working with the foreign plot. Donald 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 culling than those at coblents. Are you the emigres? Yeah, they're maxims with those of Cataline. Exactly. So they've gone from being casserole, they've become Cataline. So this does the trick. The Robespierre Sajust combo, which often works, the Convention fall into line. And so it is that two days later, on the 2nd of April, Donald and Demula are led into the pallidogestice for trial by the tribunal. And as with ABR, the committee have muddied the waters by throwing in a load of random people, bankers and things. So there's a Dutchman, a Belgian, there's two Moravians, there's a Dane, and there's a Spaniard. I mean, to be fair, everyone hates the foreign banker. They do. Exactly. I thought you were going to say everyone hates a Dutchman, but no, I love a Dutchman. You love the Dutch. And Fab and Shabo, they're also there. So the two bloke should gone to Robespierre to save themselves with their plot stories. Yeah, they fail to do so. And the point, of course, is that there are so many people in this great sense of conspiracy. And from the start, Donald'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, Donald's mind is very confused in my mind with Winston Churchill, 'cause I think this is exactly how Churchill would have behaved. The sort of the bumpishousness, the arrogance, looking to history as his judge. Completely, yeah. I mean, this is so Churchillian. They ask him the trial, check 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. But Daniel is even less modest, isn't he? Yes, he is. I mean, Daniel has to be fair. He was 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 sonkelot Jesus Christ when he stood before Pontius Pilots. I mean, you can see how basically, if you were standing next to Dante, 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 palerogisties. It's packed. The galleries are rammed with spectators. Massive anticipation. The prosecutor, I mean, you couldn't make this up. The prosecutor is Damon Land's distant cousin. His 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. Donald, who is 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 Krenner'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 an affable characters, the seal of liberty, the genius of republicanism, and I am accused of having crawled at the feet of vile despots." And the core president tries to cut him off by typing in this little bell. And Donald says, "The voice of a man who has to defend both his life and honor must vanquish the sound of your little bell." So that's day one. He's warming up. Day two is the turn of the defense. So a few years presented the indictment. At this point, Donald has just done absolutely Titanic form. He doesn't bother looking at the jury or 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 you 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 offense or something, I'd like to think I'd go down like this. During the last two days, the court has got to know Donald. 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 offense. Let's say that I can hear you deliver that peroration. Do you know the reality would be so banal? I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's a bit tired. So for the authorities, this is a terrible embarrassment. And it's actually getting worse because the beginning of day three, Donald 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 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, a prosecutor who is described by one witness his "affolée," which means "panicked." His scribbles are not 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 Donald's conviction." And Sanjuist rushes to the Convention. And he says, "We have a national emergency." I have to say this is shameless and Sanjuist. We've all been talking about his, you know, their rigid principles and their belief in their own virtue and they really sense here and all this. But this I cannot be sincere. This is cynical. Sanjuist says, "Donald's allies in the prisons are planning a mass breakout and they're going to murder members of the Convention." And actually, Demolan's wife, Luceille, is in on it. She's one of the organizers. That's not Galant. It's not good from Sanjuist. And Sanjuist goes on to say, "Look at the way Donald's behaving in the courtroom, shouting, dominating all of this. Doesn't that prove his guilty? What innocent man ever revolted against the law?" I mean, a chilling sentiment. Basically, defend yourself. It proves your 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 a warrant for Luceille Demolan's arrest as well as a Demolan's wife. Now, she in the interim had written Rob Spier a very moving letter reminding him of their old friendship and how important he'd been to their family. She'd 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 Spier's house, but Rob Spier refused to see her. I mean, the thing is that for Rob Spier, 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 who would you betray your friends or your country? He's betraying his friends. Yeah. Exactly. So in the meantime, Fikki Tampil now has what he needs. The next morning, the 5th of April, Donta and Co are removed from the court. They're dragged out and as they're dragged out, Donta shouts furiously. He says, "We're going to be judged without being heard." And then he says very mockingly, "Go on, take us to the scaffold." Fikki 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, Donta seems roofal. He's actually quite rye. He says, "Funny thing is, none of those people know anything about government. If I left my balls to Rob Spier and my legs to coot off, the Committee of Public Safety might last a bit longer." Well, I think that's a really good line. Damian, 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, Luneu. 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 eye witness account. Damian, just before he was executed, was told that his wife had been arrested. And he was devastated. He fought with the executioners on the scaffold until the shirt had almost been ripped from his body, and they have to force him into the guillotine. And then Don Tongo's last, he cuts this incredibly defiant figure, that amazing last line. Don't forget to show my head to the people. It will be worth it. Very fitting epitaph. And finally, Lucille, Damian, she was guillotine to be later, and she were very affecting last letter to her mother before she died. Good night, Damian. A tear falls from my eyes. It is for you. I am going to sleep in the tranquility of innocence." So that's that. Don Tongo is 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, because 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 Eber, on as it were, the left go to the guillotine, and you've seen Don Ton, 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 Robespierre, apparently at his peak, there are signs that this cannot last, and people who think this can last. And there's a story that when Don Ton was on his way to the guillotine, in the tumbre, he looked up and as they went past Robespierre'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 brain of terror. So next week, two episodes to finish this series. First of all, the apotheosis of Robespierre, as he climbs yet another Papier Mache 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 favourite 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, Ovoix, Ovoix. 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 "The Rest is History". So we've got Genghis Khan, we have Cyrus the Great, we have Mary Antoinette 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 dawn your very best First World War generals Moustache and to decide whether you are on the side of the heroes or the villains. A history 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 till the day you die. Goodbye!