Georges Danton

Georges Jacques Danton: Portrait (oil on canvas) by Constance Marie Charpentier , 1792

Georges Jacques Danton (born October 26, 1759 in Arcis-sur-Aube , Département Aube , † April 5, 1794 in Paris ) was a French revolutionary and politician who was Minister of Justice and head of the first welfare committee during the French Revolution . This made him one of the leading figures in the First French Republic . Because he spoke out against the continuation of the reign of terror that he had helped to install , he was executed in 1794 as an alleged conspirator against the revolution .

Life

Early years

Danton came from a middle-class family. His father was Jacques Danton, tax agent, and his mother Madeleine was born Camus. He was the sixth of seven surviving children of the couple. When he was two years old, his father died. In 1770 his mother married the owner of a cotton mill, Jean Recordain. As a boy he had two accidents with cattle, one of which left him with a split, bulging upper lip and a dented nose. The smallpox had also left scars on his face. He first attended school in Sézanne and then left home at the age of thirteen to enter the seminary in Troyes ; In addition, he took part in the school lessons of the local oratorians . In July 1775 he emigrated to Reims on his own to attend the royal ordination of Louis XVI. to participate. In 1775 he left school and seminary. What he did over the next five years is not recorded.

In 1780 he went to Paris and became a clerk for a lawyer at the parlement . Here he got to know the practice of French law and also read the common educational literature of his time. In 1784 he passed the legal exam in Reims and was henceforth allowed to call himself a lawyer . For 1788 he is mentioned in the registers of the Masonic Lodge Neuf Sœurs , but the date of his accession is unknown and the extent of his Masonic activities and contacts is disputed.

In 1787 he bought the clientele and the title of one of 73 lawyers at the Conseils du Roi from the lawyer Charles-Nicolas Huet for 68,000 livres . These courts corresponded to today's court of cassation in France and the Conseil d'État . Most of the money he had to borrow, with relatives from Arcis and his future father-in-law helping him. In addition, Danton had to take another legal examination of a speech given in Latin on a given topic, which he succeeded in July 1787. Then he was able to install himself as a lawyer. Until the repurchase of all the offices he had bought in 1791, “maitre d'Anton”, as he now called himself (the inserted apostrophe should suggest a title of nobility), led 22 trials at the conseils du Roi . This activity enabled him and his family - he had married in June 1787 - an adequate life in a six-room apartment in the rue des Cordeliers , only a few houses away from Jean Paul Marat .

In the early days of the French Revolution

In July 1789 he volunteered for the Garde nationale in the Paris district of the Cordeliers, to whose president he was elected in October. After the abolition of the districts in 1790, he got involved with Camille Desmoulins and Jean Paul Marat in the radical Club des Cordeliers , and a little later he began to attend the Jacobin Club .

Danton took part after the failed escape of King Louis XVI. as a committed advocate of a republic at a meeting on the Marsfeld , which on July 17, 1791 demanded the overthrow of the king and the introduction of the republic in a collection of signatures . Government soldiers fired into the crowd. This event became known as the Field of Mars massacre . The police wanted Danton as a co-organizer, but escaped arrest by fleeing, first to Arcis-sur-Aube, then to London , from where he returned for the elections to the National Legislative Assembly in September 1791. Danton was elected as the elector of the Paris Théâtre Français section. In the same year he was elected Deputy Public Prosecutor of the Paris Commune. The historian Albert Soboul (1914–1982) was convinced that Danton was “bought by the court”, but he had made no major concessions.

First governance

According to his own information, Danton played an essential role in the assault on the Tuileries and in the imprisonment of the royal family on August 10, 1792 through written and oral propaganda. On the same day he took over the post of Justice Minister in the majority Girondin Executive Council, where he soon became a dominant one Role played. During the First Coalition War , he advocated resolute resistance against the invading forces. Against Interior Minister Jean-Marie Roland de La Platière he got the government to stay in Paris and not to flee to the safer area south of the Loire . During the September murders of 1792 he did not intervene: According to Madame Roland , he declared that he was completely indifferent to the fate of the prison inmates. In September 1792 Danton was elected as a member of the National Convention for Paris , whereupon he resigned his ministerial office on October 9.

