He identifies two factions. One the Danton-Desmoulins faction which would push
us towards weakness but another faction which would lead towards excess.
And in the following weeks, Robespierre and his allies
within the convention, move against both of those factions.
First of all, a faction connected with Jacques Hebert, who's effectively
the town clerk, the municipal officer of the city of Paris, who
with his allies, is pushing the Committee of Public Safety to
take even more radical action on
the economy and against counter revolutionaries.
And in March, 1794, The Hebertistes as they're called, the
most militant of the sans-culottes, are
arrested, sent to the revolutionary tribunal,
and effectively found guilty of being counter-revolutionary, in the
sense that they're undermining the unity of the Republic
and sent to the guillotine. And this remarkable contemporary
image of the cart taking them towards the guillotine.
And then immediately thereafter the revolutionary tribunal tries Danton
and Desmoulins in the most famous political trials of the Revolution,
where effectively they are accused of malpractice, of financial
corruption, possibly in the case of Danton there was real veracity to that charge.
But above all, they're accused of undermining the unity of the government,
the unity of the Republic, of
being in league objectively with the counter-revolution.
Robspierre is most reluctant to sign their arrest warrants but in the end he does.
And this sketch is done of Danton, on his
way to the guillotine on the 6th of April, 1794.
For Robespierre in particular, this is a difficult
moment because Danton is a close friend and ally.
A few years earlier at the marriage of Camille and
Lucile Desmoulins, Robespierre had been the main witness at the marriage.
He was young Horace's Godfather, but he argues that such is the
situation in April 1794 that they effectively need to be placed on trial.