Editing Georges Danton (section)

==Reign of Terror==
[[File:Georges-Jacques Danton.jpg|thumb|According to a biographer, "Danton's height was colossal, his make athletic, his features strongly marked, coarse, and displeasing; his voice shook the domes of the halls".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/monthlyreview24grifgoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/monthlyreview24grifgoog/page/n398 386]|quote=danton height looks.|title=The Monthly Review|publisher=Printed for R. Griffiths|year=1814|access-date=25 February 2009}}</ref>]]
[[File:DantonSpeaking.jpg|thumb|Danton addressing the Convention]]

On 6 September, Danton refused to take a seat in the Committee of Public Safety, declaring that he would join no committee, but would be a spur to them all.<ref name="R.R. Palmer 1970 p. 256">R.R. Palmer (1970) The Twelve who ruled, p. 256</ref> He believed a stable government was needed which could resist the orders of the Committee of Public Safety.<ref>''Histoire de la revolution Française'', Volume 8, by Jules Michelet, pp. 33–34, 53</ref> On 10 October, Danton, who had been dangerously ill for a few weeks,<ref>Feuille du salut public 4 octobre 1793, p.</ref> quit politics, and set off to [[Arcis-sur-Aube]] with his 16-year-old wife, who had pitied Marie Antoinette since her trial began.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Danton |title=Georges Danton &#124; French revolutionary leader |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |date=23 October 2023 |access-date=1 October 2019 |archive-date=15 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150615022050/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Danton |url-status=live }}</ref>  On 18 November, after the arrest of [[François Chabot]], [[Edme-Bonaventure Courtois]] urged Danton to come back to Paris to again play a role in politics.

On 22 November, Danton attacked religious persecution and demanded frugality with human lives. He tried to weaken the Terror by attacking [[Jacques René Hébert]]. On 3 December, Robespierre accused Danton of feigning an illness with the intention to emigrate to Switzerland, declaring that Danton showed too often his vices and not his virtue. Robespierre was stopped in his attack. The gathering was closed after thunderous applause for Danton.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34452336z/date1793|title=Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel – Year available1793 – Gallica|website=gallica.bnf.fr|access-date=27 February 2020|archive-date=3 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803192002/https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34452336z/date1793|url-status=live}}</ref> Danton maintained that he had absolutely no intention of breaking the revolutionary impulse.<ref>Soboul, A. (1975) De Franse Revolutie dl I, 1789-1793, p. 308.</ref>

On 9 December, Danton became embroiled in a scandal concerning the bankruptcy proceedings of the [[Louis XIV's East India Company|French East India Company]], when it was discovered that directors of the company had bribed certain government officials to allow the company to liquidate its own assets, rather than the government controlling the process.<ref>Soboul, A. (1975) De Franse Revolutie dl I, 1789–1793, p. 310.</ref> By December, a Dantonist party had been formed in support of Danton's more moderate views and his insistence on clemency for those who had violated the Committee for Public Safety's increasingly arbitrary and draconian "counter-revolutionary" measures.<ref name="R.R. Palmer 1970 p. 256"/> On 25 December (5 [[Nivôse]], year II) Robespierre replied to Danton's plea for an end to the Terror.

The [[French National Convention]] during the autumn of 1793 began to assert its authority further throughout France, creating the bloodiest period of the French Revolution, during which some historians assert approximately 40,000 people were killed in France.<ref>{{cite book |last=Greer |first=Donald |title=The Incidence of the Terror During the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |location=Cambridge, MA |year=1935 |isbn=978-0-8446-1211-9}}</ref> Following the fall of the [[Girondins]], a group known as the [[Indulgents]] would emerge from amongst the [[The Mountain|Montagnards]] as the legislative right within the convention, with Danton as their most vocal leader. Having long supported the progressive acts of the [[Committee of Public Safety]], Danton would begin to propose that the Committee retract legislation instituting terror as "the order of the day."<ref>{{cite web |last=French National Convention |title=Terror is the Order of the Day |date=5 September 1793 |url=http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/416/ |access-date=22 January 2012 |archive-date=3 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120203165347/http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/416/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

On 26 February 1794, Saint-Just delivered a speech before the Convention in which he directed the assault against Danton, claiming that the Dantonists wanted to slow down the Terror and the Revolution. It seems Danton became exasperated by Robespierre's repeated references to virtue. On 6 March, [[Barère]] attacked the [[Hébertists]] and Dantonists.

While the Committee of Public Safety was concerned with strengthening the centralist policies of the convention and its own grip over that body, Danton was in the process of devising a plan that would effectively move popular sentiment among delegates towards a more moderate stance.<ref>{{cite book |last=Andress |first=David |title=The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France |url=https://archive.org/details/terror00andr |url-access=registration |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |year=2005 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/terror00andr/page/256 256] |isbn=978-0-374-53073-0}}</ref> This meant adopting values popular among the [[sans-culottes]], notably the control of bread prices that had seen drastic increase with the famine that was being experienced throughout France. Danton also proposed that the Convention begin taking actions towards peace with foreign powers, as the committee had declared war on the majority of European powers, such as Britain, Spain, and Portugal.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}} Danton made a triumphant speech announcing the end of the Terror.{{sfn|Schama|1989|p=816-817}} As Robespierre listened, he was convinced that Danton was pushing for leadership in a post-Terror government. If Robespierre did not counter-attack quickly, the Dantonists could seize control of the National Convention and bring an end to his Republic of Virtue.{{citation needed|date=December 2024}}

The [[Reign of Terror]] was not a policy that could be easily transformed. Indeed, it would eventually continue past the [[Thermidorian Reaction]] (27 July 1794), when some members of the Convention rose against the committee, executed its leaders, and placed power in the hands of new men with a new policy{{snd}}to dissolve Jacobinism (White Terror). However, in [[Germinal (French Republican Calendar)|Germinal]]{{snd}}that is, in March 1794{{snd}}the anti-Terror sentiment had not yet reached critical mass. The committees were still too strong to be overthrown, and Danton, heedless, instead of striking with vigor in the convention, waited to be struck. "In these latter days", wrote Morley in the [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition]], "a certain discouragement seems to have come over his spirit".{{sfn|Morley|1911|p=819}} Danton remarried, and, Morley continues, "the rumour went that he was allowing domestic happiness to tempt him from the keen incessant vigilance proper to the politician in such a crisis."

Ultimately, Danton himself would become a victim of the Terror. In attempting to shift the direction of the revolution by collaborating with [[Camille Desmoulins]] on the production of ''[[Le Vieux Cordelier]]''{{snd}}a newspaper that called for the end of the official Terror and Dechristianization, as well as for launching new peace overtures to France's enemies{{snd}}Danton had placed himself in a precarious position. Those most closely associated with the Committee of Public Safety, among them key figures such as [[Maximilien Robespierre]] and [[Georges Couthon]], would eventually indict Danton for counter-revolutionary activities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Andress |first=David |title=The Terror: The Merciless Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary France |url=https://archive.org/details/terror00andr |url-access=registration |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |year=2005 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/terror00andr/page/271 271] |isbn=978-0-374-53073-0}}</ref>