In the National Convention

Jacques-Louis David : Danton . Sketch from 1793

In the National Convention, Danton first sought a balance between the parties, the mountain party and the ruling Girondins. However, these tried to destroy the opposition and raised allegations of corruption against the former Minister Danton, which is why he moved closer to the democratic opposition. In the debate about whether the former King Louis XVI. should be executed, Danton did not take part because he was visiting General Charles-François Dumouriez in Belgium. In the vote in the Convention, he voted for the death penalty.

On January 31, 1793, Danton spoke out in favor of the annexation of Belgium and other areas:

“France’s borders are mapped out by nature . We will reach them in four directions: on the ocean, on the Rhine, on the Alps, on the Pyrenees. "

After Dumouriez's failures and betrayal, he called for increased military efforts, as in the previous year. On March 9, 1793, he endorsed the demand of several sections for an extraordinary tribunal to try hostile agents inside: Alluding to the September murders, he exclaimed: “We must do what the Legislative Assembly has not done: we must be terrible in order to spare the people from being. ”On March 10, the Convention decided against the votes of the Girondins who accused Danton of striving for dictatorship , the later so-called revolutionary tribunals. His further proposal to set up a committee with extensive executive powers was initially rejected. Because Danton had recently been sent to Dumouriez as a delegate from the Convention, the Girondins accused him of making common cause with the general; Danton cleverly turned the charge around on April 1, thus contributing to the decline of the Girondins.

On April 6, 1793, the welfare committee proposed by Danton was finally set up, in which Danton became a dominant member.

Second governance

After the violent overthrow of the Girondins by the uprising of the Parisian sans-culottes from May 31 to June 2, 1793 , he finally allied himself with the mountain party. "Without the cannons of May 31, without the uprising, the conspirators would triumph," he exclaimed on June 13, 1793. Despite his effective rhetoric, the specific countermeasures taken by Danton's welfare committee remained ineffectual and unsuccessful. His attempts to find a solution to the crisis through diplomatic negotiations with the British Foreign Minister Lord Grenville quickly failed and led him to suspect Cordeliers of planning to release the captured Marie Antoinette . This led to the break between Danton and his followers and the Cordeliers. When the welfare committee was elected on July 10, 1793, he was not re-elected.

Renewed activity in the National Convention

Instead, he took over the chairmanship of the National Convention on July 25th. In this position, Danton asked in a speech on August 1, 1793, in view of the threats to the revolution from the coalition war and the uprising of the Vendée, to set up the welfare committee of the National Convention as an emergency government . In it he again called for terrorist measures against the enemies of the revolution and an increased effort in war. When the terreur actually got going , Danton tried to moderate. So he had the number of weekly meetings of the Paris sections limited. After the welfare committee had actually received the unrestricted powers it required on October 10, Danton retired to Arcis-sur-Aube for several weeks.

Fall and death

The order to arrest Danton and his friends with the signatures of some members of the welfare committee.

When Danton returned to Paris in November 1793, the Hébertist campaign for radical de-Christianization was in full swing. Danton expressed solidarity with Robespierre , who opposed this movement. Under the guidance of Camille Desmoulins , editor of the Vieux cordelier , the Dantonists polemicized against the Hébertists and the radical revolutionaries, whom they accused of being agents of British Prime Minister William Pitt . The attacks were also indirectly targeted against the government and terrorism, which no longer seemed necessary after the military situation had calmed down. On December 1, 1793, Danton declared that the sans-culottes , who had repeatedly intervened in politics armed with pikes , had now played out:

"We have to be aware that one can overthrow with the pike, but that the building of society can only be reached and firmly anchored with the compass of reason and spirit."

