tempestuous emergencies which arose in such appalling succession. His distinction was that he accepted the insurrectionary forces, instead of blindly denouncing them as the Girondins had done. After these forces had shaken down the throne, and then, by driving away the Girondins, had made room for a vigorous government, Danton perceived the expediency of making all haste to an orderly state. Energetic prosecution of the war, and gradual conciliation of civil hatreds, had been, as we have said, the two marks of his policy ever since the fall of the monarchy. The first of these objects was fulfilled abundantly, partly owing to the energy with which he called for the arming of the whole nation against its enemies. His whole mind was now given to the second of them. But the second of them, alas, was desperate.
It was to no purpose that, both in his own action and in the writings of Camille Desmoulins (Le Vieux Cordelier), of whom he was now and always the intimate and inspirer, he worked against the iniquities of the bad men, like Carrier and Collot d’Herbois, in the provinces, and against the severity of the revolutionary tribunal in Paris. The black flood could not at a word or in an hour subside from its storm-lashed fury. The commune of Paris was now composed of men like Hébert and Chaumette, to whom the restoration of any sort of political order was for the time indifferent. They wished to push destruction to limits which even the most ardent sympathizers with the Revolution condemn now, and which Danton condemned then, as extravagant and senseless. Those men were not politicians, they were fanatics; and Danton, who was every inch a politician, though of a vehement type, had as little in common with them as John Calvin of Geneva had with John of Leiden and the Münster Anabaptists. The committee watched Hébert and his followers uneasily for many weeks, less perhaps from disapproval of their excesses than from apprehensions of their hostility to the committee’s own power. At length the party of the commune proposed to revolt against the Convention and the committees. Then the blow was struck, and the Hébertists were swiftly flung into prison, and thence under the knife of the guillotine (March 24th, 1794). The execution of the Hébertists was the first victory of the revolutionary government over the extreme insurrectionary party. But the committees had no intention to concede anything to their enemies on the other side. If they refused to follow the lead of the anarchists of the commune, they were none the more inclined to give way to the Dantonian policy of clemency. Indeed, such a course would have been their own instant and utter ruin. The Terror was not a policy that could be easily transformed. A new policy would have to be carried out by new men, and this meant the resumption of power by the Convention, and the death of the Terrorists. In Thermidor 1794 such a revolution did take place, with those very results. But in Germinal feeling was not ripe. The committees were still too strong to be overthrown. And Danton seems to have shown a singular heedlessness. Instead of striking by vigour in the Convention, he waited to be struck. In these later days a certain discouragement seems to have come over his spirit. His wife had died during his absence on one of his expeditions to the armies; he had now married again, and 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. He must have known that he had enemies. When the Jacobin club was “purified” in the winter, Danton’s name would have been struck out as a moderate if Robespierre had not defended him. The committees had deliberated on his arrest soon afterwards, and again it was Robespierre who resisted the proposal. Yet though he had been warned of the lightning that was thus playing round his head, Danton did not move. Either he felt himself powerless, or he rashly despised his enemies. At last Billaud Varenne, the most prominent spirit of the committee after Robespierre, succeeded in gaining Robespierre over to his designs against Danton. Robespierre was probably actuated by the motives of selfish policy which soon proved the greatest blunder of his life. The Convention, aided by Robespierre and the authority of the committee, assented with ignoble unanimity. On the 30th of March Danton, Desmoulins and others of the party were suddenly arrested. Danton displayed such vehemence before the revolutionary tribunal, that his enemies feared lest he should excite the crowd in his favour. The Convention, in one of its worst fits of cowardice, assented to a proposal made by St Just that, if a prisoner showed want of respect for justice, the tribunal might pronounce sentence without further delay. Danton was at once condemned, and led, in company with fourteen others, including Camille Desmoulins, to the guillotine (April 5th, 1794). “I leave it all in a frightful welter,” he said; “not a man of them has an idea of government. Robespierre will follow me; he is dragged down by me. Ah, better be a poor fisherman than meddle with the government of men!”
Events went as Danton foresaw. The committees presently came to quarrel with the pretensions of Robespierre. Three months after Danton, Robespierre fell. His assent to the execution of Danton had deprived him of the single great force that might have supported him against the committee. The man who had “saved France from Brunswick” might perhaps have saved her from the White reaction of 1794.
Bibliography.—Sources for the life of Danton abound in the national archives and in the columns of the Moniteur. His Œuvres were published by A. Vermorel (Paris, 1866), and his speeches are included in H. Morse Stephens’ Principal Speeches of the Statesmen and Orators of the French Revolution (vol. ii., Oxford, 1892); cf. F. V. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention (Danton and his group; 2 vols., 1885–1886). The charges of corruption freely brought against Danton by contemporaries were accepted by many historians, and he has been persistently accused of instigating or at least abetting, by failure to use the power he possessed, the September massacres. A minute examination of the evidence by F. V. Aulard and J. F. E. Robinet in France, followed by A. H. Beesly in England, has placed his career and his character in a fairer light. The chief books on Danton’s life are:—A. Bougeart, Danton, documents pour servir à l’histoire de la Révolution française (Brussels, 1861); J. F. E. Robinet, Danton, mémoire sur sa vie privée (Paris, 1865), Le Procès des Dantonistes (Paris, 1879), Danton émigré (Paris, 1887), Danton, homme d’état (Paris, 1889); F. V. Aulard, Hist. pol. de la Rév. fr. (Paris, 1901), and Danton (Paris, 1887); A. Dubost, Danton et la politique contemporaine (Paris, 1880); A. H. Beesly, Life of Danton (1899, new ed. 1906); H. Belloc, Danton (1899). There is a short “Life of Danton” in Morse Stephens’ Principal Speeches, cited above. See also C. F. Warwick, Danton and the French Revolution (1909). (J. Mo.)
DANUBE (Ger. Donau, Hungarian Duna, Rumanian Dunarea, Lat. Danubius or Danuvius, and in the lower part of its course Ister), the most important river of Europe as regards the volume of its outflow, but inferior to the Volga in length and in the area of its drainage. It originates at Donaueschingen in the Black Forest, where two mountain streams, the Brigach and the Brege, together with a third stream from the Palace Gardens, unite at an elevation of 2187 ft. above the sea to form the Danube so called. From this point it runs in an easterly direction until it falls into the Black Sea some 1750 m. from its source, being the only European river of importance with a course from west to east. Its basin, which comprises a territory of nearly 300,000 sq. m., is bounded by the Black Forest, some of the minor Alpine ranges, the Bohemian Forest and the Carpathian Mountains on the north, and by the Alps and the Balkan range on the south. From the point where the Danube first becomes navigable, i.e. at its junction with the Iller at Ulm (1505 ft. above sea-level), it is fed by at least 300 tributaries, the principal of which on the right bank are the Inn, the Drave and the Save; while on the left bank are the Theiss or Tisza, the Olt, the Sereth and the Pruth. These seven rivers have a total length of 2920 m. and drain one half of the basin of the Danube.
The course of this mighty river is rich in historical and political associations. For a long period it formed the frontier of the Roman empire; near Eining (above Regensburg) was the ancient Abusina, which for nearly five centuries was the chief Roman outpost against the northern Historical and political associations.barbarians. Traces of Trajan’s wall still exist between that point and Wiesbaden, while another line of fortifications bearing the same emperor’s name are found in the Dobrudja between Cernavoda (on the lower Danube) and Constantza. At intervening points are still found many notable Roman remains, such as Trajan’s road, a marvellous work on the