Because of this, Robespierre disparagingly called Danton and his followers indulgents (the indulgent). Albert Soboul suspects that with this two-pronged policy of his supporters Danton wanted to split the welfare committee and thereby limit its power. Perhaps he also tried to save personal friends who are said to have been involved in the so-called conspiracy abroad or, like Fabre d'Églantine, in the corruption affair surrounding the dissolution of the French East India Company . His demand to hear her before a conviction earned him renewed suspicions even in January 1794.

In March 1794, the Welfare Committee put an end to the polemics between the Dantonists, who advocated a moderation of terrorism, and the Hébertists, who called for it to be aggravated by having the latter sentenced to death. Before Jacques-René Hébert was executed , he also decided to arrest Danton and his supporters. Your mouthpiece, the Vieux cordelier , was no longer allowed to appear. Robespierre declared that, together with the Hébertists they fought, the Dantonists were part of the “foreign conspiracy”, the aim of which was to defeat France in the coalition war. Despite repeated warnings, Danton, who was on a short vacation in Sèvres , returned to Paris on March 29th because he could not imagine that the terror would be directed against himself: "Ils n'oseront pas!", " they won't dare ”, he is reported to have said repeatedly.

On March 30, 1794, Danton was arrested together with Desmoulins, Jean-François Delacroix and Pierre Philippeaux and initially taken to the Luxembourg prison . On the same day, criticism of the arrests was initially voiced in the National Convention, which Robespierre silenced with threats:

"I claim that whoever trembles at this moment is guilty, for innocence has nothing to fear from public surveillance."

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just presented the allegations against the Dantonists in context: Both factions , Hébert's “false patriots” and Danton's indulgent, were in truth pursuing the same goal, namely to reverse the revolution, despite all the contradictions. There are only two political directions in France, the true patriots and the corrupt “accomplices from abroad”. Saint-Just reviewed the not always consistent actions and omissions of Danton and his personal relationships since 1790 in detail, interpreting them all as evidence of counterrevolutionary conspiracy and corruption:

"I am convinced that this faction of the indulgent is connected with all others, that it was always hypocritical, first sold to the new dynasty, then to all factions [...] It is clear that they were pursuing the goal, the end of the to bring about the current regime, and it is obvious that it was the monarchy that they wanted to put in its place! "

The Convention then voted unanimously to indict Danton and his friends as royalist conspirators.

The arrested have now been transferred to the conciergerie . Against his stated intention to defend himself, Danton was assigned a public defender. In the trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which opened on April 2 under the chairmanship of Martial Herman in the Salle de la Liberté of the Palace of Justice , he mostly agreed with the prosecutor Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville . Among the fourteen defendants were Danton and his supporters mentioned above, Fabre d'Eglatine, General François-Joseph Westermann , who had put down the Vendée uprising , the MP Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles and some bribed convention MPs , alleged agents of the Foreign and speculators. This combination of political and financial crimes should guarantee a guilty verdict. The judges had been threatened with punishment if they showed gentleness, and instead of the usual twelve there were only seven jurors , as no one else could be found for the delicate task of trying the popular revolutionary.

During the trial, Danton gave sarcastic bon mots: When asked about his place of residence at the beginning, he replied: “Soon in nowhere, then in the pantheon of history! What does it matter to me! ”He demanded that witnesses be summoned and that a committee be formed in the Convention to investigate the dictatorial system of the welfare committee. On April 3, he delivered a large-scale defense speech in which he denied all charges of the prosecution and presented himself as a resolute and unselfish fighter for the revolution. Since the protocol of the process is considered unreliable, there is no certainty about the exact content of its statements. However, he seems to have succeeded in getting the audience on his side. Judge Herman interrupted Danton's speech after a few hours and suggested that the remainder be postponed until the following day. Danton agreed, but was not allowed to speak again the following day. First the testimony of other defendants was heard, then a messenger brought a ruling by the Convention according to which "any conspirator who opposes the jurisdiction of the nation or insults it [...] could be excluded from the meeting". This decision, urgently requested by Fouquier-Tinville and Herman, was passed through Parliament by Saint-Just without debate. Herman used it on April 5 when the defendants vehemently protested Fouquier-Tinville's proposal to end the hearing early if the jury declared they were adequately informed. All of the defendants were brought back to the conciergerie. In the courtroom, an alleged piece of evidence was subsequently presented: a letter from an English agent found in Danton's apartment from September 1793 instructing a banker to reward “CD” for counter-revolutionary services. That could be "citoyen Danton", but also "Camille Desmoulins", the assignment is not certain. The jury now declared that they were adequately informed and found all fourteen defendants guilty; according to Danton's biographer Frédéric Bluche, a clear judicial murder .

Pierre-Alexandre Wille : Danton on the way to the scaffold . Drawing from 1794.

Plaque in rue Monceau commemorating the burial place of those guillotined during the terrorism

The death sentence was read to the accused by a bailiff in prison, after which they were transported on carts to the Place de la Révolution , where the guillotine stood. Danton was the last of the fourteen to climb the scaffold. His last words are said to have been addressed to the executioner Charles Henri Sanson : “Above all, do not forget to show my head to the people; it is good to look at ”. His body was buried in a mass grave on the Cimetière des Errancis in the 8th arrondissement . Danton was 34 years old.

Private life

In 1787 he married Antoinette Charpentier, the daughter of the landlord in the Café de l'Ecole, where he frequented during his time as a lawyer. With her he had three sons, the eldest died at the age of one. Antoinette Danton died on February 12, 1793, giving birth to her fourth child, who also did not survive. On June 17, 1793, Danton married Sebastienne-Louise Gely, who was just sixteen, who outlived her husband by decades. She died in 1856.

effect

In the historiography of the Third Republic , namely in the work of François-Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928), Danton was transfigured into a hero and positive counterpart to Robespierre because of his vitality and his rejection of revolutionary violence. Albert Mathiez (1874-1932) contradicted him , who assessed Robespierre and his social Jacobinism more positively and worked out the socio-historical Movens behind the personal conflict between the two men . Former Prime Minister Louis Barthou presented a biography of Danton in 1932, which again portrayed the revolutionary in a very positive light.

During the Third Republic, several monuments to Danton were created, for example in his birthplace in 1888, in Paris on Boulevard Saint-Germain in 1891 or Edmond Desca's statue in Tarbes from 1903.

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  Monument in Arcis-sur-Aube

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  Monument in Paris

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  Monument in Tarbes

His fate is the subject of Georg Büchner's drama Dantons Tod , the drama Danton by Romain Rolland and the novel Brothers by Hilary Mantel . It is the subject of several film adaptations. In Victor Hugo's historical novel 1793 from 1874, a fictional argument between Dantons and Robespierre and Marat is described, which is said to have taken place in June 1793. In it, Danton advocates the thesis that the greatest threat to the republic comes from the Prussian and Austrian invasion troops, while Robespierre feared the Vendée uprising and an English invasion, while Marat feared domestic conspiracies and treason the most. Marat also insults Danton as corrupt.

Danton is also the subject of the French period film of the same name from 1983, directed by Poland's Andrzej Wajda, with Gérard Depardieu in the lead role.

Works

• Hector Fleischmann (Ed.): Discours Civiques de Danton. Avec une introduction et des notes . Bibliothèque-Charpentier. Paris 1920 ( online in Project Gutenberg ).

literature

• Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Librairie Académique Perrin, Paris 1984. (German: Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-608-93105-8 )
• Norman Hampson: Danton. Blackwell, Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-631-16116-3 .
• Mona Ozouf : Danton. In: the same and François Furet (eds.): A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1989, pp. 213-223, ISBN 0-674-17728-2 .

Web links

Commons : Georges Jacques Danton  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Georges Danton  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Georges Danton in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 14 f.
2. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 15.
3. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 16 ff.
4. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 18 ff.
5. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 22 ff .; Monique Cara, Jean-Marc Cara and Marc de Jode: Dictionnaire universel de la Franc-Maçonnerie . Larousse, Paris 2011, sv Georges Danton .
6. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 25-33.
7. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 227.
8. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 228.
9. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 229.
10. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 230.
11. ↑ »Les limits de la France sont marquées par la nature. Nous les atteindrons dans leurs quatre points: à l'Océan, au Rhin, aux Alpes, aux Pyrénées «. Hector Fleischmann (Ed.): Discours Civiques de Danton. Avec une introduction et des notes . Bibliothèque-Charpentier. Paris 1920, p. 48 ( online in Project Gutenberg , accessed April 6, 2014); see. Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 254.
12. ↑ »Faisons ce que n'a pas fait l'Assemblée législative; soyons terribles pour dispenser le peuple de l'être «. Hector Fleischmann (Ed.): Discours Civiques de Danton. Avec une introduction et des notes . Bibliothèque-Charpentier. Paris 1920, p. 64. ( online in Project Gutenberg, accessed April 6, 2014); quoted from Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 268 f.
13. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 264.
14. ↑ "Sans les canons du 31 mai, sans l'insurrection, les conspirateurs triomphaient" Hector Fleischmann (ed.): Discourse civiques de Danton. Avec une introduction et des notes . Bibliothèque-Charpentier. Paris 1920, p. 66 ( online in Project Gutenberg, accessed April 1, 2014).
15. ^ Hector Fleischmann (ed.): Discours Civiques de Danton. Avec une introduction et des notes . Bibliothèque-Charpentier. Paris 1920, p. 54 ( online in Project Gutenberg, accessed April 1, 2014).
16. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 330.
17. ↑ "Rappelons-nous que si c'est avec la pique que l'on renverse, c'est avec le compas de la raison du génie et qu'on peut élever et l'consolider édifice de la société". Hector Fleischmann (Ed.): Discours Civiques de Danton. Avec une introduction et des notes . Bibliothèque-Charpentier. Paris 1920, p. 208. ( online in Project Gutenberg, accessed April 6, 2014); quoted from Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 329.
18. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 325.
19. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 393.
20. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 394 f.
21. ↑ "Je dis que quiconque tremble en ce moment est coupable; car jamais l'innocence ne redoute la surveillance publique ”, quoted from Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 394 f.
22. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 398-403, there also the quotation.
23. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799) . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, p. 342; Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 405 f; Alexander Mikaberidze: Danton, Georges-Jacques . In: Gregory Fremont-Barnes (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Age of Political Revolutions and New Ideologies, 1760-1815 . Greenwood Prsee, Westport CT 2007, p. 183.
24. ↑ "Bientôt dans le néant, ensuite dans le Panthéon de l'Histoire! M'importe peu! ”Quoted from Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 407.
25. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 408-418, the quotation on p. 416.
26. ↑ “N'oublie pas surtout de montrer ma tête au peuple; elle est bonne à voir ”. Quoted from Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 408-418, the quotation on p. 419 f.
27. ^ Frédéric Bluche: Danton. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 24 f.
28. ↑ Uwe Schütte: The Poetics of the Extreme. Rioting in a radical language . Vandenhoeck and Rupprecht, Göttingen 2006, p. 196, note 50.
29. ↑ Michel Vovelle: The French Revolution. Social movement and upheaval in mentalities . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 61 f.
30. ↑ Louis Barthou: Danton . Albin Michel, Paris 1932.

predecessor	Office	successor
Étienne Louis Hector Dejoly	Minister of Justice of France August 10, 1792 to October 9, 1792	Dominique Joseph Garat
Jeanbon St. André	President of the French National Convention 25 July 1793 to 8 August 1793	Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles