REVOLUTIONARY TYPES
 
 REVOLUTIONARY 
 TYPES 
 
 BY 
 
 IDA A. TAYLOR 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'LIFE OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD* AND 
 'SIR WALTER RALEIGH 1 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
 LONDON 
 DUCKWORTH and CO. 
 
 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 
 1904
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 2082983 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, BY R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, . . vii 
 
 JOHN PYM, i 
 
 THOMAS HARRISON, 29 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON, 55 
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD, 84 
 
 Louis ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST, 117 
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE, 146 
 
 JOHN MITCHEL, 167 
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48, 194 
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS, 229 
 
 CONCLUSION, 255
 
 The Author has to thank the Editor of TEMPLE 
 BAR^r permission to use the article on ' Toussaint 
 UOuverture?
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 WOMEN in the past having been more bound by 
 convention than men, it is natural that revolution 
 and revolutionists should interest them. 
 
 They seem to feel instinctively, even when 
 unaware of it themselves, that they have all to 
 gain by alteration of existing laws. 
 
 The present writer is no exception to the rule. 
 
 Moreover, in a valedictory chapter, which has 
 made my preface quite uncalled for, she has not 
 only nailed her revolutionary colours to the mast, 
 in a passage of great faith and beauty, but to 
 paraphrase an ancient Scottish story, she ' has 
 taken the word o' God oot o' the minister's mooth. 5 
 The Types cover all the revolutionary gallery 
 that is, if, as some assert, Saint-Just was a 
 socialist, for Harrison (would the Type selected 
 had been honest Colonel Lilburne) was clearly 
 an anarchist. 
 
 He who wishes to see Christ's kingdom upon 
 earth, the Rule of the Saints, the Fifth Monarchy 
 in operation, or what not, is almost certain to be 
 an anarchist. 
 
 vii
 
 viii REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 To him quite naturally all women's political 
 hearts go out, for there is none of your damned 
 logic about the position he assumes. 
 
 Now the enslavement of man by logic is as 
 incomprehensible to most women as the slavish 
 keeping of the plighted word appeared to the 
 Turkish pasha in the story. 
 
 It is strange but true, that the man of Christ's 
 kingdom upon earth should be an anarchist ; but 
 when we consider how many conventions would 
 have to be broken to superinduce the coming of 
 such a reign, it is easily understood that the 
 easiest way is to break them all at once. This, I 
 think, is the key to the enigma. Moreover, Christ 
 himself to the Philistines and the vast majority of 
 the Publicans (for one righteous Publican does not 
 make a heaven) must have appeared as a breaker 
 of all laws. 
 
 With the single exception of Washington, all 
 the Types presented by the writer died either 
 violent or miserable deaths. 
 
 But Washington, with all his virtues, never 
 appealed to the imaginative mind after his inhuman 
 refusal when a child to tell an almost necessary lie. 
 
 The rest, in their several degrees, all have their 
 interest, some, as Toussaint L'Ouverture and 
 Saint-Just, are amongst the most interesting of all 
 characters which history can present. 
 
 It is well, I think, in this age of self-content, and
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 when in England nothing appears less possible 
 than revolution, that this book should have been 
 written, if only to remind the public that the brand 
 is not extinct. 
 
 The thing that strikes me most about the men 
 whose characters I read of in the book, is the 
 extraordinary likeness that they present to ordinary 
 men when not immediately engaged, as it were, 
 on their work. Thus it is easy for almost any one 
 to be revolutionist, and it may be that many are 
 so, all unknown to themselves. 
 
 The thing wants no experience, there is neither 
 grammar to be learned nor technique to be 
 mastered. Nor is the revolutionary, as are the 
 poet and the orator, born and not made. 
 
 Take Toussaint L'Ouverture. Up to the age 
 of fifty-four (the age at which Columbus sailed 
 from Palos to make a revolution in geography) 
 he was a slave. As he said himself, ' J'ai M6 
 esclave, fose favouer. Mais je riai jamais essuyt 
 mme des reproches de la part de mes mattresS 
 Nothing more dignified was ever penned. Again 
 he says, ' We went to labour in the field, my wife 
 and I, hand in hand.' Nothing more like Arcadia 
 is to be read in the whole field of pastoral literature. 
 
 Yet, given the opportunity, he straight became 
 not only a revolutionary, but perhaps the noblest 
 revolutionary that the world has seen. 
 
 Millions of miles and seas unnavigable, with
 
 x REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 chains of mountains, compared to which Pichincha 
 piled on Kinchinjunja would appear mere warts, 
 part him from such a man as was Saint- Just or 
 Harrison. These, in their rage for man's regenera- 
 tion and Christ's reign, spared no one, but the 
 ex-slave, raised suddenly to power, a victor in the 
 field, adored by his whole race, and hemmed about 
 with enemies, never once lost his head. His 
 courage in the field was equalled by his rare talents 
 in administration, both were excelled by his rare 
 moderation and humanity. After him, the other 
 Types the book contains seem made of common 
 clay beside this figure in black kaolin. 
 
 Saint- Just, to whom the author has done the 
 fullest justice, has always seemed to me an over- 
 rated man. Bravery certainly he had, and youth, 
 but with his youth, his talents, and his valour, he 
 always strikes me as a 'poseur' ; one, of course, who 
 gave his head in payment of his ' pose,' but still 
 a man who, had he had his way, would by his 
 theories of liberty, have rendered life intolerable to 
 those who differed with him. 
 
 So many revolutionaries seem to think that 
 liberty is absolute, and that all men see liberty in 
 the same hue. Literally it has a hundred forms 
 and shades, and to force men to certain actions in 
 the name of liberty is as rank tyranny as the worst 
 actions of the worst Russian Czar or Turkish 
 autocrat. No better exposition of the case is to be
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 found than when the preacher by his right divine 
 made Scotland hell, all in the name of liberty, and 
 with the cry upon his lips of liberty, and of Christ's 
 Headship of the Church. I fear Saint- Just would 
 have been 'unco ill to live wi',' and so would many 
 of the Types the author writes about. 
 
 Fancy all England ruled by Harrison, with 
 every one forced into church or chapel to give 
 praises to the Lord, and to sing hymns to spiritual 
 liberty. 
 
 Per contra^ as the author lets us clearly see, 
 good General Harrison was very near a heathen in 
 the carnal part, a thing not seldom to be seen in 
 saints of his calibre, and which no doubt has com- 
 pensations to all those who look for liberty in a 
 loose life with Puritanic faith. 
 
 Strange are the quips and cranks and quiddities 
 of revolutionaries, as those of Mitchel, who, an 
 exile from his native country, and hating England 
 like the devil, had little sympathy for the revolu- 
 tionaries of other lands. All socialists he held in 
 execration, saying that they were worse than tigers, 
 or mere Turks ' when all 's confessed o' them,' and 
 was not, as it seems, averse to a good whiff of 
 healing gunpowder when they rebelled. Imperfect 
 sympathy, perhaps, and the false atmosphere of 
 local patriotism, which has oppressed so many 
 men, otherwise stout and true, in his case was to 
 blame. The rational pride of all men in their
 
 xii REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 native land is praiseworthy, but he who sees only 
 his native land, is blind or bourgeois, or at most a 
 tyrant who has not come into his rights, by reason 
 of the stronger tyrants who control the State. 
 
 Pym hardly was a revolutionary, and had he 
 lived, most probably the eccentricities of Harrison 
 and the Levellers would have induced him to 
 become a Royalist, or, at the least, have forced 
 him to retire to private life. 
 
 Still he is interesting as showing how men, the 
 mildest and most constitutional of men, once started 
 on the revolutionary road, go further than they 
 had intended, and seeing freedom in the distance, 
 one by one throw down the doors that once had 
 seemed as fixed as is the world. 
 
 Of Arnold, little can be said. A man of action, 
 thwarted and controlled by fools who never risked 
 their skin, much should be forgiven to him, for he 
 sinned much ; and yet imagination lingers round 
 him on his big black horse at Saratoga, where he 
 led the van. Washington, cool and unemotional 
 as we know he was, pitied and spoke for him, 
 and all Americans should, we might think, forgive 
 the man who, dying far from his country, called 
 for his war-stained uniform with his last breath 
 on earth. 
 
 The Roman tragedy of '48, with the Pope almost 
 drawn into the European maelstrom of revolu- 
 tionary thought, is interesting, and all true Catholics
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 should deplore the chance, once lost and not to be 
 regained, of the church universal, with the Pope 
 the shepherd of the poor. 
 
 Nothing in all the histories of the revolutions 
 of the world is more stirring to the blood than the 
 old tale, oft told, but well related by the author, and 
 with sympathy for the young patriotic regiment, 
 and Manara's death. 
 
 Young men, like women, have all to gain by 
 revolution, but commonly when they have either 
 aged or gained a step towards their goal they fall 
 into the rear. 
 
 Men such as Felix Pyat, who at seventy was 
 pulling down the column in the Place Vendome, 
 are usually more to be feared than youths, who 
 love revolution for itself and not for its results. 
 
 Socialist agitators say that one man who in 
 full work, upon a summer's evening, accepts their 
 teaching (after the concluding chapter of the books, 
 I think that I can say, ' accepts the light ') is worth 
 a dozen who at a strike upon a winter's day, hungry 
 and desperate, come and enrol their names. 
 
 Manara and his youthful band of heroes repre- 
 sent the eternal protest of the young, and in so 
 doing form a fitting contrast to the Pyms and 
 Washingtons, the reasoning revolutionaries of 
 middle age, with which the book begins. 
 
 It is significant that amongst the Types none 
 of the revolutionaries, with the exception of
 
 xiv REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Toussaint 1'Ouverture, are social rebels ; all the 
 rest are Brixton pure and simple men, honest 
 and true, who strive to substitute some form of 
 government for another, and would have been as 
 pleased to see the social fabric administered by 
 the possessing class as would have been the 
 veriest emperor, or millionaire. 
 
 Still, take them for all in all, undoubtedly they 
 were worth a whole wilderness of Liberal poli- 
 ticians, and their worst vices were as virtues 
 compared to the best qualities of those they strove 
 against. 
 
 They all had faith, and he who has it, in a 
 manner does possess the earth, as they all did 
 during their tossed and agitated lives. 
 
 That they died young and with their illusions 
 on them, or old, forsaken, disillusioned, but still 
 steadfast, is a detail ; even the worst of them the 
 traitor-patriot at the last, heard the old voices 
 calling, and departed in the faith. 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.
 
 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 JOHN PYM 
 
 1586-1643 
 
 THE statesman who, before Cromwell rose to pre- 
 eminence, more than any other, held the reins of 
 the English revolution and directed its course, was 
 John Pym. He it was to whom Clarendon paid 
 the high compliment of declaring that he had been 
 the man ' most able to do hurt that hath lived in 
 any time ' ; and his name has been said to have 
 gone out into the world as ' almost a synonym 
 for the Parliament of England.' 
 
 If there is a certain lack of interest attaching to 
 him, this last tribute of praise may supply a key to it. 
 There are figures apt, like those in an allegorical 
 play, to stand for attributes rather than for person- 
 ages of flesh and blood. Such a man will, in this 
 way, represent justice, another the monarchical 
 principle, a third tyranny or oppression ; and being 
 unconsciously regarded as the embodiment of an 
 abstract idea, they inevitably lose in human interest. 
 
 In this manner Pym might well be accepted as 
 the representative of constitutional liberty. To its 
 vindication his public life was dedicated ; while of 
 his private affairs so little is known that it would 
 be easier in his case than in most others to merge 
 the man in the politician. 
 
 A
 
 2 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 When studying the lives of the makers of history 
 it is indeed not difficult to overlook the supreme 
 significance to each of that vie intime carried on 
 alongside of the great events with which their 
 names are associated. Yet how little those events 
 the convulsions, it may be, which shook a hemi- 
 sphere must have mattered to the men themselves 
 in comparison with the joys or sorrows, the fears 
 and hopes and regrets, shared by the most obscure 
 of their contemporaries ; and how seldom, if the 
 truth were known, can the fate of an empire hold 
 its own against the paramount importance of a 
 personal experience. The success of a campaign 
 is of small account to the man who misses one 
 face from the returning battalion ; and Joab's 
 reproach ' If Absalom had lived, and all we had 
 died this day, then it had pleased thee weir- 
 might have been addressed to many, besides the 
 Jewish King, to whom the fate of a nation has 
 been as nothing in comparison with a single 
 worthless life. 
 
 Here and there it is true that exceptions will 
 occur. The abstract enthusiasm of the fanatic may 
 avail to dwarf individual issues. A saint or a patriot 
 may be content to lose his life, if so be that he may 
 find it ; or the consciousness of standing at the helm 
 and guiding the vessel may serve to modify the 
 domination of private interests. Yet, even in un- 
 expected quarters, proof enough is to be found of 
 the contrary. Of Oliver Cromwell we read, that 
 when his daughter lay dying, he was, for four- 
 teen days, ' unable to attend to any public business
 
 JOHN PYM 3 
 
 whatever ' the State, with its necessities, waiting 
 and watching with him meanwhile by her bedside ; 
 while who can doubt that to have had back the 
 young son, whose death ' went as a dagger to my 
 heart, indeed it did,' it would have seemed a little 
 thing to the man charged with the destinies of 
 England to relinquish all his greatness ? 
 
 In the case of Pym, the evidence available as to 
 his private affairs is chiefly that afforded by a 
 blank. Some blanks, however, are very significant ; 
 and the one in question, if it does not draw back 
 the veil covering that hidden portion of his life, 
 may at least bring home to us a wholesome sense 
 of our own ignorance, and serve to remind the 
 reader that any picture of the man, as we know 
 him, can only be one-sided. 
 
 In 1614, when he was thirty, Pym married. He 
 had already made his mark on public life ; had sat 
 in Parliament, and shared in the excitement of 
 practical politics. He had been singled out for 
 notice by the Earl of Bedford, prominent amongst 
 the Liberal leaders ; and, lastly, he had in all proba- 
 bility received the testimony to the position and 
 influence he had already achieved implied in a 
 first imprisonment. During the six years 1614 
 to 1620 covered by his brief married life, public 
 affairs were daily assuming a more menacing 
 aspect. The struggle between constitutional 
 liberty and despotism was becoming more and 
 more acute, the hostility between King and people 
 more marked. James was grovelling before Spain; 
 Raleigh's judicial murder had been accomplished.
 
 4 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 To a glance as keen and sagacious as that of the 
 future Puritan leader the approach of a great crisis, 
 a turning-point in the history of the nation, must 
 have been apparent. Yet for those six years, from 
 his marriage onwards till the death of his wife in 
 1620, he disappeared from public life. It is true that 
 no Parliament sat during the interval ; but employ- 
 ment and means of keeping themselves before the 
 public eye were not wanting to those who sought 
 them. Eliot, Pym's junior by six years, and who 
 entered upon Parliamentary life at the same time, 
 was Vice- Admiral of Devon ; Wentworth (after- 
 wards Lord Strafford), who had likewise sat with 
 him in the House, and still adhered to the popular 
 side in politics, had been made Keeper of the 
 Archives for the West Riding, a coveted and 
 important office. But there is no indication that 
 Pym asked or obtained any post, or that he busied 
 himself in public affairs. All that is known of the 
 interval, occurring when he was in the very prime 
 of manhood, is that it was spent, to quote a con- 
 temporary divine, in the companionship of 'a most 
 loving, holy, and helpfull wife ; whose learning 
 rare in that sex, whose virtues rarer in this age, 
 whose religion the rarest adornment of all the rest, 
 could not choose but level the sorrow of losing her 
 with the former comfort of enjoying her.' We 
 also know that she bore him five children before 
 she went her way hence. But of the rest of 
 that period no record remains. Not till after her 
 death does Pym reappear, as member for Calne, to 
 resume his place in the great struggle then going
 
 JOHN PYM 5 
 
 forward ; whether embittered by sorrow, or softened 
 by the memory of past happiness, none can tell, 
 any more than they can relate the story of that 
 interlude of love and peace. ' These years,' says 
 Pym's biographer, ' were probably passed in retire- 
 ment, where the mind does not find it difficult to 
 imagine him, strengthening himself, in the calm- 
 ness of domestic quiet, for the absolute devotion 
 of his great faculties and deep affections to that old 
 cause which was now again, not dimly, dawning 
 upon the world.' It may have been as Mr. Forster 
 suggests. The interval may have been spent in 
 conscious preparation for the coming fight. But 
 another explanation is possible. It is mostly the 
 unhappy who are spurred into restless energy, 
 the unsatisfied who seek a refuge in strenuous 
 activities. Was it perhaps by the death of Pym's 
 wife that the man who had loved her was driven 
 to dedicate himself, heart and soul, to the national 
 cause? It is impossible to say. The facts that 
 are certain are these so long as his wife lived 
 he would appear to have been content with the 
 uneventful and placid life of a Somersetshire 
 gentleman; at her death alone he emerged once 
 more into public view ; in an age when such con- 
 stancy was specially rare, left a widower at thirty- 
 six, with the charge of five little children, he never 
 filled her place ; and only twenty years later is his 
 name once more definitely associated with that of 
 a woman the notorious Lady Carlisle. 
 
 In reference to Pym's life of action and the 
 work he accomplished this hiatus in his history is
 
 6 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 of little consequence. So long as the day's task 
 is done it is of comparatively small moment to the 
 world at large whether the labourer is driven into 
 the field by choice or through necessity. But as 
 an indication of character the circumstances are 
 worth taking into account. There are men whom 
 it is difficult to imagine remaining content in an 
 atmosphere of tranquillity. They belong to the 
 storm, and find their pleasure in the excitement of 
 the whirlwind. Others are swept out into the 
 tempest by the imperative demand of duty or of 
 conscience alone. Such a man was Washington : 
 such was also Toussaint : such, it is easy to ima- 
 gine, was John Pym. 
 
 At the time of his re-entering Parliament in 
 1620, to become almost at once a recognised power 
 in the national party, he was therefore fresh from 
 six years' retirement, passqd in his Somersetshire 
 home a man whom it might well seem a mis- 
 application of language to rank amongst revolu- 
 tionists. Strictly speaking, he has, of course, the 
 fullest right to the title. He was, from the first, 
 in the forefront of the battle culminating in the 
 execution of the King and the establishment of 
 the new government ; nor did any politician take 
 a more active part in that resistance to the encroach- 
 ments of the Crown which terminated in open 
 rebellion. Yet none could have been further 
 removed from the spirit of the demagogue, or 
 from the violence, the fanaticism, and the passion 
 afterwards so common amongst those who lifted 
 and held aloft the standard of revolt. Both Pym
 
 JOHN PYM 7 
 
 and Hampden Pym's 'second self were, in 
 fact, specially representative of the spirit of the 
 English revolution at least in its earlier stages 
 ' a revolution of principle, but of principle couched 
 in precedent.' 1 Such men had no desire to break 
 with the past. On that past, on the contrary, 
 with its title-deeds of liberty, they based their 
 claims. In the very act of revolt they were con- 
 servative. 
 
 They came of a class to which such conservatism 
 is natural. Like most of the earlier leaders of his 
 party, Pym was well born. Belonging to a family 
 of old descent and good means, he had carried the 
 traditions of his birth and breeding into his political 
 creed. Evidence of the views he held upon such 
 questions as class distinctions and hereditary rank 
 is afforded by his speech on the impeachment of 
 the Duke of Buckingham. The mushroom nobility 
 created by the patronage of the King's favourite 
 could only be matter of contempt to the commoner 
 conscious of his own old blood. The ancient 
 peerage, however, was another matter. For this 
 he neither felt nor affected anything but a respect 
 which, in these later days, might even be deemed 
 exaggerated. In the speech made before the House 
 of Lords he appealed to it on its own behalf. 
 
 By one article of the impeachment the Duke 
 stood charged with having been the means of 
 procuring titles, as well as grants of land, for 
 creatures of his own, unworthy of such distinction. 
 Many, before and after the Duke of Buckingham, 
 
 1 Goldwin Smith, Three English Statesmen.
 
 8 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 might be accused of the same crime ; and by some 
 friends of progress the consequent adulteration of 
 the ancient nobility would be viewed with indif- 
 ference if not with satisfaction, as tending to lower 
 in public estimation the whole body. But in the 
 eyes of Pym and his friends the offence was no 
 light one. 
 
 Having rehearsed the accusation, he proceeded 
 to deal with it. He had, as Clarendon admits, 
 ' a very comely and grave way of expressing 
 himself/ and he must have felt strongly on the 
 subject. Honours conferred by the King, he said, 
 lifting as they did men above others, should be 
 met by virtue beyond others ; more especially as, 
 being perpetual, merit in the first root of the 
 honour should transmit a vigorous example to 
 their successors, to raise them to an imitation of 
 the like. The grievance, therefore, charged upon 
 the Duke was great ; being prejudicial, first, to the 
 noble barons ; secondly, to the King ; thirdly, to 
 the kingdom. It was prejudicial to the high court 
 of peers because, should those be made members 
 of that great body who were unqualified for the 
 performance of its functions, the whole body must 
 needs be thereby prejudiced ; as water, added to 
 wine, enfeebles the spirit. By making honour 
 ordinary, it was also rendered an incompetent 
 reward for extraordinary virtue. Men, being 
 ennobled, were taken out of the press of the 
 common sort ; and how could such preferment 
 choose but fall in estimation when honour itself 
 was made a press ?
 
 JOHN PYM 9 
 
 In this vindication, before the Lords themselves, 
 of their great position and its need of guardian- 
 ship, Pym indicated clearly his own views upon 
 distinctions of rank and place. In Buckingham 
 he attacked the man who had injured, not the 
 people alone, but, still more vitally, his own order. 
 Nor was he merely using, after the fashion of the 
 opportunist, the weapon lying most convenient to 
 his hand at the moment. Nothing is more remark- 
 able in Pym than the continuity and stability of 
 his political and social faith. Most men change or 
 modify their creeds, as circumstances alter around 
 them. It needs more strength and firmer convic- 
 tion than are commonly to be found in the leaders 
 of a popular movement to maintain a stable position 
 while the world, as it were, sweeps past. Some of 
 the comrades who had stood shoulder to shoulder 
 with Pym as Falkland and Wentworth were 
 carried back by the wave of reaction. Others 
 were dashed onward to republicanism. But Pym 
 remained steady to his early ideals. Sixteen 
 years after the impeachment of Buckingham, he 
 once more addressed the House of Lords, then 
 broken and divided in its counsels. In solemnly 
 adjuring its members to make common cause with 
 the Lower House in securing the safety of the 
 nation, he sounded the self-same note. Whether 
 the country was to be lost or saved, he told them, 
 the House of Commons would be sorry that the 
 story of that Parliament should tell posterity that 
 it had been enforced to save the kingdom alone ; 
 and that the Peers, having so great an interest, in
 
 io REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 respect of their great estates and high degrees, in 
 the good success of those endeavours, should have 
 had no part in its preservation. But let them 
 apply themselves to the preservation of King and 
 kingdom, and he engaged, in the name of all the 
 Commons of England, that they should be bravely 
 seconded. The Pym of 1642 was still the Pym 
 of 1626. 
 
 In religious matters, no less than in politics, 
 Pym was, so far as circumstances admitted, like- 
 wise conservative. To quote his own words, used 
 towards the end of his life, he was 'a faithful 
 son of the Protestant religion.' In matters of 
 church government, he was a temperate Episco- 
 palian ; bitterly opposed to the party within the 
 Establishment led by Archbishop Laud 'that 
 persecutor in the name of an authority which was 
 itself the rebel of yesterday ' ; l and which had its 
 chiefest offence in his eyes become the ally and 
 support of despotism. Liberty being his watch- 
 word, her cause his own, it is not surprising that, 
 though no fanatic, a touch of violence should have 
 mingled with his reprobation both of Rome to the 
 Puritan the synonym of oppression and of those 
 within the national Church who had constituted 
 themselves in no less a degree the advocates of 
 absolute authority. At the same time, it is note- 
 worthy that whilst openly expressing his dislike 
 for their spiritual teaching, it was mainly at their 
 political influence that his blows were directed. 
 Thus in his speech on the occasion of Laud's 
 
 1 Goldwin Smith, Three English Statesmen.
 
 JOHN PYM ii 
 
 
 impeachment, the endeavour of the Archbishop 
 to introduce arbitrary government, the sermons 
 preached in its defence, the corrupt administration 
 of justice, and the illegal enactments of canon law, 
 take precedence of such spiritual matters as the 
 Romanising forces at work within the national 
 Church, intrigues with Rome, intolerance, and 
 persecution. 
 
 In this particular instance it is true that the 
 order of the articles of the impeachment was 
 responsible for the form taken by Pym's speech ; 
 but even if the impeachment had not been cast on 
 a model of his own, it is probable that the form 
 of it met with his entire approval. It has been 
 pointed out that it was his invariable habit to treat 
 religion as an element of political government. 
 ' To him, a true political government was religion. 
 . . . To be free in thought and act, to secure 
 responsibility in government and security in the 
 public liberties, was with him to set up the true 
 religion in its purity.' 1 'The greatest liberty of 
 the kingdom,' he himself declared, in the course 
 of his great speech on the reassembling of Parlia- 
 ment in 1 640, after an interval of eleven years, ' is 
 religion . . . and no impositions are so grievous 
 as those that are laid on the soul.' 
 
 Men's faith takes its colour and character from 
 their lives. To the Puritan soldier, fighting, 
 though with carnal weapons, in what he conceived 
 to be heaven's cause, God was pre-eminently 
 the great General, Commander-in-chief of the 
 
 1 John Forster, Life of Pym.
 
 12 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 armies of the elect. In the same way, the states- 
 man of the day, profoundly impressed with the 
 dignity of his office and his own responsibility, 
 felt himself to be legislating under direct divine 
 presidency. It is a significant fact that, rigid 
 Sabbatarians as were most of the Puritan leaders, 
 Sunday was made use of at this time, at certain 
 important junctures, for the transaction of secular 
 business. ' They made, as it were, their business 
 Heaven's own.' 1 
 
 Such being in outline Pym's views upon religious 
 matters, he must have been out of sympathy with 
 many of his fellow-workers, and the headstrong 
 zeal of such sects as the Independents or the Fifth 
 Monarchy Men must have been at least as dis- 
 tasteful to him as the errors he discerned in older 
 forms of belief. It was not a time, however, when 
 a man could refuse co-operation to those with 
 whom he was not in full agreement, and Pym was 
 not likely to permit such causes to interfere with 
 united action. 
 
 In secular matters, no less than in religious, he 
 had the calm, as well as the steadfastness, belong- 
 ing to firm conviction. Not many men were less 
 liable to be swayed by emotion or by sentiment. 
 It is therefore the more interesting to note the 
 few occasions when the self-control of his habitual 
 demeanour was broken down by an overwhelming 
 tide of grief or anger. Of these occasions two are 
 specially conspicuous. The first was that memor- 
 able 5th of June, 1628, when the message brought to 
 1 John Forster, Life of Pym.
 
 JOHN PYM 13 
 
 the House of Commons from the King prohibiting 
 any aspersions on ministers or government, gave 
 rise to a scene as striking as any that followed. 
 The tragedy of the situation at the special stage 
 then reached in the struggle lay, as Mr. Forster 
 has pointed out, in the conflict between the senti- 
 ment of loyalty, still so powerful even with those 
 forced into an attitude of opposition, and the 
 obligation laid upon them, by conscience and duty 
 to the country, of resistance to Charles's unlawful 
 demands. On that June day, those two forces met 
 and struggled for mastery ; a storm of emotion 
 shook the House, and the strange spectacle was 
 seen of man after man in tears. As one speaker 
 followed another in the endeavour to give expres- 
 sion to the regrets and forebodings caused by the 
 message called by Sir Robert Philips 'the saddest 
 message of the greatest loss in the world ' one 
 after another was compelled to relinquish the at- 
 tempt. Spreading from man to man, the infection 
 of uncontrollable emotion rendered each in turn 
 incapable of speech. Amongst those thus affected 
 was Pym. The scene, difficult as it is to realise 
 at the present time, must have left upon the men 
 who took part in it a mark for life. 
 
 The second occasion when, according to common 
 report, Pym's wrath got the better of him and out- 
 ran the bounds within which it was commonly 
 confined, was of a different nature. It was that of 
 the apostasy of the future Lord Strafford from the 
 cause of the people. Into the motives and nature 
 of his change of front there is no room to enter
 
 14 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 here. To those whom he has left, a soldier found 
 fighting under the enemy's flag is a traitor, a 
 deserter, and a coward. But treachery, desertion, 
 and cowardice, in the criminal sense of the terms, 
 are less frequent than one would suppose, nor 
 are they qualities with which Stratford has been 
 credited by posterity. It is not, however, at the 
 hands of a man's earlier brothers-in-arms that 
 he can fairly expect strict and impartial justice. 
 Wentworth and Pym had been close friends and 
 fellow-workers. To quote Pym's speech, when 
 his final attack upon his early associate was made, 
 Strafford was *a man who in the memory of 
 many present had sat in that House an earnest 
 vindicator of the laws, and a most zealous assertor 
 and champion for the liberties of the people.' 
 Pym's own confidence in him had been unbounded. 
 The more bitter, therefore, was his indignation 
 when it became clear that, in heart if not yet 
 avowedly, Wentworth had gone over to the 
 enemy. By Wentworth's desire the two met at 
 Greenwich at a time when his change of temper 
 was still recent ; and, talking together, the King's 
 new ally dwelt on the dangers attaching to the 
 course pursued by the national party and upon 
 advantages to be gained by an accommodation 
 with the Court. 
 
 Discerning the drift of his argument, Pym's rare 
 passion blazed forth. Cutting short Wentworth's 
 explanations, he refused to hear him out. He 
 need not, he said, use all this art to let him know 
 that he had a mind to leave his old comrades. And
 
 JOHN PYM 15 
 
 then he added, if report be true, a strange and 
 sinister promise. ' Remember,' he is said to have 
 told Strafford, ' remember that though you leave 
 us now, I will never leave you while your head is 
 on your shoulders.' 
 
 It might, at the time, have seemed an idle 
 threat. But twelve years later Pym redeemed his 
 pledge ; when, rising in the House of Commons, 
 a week after the meeting of the Long Parliament, 
 he moved the impeachment of his former associate. 
 That same afternoon the two met face to face, 
 Strafford in his place in the House of Lords, Pym, 
 spokesman of the Commons, as, standing at the 
 bar, he accused Thomas, Earl of Strafford, of high 
 treason. Throughout the following trial Pym 
 occupied a place only second in the public sight 
 to that of the doomed man. No remembrance of 
 past affection availed to stay his hand. Yet once 
 it is recorded that old recollections, suddenly 
 forced upon him, again shook his self-control. 
 The incident, so often told, must be repeated here. 
 
 At the close of his last great speech Pym had 
 designated the penalty due to the misdeeds of the 
 accused. Death, and no lesser punishment, should 
 be their reward. ' Nothing,' he declared, ' can be 
 more equal than that he should perish by the 
 justice of that law which he would have subverted. 
 Neither will this be a new way of blood. There 
 are marks enough to trace this law to the very 
 original of this kingdom ; and if it hath not been 
 put in execution, as he allegeth, this two hundred 
 and forty years, it was not for want of law, but that
 
 16 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 all that time hath not bred a man bold enough to 
 commit such crimes as these.' 
 
 Throughout the speech the eyes of Strafford had 
 remained fixed upon his early friend, transformed 
 into his relentless enemy. Now, suddenly lifting 
 his own, Pym met his glance. As he did so, the 
 iron self-possession of the Puritan leader was 
 shaken ; and he faltered in his speech. ' His 
 papers he looked upon, but they could not help 
 him.' It was but for a moment. Recovering him- 
 self, he returned to the business in hand, and 
 concluded his arraignment. 
 
 Some months before this scene took place Pym 
 had been definitely accepted as the leader of his 
 party. When the Short Parliament met many 
 gaps had been found to exist in the popular 
 ranks. Eliot was dead in his prison. Coke and 
 Philips had also passed away. Most of those as- 
 sembled sat in Parliament for the first time. One 
 politician, however, possessed both ability and 
 experience. ' Whilst men gazed upon each other, 
 looking who should begin, Mr. Pym, a man of 
 good reputation but much better known afterwards, 
 brake the ice/ 
 
 He broke it to good purpose. For close upon 
 two hours he spoke, reciting the catalogue of the 
 nation's grievances. When he sat down his posi- 
 tion was assured. The effect of his speech 
 widely circulated was felt far and wide ; while 
 the emphatic approval of the House was expressed 
 by a resolution decreeing that the consideration of 
 grievances should take precedence of supply.
 
 JOHN PYM 17 
 
 During the brief existence of the Short Parlia- 
 ment he fully maintained the position he had 
 achieved ; taking a leading part both in disputes 
 with the Upper House and in the resistance 
 offered to the King's demands, until the struggle 
 was suddenly cut short by the dissolution of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Charles had committed a fatal error. The 
 ' sudden and abrupt dissolution of Parliaments ' 
 had been one of the very grievances dealt with 
 by Pym in his great speech. It was a hard case, 
 he had argued, that a private man should be put 
 to death unheard. Yet this was the punishment 
 inflicted on Parliament, to the equal detriment of 
 King and country. ' The words of dying men are 
 full of piercing affections.' Granted the privilege 
 of speech, the Commons would so express their 
 love as to clear themselves from the aspersions 
 cast upon them ; besides commending to their 
 master such measures as would most conduce to 
 his own honour and to the public good. But ' we 
 have not been permitted to pour out our last 
 sighs and groans into the bosom of our dear 
 sovereign.' Parliament had, in fact, been made to 
 die intestate. 
 
 To this and similar complaints the answer of 
 Charles was yet another abrupt dissolution. The 
 measure, however, met with a different reception 
 than on former occasions. The time for indulging 
 a hope of an/ amicable solution of the existing 
 controversy wa drawing to an end. St. John no 
 doubt spoke the mind of many of his friends when 
 
 B
 
 i8 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 he told the melancholy Clarendon that all was 
 well that affairs must be worse before they were 
 better, the Parliament then sitting having been 
 unfitted to cope with the situation. 
 
 That the next should be better qualified for the 
 task was the determination of the popular leaders, 
 and they spared no pains to ensure success. Pym 
 in especial was hard at work. The business of 
 organisation, correspondence with the Scotch Com- 
 missioners, the direction of a private press and 
 other such duties kept him well employed through 
 summer and autumn. By November the antici- 
 pations of the opposition had found fulfilment. 
 The King had been forced to issue writs for the 
 assembling of a new Parliament, and it met upon 
 the third of the month. 
 
 Again Pym was the moving and directing spirit 
 of his party. His first great work was the im- 
 peachment of Strafford ; his second that of Laud. 
 Six months after the opening of Parliament both 
 were in the Tower ; the Lord Keeper had fled the 
 country, and Windebank, the Secretary, had like- 
 wise escaped. Shortly after, the Star Chamber, 
 the High Commission, and the other strongholds 
 of despotism had been abolished ; whilst in May, a 
 crowning victory was won in the King's assent to 
 the Bill providing that the present Parliament 
 should not be dissolved without its own consent. 
 The autocracy of Parliament had practically re- 
 placed the autocracy of the King. When the 
 House adjourned in September it might well be 
 content with the achievements of the session.
 
 JOHN PYM 19 
 
 About this time Pym's own personality, as 
 distinct from that of the politician or the leader 
 of a party, emerges for a moment into sight. His 
 prominent position attracted of necessity the atten- 
 tion of both friend and foe. Not long afterwards 
 it was considered worth while to attempt his 
 destruction by means of a rag taken from a plague 
 sore ; and a victim stabbed in Westminster Hall 
 was said to have lost his life through being ' mis- 
 taken for Mr. Pym.' Throughout the country his 
 name was the object of hatred or love, veneration 
 or contempt. 
 
 Under these circumstances it was natural that 
 his private character should not escape discussion. 
 The lampoons of ribald royalists are not convinc- 
 ing evidence ; but though his enemies' assertions 
 must be received with reservation, it is likely 
 enough that he laid himself open to some, at least, 
 of their attacks. That he was no Puritan, strictly 
 speaking, is certain ; nor is it probable that, escap- 
 ing their failings, he should have displayed their 
 special virtues. 
 
 It was in particular with the notorious Lady 
 Carlisle, formerly Strafford's devoted friend, that 
 his name was associated, though the nature of their 
 intimacy remains uncertain. 1 In this especial 
 instance, indeed, politics may have been associated 
 with sentiment ; for the friendship of a woman who 
 contrived, in spite of her connection with the liberal 
 leader, to maintain her credit at Court must have 
 been of no small value, and it is said that in 
 
 1 Mr. Forster's latest view limits it to friendship.
 
 20 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 consequence of it the interior of Whitehall was 
 better known to the patriot than that of the House 
 of Commons to the King. It was not to be long 
 before she was to give a notable proof of her 
 usefulness. 
 
 Whatever may have been the amount of truth 
 contained in the reports current about him, Pym 
 can have had but little leisure for the relaxations 
 of private life. Disquieting news came from the 
 north, whither Hampden with six of his colleagues 
 had been sent to watch the proceedings of the 
 King ; and on the reassembling of Parliament the 
 military outposts of the city were occupied, and 
 the Houses themselves placed under the protection 
 of the Westminster train-bands. In the very suc- 
 cesses by which the previous session had been 
 attended, the more sagacious of the popular leaders 
 must have discerned a danger of reaction. So 
 far all lovers of constitutional liberty had united 
 in resistance to despotism. But the situation was 
 rapidly changing ; and the spectacle of the repre- 
 sentative of an ancient monarchy shorn of his 
 prerogatives, cramped, fettered, and coming near 
 to be at the mercy of his subjects, was well adapted 
 to enlist on his side both chivalry and the incalcul- 
 able force of sentiment. The republicans, daily 
 gaining in strength, were alienating the more 
 temperate friends of reform ; and the violence of 
 the sectaries was ranging against them and their 
 party those more moderate churchmen who had 
 hitherto thrown in their lot with the people. An 
 ominous indication of the severing forces at work
 
 JOHN PYM 21 
 
 was afforded by the debate upon the occasion of 
 its reintroduction, counselled by Pym on the Bill 
 directed against the presence of the Bishops in the 
 House of Lords. Falkland, with Hyde, placed 
 themselves in opposition to the measure ; the first, 
 in answer to Hampden's reproach at his change of 
 front since last the Bill had been under discussion, 
 replying frankly that he had formerly been ' per- 
 suaded to believe many things which he had since 
 found to be untrue, and therefore he had changed 
 his opinion in many particulars, as well as to things 
 as to persons.' There could be no doubt that 
 Lord Falkland was spokesman for many who 
 shared his views and his misgivings, and his 
 candid avowal must have impressed upon the 
 popular party a sense of the instability of their 
 position. 
 
 Pym, meanwhile, had reached the height of his 
 reputation. He was, says Nalson, ' one of the 
 greatest idols of the faction.' And yet one cannot 
 but feel him to have been a curious object for the 
 idolatry of the populace. Able, honest, and con- 
 scientious as he was, it is not easy to imagine him 
 possessed of the gifts commonly attracting the 
 homage of the multitude. His services to the 
 country had no doubt been great. But it is not 
 on account of men's services that men are chiefly 
 loved ; nor are those instruments invariably most 
 prized which have laboured with the greatest 
 effect. 
 
 If the nation's affection on the one hand 
 witnessed to the position he had achieved, the
 
 22 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 enmity of the people's enemies bore testimony no 
 less strong. Not alone against his life were 
 the attempts of the baser sort amongst them 
 directed. Other means than death might be used 
 to silence the great orator and debater in Parlia- 
 ment ; and it was found necessary to protect him, 
 by a special order, from suits designed to deprive 
 him of his position and privileges. 
 
 His presence in the House could indeed have 
 been ill spared. Events were hurrying on towards 
 the open and final breach between King and 
 Parliament ; and at every stage of the contest 
 Pym's was the most prominent figure on his own 
 side ; whilst, when the King's most fatal act of 
 folly was committed, in the attempted arrest of the 
 Five Members, he enjoyed the honour of being 
 chief amongst the intended victims. 
 
 The scene stands out, even amongst the dramatic 
 incidents crowding the history of those days 
 Lady Carlisle's warning, conveyed to the man 
 now standing to her in the place of the dead 
 Strafford ; his consequent withdrawal, together 
 with his four colleagues ; the House awaiting in 
 ominous silence the arrival of the King ; Charles 
 himself in possession of the Speaker's chair ; his 
 demand by name for Mr. Pym ; and lastly his 
 angry exit when it was clear that the risk had 
 been run to no purpose ; the mutterings of ' privi- 
 lege, privilege ' as he passed out ; and his return, 
 foiled, to Whitehall. 
 
 The stroke had been a desperate one the stake 
 that of a gambler who risks all upon a single throw
 
 JOHN PYM 23 
 
 of the dice. Had Charles succeeded, the councils 
 of the national party might have been paralysed 
 by the removal of their leaders. But in aiming 
 his blow at Pym and Hampden, he had struck at 
 the heart of the people, and they were not likely 
 to forget or forgive the blow. In the city next 
 day the cries of privilege pursued him ; whilst one 
 voice raised in the crowd must have had a still 
 more sinister sound, for it echoed the war-cry of 
 the Jewish people when they rose in rebellion 
 against their King, ' To your tents, O Israel ! ' 
 Four thousand Buckinghamshire men rode up 
 to London to secure the safety of Hampden ; 
 and a voluntary bodyguard gathered in immense 
 numbers for the protection of Pym. When, on 
 January u, Charles's retractation was made, it 
 came too late. London was in gala, decorated 
 with flags and bunting ; and the progress of the 
 Five Members, recalled to Westminster, was like 
 that of victors crowned with laurel. 
 
 The night before, Charles had practically aban- 
 doned the field, and had quitted his capital. He 
 returned to it no more till he was brought there 
 a captive. 
 
 During the eight months intervening before the 
 breaking out of actual hostilities, each party was 
 organising its resources and making ready for the 
 appeal to arms. Men were taking sides, some, 
 possibly, with the joyous excitement of the born 
 soldier ; others with deep sadness and heaviness 
 of heart. Others, again, were torn by the struggle 
 of conflicting duties : ' I have eaten the King's
 
 24 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 bread near thirty years,' said Verney, Charles's 
 standard-bearer, 'and I will not do so base a 
 thing to forsake him. I choose rather to lose 
 my life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve 
 and defend those things which are against my 
 conscience to preserve and defend.' Friend was 
 ranged against friend: 'The great God,' wrote 
 Sir William Waller to the Royalist, Sir Ralph 
 Hopton, ' knows with what bitterness I go upon 
 this service. . . . We are both upon the stage, 
 and must act the parts that are assigned us in the 
 tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and 
 without personal animosities.' 
 
 Pym, for his part, was no soldier. Whilst others 
 took the field, he remained in London, to attend 
 there to the conduct of affairs. To him, too, the 
 situation must have been full of sadness. Clinging 
 to law, clinging so far as he was able to order, 
 as a man of his temper must have done, he was 
 engaged in the vain attempt ' to make the parch- 
 ment of legality cover a revolution.' l To realise 
 that the feat was impossible must have been to 
 him a bitter thing. Yet, since the kingdom 
 was thus, and thus only, to be saved or lost, he 
 never flinched from facing the necessary struggle, 
 striving to associate in it the Upper House, 
 vacillating and timorous as it almost inevitably 
 was. 
 
 Within Parliament and outside it, his exertions 
 were unwearied, almost incredible. Wherever 
 there was danger of compromise, wherever it 
 
 1 Three English Statesmen.
 
 JOHN PYM 25 
 
 seemed possible that cowardly counsels would 
 prevail, there he was to be found, encouraging, 
 exhorting, advising. Now at Westminster, now 
 in the camp, again in London's stronghold, the 
 city, he is to be caught sight of, moving from 
 place to place, his finger on the pulse of the 
 nation, regulating, controlling, directing. His 
 eminence was recognised by all. When Charles, 
 flushed by the successes achieved during the 
 first months of the war, issued a proclamation to 
 the rebels, Pym, as was due to his great position, 
 was excluded from the pardon offered to lesser 
 offenders. Upon that proclamation followed what 
 must be regarded as the retort of the popular 
 leader the impeachment of the Queen. If one 
 discerns in the measure a rare touch of bravado, 
 it may be that it was intentional, and that the 
 statesman, astute and sagacious, had learnt that 
 bravado has its use when a nation is looking on. 
 Possibly also, according to another explanation, 
 his object may have been to render the breach 
 between King and Commons, in spite of more 
 timid counsels, irreparable. 
 
 The time, however, was drawing near when Pym 
 would be called upon to surrender the direction of 
 affairs into other hands. The life he had led, of 
 incessant toil and wearing anxiety, was not one 
 calculated to conduce to the prolongation of a 
 man's days. Hampden had already fallen on the 
 field of battle, and the work of his great colleague 
 was likewise nearly over. Friend and foe were 
 watching his physical decline, the one with dread,
 
 26 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the other with rising hopes. But, worn and 
 exhausted in body, he was to give another proof 
 that he was yet too strong for his enemies. 
 Sanguine at the success still attending the royalist 
 arms, the spirits of the Cavaliers were high ; and 
 Essex himself, Commander-in-chief of the Puritan 
 forces, was leaning towards a reconciliation with 
 the Court, at a stage in the contest when a recon- 
 ciliation could scarcely choose but wear the com- 
 plexion of a submission. 
 
 The views of the Commander-in-chief found 
 strong support in the House of Commons, and 
 only by a majority of two was a petition embody- 
 ing them rejected. Pym did not content himself 
 with that narrow victory. Striving to place the 
 cause on a firmer basis, he sought, accompanied 
 by St. John, Essex at the seat of war ; and, 
 according to Clarendon, so succeeded in his 
 mission that he ' wholly changed him, and wrought 
 him to that temper which he afterwards swerved 
 not from.' 
 
 It was the great leader's last triumph. The 
 fight, for him, was over. In the words of a con- 
 temporary royalist, he was ' crawling to his grave 
 as fast as he could.' 
 
 Horses were waiting, saddled, to carry the good 
 news of his death to Oxford ; bonfires were ready 
 to be lit. Yet the effect of a prolongation of his 
 life might have been different to that anticipated 
 by his enemies. During the last year he had put 
 forth, in reply to certain charges preferred against 
 him, what may be termed a confession of his
 
 JOHN PYM 27 
 
 political faith. In this document he avowed his 
 continued attachment to the form of government 
 contained in a constitutional monarchy. No reason 
 exists to doubt the sincerity of the profession ; and 
 there are those who believe that, had he and 
 Hampden remained alive, their influence might 
 have availed to secure a settlement on these lines. 
 The ' King and kingdom ' in his mind, as on his 
 lips, were linked together by the habit of a life- 
 time and the tradition of centuries. As he lay 
 dying he was overheard strangely, one would 
 imagine, in the ears of those who listened praying 
 ' importunately ' for the King and his posterity, as 
 well as for Parliament and people. It is not by 
 their loyalty that even those most attached to the 
 monarchy amongst us at the present time are 
 likely to be preoccupied upon their death-beds ; 
 and the fact that his sovereign was the subject 
 of the dying petitions of the rebel leader marks 
 the distance we have travelled since that day. 
 
 The end came in great tranquillity and peace. 
 Living so he said he would have done what 
 service he could. Dying, he should go to the 
 God whom he had served. Declaring himself 
 thus indifferent as to the issues of life or death, 
 he presently passed, in great contentment, away. 
 He had learnt the fact that no man is indispens- 
 able. 'Au-dessus rhumanitk marche toujours* 
 The knowledge that it is so is a great man's con- 
 solation when death bids him take his hand from 
 the plough. 
 
 He was buried in Westminster Abbey, hard by
 
 28 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the arena where his battles had been fought and 
 his triumphs won ; the entire House of Commons 
 accompanying him, as was fitting, to the grave. 
 At the Restoration, when God's acre was weeded 
 after the fashion of that day, his body was taken 
 from the tomb and was flung out into the adjoin- 
 ing churchyard.
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 
 
 1606-1660 
 
 THE Puritan revolutionist of the seventeenth 
 century, or, to speak more accurately, the body 
 to which he belonged since individuals of his 
 type are to be found in all ages occupies a 
 position more or less unique in modern times. 
 
 Many who have set their hands to the recon- 
 struction of society have entered upon the struggle 
 with a belief as firm that their cause enjoyed the 
 special protection of heaven ; and in their war 
 against the different forms of tyranny and oppres- 
 sion have been consoled and strengthened by a 
 confidence in the divine assistance. Others, less 
 fortunate, have embarked upon their enterprise 
 looking for no such support. In their eyes, men 
 have been left to win unaided their own victories, 
 to work out their salvation unassisted ; and 
 counting upon no future sphere in which the 
 balances of good and evil fortune may be re- 
 adjusted and wrongs redressed, they have sought 
 the more unweariedly to render worth living the 
 short span of existence allotted to man here 
 below. 
 
 The Puritan's standpoint is distinct from that 
 of either of these classes. His cause was not only 
 indirectly and implicitly the cause of God, inas- 
 
 29
 
 30 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 much as justice and righteousness and liberty are 
 pleasing to the divine Ruler of men, to whom 
 wrongdoing and cruelty are hateful. This it was 
 indeed ; but it was more. It was God's own 
 special cause. The war was carried on under the 
 leadership of a Captain who, as in the case of the 
 Israelites of old, went before His people into 
 battle, gave the victory into their hands, or 
 crowned their apparent defeat with the eternal and 
 unfading laurels of martyrdom. The strife was 
 not waged against the tyranny of kings or the in- 
 justice of a political system alone. It was directed, 
 besides this and chiefly, at a spiritual despotism 
 usurping the name of religion, against Anti-Christ 
 blasphemously masquerading in the place of God. 
 
 In this lay the peculiar power of the Puritan ; it 
 was his immeasurable advantage. He fought, in 
 absolute good faith, as the lieutenant of the Lord. 
 Cant, with which he has been so often taunted, 
 may indeed have crept in. Dogging, as it does 
 like an evil shadow, the steps of religion, the 
 genuine features of one man become the mask 
 of another, and the world, lacking time for fine 
 distinctions, includes the two in a common con- 
 demnation. But the compelling force which could 
 throw an entire regiment upon its knees in the 
 thick of a battle was due to something widely dif- 
 ferent from cant. It was the result of a belief 
 in a present God, the recognition of the per- 
 sonal leadership of a Divine General. 
 
 The seventeenth century was a time when the 
 modern theory that few things are worth living for
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 31 
 
 and none worth dying for, counted few adherents. 
 The Puritan the special product of the age was 
 the spiritual descendant, vehemently as both would 
 have repudiated the connection, of Torquemada and 
 the Inquisition. Unlike in much, they were at one 
 in their subscription to St. Augustine's dictum, 
 Quidquid aeternum non est, nihil est, and both 
 alike carried theory into practice. 
 
 It was also one of those recurrent epochs in the 
 world's history when the fierceness of opposing 
 principles lends to clashing opinions the stimulus 
 necessary to weld all the forces of a man's nature, 
 good and bad, into one compact mass ; and when 
 side issues, destructive to the unity of lives and 
 the singleness of purposes, so far as those engaged 
 in the prevailing struggle were concerned, scarcely 
 existed. In that 'colony of God, the soul,' many 
 warring forces are found arrayed against each 
 other. The heart rebels against the dictates of 
 the brain ; reason and sentiment are at variance ; 
 imagination acts as a check upon the domination 
 of fact ; and a certain balance of power is thus 
 secured. But in the case of the Puritan no such 
 modifying process was at work. In a simplicity 
 which came near to being sublime, he was at one 
 with himself. Ranged in opposition to a world of 
 sense, he was at once a dreamer bent upon the 
 materialisation of an idea, a combatant intent upon 
 the humiliation of a foe, a disciple absorbed in the 
 worship of a God. Identifying himself with the 
 divine quarrel, charged with a mission it was 
 blasphemy to question, his very passions were
 
 32 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 enlisted in its service ; vengeance became a virtue, 
 and to show mercy to the enemy a crime. 
 
 Picture after picture remains, characteristic of the 
 spirit in which the Puritan soldier fought and died. 
 To cite one only : ' Sir,' wrote Cromwell, communi- 
 cating to his brother-in-law the death of his son at 
 Marston Moor, ' God has taken away your eldest 
 son by a cannon-shot. . . . He was a gallant 
 young man, exceeding gracious. God give you 
 His comfort. Before his death he was so full of 
 comfort that to Frank Russel and myself he could 
 not express it, "It was so great above his pain." 
 A little after he said, One thing lay upon his 
 spirit. I asked him, What that was? He told 
 me it was, That God had not suffered him to be 
 any more the executioner of His enemies.' 
 
 The sole regret of the dying man is more 
 illustrative of the attitude of the Puritan soldier 
 than pages of description. His enemies were 
 God's, God's his. 
 
 Besides his absolute singleness of aim and his 
 fusion of aspiration, he possessed another point of 
 vantage. Debarred, by the nature of the case, 
 from attaining the full satisfaction of his desire, 
 fulfilment was never for him, as so often happens, 
 the eclipse of hope. ' The joy of the road '- 
 
 ' the joy which is never won, 
 The journeying after the journeying sun,' 
 
 was pre-eminently his. Death itself had nothing final 
 
 about it ; it was no more than the stepping-stone 
 
 and gateway to glory, the supreme seal of victory. 
 
 This view, above all, of a culmination wearing
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 33 
 
 to most men the aspect of at least a personal 
 defeat, sets the spiritual revolutionist apart from 
 those whose battle is waged under other banners, 
 and renders him perhaps more formidable than 
 any other foe to the society against which his 
 efforts are directed. 
 
 ' Where is your good old cause ? ' cried a by- 
 stander in derision as Harrison, the leader of the 
 Fifth Monarchy Men, passed by on his way to the 
 scaffold. 
 
 1 Here it is,' replied the prisoner, laying, with 
 a cheerful smile, his hand on his heart, ' and I am 
 going to seal it with my blood.' 
 
 Harrison was dying, so to speak, a failure. The 
 Restoration had taken place ; the representative of 
 the monarchy he had hated and had helped to de- 
 stroy was on the throne, the struggle in which his 
 life had been spent had been apparently vain. Yet 
 his spirit was unbroken, his courage as high as ever. 
 Whatever might be the outward aspect of affairs, 
 ultimate defeat, to those who had the Almighty 
 God on their side, was a thing impossible. To 
 such men there could be no temptation to make 
 terms with the enemy. 
 
 Of those who fought in this spirit, this same 
 Thomas Harrison may be accepted as representa- 
 tive. Soldier, regicide, and fanatic, carrying the 
 principles of his party to their extremest limit, he 
 was continually in revolt against the powers, by 
 whatever name they might be called, who arrogated 
 to themselves the prerogative belonging by right 
 to Christ alone. As relentless in his opposition to 
 
 c
 
 34 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the Protectorate as to the Monarchy, ' No King 
 but Jesus' was his war-cry, nor did he recognise 
 the possibility of compromise. 
 
 Harrison was born in the year 1606. He has 
 been called the son of a butcher, Sir Walter Scott, 
 in particular, attributing to lessons learnt in the 
 shambles the indifference to bloodshed displayed 
 by him on the battlefield. The statement is inac- 
 curate. His father, in point of fact, was a Stafford- 
 shire grazier, afterwards, it seems, a colonel in the 
 army, and he himself had received a fair education, 
 being indentured to an attorney at Clifford's Inn- 
 one of that profession of lawyers who, with priests 
 and kings, were included in the maledictions of the 
 sect he afterwards joined. 
 
 Of the period of his legal apprenticeship no 
 record remains, Clarendon simply observing 
 somewhat arbitrarily that such a training was apt 
 to incline young men to more pride than any other 
 kind of breeding, and to dispose them to be prag- 
 matical and insolent. It is therefore only from the 
 time of the breaking out of war between King and 
 Parliament that it becomes possible to trace his 
 history. At that date, quitting the service of law, 
 he transformed himself from a clerk into a cornet 
 of horse in the rebel forces a path of life, to 
 judge by the sequel, for which he must have been 
 better adapted than for the more peaceful pro- 
 fession selected for him by his father. 
 
 Thenceforth, 'by diligence and sobriety' the 
 account, being Clarendon's, may be credited with 
 impartiality he rose steadily to distinction. In
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 35 
 
 no long time he is said to have attracted the 
 attention of Cromwell himself; who, finding him 
 much addicted to prayer and preaching, and fit 
 besides to be trusted in business of all kinds, 
 advanced him rapidly in the service, admitting 
 him further to relations of so confidential a nature 
 that there were to quote Clarendon once more 
 few with whom he communicated so freely. 
 
 Clarendon's testimony on this matter receives 
 corroboration from a letter written by Harrison 
 some eight years later to his chief, and marked by 
 the affectionate familiarity of a friend. 
 
 ' I know you love me,' he says, after offering an 
 explanation of some seeming negligence, ' there- 
 fore are not apt to except.' ' Love and duty,' he 
 says again, ' makes me presume ' ; proceeding, after 
 a fashion summarily qualified by Sir Henry Ellis 
 in his description of the document as ' a letter of 
 cant,' to exhort the Commander-in-chief to resort 
 to those spiritual weapons wherein alone the writer 
 placed his confidence. 
 
 ' I doubt not your success, but I think faith and 
 prayer must be the chief engines. . . . There is 
 more to be had in this poor simple way than even 
 most saints expect. . . . The Almighty Father 
 carry you in His very bosom and deliver you (if it 
 be His will) from touching a very hair of any for 
 whom Jesus hath bled. . . . Your Excellency's 
 loving servant, while I breathe, Thomas Harrison.' 
 
 In the outward appearance of the Puritan soldier 
 there seems to have been little to recall the lawyer's 
 clerk. It is related by Anthony Wood, on the
 
 36 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 authority of Herbert, Groom of the Chamber, that 
 on an observer so unlikely to be prejudiced in 
 his favour as the King himself, his bearing had 
 produced a good impression. After a close in- 
 spection of the man to whom his custody had been 
 temporarily intrusted, and who had been credited 
 by Royalists with designs upon his life, Charles 
 observed that ' he looked like a soldier and that 
 his aspect was good, and found him not such an one 
 as he was represented, and that having judgment 
 in faces, if he had observed him so well before, he 
 would not have harboured that ill opinion of him/ 
 
 The picture has been preserved of the sub- 
 sequent interview between the captive and the 
 future regicide. Charles, lodged for the night at 
 Farnham on his way to Windsor, caught sight, as 
 he stood before the fire in a large wainscotted 
 room, of Harrison, and signed to him to approach, 
 which he accordingly did ' with due reverence.' 
 The King, taking him by the arm, drew him aside 
 towards the window, keeping him for half an hour 
 or more in discourse, and communicating to him 
 amongst other things the murderous designs he 
 had been believed to have harboured. Harrison, 
 it would seem, reassured the prisoner upon this 
 point, adding, however, the less satisfactory asser- 
 tion that the law was ' equally obliging to great and 
 small, and that justice had no respect of persons, 
 which his Majesty finding affectedly spoken and 
 to no good end went to his supper.' 
 
 The same judicial coldness is apparent in another 
 recorded utterance of a somewhat later date, when,
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 37 
 
 questioned once more by Charles as to whether it 
 was the intention of his enemies to put an end to 
 him by foul means, the soldier made answer, ' We 
 have no such thought,' adding, 'Yet the Lord hath 
 reserved you for a public example of justice/ 
 
 Soon after this ambiguous reply Harrison ex- 
 plained his meaning more fully by affixing his 
 signature to the King's death warrant. 
 
 There are to continue the description of his 
 outer man incongruous touches in the appear- 
 ance of the stern Puritan, as his picture is handed 
 down to us. On the occasion when Charles 
 formed the favourable opinion of him quoted 
 above, he was gallantly mounted, with a velvet 
 montier on his head, a new buff coat and a crimson 
 silk scarf richly fringed ; and Mrs. Hutchinson, 
 who cherished no love for him, observes with the 
 pardonable bitterness of a wife, that at some great 
 function of State, having persuaded her husband 
 and others to take their places in Parliament in 
 plain black suits, he appeared himself ' in a scarlet 
 coat and cloak both laden with gold and silver 
 lace, and the coat so covered with clinquant that 
 one scarcely could discern the ground.' ' This was 
 part,' says the writer, 'of his weakness ' ; while she 
 has the justice to add that ' the Lord at last lifted 
 him above these poor earthly elevations.' 
 
 Baxter has criticisms to make of a different 
 nature. Harrison, he allows, was 'a man of 
 natural parts for affection and oratory ; but he 
 was not well seen in the principles of his religion ' 
 of Baxter's religion would probably be a more
 
 38 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 accurate description 'and . . . also so far from 
 humble thoughts of himself that it was his ruin.' 
 
 A more personal grievance on Baxter's part 
 seems to have been the refusal of the Fifth Mon- 
 archy leader to argue with him. ' He would not 
 dispute with me at all,' he observes plaintively, 
 which was certainly hard upon Baxter. 
 
 It was, it is true, a time when to dispute with 
 all those with whom they were not in agreement 
 on religious matters would have left men little time 
 for other occupations. But Harrison, pushing as 
 he did Puritan principles to their extremest limit 
 of extravagance, was likely enough to be regarded 
 with suspicion by those whom he outran. Bred 
 up as an Independent, by the time that the Fifth 
 Monarchy Men came into prominence, he occupied 
 the position of leader of a body chiefly recruited 
 from that section of Puritanism. 
 
 The special faith professed by this sect never 
 a large one, but of more importance than its 
 numerical strength would seem to warrant was, 
 briefly, the expectation of the approaching and 
 personal reign of Christ upon earth, to the con- 
 fusion of those classes in particular, priests, kings, 
 and lawyers, who should be found usurping His 
 sovereignty. Under the visible Christ, the saints, 
 possessing the earth, would rule and execute 
 justice. Moreover, it was the office of the elect, 
 until such time as the Lord Himself should appear, 
 to prepare His way, not only by means of the 
 sword of the Spirit, but by other more material 
 weapons.
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 39 
 
 These tenets were the central doctrines of a 
 faith characteristic, in a high degree, of the time. 
 In its picturesque symbolism, its appeal to the 
 senses and the imagination, the adherent of the 
 new religion found a substitute for the outward 
 elements of beauty of which Puritan worship had 
 been so ruthlessly stripped ; and in the dream 
 he indulged of Christ's earthly kingdom, with 
 all the accompaniments of splendour and mag- 
 nificence with which he loved to clothe it, the 
 Fifth Monarchy man built himself a spiritual 
 refuge from the uncompromising bareness, the 
 rigid simplicity, of his creed. Human nature is 
 the same in all ages, nor is the imagination to be 
 fettered by dogma. Confined in one direction, it 
 will force an outlet in another, and the invisible 
 pictures painted by the Puritan visionary on the 
 white-washed walls of his meeting-house were 
 as gorgeous in colouring as any he had defaced 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Nor was there, in the prevailing condition of 
 religious opinion, anything incredible in the visions 
 he indulged. It was a time when men all the 
 world over were expectantly awaiting marvels ; 
 when no portent was beyond belief; and miracles 
 were not only possible but probable. The spiritual 
 excitement charging the atmosphere was limited 
 neither by country, race, nor creed. A few years 
 later the entire Jewish community, scattered 
 throughout the world, was thrilled by the tidings, 
 sent from the East, of the appearance of the true 
 Messiah ; and men were hastening, with eager
 
 40 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 and pathetic exultation, to throw themselves at 
 the feet of the beautiful Hebrew impostor who was 
 enacting the part of the promised Deliverer. From 
 the battlefield of Edgehill it was averred, on what 
 must have seemed like indisputable evidence, that 
 phantom hosts had been seen night after night to 
 meet and struggle for the mastery. In Scotland 
 the arrival was reported of a strange and mysterious 
 vessel, with cordage and sails of silk, manned by 
 a crew speaking an unknown tongue. Any day 
 might bring fresh wonders to pass ; and if the 
 special expectations of the Fifth Monarchists were 
 not shared by the Puritan body at large, it was 
 not because anything in their creed was too incred- 
 ible for general acceptance. 
 
 Upon the first appearance of the sect of which 
 Harrison became the most prominent member, its 
 chief number of adherents were drawn from his 
 own profession. Nor was this otherwise than 
 natural, in view of the important part assigned to 
 the soldier in hastening the anticipated culmination. 
 Called to prepare the way of the Lord by the 
 destruction of those who occupied His place, men 
 fought as the emissaries of heaven, counting each 
 soul they sent to its account a fresh passport to 
 divine favour, and literally, as the Israelites of 
 old, hewing their enemies to pieces before the 
 Lord. 
 
 Harrison himself was not backward in this work. 
 If South is to be credited nor is there anything 
 in the character of the Puritan to give the lie to 
 the accusation he was indeed ' notable for having
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 41 
 
 killed several after quarter given them by others, 
 using these words in the doing it, "Cursed be he 
 that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully." 
 
 The story is not improbably true, as well as the 
 account given by Hugh Peters of the storming of 
 Basing House, where Harrison again played a 
 conspicuous part. Seventy-four persons were, on 
 this occasion, killed in or about the house, includ- 
 ing a woman ' who by her ranting provoked our 
 soldiers.' Major Cuffe, a notorious papist, was 
 slain by Harrison himself 'that godly and gallant 
 gentleman ' ; and Robinson, the player, also expiated 
 by his death the jibes levelled by him at the 
 Puritan army. 
 
 Whether or not all the charges brought against 
 Harrison were well founded, he would probably 
 have been at no pains to disavow the actions 
 attributed to him. Intrusted as he conceived 
 himself to be with the duty of removing whatever 
 obstacles might delay the triumph of the visible 
 Christ, human life, except in so far as its extinction 
 might serve that supreme purpose, would have 
 seemed of small importance. The singleness of 
 the fanatic was his, together with that strength 
 lying, as Mr. Goldwin Smith has pointed out, 
 partly at least in the fact that the die of earthly 
 destiny is thrown with the steady hand of one whose 
 treasure is not here. No motives of compassion 
 would have given him pause ; nor is the picture of 
 him sketched by Baxter, when the two stood side by 
 side at Langport, that of a man likely to take much 
 account of one life more or less lost on either side.
 
 42 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 On that occasion, as he watched the Royalists fly, 
 the preacher records that he heard him, 'with a 
 loud voice, break forth into the praises of God . . . 
 as if he had been in a rapture.' 
 
 All seemed for a time to point to the realisation 
 of his dream. Wonders had already been accom- 
 plished. An ancient Monarchy had been abolished ; 
 its representative judged, condemned, and put to 
 death. An apostate Church had been thrown 
 down ; and the success of the Puritan arms may 
 well have seemed the earnest of still greater 
 triumphs. 
 
 With Harrison personally all had likewise gone 
 well. Despatched by Parliament to conduct the 
 war in Ireland, he had received the thanks of the 
 House for his services there. Risen to prominence 
 in the army, he was the chosen confidant of the 
 Commander-in-chief. Speedily as the paths of the 
 two were to separate, Cromwell already the chief 
 power in the State and his subordinate were 
 working together on lines that must have had the 
 fullest approbation of the latter : ' Every other day 
 almost, more fasts or some such religious exercise 
 was managed by Cromwell and Harrison, who 
 mainly promoted the same proposals for a new 
 Representative, in order to the personal reign of 
 Christ.' The government was to be placed in the 
 hands of the saints ; all prophecies were drawing 
 towards fulfilment. 
 
 For the moment statesman and fanatic seemed 
 at one. It may be that Cromwell was genuinely, 
 if transiently, infected by the enthusiasm and the
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 43 
 
 heated imagination of his friend and brother in 
 arms. It was, in any case, no time to emphasise 
 their differences, religious and political. So long 
 as the Long Parliament continued undissolved, 
 Harrison, with the party he represented, was too 
 important an auxiliary for Cromwell not to use all 
 available means to propitiate him. So far, too, as 
 practical action was concerned, their views regard- 
 ing the body still nominally invested with the 
 government of the country were in cordial agree- 
 ment. To Cromwell it was an obstruction in the 
 way of the settlement of the country on a stable 
 basis. In the eyes of the Fifth Monarchy man, it 
 represented the immediate obstacle blocking the 
 way of Christ and deferring His personal reign. 
 He was therefore not only ready, but eager, to 
 lend his assistance in dislodging it from the position 
 it occupied. Cromwell is said, indeed, to have 
 complained of over-ardour on Harrison's part ; and, 
 while paying a tribute to the purity of his aims, to 
 have added that ' from the impatience of his spirit 
 he would not wait the Lord's time.' 
 
 Necessary as he may have felt it to dissemble 
 for the time his true opinions, there can be no 
 doubt as to Cromwell's genuine sentiments with 
 regard to the sect led by his lieutenant. Eighteen 
 months later, when the need for caution was at an 
 end, they were made abundantly clear. Address- 
 ing Parliament as Lord Protector, he alluded in 
 no uncertain terms to an error ' of more refined 
 sort' than others with which he had been previously 
 dealing. Many honest and sincere persons, he pro-
 
 44 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ceeded to say, belonging to God, had fallen into 
 the mistaken notion of the Fifth Monarchy. After 
 demonstrating the chimerical and illusory nature 
 of their anticipations, he indicated the treatment 
 proper to be accorded to those holding the doc- 
 trines he condemned. ' Of some have compassion,' 
 he quoted, ' making a difference ; others save with 
 fear, pulling them out of the fire. I fear,' added 
 the Lord Protector, ' they will give too often 
 opportunity for this exercise.' 
 
 While, however, it is thus clear that Cromwell 
 can have had scant sympathy with the extravagant 
 and visionary expectations of those he used as 
 instruments in the furtherance of his own designs, 
 the outward harmony between himself and Har- 
 rison continued unbroken up to the time when 
 Cromwell's coup was accomplished and Parliament 
 ousted from its position. According to the account 
 given by Harrison himself, it is true that the dis- 
 solution was not his own work, though ' afterwards 
 he was glad the thing was done.' But it is impos- 
 sible to doubt that the leading part assigned to him 
 in the day's proceedings must have been much to 
 his liking, from the moment when, pending the 
 arrival upon the scene of his chief, he * most sweetly 
 and humbly desired ' the members to lay aside the 
 Bill calculated to frustrate Cromwell's plans, to 
 the assistance he finally rendered the Speaker in 
 leaving the chair. 
 
 The scene must have represented the high-water 
 mark of the success of the cause ' the most 
 glorious cause that ever was in the world,' to use
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 45 
 
 the description he gave on the day he lost his life 
 for it the triumph of which was the object of 
 Harrison's life. The seat of government was 
 empty, awaiting its divine occupant. Was the 
 time come for Christ to fill it ? The position, 
 with its intensity of wonder and excitement, is 
 difficult to realise at present. For once Harri- 
 son must have felt himself brought close to the 
 fulfilment of his life's hope. Then the vision 
 faded. 
 
 That day must have closed the period of his 
 cordial co-operation with the man who was already 
 virtually, and was soon to be avowedly, the head 
 of the State. Less than a year after he had 
 assisted in dislodging the Long Parliament from 
 Westminster, he was in his own turn expelled 
 from the body that had replaced it. Four days 
 later the title of Protector was conferred upon 
 Cromwell. The work achieved by the overthrow 
 of the Monarchy was undone. Under a different 
 name a usurper once more sat in the place apper- 
 taining by right to none but Christ. His reign 
 was as far off as ever. 
 
 The blow must have been severe. The political 
 liberties of Englishmen might be assured, the 
 position of the country vindicated, law, order, 
 and justice restored ; but all this was as nothing 
 to Harrison and his comrades, in comparison with 
 the true object for which they had fought. The 
 blood of the saints dead upon the battlefield, their 
 own blood, had been shed merely to exchange one 
 despotism for another.
 
 46 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 In Harrison's own case the bitterness of the 
 friend was added to the anger of the fanatic and 
 the disappointment of the politician. He had 
 trusted, and he had been deceived. He was not 
 a man to forgive it. ' When I found those that 
 were as the apple of my eye to turn aside I did 
 loathe them,' he said, referring long after to the 
 time when his own path and Cromwell's had 
 diverged. No human respect would have induced 
 him to temporise ; and his opposition to the new 
 condition of affairs was open and explicit. Called, 
 with two other leaders of his party, before Crom- 
 well, he frankly declined to pledge himself to 
 maintain a neutral or quiescent attitude, and was 
 in consequence directed to leave London and to 
 remain confined to his house in Staffordshire. 
 
 His career was, in a sense, ended. Of the spirit 
 of compromise he had none. With his own hand 
 he had barred the gate to advancement, office, or 
 employment. To a man of a different temper the 
 rest of life would have been overshadowed by the 
 gloom of failure. Setting aside the bearing of the 
 situation on his future, it must have been clear 
 to the eyes of any observer, however misted with 
 enthusiasm, that the fulfilment of his dream was, 
 at the least, indefinitely postponed. But men of his 
 creed and spirit possessed a faith which nothing 
 had power to destroy. It only shone forth more 
 brightly as the darkness thickened. ' Immortal 
 hope itself,' says Carlyle, speaking of this sect, 
 ' is beautiful because it is steeped in sorrow, and 
 foolish desire lies vanquished under its feet.'
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 47 
 
 Rogers, a foremost clerical member of the body, 
 expressing his confidence in the ultimate confusion 
 of his enemies, adds that ' this is the victorious, 
 overturning, already triumphing faith of hundreds 
 (blessed be Jehovah) besides John Rogers.' 
 
 Amongst those hundreds, we may be sure, 
 Harrison was to be counted. His faith never 
 faltered. 
 
 The Protector, it is clear, had no desire to deal 
 harshly with his former comrade, confining himself 
 first to admonitions ' not to persevere in those evil 
 ways whose end is destruction.' In 1655 it was, 
 however, found necessary, in consequence of serious 
 danger apprehended from the malcontents, to use 
 a certain amount of severity towards the disaffected. 
 Harrison was accordingly at that time, with others 
 of his persuasion, confined in Carisbrooke Castle, 
 where it appears from the diary of his fellow-captive, 
 the same Rogers already quoted, that though not 
 altogether separated from their families, no over- 
 indulgence was extended to the prisoners. 
 
 Harrison's own imprisonment lasted more than 
 a year. It is then recorded by Rogers that 
 'under pretence' of his father's dangerous illness 
 and the approaching confinement of his wife, it 
 was arranged to remove him to his house at 
 Highgate. The fact affords a fresh proof of a 
 lingering kindness on the part of Cromwell. It 
 was not, however, received gratefully. ' In great 
 fear,' writes Rogers again, ' of the serpent's snares 
 in this order,' and apprehensive besides 'lest his 
 further liberty should be any entanglement to him,
 
 48 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 or let to his inward joys, and prison experiences,' 
 Harrison was inclined to refuse the proffered in- 
 dulgence. He was also unwilling, he said, to turn 
 his own house into a prison. At last, however, 
 under protest, he was compelled to accept the 
 modified degree of freedom thus forced upon him, 
 and to transfer himself to Highgate. 
 
 Of the views entertained by his wife of her 
 husband's reluctance to join her, there is no 
 mention. Singularly little is indeed heard of his 
 domestic relations. Men of his day had scanty 
 leisure to indulge in family affection, and private 
 interests were often called upon to make way for 
 public. It was a time when those that had wives 
 were forced to follow St. Paul's counsel and be as 
 though they had none. ' Rather than to turn as 
 many did that put their hands to this plough,' 
 wrote Harrison later, ' I chose rather to be 
 separated from wife and family than to have com- 
 pliance with them.' 
 
 The boast is one of the only allusions to be 
 found to the special form of sacrifice in question, 
 and even such privation brought with it its own 
 compensating satisfaction, if we are to judge from 
 the description of the final parting with the wife he 
 was to leave behind him. For on that supreme 
 occasion his farewell of her was taken ' with great 
 joy and cheerfulness, as he did use to do when 
 going some journey or about some service for the 
 Lord,' merely desiring those who loved him to 
 show their affection by being loving and tender to 
 his widow.
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 49 
 
 For the present, however, the two were re-united, 
 and a glimpse of him in his home at Highgate is 
 afforded by the account given by General Ludlow, 
 an old comrade from whom he had parted company, 
 of a visit he paid there. 
 
 Ludlow appears to have been anxious, as old 
 friends sometimes show themselves, to wring from 
 Harrison a recognition of his errors, beginning 
 with the part he had taken in the dissolution of 
 the Long Parliament. Had not subsequent events, 
 he asked, convinced him of his mistake in thus 
 assisting in the interruption of civil authority ? 
 Harrison, however, stoutly refused to own that he 
 had been wrong. 
 
 ' Upon their heads be the guilt who have made 
 a wrong use of it,' he replied. ' For my own part 
 my heart was upright and sincere in the thing.' 
 
 One of the reasons, he added, and it was 
 characteristic, which had led him to side with 
 Cromwell, was because the latter pretended to own 
 and favour a sort of men who acted from higher 
 motives than those of civil liberty. To Harrison 
 and his friends civil liberty, as any other temporal 
 good, was but of secondary importance. And still 
 his refrain was the old one his confidence in the 
 future unimpaired ' the saints shall take the king- 
 dom, and possess it.' 
 
 During the remainder of the Protectorate his 
 history presents little of importance. He con- 
 tinued to fall from time to time under suspicion, 
 and to suffer in consequence terms of imprisonment. 
 At one of these times it is recorded in a contem- 
 
 D
 
 50 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 porary newspaper, with a sneer, that he had 
 himself rebaptized. 
 
 In point of fact he appears to have taken no 
 personal part in the disturbances occurring especi- 
 ally during the last year of Cromwell's life a 
 quiescence attributed to failure of health and 
 strength rather than to any want of will. To some 
 such failure he made allusion on the scaffold when, 
 observed at that supreme moment to tremble, he 
 explained that the cause was to be found in much 
 blood lost in the wars and many wounds, adding 
 that he had suffered for twelve years from the 
 weakness of nerves responsible for it. 
 
 With Cromwell's death and the subsequent 
 events, it became clear that the Restoration was 
 at hand and that those at any rate who had been 
 personally involved in the execution of the King 
 would do wisely to retire to a place of security. 
 Harrison, however, was not a man to seek safety 
 in flight, accounting, according to Ludlow, such an 
 action equivalent to the desertion of the cause he 
 had maintained. Ludlow's report is corroborated 
 by Harrison's own statement. 
 
 ' If I had been minded to run away/ he said, ' I 
 might have had many opportunities. But being 
 so clear in the thing I durst not turn my back nor 
 step a foot out of the way by reason I had been 
 engaged in the service of so glorious and great a 
 God.' To the soldier of the Divine General flight 
 would have seemed a shameful thing. For the 
 rest, ' Sure am I,' said Ludlow, in spite of the 
 differences of opinion existing between the two
 
 THOMAS HARRISON 51 
 
 ' sure am I he was every way so qualified for the 
 part he had in the following suffering that even his 
 enemies were astonished and confounded.' 
 
 The end was not long deferred. One of the 
 seven originally exempted from the Act of In- 
 demnity, Harrison was the first to be arrested 
 and to be arraigned at the Old Bailey as a 
 regicide. 
 
 His bearing to the end was consistent with his 
 life. He pleaded not guilty, justifying alike the 
 sentence passed on Charles and the authority by 
 which he had acted. He was not there, he said, 
 to deny his conduct, but rather to bring it to light. 
 The King's death had not been done in a corner. 
 He had prayed night and day, and had received 
 assurances of the justness of his acts ; adding the 
 expression of his confidence that ere long it would 
 be known from heaven, for 'there was more of 
 God than men were aware of.' His authority had 
 been derived from Parliament, and to no lower 
 court did he hold himself accountable. 
 
 The trial was a solemn farce. He had been 
 condemned and his fate sealed beforehand. The 
 Bench was eager to pass sentence, possibly in the 
 greater haste to prove its vindictive loyalty by 
 reason of the identification by the prisoner of 
 several of his judges as having been in former 
 days as zealous in 'the cause' as he himself. Its 
 impatience was displayed not only in constant 
 interruptions of his speech, but in the refusal of 
 his reasonable demands. 
 
 Harrison requested that he might be granted
 
 52 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the assistance of counsel. It concerned, he said, 
 all his countrymen. 
 
 'Your countrymen,' was the answer, 'would cry 
 out and shame you.' 
 
 ' May be so, my Lords/ said the prisoner with 
 dignity. ' Some will, but I am sure others will 
 not.' 
 
 Accused of having proposed to ' blacken ' the 
 King in the eyes of the country, he gave an explicit 
 denial to the charge. ' I would have abhorred,' he 
 added, 'to have brought him to account had not 
 the blood of Englishmen that had been shed ' 
 
 Again he was interrupted, in terms of vulgar 
 abuse. He should be sent to Bedlam, he was 
 told, until he came to the gallows. ' He had the 
 plague,' declared one Edward Turner, 'and should 
 be avoided as a house infected.' 
 
 It was abundantly clear that the court had been 
 assembled, not to try but to convict him ; but in 
 any case the verdict must have been the same. 
 The haste with which it was given bore fresh wit- 
 ness to the impatience of the Bench ; and the 
 prisoner, asked according to custom whether he 
 had anything to say, replied in the negative, since, 
 he added, the court had already refused to hear 
 what was fit for him to speak in his defence. 
 
 To the end his courage never failed. On being 
 brought to Newgate he had sent his wife word that 
 that day was to him as his wedding-day, and he 
 continued to display the same unbroken spirit. 
 When sentence was pronounced, he received it 
 without flinching.
 
 53 
 
 ' Whom men have judged, God doth not con- 
 demn,' he said, ' blessed be the name of the Lord ' ; 
 repeating as he was led away from the court the 
 same old refrain he had no reason to be ashamed 
 of his cause. 
 
 ' I cannot be in a better condition if I had the 
 desire of my heart,' he told those who inquired 
 how it fared with him. ' We must be willing to 
 receive hard things from the hands of our Father, 
 as well as easy things.' 
 
 He proved himself willing. His friends, indeed, 
 judged him in haste to be gone, regarding as he 
 did what was to befall him in the light of an answer 
 to prayer, ' For many a time,' said he, ' have I 
 begged of the Lord that if He had any hard things, 
 any reproachful work, or contemptible service to 
 be done by His people, that I should be employed 
 in it.' 
 
 He had not long to wait. At Charing Cross, 
 on the 1 3th of November, 'so that the King/ 
 says Ludlow, 'might have the pleasure of the 
 spectacle ' Thomas Harrison was hanged. 
 
 The first of the regicides to suffer the penalty 
 of their deed, vast crowds, according to Burnet, 
 flocked to witness the execution, ' and all people 
 were well pleased with the sight.' The Bishop, 
 however, adds cautiously that, as execution after 
 execution followed, the odiousness of the crime 
 thus punished grew to be 'much flattened,' and 
 ' most of those who suffered dying with much 
 firmness and show of piety, justifying all they had 
 done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering
 
 54 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 on that account, the King was advised not to 
 proceed further.' 
 
 Reading the account of Harrison's death, and 
 judging of others by it, it is easy to believe that 
 the King's advisers were right. 
 
 ' 'Tis a day of joy to my soul,' he said, and as 
 the rope was adjusted he was heard to repeat 
 Isaac's words, ' Father, here is the wood, but 
 where is the sacrifice ? ' adding, ' If the Lord see 
 good He can provide another sacrifice . . . but 
 His Will be done. Death is not terrible to me ; 
 yea, it is no more than a rush. I have learnt to 
 die long ago.' 
 
 Thus he met his end, with as fearless a bearing 
 as that with which he had carried himself upon the 
 battlefield, 'and looking,' says Pepys, who had 
 gone with the rest to witness the execution, 'as 
 cheerful as any man could do in that condition/ 
 
 It was characteristic of the prevailing atmo- 
 sphere of that day that even death failed to be 
 regarded as final. In the east, about the same 
 time, a report was current that the dead Messiah, 
 Sabatai Sevi, from whom so much had been hoped, 
 would after a certain number of years reappear 
 on earth ; and amongst Fifth Monarchy Men a 
 rumour was circulated to the effect that the leader 
 taken from them was to rise once more, to judge 
 his judges and to restore the kingdom of the 
 saints. 'His wife,' says Pepys, 'do expect his 
 coming again.'
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 1732-1799 
 
 A SUCCESSFUL revolutionist is an anomaly. Few of 
 the brotherhood are fated, not only to carry their 
 work through to a prosperous end, but to enjoy in 
 person the fruits of their labours. To have earned 
 in addition the approval of contemporaries and 
 posterity alike, to have conciliated the good opinion 
 of both friend and foe, is a height of good fortune 
 not many men attain. 
 
 George Washington, however, may be said to 
 have achieved this signal distinction. To a marked 
 degree he was successful in all to which he set his 
 hand. ' Qui a rdussi comme lui ? ' asks M. Guizot. 
 ' Qui a vu de si pres, et si tot, son propre succes ? 
 Qui a joui a ce point, et jusquau bout, de la con- 
 fiance et de la reconnaissance de son pays f . . . De 
 tons les grands hommes il a Me 1 le plus vertueux et le 
 plus heureux' 
 
 His success was indeed phenomenal. Perhaps 
 it was stranger still that the world forgave him for 
 it. The unanimity of the admiration he excited 
 is epitomised by the fact that, at the news of his 
 death, the rival fleets of England and France, at 
 war with one another at the time, are said to have 
 hoisted signs of mourning. And if it is true that 
 the noblest reputations do not commonly go un- 
 
 .5
 
 56 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 assailed, and the blame of the vulgar critic may 
 almost be reckoned a necessary factor in the purest 
 renown, it is nevertheless worth registering, to the 
 credit of human nature, that in the case of the great 
 American patriot the voice of the detractor has 
 rarely, save during one comparatively short period, 
 made itself heard. 
 
 It must be admitted that the devil's advocate 
 would have had a difficult task had he been called 
 upon to show cause why canonisation should not 
 have been conferred by his countrymen upon this 
 national saint. ' That I have foibles, and perhaps 
 many of them,' said Washington himself, ' I shall 
 not deny. I should esteem myself, as the world 
 would, vain and empty, were I to arrogate perfec- 
 tion.' A confession of weaknesses is only to allow 
 that he was human ; that, so far as can be known, 
 they were singularly few, all men are agreed. As 
 man, as citizen, and as soldier, he stands out an 
 unusually faultless figure. In a position where the 
 absence of personal ambition came near to taking 
 rank as a miracle, no trace of it is perceptible. If 
 he was not free from the pride scarcely to be dis- 
 tinguished from self-respect, of vanity that failing 
 which, though not included in the list of deadly 
 sins, has a trick of running any one of them hard in 
 the matter of consequences he had not a jot. The 
 purity of his motives, his unblemished honour, his 
 stainless rectitude, have never been seriously called 
 in question. As citizen, the interests of his country 
 invariably took precedence of his own. As soldier, 
 he combined, with a gallantry which might have
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 57 
 
 been termed reckless, the more rare and difficult 
 courage implied in carrying on campaign after 
 campaign at the head of an army lacking in almost 
 everything essential to success. Without this 
 background of patient and dogged perseverance 
 his feats of arms might have been nothing greater 
 than the result of a splendid audacity. As it was, 
 each one of them represented months of toil and 
 suffering, and was the calculated triumph of a 
 general. Taking him altogether, he occupies his 
 place in history as blameless a figure as any there 
 to be found. 
 
 The estimate deliberately recorded of him by a 
 judge intimately and thoroughly acquainted with 
 the man of whom he wrote is worth quoting. 
 His mind, according to Jefferson, though not of the 
 first order, was great and powerful, his penetration 
 strong. So far as he saw, no judgment was 
 sounder, though, being little assisted by imagin- 
 ation, he was slow in arriving at conclusions. 
 Though incapable of fear, he was pre-eminently 
 prudent. His integrity was absolute, his justice 
 inflexible ; nor was he ever biased by love, hate, 
 or interest. In those cases where passion broke 
 its bonds, he was tremendous in his wrath ; but his 
 temper, though naturally irritable, was controlled. 
 With regard to money, he was honourable, but 
 exact. * His heart was not warm in its affections, 
 but he exactly calculated every man's value, and 
 gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. ... 
 On the whole, his character was, in its mass, per- 
 fect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent/
 
 58 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 The judgment, just, impartial, and unenthusiastic, 
 represents fairly enough the impression produced 
 by a study of his life. In spite of his many merits, 
 it is apt to leave the reader cold. His virtues are 
 written so that he who runs may, nay must, read ; 
 but it is ten to one that the recognition of them will 
 fail to excite the imagination or stir the heart. 
 Lesser, ~br worse, men have won a larger measure 
 of love. 
 
 Casting about for a reason, over and above the 
 very absence of those weaknesses of poor human 
 nature which have something endearing about 
 them, it is perhaps to be discovered in yet another 
 of his gifts the gift of silence. Simple, strong, 
 and eminently practical, he 'went about his work 
 with as few words as might be. Silence was with 
 him no habit deliberately adopted ; it was neither a 
 policy nor a precaution ; it was a necessity of his 
 nature. And whilst such a habit may be the mark 
 of a character no less rare than admirable, it is also 
 the negative proof of the absence of a need of 
 sympathy. What men want it may be taken as a 
 general rule that they will demand. In Washing- 
 ton's case, not claiming sympathy, it is probable 
 that, even in his own day, he did not fully obtain it. 
 He had, doubtless, friends whom he loved and who 
 returned his affection : but it is curious and signifi- 
 cant that it seems to have taken him a lifetime to 
 win if indeed it was won in the end the regard 
 of one at least of those dearest to him. The story 
 of his relations with the young West Indian 
 adventurer, Hamilton, for whom he cherished so
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 59 
 
 deep an affection and who returned that affection 
 so ill, whilst it has a touch of pathos investing 
 Washington with a human interest he sometimes 
 lacks, also points to a defect in his capacity for 
 calling forth affection. 1 
 
 Turning from his contemporaries to posterity, he 
 has remained to it, so to speak, a stranger. Not a 
 few men have become known to future generations 
 after a more intimate fashion than can be possible 
 during their lifetime to any save those admitted to 
 the innermost circle of familiar association. In life 
 they belonged to their friends ; in death they be- 
 came the property of the world. The grave unseals 
 many secrets, and the stranger, rightly or not, is 
 made the recipient of confidences that a man 
 hesitates to intrust to his brother. The crowd 
 enters the inner shrine and lifts the veil of the 
 temple. The letter, or the diary, yesterday guarded 
 jealously under lock and key, is to-morrow exposed 
 to the scrutiny and the criticism of the inquisitive 
 public. But Washington is not of these. We 
 know the facts of his life, what he did, how he 
 looked. We are aware of the dignity and self- 
 restraint marking his attitude towards the world ; 
 and we catch more vivid glimpses of him reflected 
 in the effect produced upon those with whom he 
 was brought into contact such as the soldiers 
 
 o 
 
 serving under him, upon whom his personality 
 
 1 It is noticeable that nothing of the kind is perceptible with 
 regard to the young Lafayette. It is possible that the demon- 
 strative love of the Frenchman for his 'adopted father' had 
 broken down the barriers of reserve set up by nature in the 
 American.
 
 6o 
 
 worked after a fashion dispensing with words. But 
 here our knowledge stops short. There is no real 
 and intimate acquaintanceship with the complex 
 springs of action. No record of struggles and 
 temptations brings him nearer to us ; no tales of 
 any secret falls, or of remorses, set him closer still. 
 The voice of the man rarely, by a personal appeal, 
 bridges the gulf time has opened. ' Of himself/ 
 says a careful biographer, ' he said nothing.' And 
 though it may be true that words are but a second- 
 ary means of self-revelation ; or even, as, Gautier 
 avers, that ' on ne parle que lorsquon ria rien a dire,' 
 personal contact, the grasp of a hand, the glance of 
 an eye, are necessary if a man is to make himself 
 understood without the medium of language. In 
 Washington's case, those utterances knitting to- 
 gether, in heart and sympathies, men who have 
 never looked upon each other's faces, are rarely 
 heard. His very strength, the qualities enabling 
 him to stand alone and maintain his attitude of quiet 
 independence, are so many sources of estrangement. 
 Posterity honours and respects, but on the whole 
 it does not greatly love him. 
 
 Different methods must be pursued to arrive at 
 conclusions with regard to different men. Whilst 
 one man must be judged pre-eminently by a study 
 of motives, another must stand or fall by facts. In 
 the case of Washington, in the absence of those 
 impulses, conscious or unconscious, of self-revela- 
 tion which occasionally give the key to a life, all 
 that is available is, broadly speaking, the evidence 
 furnished by facts evidence unsatisfactory enough
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 61 
 
 as a general rule, since it is possible for men to 
 work together hand in hand, to practise the same 
 virtues and to fall into the like faults, and yet, in 
 all that lends subjective and moral importance to 
 outward action, to remain as far asunder as the 
 limits of human nature will permit. 
 
 In the present instance, however, this data is 
 less inconclusive than usual. So far as it is 
 possible to judge, there was about George Wash- 
 ington so noble a simplicity, so complete an absence 
 of any disguise or pose, that the task of deducing 
 character from conduct becomes comparatively 
 easy. ' Oest sitrtout la faiblesse des convictions] 
 says Guizot again, ' qui fait celle des conduites' 
 In Washington there was no such weakness. 
 Neither, so far as can be guessed, was there any 
 esoteric side to his social and political faith. His 
 objects were avowed, and they corresponded with 
 the means taken to attain them. The purpose he 
 set before him that of winning freedom and inde- 
 pendence for his country might indeed be difficult 
 of achievement, an arduous task, but it was neither 
 chimerical, nor, as the event proved, beyond the 
 range of possibility. He was kindled by the hope 
 of the patriot, not by the zeal of the fanatic. 
 No visions of an earthly Paradise, to be struggled 
 for at all hazards and at every cost, dazzled his 
 sight. Eminently sane, the ideal he set before 
 him was one not out of the reach of courage, 
 perseverance, self-sacrifice and patience, and upon 
 all these, so far as he himself was concerned, he 
 could cou^t. By means of these qualities the
 
 62 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 American Revolution was accomplished. There 
 has been no more striking instance of salvation 
 won for a nation by a single man. The ultimate 
 result would doubtless have been the same had 
 Washington never lived ; but, without him, the 
 independence of the Colonies would probably have 
 been indefinitely postponed. By Washington it 
 was obtained in a comparatively short space of 
 time and in the face of almost overwhelming 
 obstacles. In July 1775 he accepted the command 
 of the forces of the revolted states ; in December 
 1781 his work was accomplished, and, 'commend- 
 ing the interests of our dearest country to the 
 protection of Almighty God,' he rendered back 
 his commission into the hands of those from whom 
 he had received it. It is with the character of the 
 man by whom the war was conducted rather than 
 with the facts of the war that we are concerned, 
 but those facts were, to an unusual degree, the 
 result and outcome of character. 
 
 A letter to Congress may serve as an example 
 of the spirit he displayed from first to last, whilst 
 carrying on the struggle in the face of difficulties 
 many men might have regarded as insuperable. 
 Reduced at the time it was written to desperate 
 straits, he had exceeded his powers and pledged 
 his own estate, and ruin to the cause still remained 
 within measurable distance. In a few brief sen- 
 tences he placed the situation before the central 
 authority, adding his reasons, and the apology, 
 were one needed, for his conduct : 
 
 'A character to lose,' he wrote, 'an estate to
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 63 
 
 forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, 
 and a life devoted, must be my excuse.' 
 
 It was seldom that Washington went so far in 
 the direction of a personal explanation, and the 
 words are a fair example of his proud and quiet 
 independence. He spoke as only a man has a 
 right to speak by whom nothing has been kept 
 back. 
 
 His tone in the hour of victory is no less in- 
 structive. It was not that of the lover of war. 
 His was not the restless ambition of the successful 
 soldier. He had attained his end, and he was 
 content. ' The scene is at last closed,' he wrote, 
 ' I feel myself eased of a load of public care. I 
 hope to spend the remainder of my days in culti- 
 vating the affections of good men, and in the 
 practice of the domestic virtues.' The hope was 
 not realised ; the infant republic could not dispense 
 with the services of the statesman to whom she 
 owed her very existence. But that the words 
 expressed his genuine aspirations there is no 
 reason to doubt. 
 
 From these two quotations alone it would almost 
 be possible to infer the character of the man. All 
 that is known of his life, public and private, in 
 peace and in war, is in harmony with them. 
 ' George was always a good boy,' said his mother 
 at a time when he had vindicated his right to be 
 regarded as the greatest of his countrymen, adding 
 her confidence that he would continue to do his 
 duty. Whether in time of peace or war, he did it, 
 and did it well.
 
 64 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Of his life antecedent to the great national 
 struggle a brief account may suffice. Born in 
 Virginia, in the position of a country gentleman, 
 there was little to distinguish it from that led by 
 his neighbours. Simple in tastes and habits, he 
 might have seemed eminently adapted to live and 
 die a planter. The work of a surveyor on the 
 frontier had, however, accustomed him early to 
 exposure and hardship, and in fighting the French, 
 his future allies, he had served his apprenticeship 
 to war. It was when scarcely more than a lad he 
 wrote that he loved to hear the bullets whistle. It 
 was a liking he never lost, in spite of his more 
 mature disapproval of the boyish boast. 
 
 A feature belonging to this early initiation in 
 war is worth noting in connection with his future 
 career. It is his profound pity a pity not always 
 found in the soldier, especially in his youth 
 for human suffering. Washington, always slow 
 to give expression to his feelings, must have 
 been deeply moved, when, in the bitterness of his 
 indignation at the insufficiency of the means placed 
 at his disposal for affording protection to the 
 unhappy inhabitants of the invaded country, he 
 wrote that the tears of the women and the petitions 
 of the men melted him into ' such deadly sorrow 
 that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, 
 I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the 
 butchering enemy, provided that would contribute 
 to the people's ease.' 
 
 The value of an object is measured by the price 
 paid for it. The man who wrote that letter was
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 65 
 
 not likely to throw himself lightly into a war of 
 the magnitude of that he subsequently carried on, 
 month after month, by means of an army denuded 
 of almost every necessary of life, and tracked, in 
 one instance at least, by the traces left by the 
 bleeding feet of the soldiers. 
 
 The passing of the Stamp Act the prelude to 
 the coming storm, found him a member of the 
 Virginian House of Burgesses, having resigned 
 his commission on his marriage in order to lead 
 the happy and unambitious life of a country gentle- 
 man. In this character Washington might have 
 passed the remainder of his days had he not been 
 forced by circumstances into action. It needed 
 the actual call to the struggle before his fighting 
 instincts, strong though they were, gained the 
 mastery, and he became ready to sacrifice sub- 
 stance, happiness, life, all, in the cause of liberty. 
 
 His identification with that cause was marked 
 by careful deliberation. If he was one of the first 
 to detect a policy on the part of the Home Govern- 
 ment which, carried out, must lead to separation, 
 he had no desire that the colonies should proceed 
 hastily to extremities. In defence of lawful liberty, 
 in resistance to a tyrannical exercise of power, it 
 was indeed his expressed conviction that 'no man 
 should hesitate a moment to use arms.' Yet he 
 added that arms should be the dernier resort. 
 
 To that last resource it was becoming clear that 
 recourse must be had. In the opinion of some 
 the proximate reasons of the war have appeared 
 inadequate. But whether or not this was true,
 
 66 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the main issue remains unaffected. The reasons 
 which drove the American people to revolt were 
 not so much the injustice of this or that tax, the 
 levying of one duty or another, as the assertion 
 on the part of the mother country of fundamental 
 rights disallowed by the colonies. The symptoms 
 are not the disease, and the true sundering causes 
 lay far below the surface agitation. To many dis- 
 passionate judges on this side of the water, as well 
 as to the American nation itself, taxation of a 
 people independently of its own consent was an 
 unwarrantable infringement of lawful liberty. But 
 had a compromise been effected, and had the 
 Home Government displayed more wisdom and 
 foresight than it did, though the crisis might have 
 been postponed, it is scarcely conceivable that it 
 should have been averted. Already in England 
 there were not wanting thinkers who perceived 
 that the malady had reached too advanced a 
 stage to be arrested, and that severance alone 
 was likely to prove an effectual remedy. At the 
 same time even Adam Smith, while an advocate 
 of this drastic cure, admitted that the solution 
 would never be voluntarily adopted by any nation. 
 That an attempt was to be made to force it upon 
 Great Britain was soon made plain. Yet, indig- 
 nant as were the colonies at the arbitrary proceed- 
 ings of the Home Government, the spirit of 
 revolution was singularly slow in spreading, and 
 the aspirations of the people continued for the most 
 part to be limited to a return to their earlier condi- 
 tions of government. Whatever might be the wider 
 
 m
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 67 
 
 principles underlying the struggle, the ostensible 
 cause in which the nation was invited to take up 
 arms was a financial quarrel. This should be borne 
 in mind as supplying a key to the fashion in which 
 it was carried on. It has been justly observed 
 that a mere money dispute is not calculated to 
 evoke enthusiasm or to transform the character, 
 and that, in consequence, ' few of the great pages 
 of history are less marked by the stamp of heroism 
 than the American Revolution.' The fervour of 
 the struggle for Italian independence, the passion 
 for abstract principles of justice that fired the 
 imagination of the French, the love of their native 
 soil and the hatred of the oppressor characteristic 
 of the Irish rebel, were all alike absent. In their 
 stead was a rational desire for a reasonable measure 
 of liberty, a prosaic and sane determination to 
 resist robbery. Such a desire and such a deter- 
 mination were enough to make men arm ; they 
 were not enough to inspire them with a longing for 
 the battle. 
 
 Washington was among the first to recognise the 
 fact that war was inevitable. Satisfied that such was 
 the case, his course was no half-hearted one, and 
 addressing a meeting of Virginians, he declared 
 himself ready to raise a thousand men, subsist them 
 at his own cost, and march them to the relief of 
 Boston, then in the hands of British troops. The 
 combative spirit of the leader of the Revolution 
 was roused at last. 
 
 By the spring of 1775 the northern colonists had 
 fought, and fought well. In the south preparations
 
 68 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 for the struggle were being strenuously pushed 
 forward, although Congress, whilst exercising its 
 own sovereign authority, continued to send ' humble 
 and dutiful petitions ' to the King. Elected a 
 delegate, Washington silently watched its vacill- 
 ations. If he abstained from taking part in the 
 debate, it was a fact more expressive than verbal 
 argument that he now appeared in his place 
 wearing the uniform of a Virginian colonel. 
 
 Silent as he had remained, consistent as had 
 been his refusal to assume a foremost place, or 
 even to add his voice unnecessarily to those of the 
 promoters of war, his power had made itself felt. 
 ' If you speak of solid information or sound judg- 
 ment,' said a contemporary observer, ' Colonel 
 Washington is unquestionably the greatest man in 
 the Congress.' He was also a tried and skilful 
 soldier ; of stainless character and unblemished 
 honour. The place he held in public estimation 
 was proved on June 15, 1775, when he was 
 appointed by Congress Commander-in-chief of the 
 American forces. On the following day he 
 signified his acceptance of the post, declining how- 
 ever, on the grounds of insufficiency for the task 
 before him, to receive any emoluments over and 
 above the actual expenses he might incur in the 
 service of the State. 
 
 What were his expectations of success can only 
 be conjectured. To some men the chances of it 
 must have seemed small. But Washington was 
 confident that, given the power and will to fight, a 
 nation struggling for freedom was destined to win
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 69 
 
 it. ' Did the militia fight ? ' was his question on 
 receiving the news of the combat at Bunker's Hill. 
 ' Then the liberties of the country are safe,' was his 
 rejoinder, when answered in the affirmative. It was 
 a confidence he never lost. We have it on his own 
 authority that he had never been despondent ; and 
 at a time when a man might reasonably have con- 
 sidered the situation desperate he wrote to his 
 brother that ' under a full persuasion of the justice 
 of our cause, I cannot entertain the idea that it 
 will finally sink.' It was no doubt this inextin- 
 guishable faith which enabled him to carry on 
 the struggle under conditions making success seem, 
 humanly speaking, almost impossible. 
 
 At Cambridge, near Boston, Washington formally 
 opened the campaign by drawing his sword before 
 the assembled troops. 
 
 A variety of circumstances contributed to add 
 difficulty to his position. A Southerner, an aristo- 
 crat, a slave-owner, and an Episcopalian, he was 
 surrounded by men identified with opposite 
 opinions ; democrats as regarded politics, dissenters 
 as regarded religion. And whilst conciliation would 
 have seemed imperatively demanded if he was to 
 gain the good- will of those over whom he had been 
 placed, there was no leisure to spend in the acquire- 
 ment of popularity. Though enthusiastic and 
 courageous, the troops were totally lacking in the 
 discipline necessary to render an army efficient ; 
 the enemy was close at hand ; and no time was to 
 be lost in taking such measures as might best 
 serve to reduce chaos to order.
 
 70 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Washington was not the man to flinch from his 
 duty. ' I spare none,' he himself declared laconi- 
 cally, describing the necessity of dealing out 
 summary justice to officers guilty of military 
 offences. ' New lords, new laws,' wrote the army 
 chaplain, with reference to the strictness of the 
 discipline enforced. Yet such was the power of the 
 Commander-in-chief, such the force of his personal 
 influence, that in spite of the obstacles presented 
 by alien race and by conflicting opinions, no 
 murmurs of discontent disturbed the unanimous 
 welcome accorded to him by the New England 
 soldiers. 
 
 The material out of which his army was to be 
 fashioned, though raw, was good. The northern 
 yeomen, from whom it had been recruited, were 
 ardent supporters of the national cause, accustomed 
 to the use of firearms, and were a well-educated 
 and intelligent class. But the mass of the troops 
 were totally inexperienced in military matters, un- 
 used to the pressure of discipline, and, above all, 
 they had enlisted only for short service. 
 
 The condition of the army as regarded munitions 
 of war may be inferred from the statement that, 
 not a month after Washington had taken command 
 of it, the discovery was made that gunpowder was 
 lacking, and that some nine rounds alone remained 
 in the cartridge boxes. Out of an army thus un- 
 provided, and constantly changing its constituent 
 elements, the new Commander-in-chief was called 
 upon to forge the instrument to be used in severing 
 the connection of the colonies with England. The
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 71 
 
 magnitude of the work he accomplished can only be 
 estimated aright when this is constantly borne in 
 mind. 
 
 The siege of Boston lasted from July till the 
 following spring. In March the end came. Howe 
 with his troops evacuated the town, and it remained 
 in the hands of the Americans. Great as was the 
 triumph in itself, its moral effect was almost incal- 
 culable. The strength of the colonies had been 
 measured against that of the mother country. Her 
 regular and disciplined forces had been compelled to 
 yield to an army of untested and uncertain calibre. 
 Lord Sandwich's contemptuous assertion, made in 
 the House of Lords, to the effect that all Yankees 
 were cowards, had been explicitly disproved. 
 
 Another fact of no less importance had been 
 also made clear. This was the mettle and quality 
 of the man who had been selected as the leader 
 in the fight. Washington had displayed, in this 
 opening scene of the struggle, gifts and powers 
 by which he continued to be distinguished to the 
 end. He had not only shown himself to be a 
 skilful general, but, though sorely tried by the 
 jealousies, the insubordination, and the lack of the 
 habit of obedience of the heterogeneous body of 
 soldiers under his command, he had testified a 
 remarkable capacity for handling men of different 
 race and breeding to his own. What was scarcely 
 less important, his attitude towards an enemy still 
 invested with the glamour belonging, in the eyes 
 of colonists, to the mother country, had been 
 characterised by a dignity, a self-control, an
 
 72 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 independence and a self-respect before which the 
 studied insolence of the British military authorities 
 had been at last forced to give way. American 
 officers, when captured, had been dealt with as 
 rebels, and therefore as felons. In a letter to 
 General Gage, couched in language studiously 
 moderate, Washington warned him that the treat- 
 ment of British prisoners would for the future be 
 regulated by that meted out to Americans. Upon 
 receiving a reply stigmatising the colonists as rebels 
 and criminals, not only did he act without delay 
 upon his threat, but, in a second letter, read a 
 lecture on manners to the English general. It 
 must be confessed that in this composition a touch 
 of the pedagogue is to be detected. Belonging as 
 it did to the time, Washington was never quite 
 free from the tendency. But it is certain that, 
 whether or not General Gage was likely to take 
 the lesson to heart, it was no less merited by him 
 than the similar rebuke administered a little later 
 on to Lord Howe. On this occasion, the British 
 general, in attempting to open a correspondence 
 with the Commander-in-chief of the American 
 forces, had addressed him in the first place as 
 ' Mr. Washington,' then as ' George Washington, 
 Esq., etc. etc.,' and only upon finding that letters 
 bearing those superscriptions were not received, 
 wrote to England to say that it would be necessary 
 to give Mr. Washington the title transforming the 
 troops under his command from rebels into 
 belligerents. 
 
 The success which had attended the opening
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 73 
 
 scenes of the war, in the face of overwhelming 
 difficulties, was little short of a miracle. Washing- 
 ton's own description of the situation, applying as 
 it does in a measure to the entire struggle for 
 independence, is worth quoting. ' It is not in the 
 page of history perhaps,' he wrote, 'to furnish a 
 case like ours : to maintain a post within musket- 
 shot of the enemy for six months together without 
 powder, and at the same time to disband one army 
 and recruit another within that distance of twenty 
 odd British regiments.' ' My situation,' he wrote 
 a month before the capitulation, 'has been such 
 that I have been obliged to use art to conceal it 
 from my own officers.' 
 
 If the astonishing incapacity of the British 
 generals then and thereafter must be allowed to 
 have contributed to the success of the American 
 arms, it is no less certain that that success was 
 mainly due to Washington and to his extra- 
 ordinary powers of patient endurance, perseverance, 
 and unflinching determination. By July 4, 1776, 
 Congress, by its Declaration of Independence, had 
 proclaimed to the world that the time for com- 
 promise was over. The Revolution was, in theory, 
 an accomplished fact. But to the Commander-in- 
 chief was to belong the glory of making that fact 
 solid and substantial. Again and again, during 
 the next five years, to a less gallant nature, a less 
 obstinate faith, the game would have seemed 
 desperate, and honourable submission the sole 
 alternative. Excuses might have been found for 
 accommodation with the British Government. All
 
 74 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 that had been claimed by the colonies at the 
 outset of the war had been practically conceded, 
 and any remaining grievances would have been 
 re'adily redressed. But the temper of the American 
 people had changed. The Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence was not likely to be retracted ; the 
 horizon had broadened, and men who had tasted 
 of full political liberty were not disposed to retrace 
 their steps. To Washington at least, such a 
 course would seem never to have suggested itself. 
 With a vacillating Congress interfering in military 
 matters it was wholly incompetent to handle, 
 appointing incapable officers, and demanding the 
 impossible from the Commander-in-chief; with an 
 army still enlisted on terms of short service, con- 
 tinually melting away and laboriously recruited 
 from raw and untried material ; with a perpetual 
 insufficiency of both munitions of war and neces- 
 saries of life ; with calumny at work to lessen his 
 own credit with the central authorities and the 
 nation at large ; with intrigues against him 
 amongst his own officers, few men would not 
 have experienced moments of discouragement if 
 not of despair. But to Washington, so far as can 
 be known, no such times came. To indulge a 
 doubt as to the ultimate issue of the struggle 
 would have seemed to him almost a want of con- 
 fidence in the justice of God. Nor did his dogged 
 determination ever fail. A story is told of how, 
 at the very crisis of the war, the Delaware having 
 been crossed on the way to Trenton, the troops 
 were marching towards the town through a storm
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 75 
 
 of driving sleet, and a message was received by 
 Washington from General Sullivan to the effect 
 that the arms of the men were wet. ' Then tell 
 your General,' was the reply, ' to use the bayonet, 
 for the town must be taken' The answer is typical 
 of the spirit he displayed from first to last. If he 
 met with mishaps, he was at once at work to 
 retrieve them. His misfortunes were so many 
 opportunities for the manifestation of an unbroken 
 courage of a kind from which that of other men 
 catches fire. 
 
 During the campaign of 1777 Washington's 
 powers of resource were taxed to the uttermost in 
 order to enable him, to use his own words, to keep 
 the body and soul of his army together. The conduct 
 of Congress too, the disparity between its demands 
 and the means at his disposal for complying with 
 those demands, was in itself enough to drive a 
 Commander-in-chief to desperation. It was at this 
 juncture, when endurance was already strained to 
 its extremest limit and the pressure of anxiety was 
 at its height, that the smouldering discontent and 
 jealousy caused by his advancement gathered to 
 a head and found expression in the cabal known 
 by the name of General Conway, one of its 
 chief promoters. The sordid intrigue can only 
 be briefly noticed here ; but the dignity and 
 self-control of Washington's bearing on the occa- 
 sion is too characteristic to be passed over in 
 silence. 
 
 The nominal head of the party hostile to the 
 Commander-in-chief was General Gates, who, as
 
 76 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 commanding the northern army, occupied a position 
 second alone to Washington's own. A vain and 
 weak man, his head had been turned by the 
 success of a campaign carefully planned by his 
 chief himself, who had moreover materially con- 
 tributed to it by detaching from the army under 
 his immediate command troops he could ill spare. 
 Not a particle of unworthy jealousy ever mingled 
 with Washington's zeal. ' If the cause is advanced,' 
 were his own words, borne out by deeds, ' indif- 
 ferent is it to me where, or in what quarter, it 
 happens.' Gates, on the contrary, the victory of 
 Saratoga won, not only embarrassed the move- 
 ments of Washington by the delays and obstacles he 
 interposed in the way of the return of the southern 
 troops, but, intoxicated by flattery, permitted him- 
 self to be placed in a position of rivalry with regard 
 to his superior officer. 
 
 He had been made a tool of by men cleverer 
 than himself. Those, in Congress and outside it, 
 who desired to make use of him to Washington's 
 detriment, had plied him with flattery, and had 
 found none too coarse for his taste. ' You have 
 saved our northern hemisphere,' wrote one of his 
 sycophants, adding that, unless he came south, to 
 ' collect the virtuous band who wished to fight 
 under his banner,' all would be lost. The most 
 active and adroit member of the intriguing party 
 was, however, General Conway, an Irish adven- 
 turer whose path to unmerited advancement had 
 been barred by the influence of the Commander-in- 
 chief. Of the nature of the revenge he sought to
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 77 
 
 take an example is contained in a note, characteristi- 
 cally laconic, addressed to the culprit by Washington 
 himself. 'Sir' thus it runs 'a letter which I re- 
 ceived last night contained the following paragraph : 
 " In a letter from General Con way to General Gates 
 he says, Heaven has determined to save your country, 
 or a weak general and bad counsellors would have 
 ruined it." I am Sir, your humble servant, George 
 Washington.' 
 
 Of the strength within Congress of the party 
 
 opposed to the man occupied, in the sweat of his 
 
 brow, in accomplishing the arduous task it had set 
 
 him, proof is afforded by the fact that Conway was 
 
 this same year appointed to be one of the two 
 
 inspectors-general intrusted with the promotion of 
 
 discipline and reform of abuses in the army. The 
 
 rank of major-general was likewise conferred upon 
 
 him. His importance was, however, ephemeral. 
 
 The intrigues against the Commander-in-chief 
 
 failed, and Gates was not invited to save the country 
 
 by assuming the supreme command. But if America 
 
 was too well aware of the value of her virtual head 
 
 to deprive herself of his services, the affair must yet 
 
 have added appreciably to his difficulties. A private 
 
 letter written at this time will best show his own 
 
 view of the matter. In this document, addressed 
 
 to the President, Laurens, Washington admits 
 
 that the knowledge that a malignant faction had 
 
 been formed against him could not but cause him 
 
 personal pain. His chief concern, however, arose 
 
 from apprehension of the public danger arising from 
 
 internal dissensions. ' My enemies,' he pursued,
 
 78 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ' take an ungenerous advantage of me. They know 
 the delicacy of my situation, and that motives of 
 policy deprive me of the defence I might otherwise 
 make against their insidious attacks. They know 
 I cannot combat their insinuations, however injur- 
 ious, without disclosing secrets which it is of the 
 utmost moment to conceal ' the weakness of his 
 forces, no doubt, and the total inadequacy of the 
 means placed at his command. Lastly, the frank 
 confession of fallibility is made the more gener- 
 ous when the charges preferred against him are 
 remembered. Unremitting as his aim had been 
 to further the common cause, yet ' I may very 
 often have been mistaken in my judgment of the 
 means, and may in many instances deserve the 
 imputation of error.' 
 
 With this characteristic admission the affair of 
 the Conway cabal may be dismissed. Another and 
 perhaps a heavier blow inflicted on him, in the 
 treason of one of his most trusted subordinates, is 
 dealt with elsewhere. His treatment of the unfor- 
 tunate Andre, as well as of Benedict Arnold him- 
 self, displays that sterner side of his character 
 sometimes overlooked. 
 
 For another failing besides treason Washington 
 had no indulgence. Lenient towards many short- 
 comings, magnanimous in dealing with personal 
 affronts, a want of courage could win no forgiveness 
 from him. ' It was from first to last impossible for 
 him to understand how any man could refuse to fight 
 or think of running away.' * Any trace of cowardice 
 
 1 Lodge.
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 79 
 
 was one of the few causes with power to disturb 
 the outward equability of a temper under firm con- 
 trol, and to disturb it to such a degree that General 
 Scott, describing his conduct at the battle of Mon- 
 mouth, records that the Commander-in-chief ' swore 
 like an angel from heaven.' The scene between 
 him and General Lee, the culprit on this occasion, 
 may serve as an example of his bearing, brought 
 face to face with this unpardonable sin. 
 
 Lee was a soldier of fortune, with a brilliant 
 record. Fighting the French in earlier days, his 
 ceaseless vigilance had earned for him from the 
 Indians the soubriquet of 'the spirit that never 
 sleeps.' He had served against Spain in Portugal ; 
 had risen to the rank of major-general in the 
 Polish army ; and, embracing the cause of American 
 independence, had aspired to the supreme com- 
 mand. These having been his hopes, disappointed 
 ambition may possibly have influenced his estimate 
 of the military capacity of the man who had been 
 preferred to him. At any rate it was a low one. 
 ' Between ourselves,' he wrote to General Gates, 
 the usual recipient of complaints against the Com- 
 mander-in-chief, ' a certain great man is most 
 damnably deficient ' ; and in his relations with 
 Washington himself he strained obedience to the 
 uttermost. He did worse. A prisoner in the 
 British camp, he not only expressed his conviction 
 that the game was near its end, but, justifying 
 his conduct by the argument that since the colonies 
 must eventually be forced to submit, it was 
 for the advantage of both parties that the war
 
 8o REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 should be brought to a speedy conclusion, he 
 occupied his enforced leisure in drawing up, for 
 the benefit of the enemy, a plan for the conquest 
 of America. 
 
 By the year 1778, having regained his liberty, 
 he was once more fighting in the cause he had 
 predoomed to failure ; and, on the occasion of the 
 evacuation of Philadelphia by the British forces, 
 was in command of the advanced corps of the 
 American troops, with explicit orders to attack the 
 retiring enemy. To this policy he had been from 
 the first opposed, urging that they should be allowed 
 to withdraw unmolested ; and though claiming the 
 command due to his military rank, he had disobeyed, 
 so far as disobedience was possible, the orders he 
 had received. It was, he informed the indignant 
 Lafayette, impossible to stand against British 
 soldiers. 
 
 The result came near to producing a serious 
 disaster. As the Commander-in-chief himself, 
 with the main body of the troops, pushed forward 
 to support the advanced corps, man after man met 
 him with tales of defeat. At first angrily incredu- 
 lous, when it became impossible to doubt the truth 
 of the report, Washington rode on faster and faster 
 through the scorching midday heat, until Lee him- 
 self, with the troops under his command, came in 
 view, in full and disorderly retreat. 
 
 What passed is variously related. It would seem 
 that, at that sight, Washington, riding straight up 
 to Lee, demanded of him, with a deep oath, the 
 meaning of what he saw ; and that, met by faltering
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 81 
 
 excuses, he gave his indignation free vent. Then, 
 setting himself to redeem the situation, he suc- 
 ceeded in retrieving the fortune of the day. 
 
 The scene was the end of Lee's employment as 
 an American soldier. At first sentenced to a year's 
 suspension, he was afterwards finally dismissed 
 from the army, in consequence of an insolent note 
 to Congress itself, and thus disappears from the 
 struggle. It was probably better so. No merits, 
 no experience, no gifts however brilliant, could 
 blot out, in Washington's eyes, a refusal to fight. 
 
 It has been shown that Washington knew how 
 to establish fitting relations between the newly born 
 State and its enemies. In dealing with allies he 
 was equally successful in vindicating the position 
 of the colonies, and fixing their place, once for all, 
 among the nations. Destitute of any spirit of self- 
 assertion or arrogance, he was no less free from 
 that servility sometimes displayed by the colonist 
 towards the friendly European. While accepting, 
 therefore, the French alliance with gratitude and 
 cordiality, he systematically opposed the practice 
 of bestowing posts upon Frenchmen to the detri- 
 ment of native officers. The foreigner remained in 
 his eyes a foreigner, to be treated with courtesy 
 and consideration, but not to be preferred to men 
 fighting in the cause of their own country. To 
 his attitude on this question a serious one at the 
 time part of the popularity he enjoyed in the 
 army was doubtless due, a popularity especially 
 important in the case of a commander-in-chief 
 compelled to call upon his subordinates to face, 
 
 F
 
 82 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 not danger alone, but every species of hardship 
 and privation. It was mainly owing to the confid- 
 ence he inspired that the army was kept together 
 at all. His character, if not altogether calculated 
 to call forth a supreme devotion, commanded an 
 absolute trust. ' I will storm hell,' General Wayne 
 is reported to have said when asked by his chief 
 if he would undertake the attack of Stony Point ; 
 ' I will storm hell, if you will plan it.' 
 
 It was on December 4, 1781, that the closing 
 scene of the militant portion of Washington's 
 life took place. Independence had been won, 
 and won chiefly by his own endurance, skill, and 
 dogged perseverance. The British defeat was com- 
 plete and final ; the Revolution was accomplished 
 and peace declared. The men who had fought 
 side by side in the defence of a great cause were to 
 part. When the officers of the army met together to 
 take leave of their Commander-in-chief, even his 
 iron self-control was shaken. As, lifting his glass, 
 he pledged those present, his voice faltered. 
 
 The toast was drunk in silence. Then he 
 spoke : 
 
 ' " I cannot come to each of you," he said, "and 
 take my leave, but shall be obliged if you will 
 come shake me by the hand." 
 
 'One by one they approached, and Washington 
 grasped the hand of each man and embraced him. 
 His eyes were full of tears, and he could not trust 
 himself to speak. In silence he bade each and all 
 farewell, and then, accompanied by his officers, 
 walked to Whitehall Ferry. Entering his barge,
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 83 
 
 the word was given, and as the oars struck the 
 water he stood up and lifted his hat.' * 
 
 In silence the salute was returned, and the 
 parting was accomplished. 
 
 The Revolution was at an end, and Washington's 
 career as revolutionist was over. 
 
 1 Lodge's Life, vol. i. p. 337. 

 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 
 
 1741-1801 
 
 To every revolution its hero. To most, un- 
 fortunately, its traitor. If Washington, in regard 
 to the struggle by which the independence of 
 America was won, filled the place of the first, 
 Benedict Arnold, of unenviable notoriety, was, 
 par excellence, the last. 
 
 It is to the melancholy and dramatic close to his 
 brilliant record that he owes his unique position 
 amongst the dramatis personce of the Revolu- 
 tion. The revolted colonies were served by 
 other soldiers whose exploits and whose bravery 
 equalled, if they could not excel, those of Arnold. 
 In his treason he was, if not alone, at least pre- 
 eminent a giant among traitors. 
 
 There is little disposition at the present day to 
 be hard upon sinners. They may even be said 
 to have become the fashion. The harmless 
 sheep is compelled, if he would win toleration, 
 to twist his features into some semblance of 
 the wolf; and it costs a man no trifling ex- 
 penditure of moral courage to avow his complete 
 respectability. 
 
 Coming to matters of historical interest, the 
 same state of public feeling is discernible, and it 
 
 S4
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 85 
 
 is not easy to discover the criminal who has not 
 found his apologist. 
 
 Treachery, however, has an ugly sound about it, 
 making men hesitate before they condone that 
 special sin, and the traitor will wait longer than 
 most for entire rehabilitation. 
 
 Nevertheless the claim put forward by Arnold's 
 biographer, that whilst his crime is remembered 
 and it has been well remembered by his country- 
 men, the recollection of his splendid services should 
 not be altogether blotted out, is a fair one. It is 
 precisely the combination of his merits the con- 
 spicuous gallantry, the iron endurance, and the 
 seeming patriotism of this Transatlantic Lucifer 
 with the sordid crime he committed, which 
 make the figure of the man who did his best to 
 wreck the national cause in America, and came 
 so perilously near to success, a tragic and memor- 
 able one in history. 
 
 It would be ungenerous, indeed, to deny him his 
 virtues. Yet another aspect of the question must 
 not be overlooked. It is impossible to refuse 
 recognition to the fact that there are actions which, 
 when not the result of a momentary impulse of 
 passion, but of mature and cool deliberation, must 
 perforce be allowed to supply the key to much 
 that would seem at first sight unconnected with 
 them. The vine does not, after all, commonly 
 bear thistles ; nor does the true and convinced 
 patriot take vengeance for personal injuries by a 
 cold-blooded betrayal of his country. By so 
 doing he betrays himself as well as his cause. It
 
 86 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 is by the lurid light afforded by his treason that 
 Arnold and his past must, in a measure at least, 
 be interpreted. 
 
 In its startling contrasts and glaring colours his 
 figure is conspicuous in the history of the war ; 
 prominent always whether in good if indeed 
 such qualities as his are to be ranked amongst 
 the virtues or in evil ; violent, vindictive, proud, 
 ambitious, and always brave, the fitting hero of the 
 melodrama in which he was to play the principal 
 part. Of his gallantry, his powers of endurance, 
 his unflinching courage in the face of overwhelm- 
 ing difficulties, there can be no question. In 
 generosity he was lavish. He was a staunch 
 friend, and capable of devoted affection. But 
 of his patriotism read in the light of the cata- 
 strophe it is impossible to speak with equal 
 certainty. He fought, it is true, for the independ- 
 ence of his native land, and fought for it no man 
 better. ' The liberties of my country were in 
 danger,' he said himself at the trial by court- 
 martial which must be considered one of the 
 proximate causes of his treason. ' The voice of 
 my country called upon all her faithful sons to 
 join in her defence. With cheerfulness I obeyed 
 the call. I was one of the first in the field.' 
 There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his 
 adhesion to the national cause, proved and guar- 
 anteed by many sacrifices. But the convictions 
 ranging him on the side of independence were, 
 likely enough, a rough and ready set of opinions, 
 adopted honestly enough, but without overmuch
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 87 
 
 reflection a garment assumed at will, not one 
 he had fashioned for himself. He was a soldier, 
 not a politician. War was his natural element, 
 fighting his delight ; and it is pardonable to 
 indulge a doubt whether the means were not to 
 him, consciously or not, a more important matter 
 than the end. A born soldier, the combat in itself 
 would have offered to him the same irresistible 
 attractions as the ring to the prize-fighter ; he 
 belonged to the brotherhood who in earlier ages 
 were accustomed to take service wherever blows 
 were to be dealt, without too curious an inquiry 
 into the justice of the quarrel. The boy is father 
 to the man. As a lad of fifteen his imagination 
 had been so fired with the dream of a soldier's life 
 that, not once, but twice, he had escaped from 
 home with the purpose of joining the troops then 
 engaged in the war with France. On the second 
 occasion he had so far succeeded in carrying out 
 his intention as to undergo some military discipline. 
 Wearying, however, quickly of it, he returned 
 shortly to his mother's house, a boy-deserter. 
 The episode was a fitting prelude to his future 
 life. 
 
 When the call to arm in the national cause went 
 forth he responded to it, abandoning without 
 hesitation the business of a successful merchant 
 in order to fling himself, heart and soul, into the 
 struggle ; and sacrificing home, profession, leisure, 
 to embrace a military career. Thenceforth, having 
 taken his side, whether as serious patriot or as 
 soldier of fortune, all his powers were devoted to
 
 88 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the endeavour to win for his cause, success, for 
 himself, glory. 
 
 His story divides itself roughly into three parts. 
 The first is concerned with a list of his remarkable 
 achievements, of feats of arms reminding one of 
 the exploits of a paladin of romance ; the second, 
 with the reward meted out to these services by 
 the representatives of the people ; the third con- 
 tains the history of what must be termed his 
 meditated revenge, the treason he deliberately 
 planned and prepared, and would have executed 
 without remorse had not his scheme been frus- 
 trated. With his failure to betray his post into 
 the hands of the enemy, the story practically ends, 
 the years succeeding that dramatic climax being, 
 like the conclusion of an ill-constructed play, of 
 no consequence to any one but the actor. 
 
 His value as a soldier was made apparent with- 
 out delay. At no time were his great military 
 gifts more signally displayed than during the 
 abortive Canadian expedition undertaken soon 
 after the beginning of hostilities. It was during 
 that campaign that he laid the foundations of his 
 reputation, winning from Washington himself, not 
 prone to exaggeration, the tribute contained in the 
 expression of his confidence that by Arnold every- 
 thing would be done that valour or prudence could 
 suggest. 
 
 From the high opinion thus early formed of 
 him the Commander-in-chief never departed. 
 Through good report and ill, he remained his 
 staunch friend and supporter, doing all that in him
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 89 
 
 lay to counterbalance the effect of the conduct of 
 the civil authorities, and never harbouring so much 
 as a suspicion of his good faith, until the final 
 catastrophe made clear to all the world the 
 means taken by the injured man to compass his 
 revenge. 
 
 If Washington was blind in his confidence there 
 had been much to make him so. Arnold was not 
 only a brilliant soldier but he possessed the 
 scarcely less important gift of inspiring entire 
 trust. In the march through the wilderness 
 towards Quebec, such was his power of dealing 
 with men that, while the troops under his com- 
 mand were in danger of dying of starvation, not 
 a murmur was heard, nor did the possibility of the 
 abandonment of the desperate enterprise appear 
 to present itself to the minds of his raw recruits. 
 When at last a retreat was found to be inevitable, 
 it was acknowledged on all hands that the leader to 
 whom the conduct of the expedition had been 
 intrusted had done all that man could do to secure 
 success. The final scene, with the touch of dramatic 
 effect so often, whether intentionally or not, marking 
 Arnold's performances, is sufficiently characteristic 
 to be worth describing. 
 
 St. Johns had been reached by the retreating 
 force, the pursuing enemy close behind. Arrived 
 at the water's edge, Arnold watched the remnant 
 of his troops embark. As the last boat-load 
 quitted the shore, he mounted his horse, and 
 accompanied by a single companion, rode back 
 towards the advancing forces. Having made his
 
 90 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 reconnaissance and satisfied himself as to the 
 British strength, he turned his horse's head, only 
 just in time, and galloped back to the lake. Then 
 shooting the animal that had carried him, lest it 
 should fall into hostile hands, he pushed off his 
 boat, sprang into it, and followed his soldiers 
 through the darkness of the night across the 
 water. 
 
 The naval fight, taking place a little later in 
 Valcour Bay, furnished another and a still more con- 
 spicuous example of Arnold's fashion of gathering 
 laurels in the very act of suffering defeat. Set, on 
 that occasion, with untried seamen and inexperi- 
 enced gunners to defend a pass against over- 
 whelming odds, he kept up the desperate fight 
 for five hours, himself, in the absence of capable 
 men, moving from gun to gun and pointing the 
 pieces. Then, night having closed in, and the 
 enemy's fleet being stationed across the channel 
 to prevent escape, in the confident expectation of 
 capturing the American vessels in the morning, 
 he contrived, under cover of the darkness, to creep 
 out through the enemy's lines with his crippled 
 and shattered ships, and so to escape from the trap 
 prepared for him. Nor was this all, for next 
 morning, as the British followed in hot pursuit, 
 Arnold, bringing up the rear of his disabled fleet, 
 himself covered their retreat, kept the enemy in 
 check, and received their concentrated fire, until 
 at last, his sails in ribbons, his ship a wreck, but 
 with his flag still flying and no thought of surrender, 
 he broke through the enemy's vessels, drove his
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 91 
 
 ship ashore, set fire to her, and landing all his men, 
 at length himself quitted the burning vessel and led 
 his little band away in safety. It was a magnifi- 
 cent exploit, justifying the statement that the man 
 who had performed it had covered himself with 
 glory. 
 
 It is necessary to bear his feats of arms in mind 
 if the conduct of Congress towards him is to be 
 fully appreciated. The fame of his doings was in 
 all men's mouths ; he was the hero of the day. It is 
 almost incredible, and certainly incomprehensible, 
 that he should have been selected as the object of 
 repeated and deliberate slights. Yet so it was. 
 In February 1777, some four months after the sea 
 fight, five officers, every one of them his junior in 
 military rank, were promoted over his head to 
 be major-generals, his own name being omitted 
 from the list. The surprise and indignation of 
 Washington equalled his own. In the opinion 
 of the Commander-in-chief, expressed privately to 
 a member of Congress, ' a more active, a more 
 spirited and sensible officer fills no department in 
 your army.' 
 
 Arnold's first impulse, anticipated by Washington, 
 was to resign his commission. That he did not 
 carry out his intention was due to the influence of 
 the Commander-in-chief, supplemented, one may 
 pardonably suspect, by the conviction that life, 
 with a fight going on from which he was excluded, 
 would be but a pointless affair. 
 
 The conduct of Congress upon this occasion 
 must be looked upon as the first link in the chain
 
 92 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ultimately leading to the final disaster. It was not 
 likely to be forgotten by a proud and ambitious 
 man. For the present, nevertheless, he consented 
 to sink personal resentment in zeal for the national 
 cause ; whilst Congress, with a tardiness depriving 
 the act of all grace, rewarded fresh achievements 
 by his promotion to the rank of major-general, 
 hitherto withheld. At the close of the campaign 
 ending in the capitulation of the British forces 
 after the battle of Saratoga, his rightful position 
 was restored to the successful soldier, but too late 
 to efface the memory of the injustice previously 
 endured. 
 
 Of that campaign Arnold had been the moving 
 spirit, and to him its success was largely due. In 
 this case, however, he had been again the victim 
 of injustice, and the sense of injury which was 
 driving him more and more into opposition to the 
 American authorities must have been accentuated 
 by the treatment he received. On this occasion 
 he had not only to contend with the enemy in the 
 field, but found himself thwarted at every point 
 by the hostility and jealousy of his own superior 
 officer. To such a degree was this jealousy 
 carried, that at the moment when the battle of 
 Saratoga was to be fought, and the issue of the 
 campaign practically decided, he was deprived by 
 General Gates, on a flimsy excuse, of any post 
 in the army. Compelled to remain inactive, he 
 listened, wild with the desire to be in the thick 
 of the fight, to the sounds of battle audible in his 
 quarters ; then, unable any longer to govern his
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 93 
 
 impatience, he broke his bounds and flung himself 
 into the combat. 
 
 ' No man,' he cried, 'shall keep me in my tent 
 to-day. If I am without command, I will fight in 
 the ranks. But the soldiers, God bless them, will 
 follow my lead. Come on ! Victory or death.' 
 
 His confidence in the troops had not been mis- 
 placed. Whether or not in nominal authority, on 
 the battlefield Arnold was supreme. Shouts of 
 welcome greeted him as, on his great black horse, 
 he rode amongst his men, and were audible above 
 the tumult of the fight. From that moment he was 
 the practical leader ; nor was it till he had fallen 
 to the ground, his horse shot under him, and 
 he himself wounded and disabled, at the head of 
 the troops he had led to victory, that he allowed 
 himself to be overtaken by the messenger de- 
 spatched by General Gates himself never under 
 fire during the day to order him back. 
 
 One incident of the fight should be recorded, 
 bearing witness as it does to a less prominent 
 feature of Arnold's character than his personal 
 gallantry. When he had fallen, shot by a German 
 private, one of his own men, eager to avenge him, 
 had rushed forward to bayonet his assailant. 
 Arnold, with the instinct of a true soldier, inter- 
 posed. ' Don't hurt him,' were his orders, 'he did 
 but his duty. He is a fine fellow,' and the man's 
 life was saved. 
 
 That day Arnold reached the summit of his 
 fame. 'It was the hour,' says some one, 'for 
 Benedict Arnold to have died.' Death, however,
 
 94 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 is not always ready to intervene at the point when 
 it would seem to the looker-on desirable. The 
 wound received on the field of battle, though 
 severe, was unfortunately not mortal ; and the 
 soldier with whose praises the whole of America 
 was ringing, survived to be the best and most 
 justly hated man upon that continent. 
 
 The behaviour of the Government, if it cannot 
 excuse, may be allowed to palliate his subsequent 
 guilt. It would almost seem as if it had been 
 deliberately planned to rouse a less resentful nature 
 to bitterness. Taking the credit for the victory of 
 Saratoga to himself, the elation of Gates was such 
 that, forgetful alike of natural courtesy and military 
 etiquette, he communicated the news of the success 
 to Congress alone, leaving Washington himself, to 
 whose carefully laid plans it was mainly due, to 
 learn it as he might. It was he who appropriated 
 the glory so little his by right, and ' Arnold's blood 
 watered the laurels which now encircled the brow 
 of Gates.' As if this were not sufficient, Congress, 
 true to its traditions, though conceding to Arnold, 
 in late reparation, his due priority in the army, per- 
 formed what Washington characterised as an act 
 of necessary justice without cordiality, and in no 
 manner to allay the irritation caused by previous 
 slights. 
 
 Worse was to follow. It was as if circumstances 
 and men were leagued together to drive him 
 towards the precipice whither he was tending. 
 Even before this date charges involving an attack 
 upon his personal integrity had been brought
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 95 
 
 against him, and certain proceedings at Montreal 
 had been made the subject of inquiry. The 
 verdict of the Board of War, confirmed by 
 Congress, had declared his conduct to have 
 been cruelly and groundlessly aspersed. But an 
 acquittal does not, unfortunately, ensure oblivion; 
 and it is likely that the accusations, though pro- 
 nounced unfounded, had strengthened the hands 
 of his many enemies. Nor was this all. Though 
 cleared of the special charges preferred against him, 
 the examination of his accounts dragged on. His 
 expenditure during the Canadian expedition had no 
 doubt been large. Army finances had been in con- 
 fusion, and the commissariat arrangements so defec- 
 tive that the general in charge of the expedition 
 had been called upon to undertake, in addition to 
 his own, the duties properly belonging to quarter- 
 master and commissary. A careful husbandry of 
 means was no part of Arnold's military equipment. 
 Lavish by nature, he had spent his private income 
 freely for the benefit of the soldiers under his com- 
 mand, and he was not likely to have been less 
 extravagant in the employment of public money. 
 It is at any rate plain that dishonesty was never 
 proved against him, and that Washington in 
 particular, acquitted him of any such offence. But, 
 nevertheless, the suspicion continued to be enter- 
 tained in other quarters ; and finding expression, 
 now in coldness, now in secret hostility, must have 
 been specially galling to a man of his proud spirit 
 and impatient temper. 
 
 Washington proved himself, as usual, a loyal
 
 96 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 supporter, giving, moreover, practical proof of his 
 friendship. The severity of the wound received by 
 Arnold at Saratoga had put an end, for the time, 
 to any possibility of service in the field ; and the 
 Commander-in-chief, anxious no doubt at once 
 to display his own confidence in one of the most 
 brilliant of his officers, and to atone, so far as 
 might be, for the treatment Arnold had received 
 at the hands of Congress, conferred upon him the 
 command of Philadelphia, upon its evacuation, in 
 June 1778, by the British forces. 
 
 Arnold might have appeared in every respect 
 well fitted for the post. Yet it was, as the event 
 proved, an unfortunate appointment. It was during 
 his tenure of office that those occurrences took 
 place leading ultimately to the final catastrophe. 
 
 The first scene of this most dramatic episode 
 might be laid at Philadelphia when, a month before 
 the departure of the English garrison, a magni- 
 ficent pageant took place, arranged by the British 
 officers in honour of General Howe and his brother. 
 This entertainment, called the Mischianza, has 
 been invested with a melancholy interest by the 
 tragic fate of some of those connected with it. 
 The ill-starred Andre, later on Benedict Arnold's 
 accomplice in his scheme of betrayal, was foremost 
 in the organisation of the show, and a prominent 
 figure in the tournament forming part of it ; whilst 
 amongst the ladies in whose honour lances were 
 laid in rest was one, then little more than a beautiful 
 child, whose doom was scarcely less melancholy. 
 Not two years later Andre" young, handsome,
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 97 
 
 and gay, and with a personal attraction felt alike 
 by friend and foe had died upon the scaffold ; 
 and Peggy Shippen, as the wife of Benedict 
 Arnold, was sharing the fate of a man ruined in 
 character and reputation, a fugitive, dishonoured 
 and disgraced, from the country he had striven to 
 betray. 
 
 The Mischianza was one of the final incidents 
 belonging to the British occupation of Philadelphia. 
 A month later Howe, with his staff and troops, 
 young Andre among them, had quitted the city, 
 leaving it to be entered by the American forces. 
 Not long after, the General by whom he had been 
 replaced was falling as rapidly as might be under 
 the influence of Miss Shippen. 
 
 Though a widower, Arnold was not more than 
 thirty-six. He had clinging about him the glamour 
 of a great military reputation, and of splendid 
 services, ill requited by an ungrateful country. 
 The circumstances and the man taken into account, 
 it was little wonder that, in return for his own 
 passionate affection, he should have succeeded in 
 winning the heart of the eighteen-year-old girl. It 
 was, at all events, quickly done. By the beginning 
 of April 1779 he had made her his wife. 
 
 Such a marriage was, from one point of view, 
 doubtless to be regretted. Philadelphia occupied at. 
 the time the position of the city of most import- 
 ance in the States. It had also remained to a 
 considerable extent loyalist in its sympathies, and 
 not a few of its inhabitants would have seen cause 
 for rejoicing in the failure of the attempt to win 
 
 G
 
 9 8 
 
 independence. To the party in the city desiring 
 an accommodation with the Home Government the 
 Shippen family belonged. By means of his wife's 
 connections, therefore, as well as by the general 
 character of his present surroundings, Arnold found 
 himself thrown into the society of those opposed, 
 secretly or avowedly, to the American cause ; and, 
 embittered by personal ill-usage, he may likely 
 enough have found a common ground of sympathy 
 otherwise lacking in those who disliked, distrusted, 
 and despised the new popular form of government. 
 His conduct, at any rate, appears to have indicated 
 that such was the fact, since one of the charges he 
 was subsequently called upon to answer was that 
 of opening his house to men of Tory and loyalist 
 opinions, to the exclusion of those belonging to the 
 national side. For the contemptuous rejoinder 
 made by Arnold, to the effect that it sufficed him 
 to contend with his enemies in the field, there is 
 much to be said ; but it cannot be denied that 
 however desirable it may theoretically be to sink 
 political differences in matters of social intercourse, 
 a too complete obliteration of party distinctions, 
 when it has become a question not merely of con- 
 flicting opinions, but of war to the death, may be 
 a dangerous experiment. Nor was the General of 
 one of the opposing armies at the moment in 
 extreme danger and stress altogether the proper 
 person to try it. 
 
 Whilst his marriage, his environment, and the 
 intangible but powerful influence exerted by atmo- 
 sphere, may all have had their share in the further
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 99 
 
 undermining of Arnold's allegiance to the national 
 cause, other forces were operating more strongly 
 in the same direction. The tedious and protracted 
 examination of the accounts he had presented had 
 been at length concluded. Much confusion had 
 been found to exist in them not unnaturally, con- 
 sidering the circumstances under which they had 
 been kept and a large proportion of the claims he 
 had advanced were disallowed. 
 
 The blow was severe. Not only did it furnish 
 his enemies and detractors, in Congress and outside 
 it, with a handle for an attack upon his character, 
 but the loss of the money itself caused him serious 
 embarrassment. Reckoning upon its payment, he 
 had embarked, during his tenure of office in 
 Philadelphia, upon a scale of living wholly dis- 
 proportionate to the means at his command, and 
 he now found himself at a loss where to turn for 
 money to meet the expenses incurred. 
 
 The annoyance attending financial difficulties 
 was inconsiderable in comparison with another 
 blow shortly to be dealt him. 
 
 He was intensely unpopular in the important and 
 influential state of Pennsylvania. It was not slow 
 to give expression to its hostility. Early in the 
 year 1779 the local executive council drew up a 
 statement of its grievances, containing no less than 
 eight distinct charges against General Arnold, and 
 not only forwarded it to Congress, but caused it to 
 be printed and sent forthwith to the several States 
 of the Union. 
 
 Arnold's indignation was naturally unbounded,
 
 ioo REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Whilst some of the accusations were trivial and 
 petty, others were of a serious character ; and he 
 was prompt in demanding a thorough investigation. 
 Nevertheless, in spite of his impatience and his ex- 
 asperation at the delay, it was not until close upon 
 a year later, and after many complicated proceed- 
 ings in Congress, that the court-martial finally 
 appointed to inquire into the matter delivered its 
 verdict. Arnold was then formally acquitted of all 
 the grave charges brought against him, and in 
 especial of any design of defrauding the public ; 
 the minor errors considered to have been proved 
 being merely of the nature of irregularities. But 
 in strange disproportion to the offence, and no 
 doubt as a concession to the Pennsylvanian Council, 
 he was sentenced to receive a reprimand from the 
 Commander-in-chief a punishment, to an officer 
 of his standing and position, equivalent to disgrace. 
 
 Upon Washington, who had ever been his 
 staunch and loyal ally, the sentence of the court 
 must have laid a most distasteful duty. It is true 
 that it was performed in a manner to convert, so 
 far as was possible, the inevitable ' reprimand ' into 
 a tribute of praise. But the harm done was irre- 
 trievable. Congress had finally driven one of the 
 most distinguished soldiers in the service of the 
 nation into the ranks of the enemy. 
 
 The story of his actual treason remains to be 
 told. It is one singularly and tragically com- 
 plete. As to the degree of culpability involved in 
 it opinions will probably differ, according as a long 
 list of unmerited slights and injuries is allowed to
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 101 
 
 serve as an excuse, or on the contrary, by lending 
 to his conduct the distinct and unmistakable stamp 
 of a personal vengeance, is considered only to 
 enhance his guilt. ' By heaven,' he once wrote 
 to General Gates, in reference to the action of 
 Congress in deliberately passing him over in the 
 matter of promotion ; ' by heaven, I am a villain 
 if I seek not a brave revenge for injured honour.' 
 The vengeance he now sought was neither brave 
 nor was it adapted to apply a remedy to wounded 
 honour ! 
 
 The date when he first seriously entertained the 
 idea of treason is uncertain. Uncertain also are 
 the arguments he used to justify it to himself. But, 
 conjecturably, they are not far to seek. A man, 
 smarting under undeserved disgrace, sore and em- 
 bittered, surrounded by those eager to turn his 
 resentment to account ; the wife he loved by birth 
 and breeding a loyalist ; vain and ambitious, and 
 flattered by the dream of becoming the Monk of 
 an American Restoration ; with the conviction 
 growing upon him, as such convictions are wont 
 to do when affording excuses for actions already 
 half decided on, of the hopelessness of the struggle 
 for independence all these reasons may have had 
 their share in determining him. But it is impos- 
 sible, even when allowing them due weight, to 
 doubt that the desire for revenge induced him first 
 to harbour the idea of treachery, and ultimately 
 turned the scale in its favour. 
 
 No man honestly suffering a change of opinion 
 is to be blamed for acting upon it. Such a course
 
 102 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 may be a conspicuous proof of moral courage and 
 honesty. But to abandon a cause is one thing, to 
 betray it quite another ; and for the last there can 
 be no excuse. The means are not justified by the 
 end, however praiseworthy the end may be. 
 
 To return to the melancholy history, it appears 
 certain that, for several months before the verdict of 
 the court-martial was pronounced, Arnold had kept 
 up a private correspondence with Major Andre, 
 the same young English officer who, with Mrs. 
 Arnold, had taken a leading part in the pageant 
 of the Mischianza, and who was now Adjutant- 
 General to Sir Henry Clinton. The correspond- 
 ence may have begun merely as an exchange of 
 friendly feeling between Andre and the husband of 
 his old acquaintance. It seems clear that, even after 
 his disgrace, Arnold was committed to no definite 
 plan of treasonable action, since so late as March 
 1780 he desired to lead an expedition against the 
 enemy. But his schemes must have been maturing 
 during the spring and summer, and there can be 
 little doubt that he had determined upon their 
 execution when he asked and obtained from Wash- 
 ington the command of West Point, the most 
 important military station of the colonies, and 
 containing large storage of munitions of war. It 
 was this post that he finally pledged himself to 
 betray to the enemy. 
 
 Before he took up his residence at his new 
 command a meeting took place between himself 
 and Washington, significant of much of absolute 
 confidence and a generous desire of atonement for
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 103 
 
 the fault of others on the part of the Commander- 
 in-chief, and of meditated betrayal on that of his 
 subordinate. It was when the troops were crossing 
 the river Hudson at King's Ferry that the two 
 met, and that Arnold made inquiry as to whether 
 a place had been assigned him in the approaching 
 campaign. The answer was in the affirmative. 
 
 'Yes,' replied Washington, 'you are to command 
 the west wing the post of honour,' thus redeeming 
 the pledge contained in his nominal reprimand 
 that the man upon whom he had been compelled 
 to bestow it should lack no opportunity of winning 
 fresh distinction. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine how Arnold's old 
 fighting spirit must have stirred within him at the 
 prompt response his fighting spirit, and some- 
 thing better, for surely loyalty to the leader of 
 what he had brought himself to regard as a forlorn 
 hope cannot have been wholly extinguished. His 
 face changed, it is said, and he remained silent ; 
 revolving, it may be, in his mind the possibility of 
 even now at the eleventh hour retracing his steps. 
 If so, however, he was not long in recognising the 
 fact that he had gone too far to draw back ; for 
 shortly after, on the score of his wound, he declared 
 himself still unfit for active service, and renewed 
 his request to be placed in charge of West Point. 
 Washington yielded to his wish, and Arnold ob- 
 tained the post he desired. 
 
 Establishing himself at Robinson House, situated 
 east of the Hudson and below a wooded hill, he 
 was often to be seen walking alone by the river,
 
 104 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 stern and sorrowful, as well he might be, while he 
 planned how he might best carry out his intention 
 and deliver over to the enemy the charge with 
 which he was intrusted. 
 
 His wife and child had joined him and all 
 seemed well. Thus the summer passed into 
 autumn, and the final catastrophe drew near. On 
 the 1 8th of September an entertainment was 
 given by a Colonel Williams, at his quarters in 
 New York, to Sir Henry Clinton, the British 
 General, and his staff. Amongst the guests was 
 Major Andre, for whom Clinton, like most of 
 those brought into contact with him, seems to 
 have cherished a special affection. For the last 
 time the young man that evening took his share 
 in providing entertainment for the party, singing 
 General Wolfe's song then very popular. He 
 was doubtless in high spirits, and looking forward 
 with interest and excitement to an adventure upon 
 which he was to start the following day. The 
 negotiations between the British camp and Arnold 
 had reached a stage demanding a personal inter- 
 view ; and Andre, as go-between, was to be 
 taken by the sloop Vulture to meet the American 
 General. 
 
 So deep has been the interest excited by the 
 episode terminating in the death of Andr6 and the 
 flight of Arnold, that every incident concerning 
 the following days has been carefully preserved. 
 It would be almost possible, were such details 
 relevant in this place, to track the light-hearted 
 envoy hour by hour as he went to meet his fate.
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 105 
 
 It is noticeable that though those by whom the 
 story was told were one and all partisans of the 
 cause which it was his object to bring to ruin, so 
 great was the sympathy he inspired, the curious, 
 incalculable effect of personal charm, that, con- 
 spirator as he was, and at least technically a spy, 
 little but compassion and something like admira- 
 tion seems to have been felt for him. 
 
 That his death was mainly due to his own 
 rashness is clear. Clinton's orders, in despatching 
 him on his perilous enterprise, had been precise. 
 He was not to cross the enemy's lines, nor to put 
 off his uniform, nor to become the bearer of any 
 written document. Every one of these injunctions 
 was disregarded in turn, to the young emissary's 
 ruin. 
 
 On the night of September 21, Arnold and 
 Andre met, hidden amongst a group of fir-trees. 
 The interview took place without witnesses, nor 
 is it known what passed between them during 
 the hours that they remained in conference. 
 When dawn was at hand, a horse was brought for 
 Andre, and the two rode together through the 
 American lines, the sentry's challenge being the 
 first intimation received by the Englishman that 
 he had unwittingly disobeyed Clinton's orders. It 
 was then too late to draw back. He breakfasted 
 at a house where Arnold left him, everything hav- 
 ing been satisfactorily arranged. The scheme of 
 treason was complete. Not West Point alone was 
 to be delivered into the hands of the enemy, but 
 the person of Washington himself the friend who
 
 io6 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 had been unfalteringly true to him was included 
 in Arnold's plan of betrayal. 
 
 So far all had gone well with the conspirators. 
 That night, under cover of the darkness, Andre 
 was to regain the Viilture, the bearer, once more 
 in disobedience to Clinton's instructions, of papers 
 intrusted to him by Arnold, carried concealed in 
 his boots. 
 
 The first serious misadventure occurred at this 
 stage of the proceedings. The English sloop had 
 attracted unwelcome attention, and shots fired at 
 her by American cannon had forced her to shift 
 her position and to retire. It was no longer 
 possible for Andre" to rejoin the vessel ; and, 
 relinquishing the intention, it became necessary 
 for him to make an attempt to reach New York 
 by land. Under these circumstances he committed 
 his third fatal error, in changing his uniform for 
 civilian clothes. 
 
 Notwithstanding his perilous position, he set 
 out in good spirits, justified at first by success. 
 Though not permitted to proceed unchallenged, it 
 appeared for a time that the pass with which, 
 under the name of Anderson, he had been pro- 
 vided by Arnold, would ensure his safety. At 
 length, however, the suspicions of a party of scouts, 
 more wary than the rest, were aroused, the more 
 so as, at first mistaking the nationality of his 
 challengers, he had openly avowed his own. 
 
 Even at this point he seems to have entertained 
 little fear as to the result. 
 
 'God bless my soul,' he exclaimed cheerfully,
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 107 
 
 in explanation of his previous claim to be an 
 Englishman, and now producing the pass signed 
 by Arnold, ' a body must do anything to get along 
 nowadays/ 
 
 Had the paper been displayed in the first 
 instance, it would probably have saved him ; but 
 the men's misgivings had been too fully awak- 
 ened to be wholly dispelled by the sight of the 
 signature of their commanding officer. They 
 insisted, therefore, upon searching the prisoner, 
 when the documents concealed in his boots were 
 discovered, and there could be no further question 
 as to the nature of the prize they had secured. 
 
 ' My God, he is a spy ! ' exclaimed the leader 
 of the band, as the meaning of the incriminating 
 papers, with the information they were intended to 
 convey, became plain to him. 
 
 Then, for the first time, Andre would seem to 
 have grasped the nature of the situation and 
 his own danger. For a moment his brave spirit 
 failed. 
 
 ' I would to God,' he said, as his captors led him 
 away ; ' I would to God you had blown my brains 
 out when you stopped me.' 
 
 A last gleam of hope followed. Handed over 
 by the men who had taken him prisoner to a 
 certain Colonel Jameson, it was arranged by the 
 Colonel apparently a thick-headed gentleman 
 that the captive, in the character of the Mr. Ander- 
 son whose pass bore Arnold's signature, should be 
 despatched under a guard, and together with an 
 explanatory letter, to the quarters of the General
 
 io8 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 himself. The plan, carried into effect, would, of 
 course, have been Andrews salvation. But, upon 
 the urgent remonstrance of a brother officer, 
 Jameson yielded so far as to consent to send 'a 
 messenger off in hot haste to overtake the party 
 already, with Andre in charge, on their way to 
 West Point, with orders to bring the prisoner 
 back. This was accordingly done, Jameson still 
 persisting in his determination to forward the 
 written report of the occurrence to the General. 
 
 To Jameson's obstinacy Arnold owed his own 
 life. But the fate of his accomplice was sealed. 
 He was sent under a guard to Colonel Sheldon's 
 headquarters, the damning document^ found upon 
 him having already been forwarded to the Com- 
 mander-in-chief himself. His last chance was 
 gone. 
 
 Meanwhile, the plot elaborated by the con- 
 spirators in their midnight conference would pro- 
 bably in any case have been frustrated. The 
 arrangements then made had been based upon the 
 expected presence of Washington at West Point 
 two days later, when the person of the Commander- 
 in-chief, as well as the military post, was to have 
 been betrayed into the hands of the enemy. Wash- 
 ington's plans, however, had been unexpectedly 
 altered, and on the morning of the 25th, a couple 
 of days earlier than had been anticipated, a 
 message was received at Robinson House to the 
 effect that the Commander-in-chief was on his 
 way thither, and might be expected to arrive in 
 time for breakfast.
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 109 
 
 By reason of this change of plan, the papers 
 found upon Andre had not yet come into Washing- 
 ton's hands. As he rode that autumn morning 
 towards Arnold's headquarters, he was wholly 
 without suspicion of the true state of affairs. It 
 was still very early, and before proceeding to his 
 destination he turned aside to inspect some 
 defences, calling forth a remonstrance from La- 
 fayette, who suggested that Mrs. Arnold would be 
 waiting breakfast for her expected visitors. 
 
 'Ah, Marquis,' returned his chief lightly, 'you 
 young men are all in love with Mrs. Arnold. I 
 see you are eager to be with her as soon as 
 possible.' 
 
 He was not, however, to be diverted from his 
 purpose, and in the end it was arranged that 
 Hamilton, his aide, should ride on, with others of 
 his staff, to desire that breakfast should be pro- 
 ceeded with, Washington, with Lafayette, remain- 
 ing behind to carry out the proposed inspection. 
 
 The record of that meal remains. Mrs. Arnold, 
 as hostess, presided at it, light-hearted and gay, 
 unconscious of the blow awaiting her. Arnold, 
 as was natural enough, was grave and thoughtful. 
 Before breakfast was concluded, a horseman rode 
 up to the house. He was the bearer of Jameson's 
 letter announcing to the General the capture of 
 ' Anderson.' 
 
 To Arnold the news did not only convey the 
 intimation of the failure of the plot it had cost 
 so much to prepare, already endangered by 
 Washington's movements. It was, besides, the
 
 I io REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 announcement of his own immediate and pressing 
 peril. 
 
 Whatever were his faults, he had never been a 
 coward. His courage did not fail him now. As 
 cool as on the battlefield, though threatened with 
 a worse fate than any he had confronted there, he 
 rose from the table, made his excuses, went out to 
 order his horse to be saddled ; then, sending for 
 his wife, he told her of the necessity for his instant 
 flight. She fell to the ground in a dead faint. 
 Laying her on her bed, Arnold summoned a servant 
 before, returning to his guests, he explained that 
 he was called away to make preparations at West 
 Point for the reception of the Commander-in-chief. 
 Then, galloping down a steep path, still known by 
 his name, he gained the landing-place where his 
 barge lay moored. A few minutes more and, his 
 pistols ready for use in case of pursuit and a white 
 handkerchief raised, he was being rowed swiftly, 
 by oarsmen even then ignorant of the truth, to- 
 wards the Vulture. The English vessel was 
 reached, the traitor was received on board, and 
 was safe from the vengeance of those he had left 
 behind him. 
 
 Upon Washington the news of his treachery fell 
 like a thunderbolt. As soldier and as friend, the 
 blow was a crushing one. 'Whom can we trust 
 now ? ' he is reported to have cried ; whilst, accord- 
 ing to another account, placing the proofs of the 
 treason in the hands of Lafayette, the man perhaps 
 of all those around him who loved him best, he 
 said, with tears in his eyes, ' Arnold is a traitor,
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD in 
 
 and has fled to the British.' 'Treachery is all 
 around me,' he said some days later to the officer 
 charged with the custody of Andr6, ' I hardly know 
 whom to trust.' The words point to one of the 
 most melancholy effects of a great betrayal. A 
 blow is dealt at men's faith in the common 
 humanity from which it is difficult to recover. 
 
 Arnold was safe ; but the doom of his less blame- 
 worthy accomplice was sealed. Tried by court- 
 martial, Andre was convicted, and sentenced to 
 suffer death as a spy. Captured within the 
 American lines, in the clothes of a civilian, and with 
 the written evidence of the meaning of his presence 
 there upon him, it could hardly have been otherwise. 
 No efforts of Sir Henry Clinton, however strenu- 
 ous, availed to save him from his fate ; nor did 
 Washington a more doubtful question of right 
 and wrong accede to his own petition that he 
 might at least die a soldier's death. He met his 
 doom with manliness and dignity, avowing no 
 consciousness of guilt in the fashion after which he 
 had attempted to serve his country. On October 2 
 he died by the gallows, his bearing to the end that 
 of a gallant soldier and a gentleman. On his way 
 to the place of execution, ' pale as death, but tran- 
 quil and calm,' he praised the discipline of the 
 troops and observed upon the excellence of the 
 military music. 
 
 On the part of his foes it should be noted, to 
 the honour of human nature, that as the American 
 soldiers watched the young man who had, with their 
 own General, plotted the ruin of their cause, all
 
 ii2 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ranks alike are said to have been pervaded by 
 melancholy and gloom. 
 
 Standing upon his coffin, his hands on his hips, 
 Andre deliberately surveyed the crowd assembled 
 to see him die. 
 
 'I have nothing more to say, gentlemen,' he 
 answered in clear, unfaltering tones to the usual 
 question, ' but this. I pray you to bear witness 
 that I meet my fate like a brave man.' 
 
 The executioner did his duty, and all was over. 
 A great silence prevailed. ' The chambers of 
 death were never stiller.' Andre\ guilty or guilt- 
 less, was gone to his account. 
 
 Andre had paid the death penalty. Arnold's 
 punishment was to be a different one. Whether 
 or not it was in the long-run harder to bear there 
 is no evidence, or little of it, to show. It is 
 reported that he made the suggestion that Andrews 
 life should be purchased by the surrender of his 
 own. It is certain that neither would Clinton 
 have acted upon the suggestion, nor would Andre" 
 have consented to profit by it. But for Arnold's 
 own sake it is to be wished that the story may 
 be true. 
 
 He was not slow to offer his justification to the 
 world for his conduct in leaving the 'rebel army.' 
 In a proclamation issued to the American people, 
 as well as in a second addressed to the troops, he 
 attempted not only to make his own apology, but 
 to induce others to follow his example. He had 
 fought, he declared, for much less than the parent 
 country was now willing to grant. Concessions
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 113 
 
 had removed every grievance that had afforded a 
 reason for taking up arms, and he had returned 
 to loyalty to the British monarchy. Such was 
 his explanation and his plea. 
 
 His argument is beside the question. To a 
 change of front it has been said that no blame need 
 necessarily attach. No man can claim infallibility, 
 nor is there anything but cowardice in continuing 
 to act upon opinions no longer honestly held. 
 When the service to be performed would be merely 
 the empty expression of a faith which has suffered 
 dissolution, it is the sincerer part to withdraw 
 from the fight. A deliberate betrayal of trust is 
 another matter. For it his countrymen could 
 admit no justification ; nor, in the long-run, could 
 the nation in whose interest the treason was 
 planned. 
 
 The end of his career can be briefly told. In 
 December 1781, after having served under the 
 British flag on various occasions, and in particular, 
 having led an expedition against his own native 
 State, Arnold left for England. Liable, should he 
 fall into American hands, to receive the treatment 
 due to a traitor and a deserter, he was an anxiety 
 to the military authorities ; and though thanked 
 by Clinton for his services, it was not considered 
 desirable that he should longer incur the risk of 
 remaining in America. 
 
 In England he was received at Court with open 
 arms. By a section of the British public he was 
 likewise treated with cordiality and consideration. 
 A sum of money was presented to him, and pensions 
 
 H
 
 114 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 were bestowed upon his wife and children. To 
 this means of living he added by engaging in mer- 
 cantile enterprises. His wife remained to the end 
 devotedly attached to him, and children grew up 
 around them. 
 
 Yet, in spite of such alleviations of his lot, it 
 must have been a bitter one. To a man of 
 Arnold's temper there would have been some- 
 thing deathly about the calm following on the 
 fierce excitement of the last few years. He was, 
 besides, a stranger amongst strangers. Nor, in 
 spite of royal favour, was the stigma attached by 
 his treason to his name ever removed. Slights 
 and indignities, equally difficult to endure or 
 openly to resent, testified constantly to the place 
 to which he had fallen in the estimation of men. 
 
 Had he, indeed, been permitted to pursue a 
 soldier's calling, it is possible that, by services 
 rendered to the country of his adoption, he might 
 have partially obliterated the recollection of his 
 past history. But in spite of his eager desire 
 to find himself once more under arms, he was 
 never able to succeed in obtaining military employ- 
 ment More than one reason contributed to his 
 exclusion. As a colonist, it would have been 
 difficult, amongst men to whom his nationality 
 was cause for contempt, to bestow upon him the 
 position due to his military rank, confirmed by 
 Clinton ; while any distinction granted to a man 
 who owed his notoriety chiefly to his treason would 
 have been resented, not only by the entire Whig 
 party, but by a section of their opponents.
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD 115 
 
 Arnold was as silent as he was proud. In what 
 spirit he received the reiterated refusal of his 
 proffered services it is only possible to guess. 
 But a single utterance gives the key to much. 
 
 ' They will not give me a chance to seek a 
 soldier's death,' he once said bitterly to his wife, 
 returning from a vain application at the War 
 Office. He was right. To the traitor no oppor- 
 tunity was to be granted, seek it as he might, of 
 washing out the stain upon his honour. 
 
 Of how he himself, in the secret tribunal within 
 the court of final appeal from the world's verdict 
 regarded that stain, few indications remain to show. 
 Some men make their confessions in public ; others, 
 if at all, where none can overhear them. ' Of that 
 impure passion of remorse,' says Stevenson of 
 another, ' he never breathed a syllable.' Arnold too 
 kept silence. But in the change he made in the 
 motto on his seal, his biographer, not too fancifully, 
 detects a sign of that to which he gave no other 
 expression. ' Mihi gloria sursum,' the words had 
 once run. But in later days they were altered, and 
 read, ' Nil Desperandzim' 
 
 Refused a soldier's work, his restless spirit 
 sought excitement in other directions, in privateer- 
 ing enterprises and hazardous adventures. It was 
 not until the year 1801 that the end came. 
 
 A story preserved by tradition concerning his 
 deathbed, if authentic, furnishes another clue to 
 that inward tragedy he never revealed in words. 
 As he lay dying, his wandering imagination set 
 him upon the battlefields where his laurels
 
 n6 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 had been won. Calling for the old uniform worn 
 on the memorable morning of his flight, he de- 
 manded, besides, the epaulettes and sword knots 
 presented to him by Washington at the height of 
 his fame. 
 
 ' Let me die in my old American uniform,' he 
 desired 'the uniform in which I fought my battles.' 
 And report says that he added, ' God forgive me 
 for ever putting on any other.' 
 
 On a tombstone at Milan the history of the dead 
 lying below is epitomised in a single line : 
 ' Qui nunquam quievit, quiescit. Tace* 
 
 ' Never quiet before, he is quiet now. Silence.' 
 Lest the restless spirit wake and the restless brain 
 begin once more to work. Surely the secret of 
 that dead man, in those few words, is told. 
 
 It might be the history of Benedict Arnold.
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 
 
 1767-1794 
 
 ' GOD sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a 
 pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastise- 
 ment of mankind.' So says Landor by the mouth 
 of one of his characters. If ever the saying was 
 true, it was true in the case of Saint- Just. 
 
 There is an order of men to whom too scanty 
 a measure of pity has perhaps been accorded. It 
 is that class who, to their own immense detriment, 
 have been, so to speak, called to be criminals ; 
 or to give another description of the unfortunate 
 vocation, have conceived themselves bound, in the 
 vindication of some higher law, to set at defiance 
 that code of morality to which mankind at large 
 has subscribed. 
 
 The question how far it is permissible for a 
 single individual to place his judgment in active 
 and practical opposition to that of the majority 
 of his fellow - citizens is a difficult one. But 
 it is undeniable that men exist to whom their 
 personal conscience represents the sole possible 
 moral arbiter ; and that such men conscience not 
 being an infallible guide have been at times 
 driven by its dictates to become, in the ordinary 
 sense of the term, criminals. 
 
 If the world has little indulgence to spare for 
 
 117
 
 n8 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 these outlaws of society, it is doubtless, in its own 
 interests, right. It is only when, from a present 
 danger, they become by the lapse of years a feature 
 of history that they can hope for justice, nor is it 
 even then assured to them. For the apportion- 
 ment of guilt is a more arbitrary affair than is 
 commonly supposed, and the average mind less 
 free from prejudice. Thus, though it cannot be 
 denied that more innocent blood a hundred times 
 is shed by the soldier than by the executioner, 
 the refusal of a man to sit at table with a suc- 
 cessful general would almost be held to furnish 
 evidence justifying his relegation to a lunatic 
 asylum, whilst there are probably scarcely a dozen 
 amongst us who would feel disposed to send 
 the common hangman an invitation to dinner. 
 Furthermore, it is ten to one that in the very 
 person obeying the dictates of a solitary conscience 
 scruples will make themselves felt. The moral law 
 of the majority has a binding, and no doubt in the 
 main, a salutary force, taking a saint, a fanatic, or 
 a hardened sinner to disregard it, and to decide to 
 which of these classes a man belongs is not always 
 an easy matter. 
 
 ' Rien ne ressemble a la vertu comme un grand 
 crime? said Saint-Just, and he might have added 
 that the converse sometimes holds equally good. 
 
 Saint-Just himself is one of the enigmas as yet 
 unsolved by history. What is the key to the 
 riddle he presents ? Was he the wholesale assassin, 
 thirsting for blood, that his enemies have repre- 
 sented him, or was he rather a zealot, weighing
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 119 
 
 human life his own no less than that of others 
 as nothing in the balance compared with the 
 advancement of his cause? Studying his life dis- 
 passionately it would seem that this last is the 
 more likely explanation of the problem it presents. 
 There are men who start on the search for truth 
 with expectations by which all their discoveries 
 are coloured. ' As for monsters,' says More in 
 his Utopia, ' because they be no news, of them 
 we were nothing inquisitive,' and if it is taken for 
 granted that such portents are of daily occurrence, 
 an easy explanation is at hand for any anomaly to 
 be found in human nature. But monsters, after 
 all, are the exceptions, and examining Saint-Just's 
 history in the light of the written evidence of 
 character he has left behind him, it is not easy to 
 include him amongst such phenomena ; whilst, 
 on the other hand, all evidence goes to prove 
 him the very type of the enthusiast who sacrifices 
 everything to an idea. Provided liberty remained 
 they are his own words, and in them one dis- 
 cerns at once the voice of the fanatic what matter 
 if vanity after vanity should be brought to the 
 scaffold, to the grave, to nothingness? Circum- 
 stances present difficulties to those alone who fear 
 death. ' Mourir nest rien, pourvu que la Re'volu- 
 tion triomphe!' Whilst more significant still, per- 
 haps, is his avowal that ' il y a quelque chose de 
 terrible dans I' amour de la patrie. II est tellement 
 exclusif quil immole tout, sans pitie", sans frayeur, 
 sans respect humain, a I' inte'rH public? 
 
 This was his confession of faith. The question
 
 120 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 of its genuineness, of course, remains ; nor can it 
 be denied that there are men capable of employing 
 such language as a veil and a disguise. But 
 Saint- Just has rarely been charged with playing 
 the hypocrite, and the absence of dissimulation has 
 been admitted, even by an opponent, to be one of 
 his negative virtues. ' Too proud to wish to seem 
 other than he was,' says M. Fleury, 'he heaped 
 crime upon crime with a terrible sincerity.' 
 
 The likelihood would seem to be that, fascinated 
 to use once more the language of an enemy by 
 the mirage of a phantasmal city where Providence 
 and goodness should reign supreme, and peace and 
 justice should be crowned, he pressed towards that 
 goal, reckless of the sea of blood through which 
 it was to be reached, and enacting, in strange 
 and mournful travesty, the part of the merchant- 
 man who, to obtain the pearl of great price, was 
 willing to barter all that he possessed. 
 
 Saint-Just was, in fact, before all things a 
 dreamer, and one whose endeavour, from first to 
 last, was to translate his visions into reality. Most 
 men outlive their dreams, whether they look back 
 upon them with the indulgent contempt of experi- 
 ence, or with a regret so keen that they hide it like 
 a sore. But Saint-Just remained a visionary to 
 the end, from his lonely boyhood onward ; through 
 the years when, with the terrible realities of life 
 around him, inflexible and passionless as destiny 
 itself, he 'reformed the army with the axe,' and 
 sent to the guillotine, without pity or remorse, 
 those who barred the path of revolution ; up to
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 121 
 
 the very day when, red-handed, silent, and proud, 
 he himself ascended the scaffold amidst the execra- 
 tions of the people he had believed himself to serve. 
 Truly there are dreams which are perilous. 'La 
 vertu' he himself once said, ' a des nobles illusions 
 qui la per dent' 
 
 Few men have given rise to opinions so diverse. 
 The idol, for a brief space, of the capricious 
 Parisian populace, a contemporary caricature, re- 
 presenting the Prince of Darkness and his wife 
 engaged in a dispute as to the excellence of their 
 respective handiwork, nevertheless reflects an 
 opposite view : 
 
 ' I made Mirabeau,' boasts the Devil's wife. 
 
 ' I did worse,' is Satan's reply. ' I made Robes- 
 pierre.' 
 
 ' It is possible to go further,' is the retort. 'I 
 made Saint- Just.' 
 
 And the Devil recognises the superiority of 
 female workmanship. 
 
 For more than fifty years after his death his 
 memory was held in such detestation that his 
 family scarcely ventured to avow the relationship ; 
 while in '48 that period of revolution something 
 like an apotheosis of the young republican leader 
 took place. The reaction was natural enough. 
 We are told of Indians found paying divine honour 
 to their own shadows. It is a cult to which men 
 more advanced in civilisation are prone, and each 
 stage of human development will possess its own 
 calendar of saints. 
 
 The actual facts of his life can be briefly sum-
 
 122 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 marised. Born about 1767, his childhood was 
 passed in the little village of Blerancourt, from 
 whence he was sent to Soissons to receive at 
 the hands of the Oratorian Fathers the classical 
 education that exercised so strong an influence upon 
 his after life. Alike in his rhetorical references to 
 ancient history, and in the ideals he plainly set 
 before him, the effect of it is constantly apparent. 
 ' Le monde est vide depuis les Remains' he cried ; 
 ' Us immolaient leurs affections . . . Imitons-les ! ' 
 
 To imitate them was his own endeavour, and 
 in that endeavour is found the key to much in his 
 history. 
 
 School-life, apart from its work, did not commend 
 itself to the silent, unsocial boy. Already addicted 
 to the habit of dreaming, he is said to have resented 
 interruption to the point of violence ; and it was 
 no doubt with relief that he returned to the quiet 
 of his country home and to the studies he there 
 carried on, in a garden bounded by a running 
 stream and shaded by a hedge of yoke-elms, of 
 the works of Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and 
 Montesquieu. These studies are said to have been 
 interrupted, shortly after the completion of his 
 nineteenth year, by a confinement of some months 
 in a house of detention, at the request of his 
 mother, and in consequence of a serious escapade. 
 Such, at least, is the story contained in a publica- 
 tion of the Socittt des Amis des Livres. There 
 seems no reason to doubt its authenticity, though 
 the name of the culprit does not appear in the 
 lists of the dttenus preserved at Picpus.
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 123 
 
 One would be curious to learn whether it was 
 during this enforced retirement that a poem was 
 composed, manifestly modelled upon Voltaire, and 
 shortly afterwards published. It raised at once 
 the standard of revolt. Out of this boyish per- 
 formance much capital has been made by those 
 whose object is to depict the author in the darkest 
 colours. It was, in fact, a satire, bitter and coarse, 
 upon society as he knew it, doubtless at second 
 hand ; upon religion as he conceived it ; upon Queen 
 and Court and other more sacred subjects. But 
 incapable of defence as it may be, the assertion 
 that in this volume is to be sought the true Saint- 
 Just, and that the man who at twenty, if not 
 earlier, produced Organt, could at no time be 
 sincere in virtue, discredits itself. The brief 
 preface of the author is its best apology : *J'ai 
 vingt ans ; fai mal fait ; je pourraifaire mieux ' ; 
 and his maturer estimate of the work is contained 
 in the fact that he withdrew it, two years later, 
 from circulation. 
 
 Setting aside this crude performance the work 
 of a boy copyist two other volumes remain : his 
 Considerations sur I' Esprit de la Revolution, and a 
 series of fragments Stir les Institutions Republi- 
 caines, only published after his death. It is in 
 these compositions that are to be found the ideals 
 he cherished, and the goal upon which his eyes 
 were fixed. 
 
 The Considerations were written in the interval 
 of quiet preceding his entry upon public life. At 
 that time no presentiment of the part he was to
 
 124 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 play had made itself felt, and had the veil been 
 withdrawn from the future, the incredulous question 
 of the Jew of old Is thy servant a dog? might 
 well have risen to his lips. It was at this period 
 that, painting to a friend the mode of existence he 
 would choose, he drew a picture of a country life, 
 nature as his companion, a wife and children ' pour 
 man cosur? and study to fill up his leisure hours. 
 Time brought changes. ' Autres temps> autres 
 discours? was his brief reply when reminded in 
 after days of the outline he had sketched, ' when 
 a man has to model himself upon Tarquin, he no 
 longer reads Gessner's idylls.' 
 
 The literary result of this period of tranquillity 
 was a notable performance to be the work of 
 a writer of twenty-three. Notwithstanding the 
 enthusiasm pervading it and the Utopian projects 
 which fill the pages, it is singularly temperate in 
 tone ; whilst to the charge that it was a mere 
 electioneering pamphlet the lie is given by the 
 stern home-truths it contains. Saint-Just loved 
 the people, but he did not flatter them. Boundless 
 as was his faith in the nation's possibilities, it was 
 in his eyes an eternal child, ruled by fear and by 
 flattery alike. Nor did he refrain from denouncing 
 in the strongest terms the brutalities by which the 
 Revolution had already been defaced. But in 
 the real power for good working within it he had 
 a magnificent confidence. What, in his eyes, the 
 nation needed was courage to be good goodness 
 being more rapidly produced in a people than in 
 an individual. And, filled with this faith, he looked
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 125 
 
 forward to a republic softening laws, habits and 
 customs becoming gentle, a free government under 
 which health, pity, pardon should bear sway. With 
 the ancient nobility he would do away, but there 
 remained another proscribed by no law, the 
 aristocracy of goodness. Turning to matters of 
 religion, France, he declared, had not thrown 
 down her church ; she had but polished its stones, 
 liberating God and Truth from the yoke of the 
 priesthood. Capital punishment should be abol- 
 ished ; the purity of private morals re-established ; 
 divorce the separation of those joined by God 
 and nature done away with, otherwise, ' qite rfyon- 
 drai-je a mes enfants quand Us me demanderont 
 leur mere ?' In twenty years, so runs the sanguine 
 prophecy, when liberty should have had time to 
 work, happiness would be at hand. 
 
 The anticipation of the speedy and bloodless 
 triumph of revolutionary principles and the forecast 
 of a near future of peace and happiness, strike one 
 strangely, coming from the man who was to be the 
 dominating influence of the Committee of Public 
 Safety. One is reminded, as one reads, of 
 Michelet's epitome of the earlier spirit of the 
 Revolution ' O my enemies there are no longer 
 any enemies! ' Again, 'autres temps, autres discours,' 
 would have been no doubt his reply. But to 
 understand the part he took in what was to follow, 
 it is essential to bear in mind his hopes, nor should 
 it ever be forgotten that it was Saint- Just the 
 dreamer, the believer in human perfectibility, 
 who sent men relentlessly to the scaffold. His
 
 126 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 severity, or call it his cruelty, was not gratuitous, 
 or the result of mere lust for blood. Even M. 
 Fleury is careful to allow so much, to separate 
 him from the savages to whom brutality was in 
 itself an end, and to admit that in his case violence 
 was a weapon to be laid aside as soon as it could 
 be dispensed with. As it has been said of another, 
 so with him, ' il sembrasa avec une furie meurtriere 
 du ddsir de faire le del ici-bas? ' The most bloody 
 revolutions,' was Souberbielle's dying assertion, 
 ' are conscientious revolutions.' False ideas, ideas 
 that hindered the triumph of truth, must be 
 destroyed, and destroyed where alone they could 
 be reached, in the persons of their representatives. 
 
 He was no materialist. From faith in Providence, 
 in the soul, and in immortality, he was never 
 apostate ; and in however opposite a direction such 
 beliefs should work, there is a stern logic on the 
 part of those who hold them in the subordination 
 of human life in the concrete to the furtherance of 
 what they hold to be the truth. 
 
 For the present all went well. Side by side 
 with literary and philosophical studies, he had 
 carried on work of a practical nature, becoming 
 in his own neighbourhood the apostle of that fair 
 new gospel of humanity recently proclaimed. The 
 leader of the young and of the poor, a member at 
 twenty-one of the local departmental assembly, he 
 was winning his way to prominence. His vehement 
 faith in the cause he advocated, his enthusiasm and 
 his singular power of language, were so many 
 means of persuasion, supplemented by his personal
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 127 
 
 attraction and sombre beauty. Tall and slight, 
 with melancholy blue eyes, regular features, and 
 dark hair, his bearing was a little stiff, and the 
 carriage of his head gave rise to Camille Des- 
 moulins' gay ridicule. His manners, in spite 
 of their gentleness, were not without a touch of 
 cold austerity, foreshadowing the relentless inflexi- 
 bility of later days. Such, outwardly, was Saint- 
 Just, nick-named the Apocalyptic, or the Saint of 
 the Terror, and recalling, observes Alison, the 
 image of those desperate Scottish enthusiasts 
 with whom he had so much and so little in 
 common. 
 
 Not long after the appearance of the Considdra- 
 tions, the public career of the author was begun by 
 his return to the National Convention. It was not 
 the first time that he had been a candidate for 
 election, and in the indignation with which he had 
 resented his defeat the youth of the philosopher for 
 once betrays itself. 
 
 ' Oh Dieu ! ' he wrote some months later, ' faut- 
 il que Brutus languisse loin de Rome ? Man parti 
 est pris, cependant. Si Brutus ne tue pas les autres, 
 Use tuera lui-meme? 
 
 It was a boyish outbreak, full of the exaggera- 
 tion of his years. In youth time seems long, and 
 waiting unendurable. Only later do men learn 
 the cheerless wisdom appraising the mischances 
 of life at a juster rate, when the acknowledgment 
 is forced from them that the advantage of having 
 something to hope for is apt to run the joy of 
 fulfilment hard. Saint- Just, at any rate, had not
 
 128 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 long to wait. He was to do killing enough and 
 to spare before many more months had passed. 
 Shortly after his complaint had been uttered he 
 was returned to the National Convention, and had 
 gone to Paris to take his part in the drama to be 
 enacted there. 
 
 His first speech was an example of the rapidity 
 with which opinions developed in those days. 
 When the Considerations had been written he 
 had still clung to a belief in the compatibility of 
 incompatible faiths. He had looked forward to 
 a monarchy purified, reformed, and controlled by 
 revolution. But a few months had sufficed to 
 dissolve the union of jarring creeds. When he 
 now broke silence it was to declare sovereignty 
 in itself a crime, and to demand that its repre- 
 sentative should be treated, not as a citizen, but 
 as a foe. Caesar had been slain with no other 
 formality but that of twenty-two stabs. Each 
 citizen possessed the rights of Brutus. 
 
 The effect of the speech was electric. A new 
 power had been recognised. The unknown boy 
 sprang at once into notoriety, and made good 
 his claim to be admitted into the foremost revolu- 
 tionary ranks. 
 
 Thenceforth his course was steady and con- 
 sistent. Though his position with regard to 
 Robespierre was that of disciple to master, he has 
 been credited by many with having been the more 
 dominant spirit of the two. Arrived through 
 fanaticism, says Thiers, at opinions reached by 
 Robespierre through hatred alone, the latter was
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 129 
 
 in fact his plagiarist. By means of Robespierre 
 the ideas originated by Saint-Just took effect. In 
 the disciple, determination, ruthless and unswerv- 
 ing, counteracted the vacillations of the chief. 
 Saint-Just's disregard of side issues and indiffer- 
 ence to personal danger made him strong where 
 Robespierre was weak. An immense faith in his 
 cause steeled him against discouragement. Grave, 
 serious, and severe, he pursued his way; now 
 taking part in the proceedings of the Convention ; 
 now remaining a spectator, silent and melancholy, 
 of the broils and disputes, the envenomed ani- 
 mosities, the brutal personal attacks, disfiguring 
 its deliberations and crippling its forces ; ready to 
 sacrifice human life without remorse where it 
 proved an obstacle to the realisation of the revolu- 
 tionary ideal, and declaring pity to be treason. 
 Except when kindled by the impersonal passion 
 of the fanatic, cold, passive, and unmoved, he was 
 still dreaming, his eyes set on the distance, of a 
 regenerated France, of a nation become strong 
 and just and righteous, of a state consolidated 
 with virtue. Nor was the part to be played by 
 himself likely to be absent from his dream. 
 ' Saint-Just,' says Lamartine, ' respected in him- 
 self the Revolution as a dogma of which he 
 sacrificed nothing to sentiments of humanity.' The 
 words may read like irony, yet they are strictly 
 true. 
 
 It is perhaps on his missions to the army of the 
 Rhine that his character, at least as a man of 
 action, stands out in clearest relief. It has been 
 
 i
 
 130 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 asserted that he moulded his conduct upon the 
 model of a Roman proconsul ; that under his rule 
 defeat became criminal, and an error of judgment 
 a capital offence. But it should be borne in mind 
 that the situation was such as to palliate, if not to 
 justify, the severity of the measures he employed 
 to retrieve it. An army face to face with the 
 enemy, demoralised, lost to discipline, destitute of 
 the necessaries of life ; treasonable intrigues carried 
 on with the foreigner ; Strasbourg crushed by a 
 Terror of its own, and revolutionary tyranny 
 triumphant such was the condition of affairs with 
 which he was called upon to cope. Desperate 
 remedies were demanded if ruin was to be averted. 
 Those remedies Saint-Just applied and applied 
 with success. By inflexible severity, alike civil 
 and military, combined with a personal courage in 
 the field denied by none, and supplemented by the 
 skill of a general, he brought back victory to the 
 dispirited and disorganised armies of France; whilst 
 his attitude towards the invaders was in itself a 
 presage of triumph. ' The French Republic,' was 
 his reply to a flag of truce, ' receives and sends 
 only lead to its enemies.' 
 
 Friend or foe fared alike at his hands. His 
 justice was, if inhuman, equal. A story is told of a 
 friend of his boyhood sent to execution in punish- 
 ment of a breach of discipline, Saint-Just declaring 
 himself happy in the opportunity, by thus making 
 an example of the man he loved, of sacrificing 
 private sentiment to the public good. Whether 
 the incident is true or false, it is no less indicative
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 131 
 
 of the character he bore than the fact that, during 
 his brief engagement to the sister of his friend and 
 colleague, Lebas, he warned his betrothed that, 
 should she seek to interfere with the course of 
 justice, he would find himself compelled to banish 
 her from the camp. 
 
 There is, it is true, another side to the picture. 
 There were times when he allowed himself a respite 
 from the duties of his position hours when, inter- 
 mitting the labours of the general and the discip- 
 linarian, he climbed a mountain with Lebas, and with 
 the wide winter landscape spread below, and the 
 hush of the country all around, the converse of the 
 two was of Lebas's young wife, and of Henriette, 
 his sister, whom Saint-Just loved ; or when that 
 scene occurred which, described by an eyewitness, 
 throws so curious a light upon another side of the 
 character of the young revolutionary : l je ai vu 
 pleurer d 1 indignation et de rage ait milieu de la 
 socie'te' populaire de Strasbourg,' says Nodier, ' lui 
 qui ne pleurait pas souvent et qui ne pleurait jamais 
 en vain, d'un outrage a la liberty de la foi et a la 
 divinitd d^^, Saint- Sacrement. C'dtait un philosophe] 
 adds the writer, ' extremement arrie're' au prix de 
 notre siecle' 
 
 It is well to take note of these side-scenes. But 
 they are nothing more. It is with the Terror that 
 the name of Saint-Just, and fairly enough, has been 
 chiefly connected. Nor is it possible for any but a 
 partisan to deny his responsibility with regard to 
 that darkest period of the Revolution. Of a share 
 in the guilt attaching to those months of delirium,
 
 132 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 when Paris was turned into a shambles, and men 
 went mad in their lust for blood, it is impossible to 
 acquit him. It may indeed be urged that for part 
 of that time he was absent with the army in Alsace ; 
 that he was not in Paris when the infamous decree 
 was passed sweeping away the last traces of 
 judicial procedure with regard to the suspects ; 
 there may be quoted in his defence the charge 
 directed by Barere against him, together with his 
 colleagues Couthon and Robespierre, of a desire to 
 shake the prisons and to restore to the aristocracy 
 their influence ; with the added invective against 
 those who would thus arrest ' the majestic and 
 terrible course of the Revolution.' Evidence may 
 also be brought to prove the comparative rarity of 
 his signature on the arrdtts of the Committee of 
 Public Safety. But when all that is possible has 
 been admitted in his favour, and setting aside 
 the decrees proposed or supported by himself, the 
 fact remains that there are times when inaction is 
 criminal, and that if not a positive agent in 
 the worst horrors of those months, he was no less, 
 by reason of his position and the influence he 
 possessed, a participator in their guilt. 
 
 And yet at this very period, when Paris, a mass 
 of seething and antagonistic forces, was approach- 
 ing nearer and nearer to chaos ; when the different 
 and warring factions were ready to tear one another 
 in pieces ; when each party was engaged in a 
 struggle meaning life or death to its individual 
 members, and a man might well have forgotten the 
 future in the stress of the present conflict, it is
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 133 
 
 clear that from the mind of Saint-Just the thought 
 of the government, just and strong and merciful, 
 to be founded when the work of destruction had 
 been accomplished and order should have replaced 
 anarchy, was never absent. 
 
 For him the present condition of the country 
 was merely transitional. It was ' a passage from 
 bad to good, from corruption to uprightness, from 
 evil maxims to honest ones.' Nor did he cease 
 to elaborate the details of the plan for that future 
 Republic for which the Revolution was to prepare 
 the way. To the establishment of such a Republic 
 he looked confidently forward. Of his project, 
 though left incomplete, it is possible to form an 
 idea by means of the Fragments sur des Institutions 
 Republicaines. In those pages, the fruit of his 
 later thought, his scheme is embodied. In them 
 the key to the paradox he presents is pre-eminently 
 to be found. 
 
 There indeed the visionary stands discovered. 
 There is no attempt at compromise. It is as if a 
 presentiment of his approaching doom, a convic- 
 tion that time was short, and that he was already 
 * racing with a racing death,' had warned him to 
 practise no economy of truth. 
 
 Printed shortly after the writer's death and re- 
 published later by M. Charles Nodier, the Frag- 
 ments have stamped him in the eyes of many as a 
 Socialist. Labour for all, State education, the dis- 
 tribution amongst the needy of national property, 
 and other measures associated with the Socialist 
 programme, were in fact amongst those he advo-
 
 134 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 cated ; while his denunciation of wealth is unquali- 
 fied. But for law and order he had the respect of 
 a statesman, for anarchy or government by force 
 the repulsion of a philosopher, and in the final 
 triumph of the first his faith remained indomitable. 
 For the realisation of this dream he lived. ' The 
 day I am convinced it is impossible to give the 
 French nation habits of gentleness and energy, 
 and to make them inexorable towards tyranny 
 that day I will stab myself was his declara- 
 tion. 
 
 To his forecasts, hopeful though they remained, 
 a shade of sternness had, it is true, been added 
 since the days when, in the quiet of his country 
 home, the Considerations had been written the 
 touch of seventy serving as a connecting link, other- 
 wise strangely lacking, between the writer and the 
 man of action. A Republican government was to 
 have virtue as its principle there is the ideal ; 
 but if not virtue, then terror there is the con- 
 cession to practical necessity ; and though force 
 created neither reason nor right, it might be im- 
 possible to make either respected without it. But 
 to the evil of the system then in existence he was 
 never blind. 'Crime,' he said, 'has become blast 
 by the use of terror, as the palate becomes blast 
 by strong liquor.' And side by side with the 
 reluctant acknowledgment of the provisional neces- 
 sity of force, there is found running through the 
 sections of his scheme dealing with such subjects 
 as friendship, or children, or the treatment of the 
 aged and of women, a singular vein of tender-
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 135 
 
 ness, corresponding with the curious confession 
 coming strangely, almost pitifully, from the ' Prince 
 of the Terror' of the single personal ambition 
 he cherished, the hope, namely, that ' the memory 
 of a lover of humanity might one day be held 
 dear.' The aspiration has, so far, met with but im- 
 perfect realisation, nor is it as a lover of humanity 
 that Saint-Just has chiefly been remembered. 
 
 To enter at length into the details of his project 
 and its strange and chimerical provisions would 
 be impossible in this place. They must be studied 
 in the Institutions themselves. Some of them, 
 however, must be summarised if the character of 
 the writer is to be understood ; whilst it must 
 also be borne in mind that the principles and rules 
 laid down were not intended to apply to a future 
 and ideal state ; nor was he sketching the outline 
 of a confessedly impossible Utopia. On the con- 
 trary, had Saint-Just lived, he would have lost 
 no time in using all his power to enforce his pro- 
 visions, so soon as the condition of France should 
 have made the attempt feasible. ' I ask some 
 days still of Providence' the words occur in the 
 draft of his last, undelivered, speech ' that I may 
 call the meditations of the people and of their 
 legislators to the Institutions' But those days 
 were not granted. Saint-Just was in his grave 
 before the people had leisure to attend to the 
 lessons he would have taught them. 
 
 According to his provisions every man, arrived 
 at the age of twenty- one, was to be bound to name 
 his friends, the penalty for possessing none, or for
 
 136 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 disavowing the belief in friendship, being banish- 
 ment. Should the connection be terminated 
 without due reason, the penalty was likewise 
 banishment ; whilst the same punishment was to 
 be inflicted upon ingratitude decrees, one cannot 
 but imagine, which, carried into effect, would be 
 productive of not a few gaps in the social circle. 
 
 For the care of little children the rules were 
 curiously precise. They were to eat no meat and 
 neither to be struck nor caressed. Banishment 
 was again the penalty for a blow given to a child. 
 A marriage proving childless was thereby annulled, 
 unless the lack should be supplied by adoption. 
 Love constituted the bond of wedlock, and, in 
 contrast to the writer's earlier views, the tie was 
 dissoluble. A blow to a woman was to be visited 
 with banishment, nor could she be censured in 
 public. 
 
 A vein of religion, or perhaps rather of re- 
 ligious sentiment, is apparent throughout. Of the 
 materialistic atheism of another section of repub- 
 licans Saint-Just was a contemptuous opponent. 
 ' On croiraity he said once, in allusion to the 
 arrogant dogmatism then prevalent 'on croirait 
 que le pretre s'est fait athe'e, et que lathte s'est fait 
 pretre' In the Fragments, belief in the Supreme 
 Being is inculcated, as well as faith in immortality. 
 Religious festivals are to be observed ; and the 
 souls of good citizens, of those who have died in 
 their country's cause or who have cherished father 
 and mother, are declared to be in the bosom of the 
 Eternal.
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 137 
 
 Such are a few of the features of the system of 
 government advocated by Saint-Just. It is easy 
 to ridicule it ; and Nodier, in reprinting the frag- 
 ments, is doubtless justified in guarding himself 
 from possible misinterpretation by pointing out the 
 absence of any risk to be apprehended from the 
 publication, on the grounds that there was no 
 danger that the ideas there set forth would gain 
 adherents amongst later and more practical poli- 
 ticians. It was indeed not likely that the latter 
 should be led to attempt the establishment of a 
 system on the lines laid down by Saint-Just, having 
 labour for its object, replacing luxury by poverty, 
 constituting friendship the social link, and making 
 age supreme in the magistracy. And yet so 
 M. Nodier adds, a little inconsistently the republic 
 contained in Saint-Just's ' political pastoral ' was 
 the sole one which could have awakened the sym- 
 pathies of a poet, and some few hundreds might 
 die for it. 
 
 Saint-Just did die for it. The weeks went by. 
 The Terror was filling up the measure of its 
 crimes ; and all Europe was looking on, with horror 
 and loathing, at the sanguinary spectacle. Even 
 amongst the men responsible for what was going 
 forward, some had their doubts, their moments of 
 vacillation or compunction ; others enjoyed intervals 
 of relaxation, varying the labours of the man of 
 ambition, the judge, or the executioner, with 
 amusement, giving entertainments to women ' light 
 as pleasure, discreet as death.' But to Saint- 
 Just no divided service was possible. So far as
 
 138 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 it is possible to judge, he pursued his way, undis- 
 turbed by misgiving or remorse, with the direct- 
 ness, the pitiless indifference to the trampling out 
 of human life, of the fanatic. Even his engage- 
 ment to Henriette Lebas had been terminated. 
 More and more his whole powers of body, soul, 
 and spirit were concentrated upon the cause for 
 which alone he lived. His habits were those of 
 an anchorite, his austere simplicity of life was so 
 marked as to lay him open to the charge of affec- 
 tation. Without the Revolution, says one critic, 
 death would have surprised him in a boudoir. The 
 assertion is incapable of proof, for the Revolution 
 had absorbed alike energies, imagination, and 
 affections. ' The tyrant of his passions ' such was 
 the testimony of one charged at a later date with 
 having been the friend of the conspirator, Saint- 
 Just 'he had conquered them all, to know none 
 but the love of his country.' That the doom 
 to which that love, as he understood it, might 
 lead, was constantly before his eyes there is no 
 room to doubt. It is related that when informed, 
 on his return from a successful campaign, of the 
 enthusiasm entertained by the Parisian populace 
 for himself their idol of a moment he observed 
 sardonically that the acclamations of the crowd 
 would be of a different nature the day he was led 
 to the scaffold ; and the sentence, ' I would will- 
 ingly walk between the executioners, my feet in 
 blood and tears,' found amongst his papers, wit- 
 nesses to the persistency with which the forebod- 
 ings of a like culmination haunted his imagination.
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 139 
 
 The end was at hand. Within the Convention 
 group after group had been sacrificed to the 
 dominant influence of the hour. The Girondists 
 had been the first to fall, followed by the He'bert- 
 ists. Danton and his friends had been the latest 
 victims. The part played by Saint-Just in this 
 last tragedy left the darkest stain of all upon 
 his reputation. It is at this juncture that his 
 conduct is least capable of palliation ; and in plead- 
 ing as his excuse an ' austeriU farouche ' and a 
 ' terrible bonne foi,' his most ardent apologist, 
 M. Hamel himself, is constrained to admit in that 
 good faith an element of madness. He outraged 
 not only humanity, but friendship. Danton, Ca- 
 mille Desmoulins, and the rest had been friends, 
 brothers in arms, comrades, but they had become 
 obstacles so he had convinced himself, following 
 in this case the lead of his chief to the realisation 
 of the republican ideal, and he did not hesitate to 
 strike. It had been imagined, he declared, that 
 none would venture to attack men surrounded by 
 a great illusion, but, for his part, he had left such 
 weaknesses behind : ' I have seen in the universe 
 truth alone, and I have uttered it.' The blow was 
 struck : Danton fell ; it was a blow levelled at 
 the Republic itself. It never recovered from it. 
 < J' entraine Robespierre' Danton's well-known 
 prophecy found speedy fulfilment. 
 
 For the moment, however, hated and feared as 
 they might be in secret, the victors were left with- 
 out an open rival. The Convention had become 
 subservient to the Committees, and the Committees
 
 140 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 to the terrible triumvirate, Robespierre, Couthon, 
 and Saint-Just. Outside, the Revolutionary Tri- 
 bunal was sending its victims by hundreds to the 
 scaffold. But Paris, maddened as it was alike by 
 rage and fear, was becoming at length weary of 
 the carnage, satiated with blood ; and within the 
 Convention a growing disquiet the disquiet of 
 men who look each upon his neighbour with 
 distrust and anticipate a blow in the dark 
 was apparent. 
 
 Saint-Just had been absent on his fifth mission 
 to the army. Setting out for it, some cloud of dis- 
 couragement or foreboding would seem to have 
 overshadowed his spirit. 'I go to be killed,' he 
 said. ' Republicans have no longer any resting- 
 place but the grave.' 
 
 For that last refuge he had not long to wait. It 
 was not, however, upon the battlefield that he was 
 to find it. 
 
 Lebas was once more his colleague, but over 
 the affection of the two a shadow had fallen, 
 the result of Saint- Just's estrangement from his 
 friend's sister. Implacable and relentless in love 
 as in politics, he refused to respond to the advances 
 made by Henriette towards reconciliation ; and 
 when the girl addressed a letter to her brother and 
 her lost lover conjointly, he handed it to Lebas, 
 with the observation that it was for him alone. 
 For Henriette, whatever had been her offence, and 
 it is said to have been not more serious than a 
 lapse in good taste, there was to be no place for 
 repentance.
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 141 
 
 The usual success attended his presence with 
 the army. The battle of Fleurus was won, 
 Charleroi was taken, and, his task accomplished, 
 he returned to Paris. During his absence, how- 
 ever, disunion had made rapid progress. Robes- 
 pierre, in displeasure, had taken the perilous course 
 of ceasing to attend the meetings of the Com- 
 mittees, leaving the Revolutionary Tribunal, armed 
 with the terrible power he had been the means of 
 bestowing upon it, of dispensing with the forms of 
 justice, to proceed unchecked with its evil work. 
 To what extent Saint- Just, who at once resumed 
 his place at the Committee of Public Safety, was 
 responsible for the events immediately preceding 
 his fall it is, once more, difficult to determine. It 
 may be pleaded that, to take a single instance, the 
 list of the 368 victims sent, a week before his 
 death, in one batch to the Tribunal was signed not 
 by him but by nine members, all numbered among 
 his opponents ; that the multiplication of arrests 
 was denounced by both him and Robespierre, and 
 that, again and again, both were accused by their 
 colleagues of erring on the side of moderation. 
 But when every possible allowance has been made, 
 it cannot be doubted that blood enough and to 
 spare was on his hands to justify his punishment. 
 If excuse is to be found for him, it must be sought 
 rather in motives than in the acts resulting from 
 them. 
 
 It was, at any rate, not long before he paid the 
 penalty decreed against the man by whom blood is 
 shed, although the proximate cause of his death
 
 i 4 2 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 was a different one. Fear and jealousy had done 
 their work, the tension could not be much longer 
 prolonged, and a crisis was plainly imminent. 
 When, on the 8th Thermidor, Robespierre made 
 his appearance in the Convention, in his speech, 
 unwisely vague, every man guiltily conscious of 
 misuse of power discerned a personal menace. At 
 night the Committees had met, full of fear and 
 hatred, to concert in secret their plan of attack, 
 when Saint- Just, entering, took his usual place, 
 maddening his colleagues by the restraint imposed 
 by his presence, himself calm, fearless, and un- 
 moved ' de marbre ' is the expression of an eye- 
 witness one man against ten, all eager to compass 
 his ruin. 
 
 The night wore away, and still he kept his place. 
 As he was seen to prepare, in sombre silence, his 
 report upon the situation, each man present sur- 
 mised that in it his own arraignment would be in- 
 cluded. At times he broke that silence to protest, 
 with cold contempt, against the methods of the 
 Committee in ' improvising thunder ' at every 
 moment, or to counsel a return to juster and wiser 
 measures. Thus, to quote Barere, did he hold his 
 colleagues in check, paralyse their measures, and 
 chill their zeal. Only at five o'clock, the long 
 night over, did he relieve the Committee of his 
 presence, and leave them free to arrange his 
 destruction. 
 
 The sketch for his last speech remains, covered 
 with erasures. It is the echo of his life, melancholy, 
 proud, and fearless. In it he alludes to the
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 143 
 
 jealousies by which the Convention was torn, 
 points to the abyss opening before the Republic, 
 speaks of his personal danger, and of the small 
 regret he would feel at quitting a world where it 
 was necessary to be the witness and accomplice of 
 evil. And then once more is struck the note of 
 the vanity of all human ambition : ' To what end 
 should a man seek to prolong his days ? Renown 
 is but an empty sound. Listen to past centuries 
 you will hear nothing ; and those who in future 
 ages shall wander by our funeral urns shall hear no 
 more.' 
 
 The speech was never made. Rising in fierce 
 revolt against the power by which it had been so 
 long dominated, the Convention refused to listen ; 
 and during the whole remainder of the sitting 
 Saint-Just remained, the shadow of his doom 
 darkening above him, silent, impassive, and 
 motionless, leaning against the tribune. The result 
 was a foregone conclusion. Before the meeting 
 dispersed he had been placed, with the master to 
 whom he had been unswervingly true, with Lebas, 
 his friend, Couthon and the younger Robespierre, 
 under the arrest which was the prelude to death. 
 
 The succeeding scenes are marked by the same 
 unalterable calm and proud endurance. He had 
 always professed indifference to death, nor did he, 
 brought face to face with it, give the lie to his pro- 
 fessions. He met his end, admits Fleury, 'sans 
 forfanterie, mats avec calme et dignite", sans emphase 
 affectde, comme sans regret de la vie, comme sans 
 frayeur'
 
 144 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Each recorded incident serves to complete the 
 picture. At one moment, a temporary rescue 
 having been effected by the Commune, it seemed 
 possible that even yet the situation might be 
 retrieved. It was proposed to issue a proclama- 
 tion to the people. ' In whose name ? ' demanded 
 Robespierre. ' In the name of the Convention,' 
 was Saint- Just's reply. ' It is present in any place 
 where we are.' 
 
 It had been no more than a transient gleam of 
 hope. The Commune was attacked ; resistance 
 impossible. In despair, Lebas shot himself, the 
 younger Robespierre threw himself from a window ; 
 his brother lay desperately wounded, whether by 
 his own hand or not remains uncertain ; but Saint- 
 Just made no endeavour to elude his fate. His 
 hands tied, he followed, amid the execrations of the 
 mob, the litters on which his comrades were borne, 
 'as if,' some one says, 'assisting at a victory.' 
 Once he broke silence. ' Oest pourtant moi qui ai 
 fait cela,' he said, as, lifting his bound hands, he 
 pointed to the framed declaration of the Rights of 
 Man. 
 
 In the car in which he was taken to the place of 
 execution he stood upright, bare-headed, and pale, 
 looking calmly down, in his singular beauty, upon 
 the surging crowd, shouting and dancing as they 
 followed the funeral procession, until that furious 
 mob itself is said to have been touched by some 
 wave of emotion. Then, facing the people for the 
 last time from the scaffold, he stood erect, tall, and 
 slight, and young, his feet bathed in the blood of
 
 LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST 145 
 
 the master to whom he had been loyal to the last, 
 and, still silent, died. He had not completed his 
 twenty-seventh year. 
 
 Thus Louis Antoine de Saint-Just lived and 
 dreamed. ' C'est nne cruelle vertu ' to quote the 
 words of a contemporary ' mais qui oserait la 
 souiller par le mdpris ? ' 
 
 K
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 
 
 1743? 1803 
 
 ABOUT the year 1743, there was born, in the 
 island of Hayti, a black slave baby of royal African 
 blood. It was this child who, in the last decade 
 of his life, became successively General, Com- 
 mander-in-chief, and Governor of the island, and 
 who, finally, having incurred the jealousy of 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, was 
 thrown by him into prison. There, by foul means, 
 he met his death. 
 
 It is a common habit with men, when the 
 burden of responsibility grows too heavy to be 
 borne with complacency, to shift it on to other 
 shoulders, explaining that the part they play was 
 not of their own seeking, but was thrust upon 
 them by destiny or by that to which, if they are 
 of a different turn of mind, they will give another 
 name. And, whether or not such a disavowal of 
 personal responsibility is wholly to be commended, 
 there are cases in which it is impossible to deny it 
 justification. For if the generality of human kind 
 have themselves to thank for the fate which over- 
 takes them if they have courted, or, at least, have 
 gone to meet it halfway there are other men who 
 have been tracked by their vocation before they 
 
 146
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 147 
 
 were so much as conscious of its existence, and on 
 whose unexpectant ears the call has fallen as they 
 were following the plough, or sitting at the receipt 
 of custom, or, it may be, burying their dead. 
 
 To this last class it was that Toussaint L'Ouver- 
 ture, the liberator of Hayti, belonged. To an 
 altogether exceptional degree he was singled out 
 for a destiny he had in no way invited, and had 
 neither anticipated nor coveted, until the day when 
 he was to pass from ministering submissively to 
 the will of others to become himself a ruler of 
 men, the saviour and the idol of his people, and 
 was to prove himself, according to the impartial 
 testimony of the French agent, Roume, ' a philoso- 
 pher, a legislator, a general.' 
 
 Of the nature of his call he entertained no 
 doubts. Not Joan of Arc herself was more con- 
 vinced of its divine origin. His own words- 
 reported from memory give an account of the 
 matter. 
 
 'At the beginning of the troubles of St. 
 Domingo,' he said, ' I felt that I was destined to 
 
 o * 
 
 great things. When I received the divine intima- 
 tion I was fifty-four years of age. ... A necessity 
 was laid upon me to commence my career. . . . 
 A secret voice said to me, (< Since the blacks are 
 free they need a chief, and it is I who must be 
 that chief, foretold by the Abbe Raynal." . . . 
 France and the voice of God,' he added, ' have not 
 deceived me.' 
 
 France and God ! To the end, bound, betrayed, 
 forsaken, faith in the last never failed him. But
 
 148 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 his trust in France, cling to it as he might and 
 did, with a strange and obstinate persistence, must 
 have received many rude shocks. 
 
 To the conviction, profound and intense, that 
 he was the instrument and agent of the divine 
 will, was no doubt due part at least of his almost 
 miraculous ascendency over the unruly elements 
 he was set to govern ; and to leave out of sight or 
 to deny the factor of religious enthusiasm is to 
 relinquish the only key to the enigma presented by 
 his career. When the obedience of the people was 
 rendered to Toussaint L'Ouverture, till lately a 
 slave amongst fellow-slaves, that obedience was 
 combined with something of the veneration due to 
 the representative of a higher power ; whilst on his 
 part, when he preached pity and forgiveness, and 
 enjoined upon a race thirsting for blood and for 
 vengeance the duty of oblivion of past wrongs, he 
 spoke with the authority of the accredited and 
 conscious ambassador of heaven. 
 
 ' This is the path,' he would tell his troops, 
 unfolding to them his policy of conciliation and 
 mercy, ' which we must all follow to draw down 
 upon us the blessing of the Lord.' In their 
 struggle for freedom they were fighting in a sacred 
 cause, and as the soldiers of Christ and of God, 
 they were soldiers whose hands must be pure from 
 innocent blood. And for a time, till the mouth of 
 the preacher was stopped, and his voice silenced, 
 the gospel he proclaimed compelled the submission 
 of the half-civilised masses to whom it was 
 addressed.
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 149 
 
 The genuineness of the religion of Toussaint 
 L'Ouverture has been called in question ; he has 
 been accused of using the name of God for the 
 furtherance of personal interests and ambitions. 
 Thus it was declared by one of his contemporaries 
 that his actions were covered with so profound a 
 veil of hypocrisy that all who approached him 
 truly a significant admission were betrayed into 
 an opinion of the purity of his intentions. But 
 cant, carried so far as to extend to deeds, is diffi- 
 cult to distinguish from virtue ; and, as an anony- 
 mous biographer shrewdly remarked, ' when a man 
 will, from mere hypocrisy, act well and nobly to 
 the end of his life, there is no way to prove the 
 guilt against him.' At any rate, he was never 
 convicted of falsehood ; in no case did his actions 
 give the lie to his professions ; nor was the veil 
 ever torn off by which he convinced those who 
 approached him of his rectitude. And if God is 
 not mocked, it may be taken as a general rule that, 
 in the long-run, neither is man. 
 
 Character is not formed in a day, and the 
 principles which made Toussaint L'Ouverture 
 what he was must have been the growth of a life- 
 time. But of the years before the ' call ' sounded 
 on his ears little is known, and in the memoirs in 
 which he vindicated his honour to Napoleon and 
 to the world, only one mention of them is made. 
 
 'J'ai t esclave? he wrote ; 'fose Favouer. Mais 
 je riai jamais essuyd meme des reproches de la part 
 de mes maitres'
 
 ISO REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ' We went to labour in the field,' he said on 
 another occasion, describing the peaceful routine of 
 those bygone days, 'my wife and I, hand in hand.' 
 Whilst on Sundays and festivals, the landmarks 
 of that quiet life, a devout Catholic, he attended 
 mass, accompanied by those nearest him in kin, 
 returning to spend the day together 'as a family,' 
 and concluding it with prayer. 
 
 He had acquired in his youth some knowledge 
 of French, and even a little Latin ; and the works 
 of the slave Epictetus, together with those of the 
 Abbe" Raynal, the early abolitionist, are said to 
 have constituted the favourite studies of the 
 future leader of the blacks. For the rest, a con- 
 scientious servant, trusted and valued, he lived at 
 peace, indulging so little ambition to rise above his 
 station, that though, by thrift and industry, he had 
 accumulated a certain amount of property, it does 
 not appear to have occurred to him to employ his 
 savings in the purchase of his freedom. He could 
 with truth assert in later days that ambition had 
 never been his master. 
 
 Of his absentee owner, the Comte de Breda, 
 little is known, except that under the supervision 
 of the agent, Bayou, the slaves upon his estate 
 were not harshly treated, and that in after years, 
 when Toussaint had already achieved distinction, 
 a singular transaction is reported to have taken 
 place. For the sum of four thousand and eighty 
 francs, the possession of the negro chief, ' tout 
 gtntral quit estj was then transferred to a mulatto 
 purchaser, a curious proof of the contemptuous
 
 incredulity entertained by their masters as to the 
 permanence of the enfranchisement already won 
 by the blacks. 
 
 And what was the man thus bought and sold 
 the man who, after half a century of contented 
 obscurity, became with strange suddenness the 
 supreme and dominating power in the land of his 
 birth; who mastered, wherever he appeared, the 
 fierce and turbulent elements at work in the 
 desperate struggle for freedom ; and moved among 
 the disordered multitudes like the very spirit of 
 mercy and peace, curbing the passions, roused to 
 fever-heat, which had been let loose ? 
 
 To form a just estimation it is necessary to 
 compare him with the other figures foremost in the 
 struggle. The generality of men are, if not the 
 reflection of their surroundings, at least the pro- 
 duct of the atmosphere they breathe. But there 
 are some the few whose lives are, in their fair 
 and transient irradiation, the demonstration of the 
 fact that light, like the angel in the block of un- 
 hewn marble, sleeps in humanity. 
 
 It was to these elect few that Toussaint L'Ouver- 
 ture belonged. Around him, before and after 
 him, was darkness, and it was no wonder if, look- 
 ing upon the phenomenon of his life, there should 
 have seemed to the people of his race something 
 superhuman about the man they loved. 
 
 To set him side by side with the other leaders 
 of the movement is to mark at once the gulf 
 between them. Dessalines, after himself the most 
 popular of the black generals, was a brave soldier
 
 152 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 and not wanting in ability, but brutal and blood- 
 thirsty a man who, proclaiming later on a whole- 
 sale massacre of the whites, confessed himself 
 sardonically to be ' a little unlike ' his great prede- 
 cessor. Christophe, afterwards King of Hayti, 
 was courageous and for the most part temperate, 
 but he betrayed his master and his trust in the 
 day of disaster. Jean Francois, the leader of the 
 blacks on their first rising, was an able man, but a 
 lover of luxury and not distinguished for courage ; 
 while Biassou, his second in command, was fiery, 
 vindictive, and drunken. Rigaud, too, the chief of 
 the mulattoes, whilst allowing himself to be made 
 the tool of the whites in his jealousy of the negro 
 race, was yet ready to turn on the very race whose 
 purpose he had served and to massacre them. 
 
 The influence of these men, and of those of 
 their type by whom Toussaint was surrounded 
 men brought to the front by foreign wars as well 
 as by civil strife would have been ever (that of 
 Christophe perhaps excepted) in favour of blood- 
 shed, of retaliation, and of revenge. But, practi- 
 cally alone, Toussaint withstood them. He used 
 these men, and some of them he loved, but he was 
 not guided by them. His own hand was kept 
 upon the helm. 
 
 'Whoever those may have been,' he once wrote, 
 ' of whom I was obliged to make use ... I will 
 one day prove that no one less than myself merits 
 the reproach of having allowed myself to be 
 governed.' 
 
 He possessed, in truth, the rare capacity, invalu-
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 153 
 
 able in a leader, of bending stubborn instruments 
 to execute his will, and of employing the passions 
 of men to carry out his purposes, his clear and 
 penetrating insight discerning the special use 
 to which each one could be put. ' God forbid,' 
 he answered, when urged to arrest Rigaud, his 
 irreconcilable foe, secret or open ; ' I have need of 
 Rigaud. He is violent. I want him for carrying 
 on war, and that war is necessary to me. The 
 mulatto caste is superior to my own. If I take 
 Rigaud from them, they would perhaps find an- 
 other superior to him. I know Rigaud ; he gives 
 up the bridle when he gallops ; he shows his arm 
 when he strikes. For me, I gallop also, but I know 
 where to stop ; and when I strike I am felt, not 
 seen. I know how to put the people in movement ; 
 but when I appear all must be tranquil.' 
 
 It is a course a man can venture to pursue 
 only when he can count upon that indeterminate 
 quantity, personal influence. Toussaint was pre- 
 eminently able to count upon it. When he was 
 present all gave way before him. 
 
 ' Soldiers of the Qth/ he once cried, recognising 
 a regiment of deserters who had been carried over 
 by their officers to the enemy, and advancing alone 
 to meet them ; ' soldiers of the 9th, will you dare 
 fire on your general, on your father, and on your 
 brothers ? ' 
 
 And the soldiers of the gth, stricken to the heart, 
 fell on their knees before him. 
 
 He was the idol of his troops. His courage, 
 amounting almost to temerity, the fearlessness
 
 154 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 with which he risked his life again and again, 
 were so great that at times and to a superstitious 
 people he seemed to bear a charmed life ; whilst by 
 his strenuous activity, his unintermitted labours, it 
 was said that he would wear out three secretaries, 
 or three horses, in a day. Gifted with extra- 
 ordinary physical strength, he would set fatigue 
 and sickness at defiance, and his movements were 
 of a rapidity so astonishing, that to the ignorant he 
 seemed superior to time and space. Yet the love 
 that was borne him was not only the result of the 
 services he had rendered his countrymen, nor yet 
 because to him primarily their freedom was due, 
 but more than all because Toussaint was Toussaint, 
 their brother and their friend. 
 
 If he was loved to the verge of idolatry he knew 
 also how to make himself feared, and a just severity 
 found its place in his rule. Notwithstanding his 
 rare and beautiful humility he could speak as a man 
 born to govern ; while with profound sagacity he 
 made his appeal to every instinct, good or bad, of 
 the race he ruled. There is nothing more striking 
 in the whole of his career than his method of deal- 
 ing with the revolted and seditious mulattoes, at a 
 time when their smouldering animosity had broken 
 out into open insurrection. 
 
 On the eve of taking the field against those of 
 the body actually under arms he summoned the 
 members of the caste left behind in the capital to 
 meet him, and addressing them, according to his 
 wont, from the pulpit of the principal church of the 
 city, not only displayed an intimate acquaintance
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 155 
 
 with their machinations, but played upon the super- 
 stitious clread inspired by himself. 
 
 ' I see to the bottom of your hearts,' he told the 
 conscience-stricken conspirators sternly. ' You are 
 ready to rise against me. But though all the 
 troops are quitting the west, I leave behind me my 
 eye and my arm ; my eye which will watch you, 
 my arm which, if necessary, will smite you.' 
 
 On his return to the city he once more sum- 
 moned the population to the same meeting-place. 
 The civic authorities were present, the church was 
 filled with expectant crowds, and, closely guarded 
 in the midst of the troops, the mulatto conspirators 
 awaited their sentence. But this time it was the 
 tidings of forgiveness of sin, of the blotting out of 
 grudges, which were declared by the victor. He 
 proclaimed to the traitors pardon and reconcilia- 
 tion, bestowed upon them money and clothing, 
 and let them go free. 
 
 It was by such deeds as these that this 'hero 
 of charity ' won his way to hearts and converted 
 enemies into friends and followers. 
 
 'Ah, it is you, Fremont,' was his kindly greeting 
 to a soldier brought before him as a deserter. 
 ' Fortune will not allow you to be separated from 
 me.' The man returned to his duty and remained 
 faithful to the end. 
 
 A curious and graphic account of the negro chief 
 is given by an English officer, Captain Rainsford, 
 who, driven by stress of weather on to the Haytian 
 coast at a time when England was at war with 
 France, contrived to pass himself off as an Ameri-
 
 156 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 can, and, as such, had opportunities of forming an 
 independent opinion of Toussaint in his private 
 and public character. In the former capacity he 
 mixed on a footing of perfect equality with those 
 around him, dining at the hotel, and playing 
 billiards afterwards with the other guests ; whilst, 
 as Commander-in-chief of the troops, the utmost 
 attention to rank and ceremony was enforced, and 
 what the Englishman characterised as an ' orderly 
 ferocity' prevailed among the blacks. Of Tous- 
 satnt's own generosity, Rainsford made personal 
 experience when, later on, in the absence of the 
 chief, his nationality was detected, and he was 
 condemned to death as a spy. Upon the sentence 
 being, however, sent to receive confirmation from 
 L'Ouverture, the latter ordered the release of 
 the prisoner, merely adding the warning that he 
 must never return to the island without the proper 
 passports. 
 
 If, in one respect, his policy of conciliation was 
 a failure, if he did not succeed in dispelling the 
 jealousy of the former rulers of the island, they, 
 nevertheless, gave him the confidence due to a 
 man who had never been known to break a 
 pledge. No more marked proof could be given of 
 the trust he inspired than the fact that, when the 
 British troops were about to evacuate the island, 
 the general in command repaired, almost unat- 
 tended, to the negro camp. On his arrival he 
 was kept waiting for a considerable time before 
 L'Ouverture, entering, presented his guest with 
 two letters, the one from Roume, the French
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 157 
 
 Commissioner, urging the arrest of the English 
 general ; the other, Toussaint's own reply. Not 
 till it had been made would he receive his visitor. 
 
 Toussaint had not succeeded in achieving what 
 would, perhaps, have been scarcely less than a 
 miracle. Black and white remained at heart hostile 
 the one to the other. But in all else his policy 
 had triumphed. As philosopher and as legislator 
 he had carried all before him. The foreign foes 
 had been forced to withdraw from the country ; 
 negro freedom had been established throughout 
 the length and breadth of the island, and had been 
 formally recognised by France. With Te Dennis, 
 announced by salvos of artillery, and with the 
 celebration of solemn masses, thanks had been 
 rendered to God. A general amnesty had been 
 proclaimed, and the doctrine of a universal brother- 
 hood, independent of colour or race, was again set 
 forth. Once more, from the pulpits of the church, 
 Toussaint, high priest of that strange new creed, 
 enjoined upon those who heard him the duty of 
 oblivion of past injuries ; and, for the time at least, 
 peace reigned, and warring passions submitted to 
 the control of his all-powerful will. Law and order 
 were on the way to be restored ; religion and 
 morals were gaining ground ; the arts music and 
 the theatre received encouragement ; the rights 
 of men of all colours were safeguarded, and, by 
 a wise provision bitterly reviled by a coloured 
 biographer as the restoration of slavery a five 
 years' apprenticeship, on easy terms, would have 
 accustomed the negroes, indolent by nature, to a
 
 158 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 right use of freedom, and have prevented the land 
 from remaining uncultivated. 
 
 Toussaint had a right to enforce the duty of 
 labour, for never man worked harder; it is said 
 that he rarely allowed himself more than two 
 hours' sleep, and luxury and idleness were un- 
 known to him. Yet he did not lose sight of the 
 necessity of appealing to the imagination of the 
 races with which he had to deal. To personal 
 habits of a rigid simplicity almost amounting to 
 asceticism, he united, on public occasions, the 
 display of a royal state calculated to impress 
 Frenchman and negro alike. In his home among 
 the mountains, he gave audience like a king, sur- 
 rounded by a splendid retinue, to the people who 
 crowded to pay him homage, and, though the 
 humblest of men, he never forgot the dignity of 
 his position. 
 
 All was going well, and prosperity was revisiting 
 the island. For himself he asked nothing, claimed 
 no reward. ' My task,' he said, 'is accomplished.' 
 
 Evil days, however, were at hand. The power 
 of Toussaint, of which the very prosperity enjoyed 
 by the island was proof, was his crime, and 
 for that crime vengeance was preparing to over- 
 take him. 
 
 It was the year 1801. Peace had been concluded 
 between France and England, and Napoleon was 
 at liberty to turn his attention westward to the 
 favourite colony of France an island where liberty 
 and equality were not theories but facts, where,
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 159 
 
 under a strong and beneficent rule, hostile races 
 were beginning to live at peace, and with which, as 
 it recovered from its struggle, all was beginning to 
 be well, This, or most of it, he saw to be due 
 to the influence, the force, moral and physical, 
 of a single man ; and Napoleon disliked what he 
 saw. 
 
 Toussaint, it was true, asked nothing better 
 than to serve France. There had, indeed, been a 
 time when, despairing of obtaining justice at her 
 hands a time, too, when Frenchmen were at war 
 with Frenchmen he had, as a royalist, joined with 
 Spain in opposition to the representatives of the 
 French Republic. But the alliance had been short- 
 lived, and once more he had sworn allegiance to 
 the country to which he felt, strangely enough, 
 that it was due. The negroes of St. Domingo 
 had little enough, one would think, to thank France 
 for ; yet it was, nevertheless, to France, so long as 
 it was possible, that, with incredible persistence, 
 their leader clung. 
 
 But now when, at the height of his success, 
 Toussaint had written again and again to the ruler 
 he would have wished to regard as a brother, when 
 he had begged that men capable of administering 
 public affairs and of filling those offices for which 
 negroes were still unfit should be sent from France, 
 and when his letters had been met only by an 
 ominous silence, a vague disquietude, mingled with 
 something like wounded affection, stirred within 
 him. 
 
 ' Bonaparte is wrong not to write to me,' he said
 
 160 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 mournfully even, it is related, with tears, the tears 
 of a strong, yet emotional nature ' he must have 
 listened to my enemies.' 
 
 It was soon clear that Bonaparte had, indeed, 
 listened to the enemies of the negro chief the 
 man whom he appeared to consider, in some 
 strange manner, as his rival, the ' first of the 
 blacks' nor was it long before rumours reached 
 the island of the manning and equipment of a 
 powerful armament, whose destination was said to 
 be St. Domingo. 
 
 At the report of the coming expedition the 
 whites, always ready to turn upon their protector 
 and benefactor, openly congratulated themselves, 
 and, as Toussaint heard of their insolent rejoicing, 
 his tolerance, for once, gave way, and he banished 
 the men who had thus requited his clemency. 
 Yet, when the result of his action appeared in the 
 solicitation of a passport by one of their country- 
 men, he was visibly moved. 
 
 ' Why do you wish to go ? ' he asked, with 
 emotion, ' you, whom I esteem and love ? ' 
 
 The black man and the white, representatives of 
 rival races, confronted one another, and the latter 
 spoke his mind 
 
 ' Because I am white, 'he answered bluntly, 'and 
 because you are Ion the eve of being the irritated 
 chief of the blacks.' 
 
 Possibly Toussaint recognised the force of the 
 argument. Sorrowfully he let his friend go. The 
 action of the First Consul was already bearing 
 fruit ; the amalgamating elements were separating
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 161 
 
 once more ; and still there was dead silence, so 
 far as Toussaint was concerned, on the part of 
 Napoleon. But in France the silence had been 
 significantly broken. 
 
 A proposed constitution for Hayti had been 
 drawn up and sent to the mother country for confir- 
 mation. By its provisions it finally abolished slavery 
 in the island, and made Toussaint L'Ouverture 
 Governor for life. On a council composed of nine 
 members eight were whites, and the remaining 
 one a mulatto, the race of Toussaint himself, the 
 guiding spirit, being wholly unrepresented. But 
 Napoleon, blind with anger, was not a man to take 
 account of such a fact as this, and his jealousy, 
 long smouldering, blazed out. 
 
 ' Cest un esclave re'volte', ' said the champion of 
 European liberty, ' quil faut punir. Uhonneur 
 de la France est outrage"' Toussaint, who with 
 patient and pathetic confidence in the generosity 
 of the man who ruled the destinies of France, was 
 awaiting his approval, was characterised by Bona- 
 parte as ' un chef de brigands 1 to be brought to 
 justice. His doom was sealed. 
 
 Not yet, however, prepared to throw off the 
 mask, Napoleon sent for Toussaint's two sons, in 
 France for purposes of education, in order to im- 
 part to them the pacific intentions of the fleet to 
 be despatched to Hayti ; spoke in terms of ex- 
 travagant laudation of the 'esclave re'volte',' and 
 presented them with gifts of value and with his 
 directions to proceed to St. Domingo and to assure 
 their father of the uprightness of the First Consul's
 
 162 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 intentions. The story of what followed is well 
 known. 
 
 4 We must perish,' said Toussaint, as he watched 
 from a height the French armament. ' All France 
 is coming to St. Domingo. She has been deceived. 
 She comes to take revenge, and to enslave the 
 blacks. ' 
 
 He was right. Unaccountable as was the action 
 of Napoleon to the gentle and generous spirit of 
 his victim, the latter had divined with sufficient 
 correctness the aim of the expedition. War again 
 laid waste the land. The despairing population, 
 compelled to yield to the overwhelming strength 
 of the invading forces, set fire to their cities as 
 they retreated, leaving one after another a mass of 
 ashes as they retired into the mountain fastnesses, 
 there to carry on the unequal struggle. For 
 three months that struggle was kept up months 
 during which Toussaint, surely with despair at 
 his heart, watched the fruit of the labours of years 
 being destroyed before his eyes ; and, worse still, 
 found himself forsaken by friend after friend, by 
 Christophe, Dessalines, his two brothers and his 
 nephew all deserters in the day of necessity 
 whilst his own son, to crown all, when offered his 
 choice, declared himself a faithful servant of France, 
 who could never resolve to bear arms against her. 
 
 The time came when it was no longer possible 
 even for Toussaint's gallant spirit to hold out. 
 Yet, in his ruin, and when further resistance 
 was hopeless, he was powerful enough to wring 
 from the enemy favourable terms of surrender
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 163 
 
 favourable, that is, for army and people. For 
 himself, as he had before asked nothing, so he 
 would now accept nothing ; and when the French 
 general, anxious to propitiate the man he hated, 
 would have offered him the post of Governor of 
 the city of St. Domingo, he declined it. His only 
 personal demand was for liberty to live in obscurity 
 and in silence among the mountains. 
 
 At the city of Cap Fra^ois one of the towns 
 reduced to ruins he met the French general, 
 Leclerc, in order to make the necessary arrange- 
 ments for the future government of the island. 
 His journey thither, fallen as he was, resembled 
 the triumph of a conqueror. Crowds prostrated 
 themselves at his feet, hailing him author of the 
 liberty assured to them by oath so far as French 
 oaths could assure it. As he approached his des- 
 tination an officer, sent by Christophe, rode up to 
 ask on his chief's behalf the orders of the general 
 he had deserted. 
 
 ' Colonel,' answered L'Ouverture with the gentle 
 and courteous dignity which never failed him, *je 
 vous vois avec plaisir, mais je riai pas de rdponse 
 a vous fair e au sujet de votre mission' 
 
 There was for the false friend no place for re- 
 pentance. It was Toussaint's only vengeance. 
 
 The interview with Leclerc took place, charac- 
 terised by flattery on the one side, and by quiet 
 dignity on the other. Once only the old fighting 
 spirit flashed out. Had Toussaint decided to carry 
 on the struggle, where, the Frenchman asked, would 
 he have found arms and ammunition to keep it up ?
 
 164 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 'J'aurais pris les votres, was the answer of the 
 black chief. 
 
 In tears his veterans received the farewell ad- 
 dress of the general who was never to lead them 
 again, and L'Ouverture passed out of their sight 
 into the retirement of his home. It was the end 
 of the last act but one of the tragedy. 
 
 There, amongst his mountains, surrounded by his 
 family and in the midst of those who loved him, 
 he might yet have found happiness. But he was 
 still too powerful to be permitted to end his days 
 in peace. There was one place it was not in his 
 power to relinquish the place he held in the 
 hearts of the people, and while this was his, no 
 undivided rule could be enjoyed by the victors in 
 Hayti. A plot was laid to entrap him, and, in 
 spite of warnings, Toussaint refused to avoid the 
 snare. The French general, Brunet, in terms of 
 studied cordiality, had written to invite him to his 
 house, in order that together they might concert 
 measures for the further pacification of the island. 
 When Toussaint responded to the invitation he 
 was arrested, by a flagrant breach of good faith, 
 and sent a prisoner to France. 
 
 The sequel can be briefly told. In a dungeon 
 at Joux, purposely selected, it has been believed, 
 in order that damp and cold might prove fatal to 
 an inmate of his race and blood, Toussaint L'Ou- 
 verture dragged out nine months, denied so much 
 as a hearing in his own defence. Bonaparte never 
 looked upon the face of his victim. In the misery 
 of that captivity he drew up, in his memoirs,
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 165 
 
 couched as they were in language studiously tem- 
 perate, a terrible indictment against France and 
 the man who was her ruler. No injustice had 
 been too great, no indignity too petty, to be put 
 upon him. The means of defence, so far as it 
 was possible, had been taken from him, his papers 
 seized. ' N'est-ce pas couper les jambes a quel- 
 guun, et lui ordonner de marcher?' he asked; 
 ' riest-ce pas lui couper la langue et lui dire de 
 parler?' And coming to lesser matters, he com- 
 plained that the orders no doubt given by the 
 First Consul and his ministers that the necessaries 
 of life should be supplied to him is his confidence 
 irony or innocence ? had been unexecuted, and 
 that the cast-off rags of soldiers, ' a moiHe" pourris, ' 
 had been sent him for clothing. Again his appeal 
 is made to the man from whom he persisted in 
 looking for justice. Will Napoleon, a soldier him- 
 self, leave an old soldier to die in prison ? ' Premier 
 Consul] he cries, ' pere de tous les militaires, juge 
 integre, ddfenseur de I'innocence, prononcez done 
 sur mon sort. Mes plates sont tres profondes, 
 portez y le remede. . . . Vous tes me'de'cin ; je 
 compte entierement sur votre justice' 
 
 Another physician, healer of all wounds and 
 more powerful than the First Consul, was at hand. 
 In prison, old, fallen, defeated, far from home and 
 country, Toussaint L'Ouverture was still danger- 
 ous. So long as he drew breath the hopes of the 
 deceived and desperate population of St. Domingo 
 would centre upon him. Yet there are crimes 
 which, none knew better than Napoleon, must be
 
 166 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 executed in the dark ; to kill, publicly and openly, 
 the negro liberator was a deed he dared not do. 
 And the iron constitution of the ' vieux militaire ' 
 had resisted cold and grief and privation. The 
 ordinary prison allowance of food had been dimin- 
 ished, but in vain. The faithful servant who had 
 been his one companion had been removed, and 
 still solitude had not killed him. It was then that 
 the governor of the prison took two short holi- 
 days. During the first he confided the keys of 
 the dungeon to his lieutenant, Captain Colomier. 
 But Colomier was obtuse. He even bettered the 
 condition of the unhappy captive by allowing him 
 the coffee for which he craved. On the governor's 
 return he found matters no further advanced than 
 he had left them. Presently he took another 
 journey. On this occasion Colomier was not in- 
 trusted with the keys of the dungeons. The 
 prisoners, he was told, had need of nothing. By 
 the time the governor returned, after four days' 
 absence, of one prisoner, at least, the words were 
 true. Toussaint L'Ouverture needed nothing. He 
 lay in his cell, dead from starvation.
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 
 
 1815-1875 
 
 1 POOR Mitchel,' said Carlyle. ' I told him he 
 would most likely be hanged, but I told him too 
 they could not hang the immortal part of him.' 
 
 The prophecy was not fulfilled. John Mitchel 
 was not hanged. But he was tried, convicted, and 
 transported, and close upon half of his life was 
 spent in a foreign land. The period covered by 
 his public career in Ireland was not more than two 
 years and a half. But time is not measured by 
 years. ' A tors' says Michelet of the revolutionary 
 period in Paris, ' il riy avait plus de temps ; la 
 Revolution F avait tut, avec bien dautres choses? 
 Into that short space was compressed, for Mitchel, 
 all that, to a man of his temperament, made life 
 best worth living. 
 
 Amongst the multitude of Irishmen who have 
 devoted themselves to the attempt to free their 
 country from what they regarded as a foreign 
 despotism, John Mitchel is distinguished, not so 
 much by any special prominence in character, gifts, 
 or achievements, as by the fact that, unlike most 
 of the working members of the brotherhood of 
 revolution, he has left behind him a personal 
 record of exceptional brilliance and force, by which 
 it is possible to form a clear judgment of the man 
 
 167
 
 i68 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 himself, as well as of his motives, aims, aspira- 
 tions, and hopes. 
 
 It is not often that those engaged in an active 
 struggle with society have had time or leisure to 
 devote to a like performance ; or that, where time 
 and leisure, as in Mitchel's case, followed upon 
 failure, they have cared, while fresh from the 
 battle and suffering the penalties of defeat, to 
 employ them as he did. It is rarer still that the 
 opportunity and the inclination to commit past 
 experience and present hopes and faiths to paper 
 should be accompanied by an unusual power of 
 literary expression. That this is the case with 
 John Mitchel as with Wolfe Tone, the man who, 
 fifty years earlier, had lifted the banner of revolt 
 renders him a convenient representative of his 
 special section of the revolutionary army. Had 
 other reasons to be sought for thus singling him 
 out, they might be found in the tribute paid to his 
 memory by Carlyle's biographer when, recording 
 the speech already quoted, he added that the 
 'immortal part ' of John Mitchel was still working 
 in dynamite conspiracies a striking testimony to 
 the influence he has exercised, in the opinion of 
 an adversary, on the history of his country. 
 
 Yet, if John Mitchel was a revolutionist, and one 
 of the most irreconcilable of the band, he was such 
 not so much by nature and creed as through stress 
 of circumstances. In his sympathies he was nar- 
 rowed by the intense nationality alike the snare 
 and the strength of the Irish race. Of this spirit 
 of nationality he himself defined the limitations
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 169 
 
 when he wrote that 'Ireland without the Irish the 
 Irish out of Ireland neither of these can be our 
 country.' The combination of the native soil and 
 the native race was necessary to command his 
 allegiance. He did not possess a spark of the 
 enthusiasm for the cause of humanity at large, or 
 of the love for liberty in the abstract by which 
 the best and purest revolutionists of the preceding 
 century had felt their blood fired ; nor had he 
 any sense of brotherhood with the men who, by 
 other means and different methods, were engaged 
 in a struggle of a kindred nature to his own. 
 'Socialists,' he says, with strange violence, 'are 
 something worse than wild beasts,' and again, 
 describing events in Paris in 1848, ' they [the 
 Communists] were swept from the streets with 
 grape and canister the only way of dealing with 
 such unhappy creatures.' It is more remarkable 
 still that when in later days the war broke out in 
 America between North and South, his sympathies 
 should have been vehemently engaged on the side 
 of the Confederate States and slavery. Through 
 his own country and her wrongs alone he made 
 common cause with the men who in like case as 
 in Poland and Hungary were struggling with 
 their evil destiny. Had Ireland's wrongs been 
 redressed, he would, in theory at least, have had 
 no hesitation in beating his sword into a plough- 
 share. 
 
 In describing the principles of his lifelong friend 
 and fellow-convict, John Martin, he gives an 
 account of his own, and furnishes the key to the
 
 170 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 line of conduct based upon them : ' Instead of 
 being a Jacobin and natural enemy of law and 
 order, he venerates law beyond all other earthly 
 things . . . would for ever prefer to bear with 
 unjust institutions, corruptly administered, rather 
 than disquiet himself and others in a struggle to 
 abolish them.' At the same time, 'property is an 
 institution of society not a divine endowment 
 whose title-deed is in heaven ; the uses and trusts 
 of it are the benefit of society ; the sanction of it 
 is the authority of society ; but when matters 
 have come to that utterly intolerable condition 
 they have long been in in Ireland, society itself 
 stands dissolved a fortiori, property is forfeited. 
 . . . If we must needs go through a sore agony of 
 anarchy before we can enjoy the blessings of true 
 order and law again, in the name of God, let us 
 go through it at once.' 
 
 Whilst a narrow and possibly a selfish love for 
 his own country was one of Mitchel's two master 
 passions, hatred of England the 'enemy' to 
 which constant reference is made in his journal 
 was the other. 
 
 It is indeed significant that, writing in days 
 when the mist of prejudice had had time to clear, 
 he confesses that, looking back, and striving to 
 analyse the motives by which he had been actuated, 
 he had discovered in them perhaps less of love 
 than of hate, less devotion to truth and justice 
 than raging wrath against cant and insolence. 
 That retribution should follow upon wrongdoing 
 had ever been his constant hope. ' Punishment
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 171 
 
 of England for the crimes of England this right- 
 eous vengeance I seek, and shall seek. Let but 
 justice be done; let Ireland's wrong be righted; 
 and the wrong done to me and mine is more than 
 avenged ; for the whole is greater than its part. 
 . . . For such vengeance I do vehemently thirst 
 and burn.' 
 
 Thus he wrote from the cabin cell in the hulk at 
 Bermuda to which he had been consigned in pur- 
 suance of the sentence of transportation obtained 
 by Government by means of a flagrant disregard 
 of the very forms of justice. 
 
 The introduction to the Jail Journal^ published 
 after he had effected his escape, gives an account 
 of the condition of the country preceding what 
 proved to be for him a lifelong exile a state of 
 things by which men like himself, an Ulster Pro- 
 testant, John Martin, calm, gentle, and long-suffer- 
 ing, Smith O'Brien, the high-minded representative 
 of the landlord class, and a crowd of others had 
 been converted first into rebels, then into convicted 
 felons. ' At the end of six years,' he writes, ' I 
 can set down these things calmly, but to see them 
 might have driven a wise man mad.' 
 
 After a brief and graphic review of the earlier 
 history of Ireland, of her reiterated deaths and 
 repeated resurrections, he passes on to the period 
 of the Penal Laws, to the ruin of Irish manufac- 
 tures consequent upon British legislation, and to 
 the accompanying misery 'one can scarcely 
 believe,' he says, 'that the sun shone as he is wont 
 in those days ' to the partial revival of prosperity
 
 172 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 towards the close of the eighteenth century, and to 
 the extinction of that gleam of hope at the time of 
 the Union. And next he tells of the result of that 
 measure ; of yearly famines, of an entire country 
 lying under the shadow of death ; of a condition of 
 things described by Sir John Newport in the 
 House of Commons when he told how the priest of 
 one parish had gone round and administered the 
 Sacraments of the Dying to every man, woman, 
 and child within it, all in articulo mortis through 
 starvation. 
 
 It was during this dark portion of his country's 
 history that Mitchel himself was born, in the year 
 1815, and that his boyhood and early manhood 
 was passed. In 1829 the boon of Catholic eman- 
 cipation was thrown as a sop to the Irish people ; 
 but great as were the benefits conferred by that 
 act of tardy justice, it was impossible that it should 
 produce the same effect upon the son of a Presby- 
 terian minister of Scotch extraction as upon those 
 of his countrymen who had laboured under the 
 disabilities it removed. Keenly alive as Mitchel 
 was to the injustice of the former system, he 
 did not hesitate on the contrary to characterise 
 the Bill as a misfortune for the country at large, 
 in removing a palpable and crying grievance, 
 while leaving other evils unredressed. ' Respect- 
 able Catholics/ he said bitterly, 'were contented 
 and became West Britons from that day.' The 
 starving people were left to fight their battles 
 unassisted. 
 
 Such being his attitude towards the measure, it
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 173 
 
 was inevitable that he should find himself in 
 opposition to the man by whose methods of legal 
 agitation it had been ostensibly at least won ; 
 and while recognising the great gifts of O'Connell, 
 he was wholly out of sympathy with him. His 
 description of the Liberator is so vivid and so 
 striking an example of his power of word-painting 
 that it is worth quoting here. 
 
 ' At the head of that open and legal agitation,' he 
 wrote, ' was a man of giant proportions in body and 
 in mind ; with no profound learning, indeed, even 
 in his own profession of the law, but with a vast 
 and varied knowledge of human nature, in all its 
 strength and especially in all its weakness ; with a 
 voice like thunder and earthquake, yet musical and 
 soft at will as the song of birds ; with a genius and 
 fancy tempestuous, playful, cloudy, fiery, mournful, 
 merry, lofty and mean by turns, as the mood was 
 on him a humour broad, bacchant, riant, genial 
 and jovial with profound and spontaneous natural 
 feeling, and superhuman and subterhuman passions, 
 yet withal a boundless fund of masterly affectation 
 and consummate histrionism, hating and loving 
 heartily, outrageous in his merriment and pas- 
 sionate in his lamentation, he had the power to 
 make other men hate or love, laugh or weep, at his 
 good pleasure ; insomuch that Daniel O'Connell, 
 by virtue of being more intensely Irish, carrying to 
 a more extravagant pitch all Irish strength and 
 passion and weakness than other Irishmen, led and 
 swayed his people by a kind of divine, or else 
 diabolic, right.'
 
 174 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 'He led them,' adds Mitchel, 'as I believe, all 
 wrong, for forty years.' A lawyer, he could not 
 bring himself to defy British law. A Catholic, he 
 was blind to the fact that, at the time, the Church 
 was opposed to the cause of Irish liberty. The 
 name and idea of a Republic, the dream of all 
 Irishmen in their great distress, was abhorrent to 
 him. 
 
 It was during the period of O'Connell's domin- 
 ating that Mitchel grew to manhood. Upon the 
 portion of his life preceding his entrance upon a 
 public career there is no need to linger. There 
 was little to distinguish it from that led by hundreds 
 of his countrymen. Educated in the first place 
 at Newry, where his father's home was fixed, he 
 afterwards graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, 
 taking his degree before he was fifteen. He was, 
 however, never a resident student, and entering at 
 twenty-one the office of a solicitor at Newry, it was 
 in these surroundings that the following twelve 
 years were mainly spent, an early marriage having 
 rendered it imperatively necessary that he should 
 engage without delay in a profession affording a 
 hope of support for himself and his family. 
 
 Though the work of an attorney was never con- 
 genial, this period of his life was a happy one. His 
 marriage leading in the first place to a brief 
 imprisonment, the bride having been a girl of 
 seventeen, with whom he had run away had 
 proved in all respects successful. Children were 
 born to him ; his dearest friend, John Martin, 
 lived within easy reach ; and his ardent love of
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 175 
 
 nature always a distinguishing feature in his 
 character must have gone some way towards 
 reconciling him to remaining at a distance from the 
 centre towards which his attention and interest 
 were increasingly attracted. Again and again 
 throughout his life, from the days when, as a boy, 
 it was his habit to wander at night about the hills, 
 or to seek at sunrise the mountain tops, until that 
 sadder hour when, shortly before his death, revisit- 
 ing Ireland after long years of exile, he was seen 
 to tremble from head to foot as he first caught 
 sight of an Irish hill again and again his love of 
 nature breaks forth. Thus, writing to Martin in 
 1842, when the May time was in his blood, he 
 says : 
 
 ' When I see the first violet of any spring with- 
 out a passionate yearning, without a fulness of the 
 throat that makes me think the fountain of sweet 
 tears is hardly yet hermetically sealed in me ; when 
 the singing of the birds is to me only a tuneless 
 whistle ; and that brave overhanging firmament 
 nothing but a pestilent congregation of vapours 
 then let my grave be dug, and the sooner and 
 deeper the better.' 
 
 ' The tinkle, or murmur, or deep resounding roll, 
 or raving roar of running water, is of all sounds my 
 ears ever hear now the most homely,' he writes in 
 his island prison of Van Diemen's Land. ' No- 
 thing else in this land looks or sounds like home. 
 The birds have a foreign tongue the very trees 
 whispering to the wind, whisper in accents un- 
 known to me . . . they can never, never let breeze
 
 i;6 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 pipe or zephyr breathe as it will never can they 
 whisper, quiver, sigh, or sing, as do the beeches and 
 the sycamores of old Rosstrevor.' Or again, whilst 
 he was still a convict in a hulk at Bermuda, the old 
 memories find vent. ' This thirteenth of Septem- 
 ber,' he writes, ' is a calm, clear, autumnal day in 
 Ireland, and in green glens there and on many a 
 mountain-side, beech leaves begin to redden, and 
 the heather-bell has grown brown and sere ; the 
 corn-fields are nearly all stripped bare by this time ; 
 the flush of summer grows pale . . . and the rivers 
 as they go brawling over their pebbly beds, some 
 crystal bright, some tinted with sparkling brown 
 from the high moors ... all have got their 
 autumnal voice, and chide the echoes with a 
 hoarser murmur, complaining (he that hath ears to 
 hear let him hear), how that summer is dying and 
 the time of the singing of birds is over and gone. 
 . . . Well known to me by day and by night are 
 the voices of Ireland's winds and waters, the faces 
 of her ancient mountains. I see it, I hear it all 
 for by the wondrous power of imagination, in- 
 formed by strong love, I do indeed live more truly 
 in Ireland than on these unblessed rocks.' 
 
 It has seemed worth while to dwell on this love 
 of nature especially of Irish nature since it is an 
 incongruous trait in a man like Mitchel, hard- 
 headed and practical, with nothing of the dreamer 
 or the poet about him ; and because also it is only 
 by a comprehension of the affection he bore to 
 mountain and glen and stream of his native land, 
 that the bitterness of a life passed in banishment
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 177 
 
 can be measured. Almost one can hear him say 
 with another Irish exile, St. Columba, ' Better is 
 death in Ireland than here endless life. . . . My 
 heart is broken in my breast. If sudden death 
 surprises me it is my love for the Gael which is 
 the cause.' 
 
 All things considered, then, it may be said that 
 up to the time of his taking an active part in 
 politics, Mitchel's life had passed away pleasantly. 
 
 'As he played with his children,' wrote John 
 Martin's sister afterwards, speaking of this period, 
 ' he was the very type of a happy man. All the 
 good days were before he threw himself into 
 political life.' 
 
 It was in the year 1845, when Mitchel was 
 thirty, that those days were to end. Two years 
 earlier, by his action with regard to the proclama- 
 tion by the Government of the meeting to be held 
 at Clontarf, O'Connell had practically committed 
 himself to a policy of non-resistance. There was 
 plainly room for the creation of a party holding 
 a different creed the creed that if repeal was not 
 to be won by legal and peaceful methods, others 
 might be rightfully employed. It was with this 
 party the party of Young Ireland that Mitchel 
 was to throw in his lot. 
 
 Of signs foreshadowing his future destiny there 
 had hitherto been singularly few. 
 
 If he loved Ireland, so did others. He resented 
 her wrongs ; but thousands resented them as 
 deeply and perhaps more loudly ; the hatred of 
 hundreds of thousands for England was no less 
 
 M
 
 i;8 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 strong. If his sympathies had always been en- 
 gaged on the national side, he had been content 
 to give them little active expression. In the 
 summer of 1843, however, there were indications 
 that the attitude of a looker-on at the struggle 
 then going forward would not long continue to 
 content him. 
 
 About a year earlier he had become acquainted 
 with Thomas Davis, leader of the Young Ireland 
 party, and, to use Mitchel's own words, 'the 
 friend who first filled his soul with the passion of 
 a great ambition and a lofty purpose.' From that 
 time the ' good days ' of quiet and domestic happi- 
 ness were numbered. When the disaster of Davis's 
 death fell upon the little band of whom he had 
 been chief, Duffy, editor of the Nation, to which 
 Mitchel had been for some time a contributor, 
 proposed to him to give up his profession, come 
 to Dublin, and take the place of the dead leader 
 upon the staff of the paper. Thus called upon to 
 make a deliberate choice, Mitchel did not hesi- 
 tate. He at once accepted the offer, and became 
 from that time a prominent figure in the ranks of 
 Young Ireland. 
 
 Most of the decisions of men's lives are taken 
 with but little apprehension of their importance or 
 scope, nor was Mitchel in particular likely to be 
 over careful in counting the cost before he em- 
 barked on an adventure. Had he done so, and 
 had he divined the consequences of his action, 
 though it might have given him pause, it is not 
 probable that he would have been turned from his
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 179 
 
 purpose, or that he would have shrunk from the 
 sacrifice involved. At the moment, however, 
 there was no reason to anticipate that the price he 
 would be called upon to pay would be what it 
 eventually proved, nor was there any obvious con- 
 nection between the assistant-editorship of a 
 nationalist newspaper and the convict's cell. 
 
 Of Mitchel's spirit in carrying on his work 
 during the next two years, a letter written to John 
 Martin in the spring of 1846 may be accepted as an 
 indication. ' I think it highly important,' he said 
 frankly, referring to the tone of the Nation, 'to 
 keep up an exasperation of feeling against the 
 English Government.' He was an enemy, open 
 and avowed, of the dominant country and of its 
 ways and methods of dealing with Ireland, and 
 was bitterly opposed to the principles advocated 
 by O'Connell and his party. During these years 
 of want and famine his conviction that the ultimate 
 appeal must be made to a force other than moral, 
 was doubtless becoming more and more strong ; 
 nor did the longing he felt to stir a people, apa- 
 thetic through misery, to a more warlike spirit ever 
 give place to more timid, or as some might say, 
 saner counsels. It was a longing only rendered 
 more pronounced by the absolute failure of the 
 abortive insurrection of 1848, cited by O'Connell's 
 son as chastisement for the revolt of Young 
 Ireland against the policy enjoined by the Liber- 
 ator. Each fresh proof of the incapacity of the 
 Irish people, in the condition to which they had 
 been reduced, to oppose an armed resistance to
 
 i8o REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 tyranny, only served to increase his detestation of 
 the teaching they had received. His views found 
 forcible expression in the Jail Journal. ' Because 
 the Irish have been taught peaceful agitation in 
 their slavery, therefore they have been swept by a 
 plague of hunger worse than many years of bloody 
 warfare. Because they would not fight they have 
 been made to rot off the face of the earth, that so 
 they might learn at last how deadly a sin is 
 patience and perseverance under a stranger's 
 yoke. . . . Tell me not of O'Connell's son. His 
 father begat him in moral force, and in patience 
 and perseverance did his mother conceive him. I 
 swear to you there are blood and brain in Ireland 
 yet, as the world one day shall know. God ! let 
 me live to see it.' 
 
 Such was the language used by Mitchel in his 
 prison cell, when he was free to give expression 
 to his sentiments without reserve or restraint. 
 Though in terms of less violence, he had sought, 
 during the two and a half years of his active 
 share in the struggle, to impress the lesson of 
 armed resistance upon his starving countrymen. 
 It is only fair to bear the fact in mind that if 
 England, as can scarcely be denied, took advant- 
 age of every means at her command, just or 
 unjust, to remove Mitchel from the scene of action, 
 she was using those means in order to clear from 
 her path an enemy, bitter, irreconcilable, and 
 avowed. 
 
 In the meantime it is impossible not to believe 
 that to a man of Mitchel's temper there must
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 181 
 
 have been much to enjoy in the fight of which he 
 had become one of the leaders. In 1846 he paid 
 his first visit to London, as a member of a deputa- 
 tion sent to express to Smith O'Brien the sympathy 
 of the '82 Club, on the occasion of his consignment 
 to a cellar in the House of Commons in conse- 
 quence of his refusal to serve on a Select Com- 
 mittee. It was at this time that Mitchel first met 
 the writer for whom his admiration, in spite of 
 discordant opinions, was so profound. Nor did a 
 nearer view of Carlyle dispel his enthusiasm, even 
 though the views expressed by the philosopher in 
 regard to Irish questions were stigmatised by the 
 man who knew Ireland personally and by heart as 
 ' strangely and wickedly unjust.' Yet, ' to me his 
 talk,' he wrote to Martin, ' seemed like the speech 
 of Paul or Chrysostom, and his presence and en- 
 vironment royal and almost Godlike.' 
 
 In the summer of 1846 came the open breach 
 between O'Connell and the Young Irelanders, 
 following upon the alliance formed by the Liber- 
 ator with the Whig Government, and the adoption 
 by the Repeal Association of the Resolutions con- 
 demnatory of physical force. Into the question of 
 the rupture there is no space to enter here. That 
 a determination existed on the part of those by 
 whom the proceedings of the Association were 
 directed to drive out of it the newer party, will 
 scarcely be denied. That object was accomplished, 
 and henceforth the two forces worked apart, each 
 on its own lines. 
 
 For the present, banished from Conciliation Hall,
 
 182 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the work of the Young Irelanders was mainly con- 
 fined to the propagation of their doctrines through 
 the Nation newspaper and other literary channels. 
 But whilst labouring strenuously at this object, 
 Mitchel collected round him a pleasant band of 
 comrades, and enjoyed a large amount of social 
 intercourse. To give a list of those who were 
 more or less intimately associated with the set 
 thus brought together would be to name many of 
 the men most eminent in Irish literature. Carleton, 
 Ferguson, Kenyon, O'Hagan, Clarence Mangan 
 all these came, with many more ; and ' to us 
 younger men,' wrote a frequenter of Mitchel's 
 house, ' it seemed impossible that men so brilliant 
 and genial could be wrong or fail.' Once, too, a 
 more distinguished visitor was Carlyle himself. 
 ' For two evenings,' wrote Mitchel to John Martin, 
 ' we have heard his prophesyings (by " we " I mean 
 Young Ireland generally) to our infinite content- 
 ment.' 
 
 Whatever occasional relief might be thus afforded 
 from the serious business of life, nevertheless with the 
 people dying by thousands of famine and typhus, the 
 sombre background must have been ever present, 
 and the unceasing endeavour to find a cure for the 
 prevailing misery was becoming more absorbing 
 every day. In the opinion of Mitchel and his 
 comrades the only hope of an amelioration in the 
 deplorable condition of the country lay in a Repeal 
 of the Union by which it had been brought about, 
 and for the furtherance of that object the Irish 
 Confederation was founded in January 1847 by
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 183 
 
 the party of Young Ireland. This body, though 
 far from proposing a present or immediate resort 
 to physical force, did not in the abstract condemn 
 an appeal to it, and was therefore in distinct op- 
 position to the principles advocated by O'Connell. 
 The Liberator himself was removed from the scene 
 in May of the same year, when he died, leaving 
 the Irish misery at its height. Whether or not 
 much was to have been hoped from his presence 
 in Parliament, it was increasingly clear to Mitchel 
 and his party that, without it, little could be 
 expected from Parliamentary representation. ' We 
 have neither the men, the money, nor the fran- 
 chises,' wrote Mitchel to Smith O'Brien, himself 
 an Ishmael amongst the allies of the Whig ad- 
 ministration. It was nevertheless his opinion that 
 it remained open to the landlords to make honour- 
 able terms and to save themselves and the nation 
 together. So he told O'Brien in a letter in which, 
 re-reading it, he adds that he found he had ex- 
 pressed himself with more revolutionary vehemence 
 than he felt as yet. 
 
 All through those months of the country's agony 
 the Young Irelanders carried on their uphill fight. 
 Though O'Connell himself was gone, the prestige 
 of a great name was still opposed to them, and 
 the dead Liberator was even now stronger than 
 his living rivals. At the general election, not a 
 single member of the newer party, except Smith 
 O'Brien, was returned to Parliament. With the 
 landlords on the one hand, distrustful and sus- 
 picious, and upon the other the mass of the people
 
 1 84 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 still swayed by the magic of O'Connell's name, 
 they stood alone. 
 
 But events were moving rapidly on. By the end 
 of the year, the landlords had declared definitely 
 against repeal ; a fresh coercion Bill had been 
 passed, and Mitchel, with many others of his 
 countrymen, was finally strengthened, settled, and 
 established in irreconcilable hostility to English 
 rule. ' A kind of sacred wrath,' he afterwards 
 wrote, 'took possession of a few Irishmen at this 
 period. They could endure the horrible scene no 
 longer, and resolved to cross the path of the British 
 car of conquest, though it should crush them to 
 atoms.' 
 
 One of the first results of the fresh development 
 of Mitchel's views was the accentuation of the 
 divergence of his opinions from those of Duffy, 
 and his consequent retirement from a paper in 
 which he was no longer at liberty to give expres- 
 sion to his true sentiments. His opinions were 
 extreme ; his doctrine illegal. It was, Mitchel 
 himself admitted, natural enough that Duffy, as 
 proprietor, should not be willing to incur the risk 
 of prosecution for the sake of views he did not 
 share. The two, therefore, parted company, 
 Mitchel deciding, after an interval of two or three 
 months, to start a newspaper of his own, where 
 he would be at liberty to inculcate upon his readers 
 the course of action promising, as he was per- 
 suaded, the only hope of salvation for the unhappy 
 people. 
 
 Thenceforth his teaching was explicit. He con-
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 185 
 
 fessed himself weary of constitutional agitation. 
 He exhorted the nation to arm, and to prepare, 
 should opportunity offer, to make use of it. Look- 
 ing backward, and learning his lesson from the 
 past, he declared himself to differ on one point 
 from the rebels of 1798. He did not believe in the 
 possibility of a secret organisation. He was pre- 
 pared to act without disguise and in the light of day. 
 ' No espionage,' he told Lord Clarendon, in an open 
 letter printed in the columns of the new organ, 
 The United Irishman, ' no espionage can tell you 
 more than we will proclaim once a week on the 
 house-tops.' While actual warfare remained as 
 yet impracticable, he counselled passive resistance 
 to what in Ireland went by the name of law ; and, 
 coming to practical details, he desired that when 
 as would inevitably follow should this policy be 
 pursued collisions occurred, they should take 
 place in streets rather than in the open country. 
 Street fighting, he considered, afforded most pro- 
 spect of success. 
 
 Such was the advice he offered to the wretched 
 victims of British misrule. It is difficult to believe 
 that, at least in his calmer moments, Mitchel, hard- 
 headed and sagacious, can have anticipated that, 
 in the then condition of the Irish people, the policy 
 he advocated could be carried out. If those are 
 right who are of opinion that he propounded it, 
 not merely as the sole alternative to death by 
 starvation but as offering a fair chance of success, 
 it is hard to account for his blindness. On the 
 other hand, when a dying man is given up by
 
 1 86 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 medical science it is permissible, as a last chance, 
 to make use of dangerous remedies ; and from this 
 point of view, Mitchel may have been justified. 
 His own words, written twenty years later, are the 
 best apology, if one is needed, for the attitude he 
 took up at this juncture. ' True,' he said, ' it was 
 an act of desperation. But remember that in those 
 very same days the people were actually perishing 
 at any rate, dying by thirty thousand per month, 
 and by a death far more hideous than ever was 
 dealt by grape, or shell, or sabre. " Oppression 
 maketh the wise man mad " ; and the oppression 
 at that moment was so bitter and relentless that no 
 calmness remained for calculating chances.' 
 
 One more factor in the case should be borne in 
 mind. It was 1848. The beacon fires of revolution 
 were alight throughout Europe. Was it to be 
 expected that Irishmen should escape the general 
 infection and remain passive prisoners not of 
 hope ? If nothing more was possible, might they 
 not at least fill the trenches so that others might 
 pass on to victory ? Men had given their lives in 
 less noble causes ; nor was Mitchel likely to grudge 
 the cost. 
 
 His paper was launched with astonishing success. 
 If many of the men with whom he had been work- 
 ing dissociated themselves, for a time, from the 
 extreme course he advocated, others had fearlessly 
 thrown in their lot with him, with the result in- 
 dicated by Lord Stanley's speech in the House of 
 Lords. ' This language,' he said, speaking of the 
 first number of The United Irishman, ' will tell, and
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 187 
 
 I say it is not safe to disregard it. These men are 
 honest ; they are not the kind of men who make 
 their patriotism the means of barter for place or 
 pension . . . they are rebels at heart ; and they are 
 rebels avowed, who are in earnest in what they say 
 and propose to do. My Lords, this is not a fit 
 subject, at all events, for contempt.' 
 
 Lord Stanley was right. It is only necessary to 
 be acquainted with the ability marking The United 
 Irishman to concur in his assertion. A man who 
 was so great a master of language as Mitchel was 
 no force safely to be disregarded. The terms of 
 the challenge to the Government contained in the 
 letter to Lord Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant, 
 already quoted, and his description of the past year 
 of famine, would alone be sufficient to set him far 
 apart from the common journalist : ' You could 
 weep,' he says, speaking of those days of misery 
 and desolation, ' but the rising curse died unspoken 
 within your heart, like a profanity. Human passion 
 there was none, but inhuman and unearthly quiet. 
 ... It seemed as if the anima mundi, the soul of 
 the land, was faint and dying, and that the faintness 
 and death had crept into all things of earth and 
 heaven.' 
 
 One more quotation from the same paper, whilst 
 again demonstrating the power of appeal possessed 
 by Mitchel, will likewise show that he left no 
 choice to the English Government but to strike. 
 
 The news had reached Ireland of the rising in 
 Paris. A Republic had there been proclaimed. It 
 was a presage of hope for all lands.
 
 1 88 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ' Oh, my countrymen, my countrymen,' cried 
 Mitchel, 'look up, look up. Arise from the death- 
 dust where you have long been lying, and let this 
 light visit your eyes also, and touch your souls. 
 . . . Clear steel will, ere long, dawn upon you in 
 your desolate darkness ; and the rolling thunder of 
 the people's cannon will drive before it many a 
 heavy cloud that has long hidden from you the 
 face of heaven. Pray for that day, and preserve 
 life and health that you may worthily meet it. 
 Above all, let the man amongst you who has no 
 gun, sell his garment and buy one' 
 
 The British authorities could scarcely have re- 
 fused to take up the challenge. Their retort was 
 made on the 2oth of March, when Mitchel was called 
 upon to give bail to stand his trial for sedition. 
 
 O'Brien and Meagher were charged together 
 with him. The attitude of the Young Irelanders, 
 dissevered for a time from that of Mitchel, had 
 undergone a change so soon as the Paris revolution 
 had seemed to afford fairer grounds for hope of 
 success in the event of his policy being carried out ; 
 and the tone of the speeches made by others of the 
 party had harmonised sufficiently with that adopted 
 by Mitchel to cause them likewise to be included in 
 the attack of the Government. None of the three 
 first called to account had so much as attempted 
 to disguise the fact that they were awaiting 
 opportunity alone to make their appeal to force. 
 It would have been too much to expect of any 
 dominant country that it should leave them time 
 to mature their plans.
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 189 
 
 The trials of O'Brien and Meagher preceded 
 Mitchel's, and in the eyes of the Government 
 resulted in a signal miscarriage of justice. On 
 each jury a single repealer had been permitted to 
 remain ; and in both cases he had refused to con- 
 cur in a conviction. The defeat of the authorities 
 was celebrated by bonfires throughout the country. 
 When the juries by which Mitchel, on the several 
 counts, was to be tried were struck, it was evident 
 that the result would be the same. The Govern- 
 ment, therefore, decided upon a change of tactics. 
 The pending prosecution for sedition was dropped ; 
 and the same day Mitchel was arrested on a charge 
 of treason-felony, chiefly based on a series of 
 letters treasonable enough, it cannot be denied 
 to the Protestants of the north. 
 
 The question, however, of the means to be taken 
 in order to secure a conviction still remained un- 
 determined, and was a serious one. The Whigs 
 had denounced jury-packing, Lord Russell in par- 
 ticular having declared his disapproval of the 
 practice. But the situation was too critical for the 
 indulgence of delicate scruples ; and the time- 
 honoured method of ensuring success was resorted 
 to. Every one of the nineteen Catholics included 
 in the panel was challenged by the Crown, and the 
 jury selected to try the national leader was in the 
 end exclusively composed of Protestants. 
 
 Such being the case, the result could be securely 
 counted upon. A verdict of guilty was returned, 
 and sentence of fourteen years' transportation was 
 pronounced upon the prisoner.
 
 190 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 In the speech made by Mitchel after his convic- 
 tion he showed himself at his best. It was his 
 hour of triumph, and if it was heavily paid for 
 during the long years which were to follow, he was 
 not the man to grudge the price. Three months 
 ago, he told the court, he had promised those who 
 held the country for the English that either he. 
 would force them, publicly and notoriously, to pack 
 a jury to convict him, or else that he would walk, a 
 free man, out of the court and provoke a contest in 
 another field. 
 
 ' My Lords,' he added, ' I knew that I was 
 setting my life on that cast ; but I knew that in 
 either case victory would be with me ; and it is 
 with me.' 
 
 As he held up to contempt the methods by which 
 his conviction had been obtained, murmurs of 
 applause, repressed by the police, made themselves 
 audible. Baron Lefroy also broke in to protest 
 against the repetition of the very offences of which 
 the prisoner had been convicted. But Mitchel was 
 not to be put to silence. 
 
 ' I do not repent,' he said, ' anything I have 
 done, and I believe the course which I have opened 
 is only commenced. The Roman who saw his 
 hand burning to ashes before the tyrant promised 
 that three hundred should follow out his enterprise. 
 Can I ' his eyes travelling over those who stood 
 by ' can I not promise for one, for two, for three ? ' 
 
 He was interrupted again, by passionate cries of 
 response. 
 
 'Promise for me and me and me, Mitchel,'
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 191 
 
 came from the crowd around him. Mitchel did 
 their bidding. 
 
 ' For one, for two, for three ? ' he repeated 
 proudly. ' Ay, for hundreds ! ' 
 
 He had reason to be proud. A convicted felon, 
 under a sentence many might have considered 
 worse than death, men were yet ready, eager, at 
 his word, to pledge themselves to follow in his 
 steps, and to fling their defiance in the very face of 
 the power now crushing him. The seed he had 
 sown was already bearing fruit. Whatever might 
 befall him thereafter, his work had not been done 
 in vain. 
 
 It was the culminating point of his life. To 
 that crisis all that had gone before had led up. To 
 it in days to come he must have looked back as 
 men look back upon the moment when vitality has 
 reached its utmost limit of intensity. As, amidst 
 the excitement he had produced, he was led away 
 to begin his long captivity, his active career as an 
 Irish revolutionist ended. 
 
 He lived on. For twenty-seven years his days 
 were prolonged ; passed in the first place as a 
 convict ; afterwards, with brief intervals, spent in 
 the United States of America. There he took his 
 part in what went on around him, finding occupa- 
 tion in journalistic and literary work. To some 
 men it would have been an existence, if not 
 satisfying, at least tolerable. But the view taken 
 by Mitchel himself of the life left to him is 
 expressed in a letter written in 1857 to his old
 
 r 9 2 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 friend and brother-in-arms in the national cause, 
 Father Kenyon. 
 
 ' In the case of a man (e grege me),* he wrote, 
 'who has never but once been absorbed and en- 
 grossed and possessed by a great cause, whose 
 whole life and energy and passion converged 
 themselves once to one focus, and were then 
 dissipated into the general atmosphere, who 
 dashed himself one good time against the hard 
 world, and was smashed to smithereens in the 
 case of such a fellow as this . . . his life, or the 
 fragment of it, then and there crystallises, and he 
 never grows older, but is truly dead and a ghost.' 
 
 The words, with the touch of exaggeration 
 natural to the man, contain a truth. His experi- 
 ence, vivid enough, as a convict, can be read in 
 the Jail Journal. The history of the years passed 
 in America, of the tribute paid to him by his 
 countrymen when he was elected by Tipperary to 
 be her representative in Parliament, and of his 
 return, only to find a grave there, to Ireland has 
 also been told. But, in spite of all that came after, 
 it was doubtless true that, for him, the intensity of 
 life, the joy and excitement of living, came to an 
 end on the day when he passed out of the court of 
 justice 'as places of this kind,' to use his own 
 words, ' are called ' a convicted felon. 
 
 Note. It may be well, though the incident be- 
 longs to a later period than that dealt with here, to 
 notice an event of Mitchel's after life which has
 
 JOHN MITCHEL 193 
 
 given rise to a certain amount of discussion, and has 
 served to discredit him with some of those whose 
 sympathies would otherwise have been enlisted on 
 his side. This is the manner of his escape from 
 Van Diemen's Land. Without entering at length 
 into the question, one or two observations may be 
 made. First, it is clear that Mitchel himself was 
 fully convinced that, in withdrawing his parole in 
 person, before a magistrate and with police at 
 hand, he had complied with the demands of 
 honour. In this view many men of stainless 
 character concurred, Smith O'Brien being of their 
 number. It will nevertheless appear to most un- 
 biased judges that the very fact that the affair 
 was managed in such a fashion as to make evasion 
 possible, is proof that the spirit, if not the letter, of 
 his pledge was broken. It may indeed be urged 
 that, if a more scrupulous sense of honour would 
 have chained Mitchel to his prison, a more 
 scrupulous sense of honour would have debarred 
 his opponents from using the means they em- 
 ployed to place him there. But to urge such an 
 argument is, in fact, only to place Mitchel on a 
 level with the men who had made the name of 
 justice, a by-word in Ireland. It is more to the 
 credit of the man and of his cause to admit that 
 the temptation to escape from a captivity to which 
 he had been consigned by means of a trial destitute 
 of so much as a semblance of fair dealing was too 
 strong, and that he had not power to resist it. 
 
 N
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 
 
 1 THERE is a sovereign,' wrote Lord Rosebery, 
 'whose pretensions soar far above empire, who is 
 as much above terrestrial thrones, dominations, and 
 powers, as these in their turn are above their 
 subjects. The Pope exerts an authority short 
 only, if it be short, of the Divine government of 
 the world.' 
 
 In the middle of the last century the representa- 
 tive of the claims thus not without exaggera- 
 tion described, appeared in the eyes of friends 
 and foes alike to have placed himself at the head 
 of that movement variously designated as Reform 
 or Revolution. Of the view taken by hostile critics 
 of the attitude assumed by Pius ix. on his elevation 
 to the Pontificate a pamphlet published in England 
 and entitled ' The Pope the future head of revolu- 
 tionary Europe ' may be accepted as represen- 
 tative. 'Who would ever have imagined that 
 God would find out another General Lafayette,' 
 exclaimed a spectator of one of the popular demon- 
 strations in his honour, ' and that He would make 
 of him a Pope ! ' 
 
 The brief space of time during which the head 
 of Catholic Christendom stood forth as a leader of 
 reform, and the place he occupied for that period 
 
 194
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 195 
 
 in public estimation, makes the story of what un- 
 happily proved to be no more than an episode in 
 his life a fitting one to be included in the present 
 series of sketches. 
 
 It was in 1848 that Pius ix. made his great 
 failure a failure which, in the eyes of many, took 
 on the complexion of a treachery. 
 
 He had entered upon a path without a just 
 appreciation of its goal. Like the man in the 
 parable, he had engaged in an enterprise without 
 a preliminary calculation of its cost. And he 
 turned back from the path, relinquished the enter- 
 prise. For the space of more than two years he 
 had seemed destined to disprove Metternich's 
 assertion that a liberal Pope was a thing incon- 
 ceivable. He had presented to the world what to 
 many men appeared the paradox of the head of the 
 Catholic Church as a leader in social and political 
 reform and as vindicator of the rights of the 
 people ; and new aspirations after liberty mingling 
 with traditional loyalty to the Papacy, Italians 
 had dreamt of an Italy regenerated and free under 
 the presidency of the Pope. ' La derniere rdvolu- 
 tion Italienne, wrote Perrens in 1857, ' a ^td 
 commence'e a Rome par le sacre 1 college, le jour ou les 
 cardinaux ont dlevd Pie ix. sur le trone pontifical.' 
 The hopes he had aroused proved an illusion ; 
 those who had indulged them were roughly 
 awakened from their dream ; and the reconciliation 
 of the Church and the democracy was indefinitely 
 postponed. 
 
 The tragedy of those two years is one of which
 
 I 9 6 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the full significance, blurred and confused by the 
 bitterness of party spirit on the one side and the 
 other, is often overlooked. To the chief actor in 
 it may be applied words written in another con- 
 nection 'if good powers do regard these things, 
 imagine the pity and the sorrow with which 
 they behold the right man taking the wrong 
 side, and the virtues of a man put into the scale 
 of oppression and of cruelty.' But that pity, 
 perhaps inevitably, is rarely accorded by fellow- 
 man ; and the spectacle of a leader abandoning 
 in obedience, it may be, to an upright though 
 wavering: conscience his colours in the stress 
 
 o 
 
 of the battle, must necessarily fail to enlist the 
 sympathy called forth by an honourable defeat. 
 To most changes of front more than one element 
 contributes ; nor is it always easy to discriminate 
 between a treachery and a weakness, a crime and 
 a mistake. The act may be that of a brave man ; 
 it is sure to be branded as a coward's; and it 
 courts and invites the condemnation of the traitor. 
 There is yet another view of the matter. The 
 triumph of reaction, when it came, could not 
 obliterate the memory of the past. The import- 
 ance of the vindication, however short-lived, of a 
 principle should never be minimised. It can 
 scarcely be exaggerated ; for it is the earnest and 
 the proof of a possibility. A match is struck ; it 
 burns itself out and the darkness may seem more 
 impenetrable than before. But what has been 
 remains the measure of what may be, and the 
 significance of light, once made plain, can never be
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 197 
 
 forgotten. Forces heretofore deemed antagonistic 
 have for a time worked together, and their ulti- 
 mate fusion is no longer out of the range of 
 possibility. A recantation is not an erasure. 
 The idea of a liberal Pope to quote once more 
 Prince Metternich can never again be wholly 
 inconceivable. 
 
 The position occupied by Pius ix. on his election 
 can only be understood when the attitude of the 
 men who were at the moment directing the aspira- 
 tions of the nation aspirations, be it remembered, 
 shared by the Pope himself is taken into account. 
 In the eyes of such thinkers as Gioberti and 
 d'Azeglio, the unity of Italy was bound up with 
 papal co-operation. Led by them, Italians had 
 looked forward, even during the dark days of the 
 reign of Gregory xvi., with a persistence as obstin- 
 ate as it was strange, to a freedom which should 
 find its centre at Rome, its inspiration in the Pope. 
 
 The fuel was ready to catch fire. By the mea- 
 sures with which the new Pontificate was inaugur- 
 ated the match was applied ; and when the news 
 of an amnesty to political offenders went forth, the 
 people went mad with joy and expectation. 
 
 In no case would hopes pitched so high have 
 found easy satisfaction ; and for the man called 
 to the task of fulfilling them there were special 
 difficulties in the way. At once head of the 
 Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, 
 and sovereign of the Papal States, the duties 
 appertaining to the double office, not necessarily
 
 198 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 incompatible in theory, were in practice almost 
 certain to conflict. In virtue of his cosmopolitan 
 authority all Catholics, of whatever race or nation, 
 had an equal claim upon his consideration, since 
 in Christ was neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor 
 free, Austrian nor Italian ; whilst at the same time, 
 in respect of his limited territorial jurisdiction, he 
 occupied the position of an Italian prince, bound 
 to take thought for the temporal interests of his 
 subjects. The result of the dual responsibility 
 could scarcely fail to make itself apparent, either 
 in the clogging and maiming of his spiritual rule, 
 or in the crippling of his action as temporal sove- 
 reign. And with the difficulties of the position, 
 at all times great, it was practically impossible to 
 deal satisfactorily at a moment when the spirit of 
 Italian nationality, crushed for a time by repeated 
 failures to shake off the tyranny that oppressed it, 
 was once more awake and in fierce revolt against 
 one of the great Catholic powers of Europe. 
 
 It is possible that a worse man might have been 
 better able to grapple with the situation. But 
 upon Pius, conscientious and single-minded, whilst 
 lacking in clearness of conception and aim, at 
 once scrupulous and irresolute, and before all 
 things a priest, the burden was not likely to fall 
 lightly. ' Cut Giovanni into little pieces ' was the 
 saying of his elder brother, 'and from each one 
 of them a priest will be born.' 'An honest priest 
 but a bad prince ' was the judgment passed upon 
 him by Mazzini ; whilst Farini, his own official, 
 bore witness that the pontifical and sacerdotal
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 199 
 
 conscience ever outweighed the conscience of the 
 prince and the citizen. 
 
 A proclamation issued a year after his election 
 gives the key to the condition of affairs. In that 
 document regret was expressed at endeavours to 
 impose upon the Pope maxims incompatible with 
 his position as minister of the God of peace and 
 ' father of all Catholics, to whatever part of the 
 world they might belong.' The protest was doubt- 
 less not unjustified from the point of view of the 
 universal spiritual Fatherhood. But Italians re- 
 quired at that moment, in temporal matters, a 
 leader unfettered by obligations to foreign powers 
 and hampered by no cosmopolitan rule. 
 
 Another point should be borne in mind. Fully 
 grasped, it exonerates Pius from the charge of the 
 deliberate abandonment of a course of action 
 chosen and entered upon with open eyes. ' The 
 Pope will march in reform through principle and 
 of necessity,' said Mazzini, in October 1846. 
 The King of Naples, on the other hand, bade his 
 sons pray for Pius, on the score that he knew not 
 what he did. It is likely that, for once, the tyrant 
 was more clear-sighted than the patriot. Pius was 
 generous, tender-hearted, and devoted. He desired 
 to give to his people what in his opinion would 
 be for their good, to free them from oppression 
 and wrong. But it is probable, almost certain, 
 that he failed to foresee the logical consequences 
 of his own measures ; and that when he was hailed, 
 not only as the saviour from intolerable bondage, 
 but as the founder of a stable and liberal govern-
 
 200 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ment, he was placed in a position he had never 
 contemplated, and to which he was not morally 
 pledged. That such was the case may be his con- 
 demnation as a statesman. It is his exoneration 
 as a man of honour. He had regarded his con- 
 cessions as free gifts, not as the tardy recognition 
 of inalienable rights. And this distinction must 
 be kept in view if a fair verdict is to be pronounced 
 upon the two years ending so calamitously for 
 Rome and for the Pope. 
 
 The drama of those two years opened amidst the 
 rapturous applause of the whole of nationalist Italy. 
 The name of Pius was in all men's mouths. To 
 him every liberal whether Italian born or foreign 
 looked for the regeneration of the country. 
 ' There is one more chance for Italy/ said a writer 
 in the Edinburgh Review, ' and it comes from an 
 unexpected quarter from Rome itself. Pius ix. 
 is a ruler resolute as Luther, yet gentler than 
 Melancthon.' ' This time,' says a historian not 
 biased in favour of the Papacy, ' it was not Pied- 
 mont, nor a constitutional sovereign, that woke 
 Italy from her sleep, but the Pope. There can 
 be no doubt that the signal for the liberation of 
 Italy was in effect given by Pius ix.' 
 
 The statement, were it necessary, finds corro- 
 boration in the Milanese manifesto of that year. 
 
 ' At the voice of the great Pontiff/ declared those 
 responsible for the Revolution in that city, 'we 
 were inspired with true citizenship, and arose more 
 Italian than before. His name became the symbol 
 of our hopes, of our creed.'
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 201 
 
 Through the length and breadth of the country 
 the same spirit prevailed. In the very extrava- 
 gance of the general fervour a presage of dis- 
 aster might indeed have been discerned, since 
 the iconoclast follows, in necessary sequence, the 
 idol. But Italy was in no mood to indulge in 
 sinister forebodings. In Pius she hailed the de- 
 liverer who was to lead her forth from Egypt and 
 from the house of bondage ; forgetting, as men do 
 forget when their hopes are high, that salvation 
 is not won in a day ; forgetting also that it was 
 not the captain of the host under whose guidance 
 the Red Sea was crossed by whom Israel was led 
 at last into the promised land. 
 
 Pius was well adapted by nature to appeal to 
 the emotional side of the Italian character. Not 
 only was he a member of an ancient family dis- 
 tinguished for its nationalist sympathies traditions 
 to which he himself had always remained faithful 
 but he was possessed besides of singular personal 
 attraction. His beautiful voice and his oratorical 
 power were gifts of no small importance to a 
 popular leader. In his bearing dignity mingled 
 with courtesy, grace with irony; and in spite of 
 the simplicity of his habits, he enjoyed to the full 
 the advantage belonging to a man of the world. 
 His private life was of stainless purity ; and his 
 genuine piety, his lavish charities stigmatised by 
 a hostile critic as theatrical his ministrations to 
 the sick and poor, went to make up a person- 
 ality commanding a devotion almost amounting 
 to adoration from all classes and ranks. Nor,
 
 202 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 in view of the charge of disingenuousness brought 
 against him a charge to which vacillation and 
 weakness must always lay a man open is it beside 
 the question to note the special tribute paid 
 to him by the great liberal, Montalembert, him- 
 self conspicuous for chivalry and honour, when 
 he declared that it was impossible to reproach 
 the Pope with the shadow of perfidy, or of bad 
 faith. 
 
 But in whatever other respects he may have 
 been calculated to appeal to the imagination of a 
 race ever prone to idealisation, it was pre-eminently 
 as the symbol of a united Italy that the heart of 
 the entire population sprang to meet him. To the 
 average Italian, says Italy's latest historian, 'a 
 Pope's sympathy meant more than all the philo- 
 sophy and idealism of young Italy.' A passionate 
 loyalty, a personal allegiance, spread like wild- 
 fire through the land. In Rome itself multitudes 
 sought his nightly blessing ; men and women 
 wore his colours ; Rossini composed the hymn in 
 his honour afterwards used as a national anthem ; 
 Gioberti proclaimed the opening of a new era. 
 Even aliens caught the infection. The panegyric 
 of the organ of English Liberalism has been already 
 quoted; the Sultan sent gifts; a Hebrew hymn 
 in praise of the Pope was sung at a Jewish service ; 
 messages of sympathy came from America. The 
 political exiles, returning home by virtue of the 
 amnesty, crowded to the Sacraments, and supple- 
 mented the required oaths of fealty with addi- 
 tional and voluntary pledges. ' The hope invaded
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 203 
 
 men's minds,' wrote the old Carbonaro, Pepe, 
 sardonically, when that delirium of joy had be- 
 come a thing of the past, 'that liberty might 
 be granted by a Pontiff, and that insurrections 
 were, perhaps, not necessary.' Foes were recon- 
 ciled ; there was no leisure to remember old 
 grudges ; men were eager to forgive. In the 
 English pamphlet directed against the Pope, already 
 noticed, it is mentioned as a dangerous symptom 
 that party feuds and private animosities were in 
 abeyance, and that the antipathies formerly separ- 
 ating Italian states were set aside, if not for- 
 gotten. 
 
 It was one of those memorable moments in 
 history when the brotherhood of man, from a 
 theoretical maxim, vindicates its claim to be 
 reckoned with as a practical force. For the time, 
 in the sight of Europe, the enthusiasts of either 
 camp, political and ecclesiastical, stood shoulder 
 to shoulder, brothers-in-arms in the same cause. 
 
 Whilst this wild outburst of rejoicing, un- 
 tempered by any misgiving, was taking place, it 
 is curious to note the attitude of the greatest of 
 Italian revolutionists, as he stood apart, leaning as 
 it were upon his sword and looking on. 
 
 Mazzini was ready to join hands with all who, 
 from whatever motive, might be counted upon to 
 further the aims he had at heart. In great 
 countries so he told those who looked to him for 
 guidance regeneration should be won by means 
 of the people themselves ; in Italy it must be 
 obtained through the action of princes. To the
 
 204 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Pope he accordingly appealed, some little time 
 later, to conjure him to bring about the unification 
 of the nation. With Pius, he said, it rested to make 
 the terms God and the people so often sundered 
 one. In the people let his confidence be placed ; 
 let him bestow his blessing on their cause, and 
 trust to their loyalty and aid. 
 
 Thus Mazzini wrote, in a moment he himself 
 characterised as one of expansiveness and juvenile 
 illusion. Yet, prepared as was the great patriot 
 to co-operate with each and all in the common 
 interest, he was too clear-sighted to be misled for 
 long together by false hopes as to the amount of 
 assistance to be expected from the allies whom he 
 sought to enlist in the cause. ' There are few who 
 would go to the end,' was his conclusion, as he 
 appraised and weighed the several instruments 
 available for the approaching struggle. The true 
 goal, therefore, of national aspiration should be 
 left unsuspected by those pressed into the service 
 and taking part in the movement ; nor should 
 they be shown more than the proximate step. 
 
 Such was the policy enjoined upon the initiate, 
 if not by himself personally, by those who directed 
 the action of his party. It was a policy excused, 
 if not justified, by many treacheries in the past and 
 dangers in the future ; but if accepted as one upon 
 which conduct was actually based, it may likewise 
 be allowed to serve as a partial justification for 
 those who deserted the flag so soon as its true 
 significance became apparent to them. 
 
 For the present, however, all was going well.
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 205 
 
 In spite of opposition Pius, though standing at 
 times almost alone, had persisted in carrying out 
 his remedial policy. Not a single member of the 
 Roman Curia would consent to sign the decree of 
 amnesty ; and on another occasion it is said that 
 when twenty black balls recorded the opposition 
 of as many cardinals to some proposed measure of 
 reform, the Pope's response was to cover the urn 
 containing them with his own white cap ; observ- 
 ing composedly that all were now white, and that 
 the reform was adopted. Taxes were remitted ; 
 the restrictions imposed upon the Jews modified ; 
 improvements in hospitals and prisons initiated ; 
 whilst political reform, more important to a people 
 fired by the dream of liberty than even the removal 
 of practical grievances, was promised. With the 
 universal acclaim the first act of the drama may be 
 said to have closed. 
 
 In the year succeeding the inauguration of the 
 new Pontificate a certain modification of public 
 sentiment was discernible. In the Pope himself 
 the confidence of the people was indeed as un- 
 limited as ever ; nor had their love and loyalty 
 suffered diminution. But he had been guilty of an 
 error involving disastrous consequences. It was a 
 mistake characteristic of his whole course of action, 
 founded, that is, upon principles of mercy and 
 justice, yet calculated to defeat his own objects 
 and to neutralise the very reforms he had most at 
 heart. He had absolutely refused to purge the civil 
 service from the corrupt and reactionary elements 
 bequeathed to it by Gregory's administration,
 
 206 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 replying to remonstrances addressed to him on 
 the subject that nothing but the clearest evidence 
 of guilt would induce him to dismiss an official. 
 He made, in fact, the vain attempt that of an 
 over-sanguine reformer to pour new wine into old 
 bottles. It was followed by the natural and inevit- 
 able result. Disobedience and insubordination 
 paralysed the executive ; orders were falsified and 
 the intentions of the Pope frustrated. 
 
 Protest was vain. So early as November 1846, 
 his future minister, Minghetti, warned him in a 
 private interview that of all reforms the reform of 
 the personate of the administration was the most 
 urgent. The Pope listened and took no action. 
 Reform, in consequence, continued to exist largely 
 on paper alone ; and a year after the beginning 
 of the new Pontificate, Rossi, then French am- 
 bassador at Rome, was still reporting to his 
 Government that acts, as well as promises and in- 
 operative commissions, were needed. The people 
 were growing impatient. To their belief in Pius 
 they indeed continued faithful ; the Pope could do 
 no wrong. But they had begun to discriminate 
 with bitterness between himself and his advisers. 
 1 Evviva Pio Nono solo ' had become their signifi- 
 cant cry. 
 
 It was Austria who came involuntarily to the 
 rescue, and at least retarded the coming rupture. 
 Her occupation of Ferrara, in defiance of Pope 
 and people alike, served temporarily to consoli- 
 date anew ecclesiastical and national sentiment. 
 A common enemy is a powerful stimulus to friend-
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 207 
 
 ship, and brings about singular alliances. Garibaldi 
 hastened to proffer the services of his legion ; the 
 King of Piedmont identified with fervour his own 
 cause with that of the Pope ; a fresh wave of 
 national enthusiasm swept over the country, ob- 
 literating all minor differences; and Pius, as the 
 victim of Austrian insult, was rendered more than 
 ever an object of popular idolatry. The position he 
 held in the hearts of the people is emphasised by 
 the fact that in Naples, Parma, and Modena, the 
 cry of ' Pio Nono ed Italia ' was prohibited by the 
 authorities ; and that even in Piedmont, during 
 one of the intervals of timidity and irresolution to 
 which the King was subject, a crowd assembled 
 to listen to Rossini's hymn was dispersed by the 
 police. 
 
 Yet, in spite of all this in spite of the passion- 
 ate persistence shown by the nation in clinging to 
 their hopes the union of Pius and his people was 
 becoming, month by month, less a reality ; and 
 to the Pope himself it must have been grow- 
 ing clear that their aims were eventually doomed 
 to conflict. Much, it was true, had been done. 
 The municipality, the Council of State, the Cabinet, 
 with its lay element, had all in turn been granted, 
 each fresh concession eliciting new demonstrations 
 of affection and gratitude. But it was evident that 
 more would be demanded, and that the Roman 
 people, with their bitter experience behind them, 
 would not be content to leave their liberty 
 practically dependent upon the generosity and 
 goodwill of their sovereign for the time being. A
 
 208 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 Gregory might follow upon a Pius, even as a Pius 
 had succeeded a Gregory. The lesson had been 
 too well learnt to be lightly effaced. And as Pius 
 drew nearer and nearer to the limit he would be 
 unable conscientiously to over-step, his position 
 was becoming ever more critical. 
 
 That the approaching choice between obedience 
 to the will of the people, and that higher obedience 
 due from his point of view to a principle would be 
 eminently painful is proved by the very reproaches 
 levelled against the excessive value he is said to 
 have set upon his popularity. Read for popularity 
 the love of his people, and he may well have prized 
 it. A throne is proverbially solitary, and to a 
 childless priest its loneliness must necessarily be 
 enhanced. To Pius the people's affection on the 
 one hand, and his duty, as he conceived it, to his 
 position on the other, were, likely enough, the 
 chief factors in life ; and regarding, as he doubtless 
 did, the absolutism of the temporal power as a 
 sacred trust which he was bound in honour and 
 conscience to hand on unimpaired, it was becoming 
 plain that the one would have to be sacrificed to the 
 other. 
 
 It is fair to remember that he had never sought 
 to disguise what would be the necessary issue of 
 such a conflict. Rather he had repeatedly em- 
 phasised it. So early as June 1847, although reform 
 was still promised, it was distinctly described as 
 such reform as should be confined within the limits 
 of the papal sovereignty and the temporal govern- 
 ment a government, it was pointed out, which
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 209 
 
 could not possibly adopt certain forms ruinous to 
 that sovereignty or of a nature to impair its in- 
 dependence in the exercise of the primacy. Later 
 on, he had also deliberately invited the criticism of 
 the party of progress by the explanation that the 
 Council of State had been summoned solely in 
 order to assist the Pope in his sovereign resolution ; 
 the explicit declaration being added that any other 
 view of its functions would be as erroneous as to 
 see in it the realisation of Utopias and the germ 
 of an institution incompatible with the pontifical 
 authority. Again, when giving public expression 
 to his hopes of being shortly enabled to announce 
 a form of government embodied in a constitution 
 calculated to content the people, he did not fail to 
 add that should his labours advantage religion, it 
 would afford him more satisfaction as head of the 
 universal church than as temporal prince. 
 
 In such declarations as these, repeated and re- 
 iterated, little desire is apparent to subordinate 
 plain speaking to the conciliation of public favour. 
 On the contrary, they go far to justify Rossi's 
 complaint that the Pope had squandered a wealth 
 of popularity (' le Pape a gaspilld un trdsor de 
 popularity.'} But the sacrifice can have been no 
 light one ; more especially since that popularity, 
 apart from its intrinsic value, was means to an end 
 appealing to Pius with special force. A conversa- 
 tion is not without significance in this connection, 
 in the course of which Montanelli, the Tuscan 
 republican, pointed out to the Pope with un- 
 courtierlike frankness that the Vivas of the crowd 
 
 o
 
 210 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 were due rather to nationalist than to Catholic 
 sentiment. 
 
 It was, Pius admitted, true ; while he further 
 added that for that very reason he preferred the 
 greetings addressed, not to Pio Nono, but to the 
 Holy Father the first being a personal, the second 
 a religious tribute. 
 
 'What matter?' was the Tuscan's blunt re- 
 joinder. ' Pius ix. can do the Holy Father's 
 business wonderfully well. . . . The love of the 
 people for Pius ix. will bring them back to the 
 religion by which he is inspired.' 
 
 'That,' answered the Pope, 'is also true.' 
 
 It is easy to discern in the dialogue matter for 
 fresh perplexity on the part of the man who was 
 beyond all things a priest. 
 
 Another scene this time related by Minghetti, 
 afterwards one of Pius's own Cabinet serves alike 
 to epitomise the situation and to accentuate the 
 sharp personal note by which it was dominated, as 
 well as to demonstrate the curious, close relation- 
 ship between Pope and people. 
 
 The Pope is standing on the balcony of the 
 Quirinal ; Rossi the ill-fated Rossi with Min- 
 ghetti himself, looking on ; while a sudden, tense 
 silence has fallen upon the surging crowd collected 
 below, at a sign that Pius is about to speak. 
 'Bless, great God, Italy,' he says in a voice loud 
 and clear. Then to the hushed throng, already 
 moved to emotion, he addresses something of the 
 nature of an appeal. ' Do not make demands 
 upon me which I cannot, should not, will not
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 211 
 
 admit.' And Rossi standing by, shrewd, obser- 
 vant, and unmoved, makes his comment upon the 
 scene. ' The Pope has had recourse to a heroic 
 remedy,' he observes to Minghetti. ' But woe to 
 him if he speaks again to the people, \\isprestige 
 will be lost.' 
 
 So the winter passed away. Of the attempts 
 to reconcile the irreconcilable by which the papal 
 policy was marked the constitution ultimately con- 
 ceded was one. Into its precise nature there is 
 not space to enter here. Politically worthless as it 
 was, it was received with acclamation ; the tricolour 
 was added to the papal flag ; and the populace 
 once more forgot that symbols are not realities. 
 
 The truth was soon to be brought home to them. 
 Events were hurrying on. It was March 1848. 
 The spirit of revolution was abroad throughout 
 Europe, with an effect difficult, at this distance of 
 time, to gauge. Even to men who had lived 
 through those days and watched the attempts of 
 nation after nation to shake off its fetters, it was 
 afterwards hard so one of them has said ade- 
 quately to paint the anxiety and the anticipation 
 then filling men's souls. To popular desire nothing 
 seemed impossible. 1 The people that had sat in 
 darkness had seen a great light. It was soon to 
 be extinguished. The saddest chapters of human 
 history are the records of men's hopes, dispropor- 
 tionate as they are doomed to prove to the measure 
 of fulfilment. The coup d'ttat in France, the 
 triumph of reaction in Italy, were quickly to follow 
 1 Memorie, Mitighetti.
 
 212 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 upon the boundless expectations of 1848. But, for 
 the moment, in France, in Austria itself, and above 
 all in Italy, to the lovers of liberty the world 
 seemed full of hope. 
 
 To others than the lovers of liberty affairs wore 
 a different aspect. To those to whom the old 
 order of things had been dear, all that was in their 
 estimation best worth preservation appeared in 
 danger of being swept away in a common ruin ; 
 and to the view taken by such thinkers of Pius ix. 
 in especial, an article in the Quarterly Review bears 
 witness. 
 
 'There is one among [Italian princes],' says the 
 writer, dealing with the events then taking place in 
 the peninsula, ' whose fault was the heaviest, and 
 whose punishment has already begun. It is to 
 Pius ix. that all this complicated evil is mainly due. 
 . . . No man ever erred more grossly, or in a way 
 more sure of speedy retribution.' The Pope was 
 the ' dupe of his benevolent intentions, architect of 
 his own misfortunes, traitor to his order, and slave 
 of a faction.' 
 
 In France the Journal des Ddbats, inspired by 
 Guizot, had expressed its opinion in terms as plain, 
 if less violent. ' Does the Pope indeed sincerely 
 desire Italian independence and liberty?' it ques- 
 tioned. ' It is not possible; but were it so, it 
 would become the duty of France to come to the 
 aid of Austria, so as to stifle a Liberal movement 
 which might cause the whole of Europe to rise.' 
 
 No doubt the spectacle presented by Italy was 
 such as to incline those by whom revolution was
 
 213 
 
 hated and feared to deal out harsh measure to the 
 man they held chiefly responsible for it. The situa- 
 tion must have appeared strange and anomalous. 
 Whereas in most countries infected with the longing 
 for free institutions the people were ranging them- 
 selves in opposition to their rulers with the object 
 of wringing from them by force the rights of citizen- 
 ship, in Rome long considered the stronghold of 
 despotism, spiritual and temporal there reigned 
 a sovereign to whom the eyes of those Italians 
 bent upon the liberation of their country from the 
 yoke of the oppressor were turned with loving and 
 reverent confidence, as to their leader in the coming 
 struggle. 
 
 That that struggle was imminent could no longer 
 be doubted. It had indeed begun. With the 
 tidings of Vienna in revolt and of Metternich's 
 fall, the whole of the peninsula had risen with one 
 accord. The Milanese, in those five days which 
 make one of the most heroic episodes of modern 
 history, had driven out the foreigner, staining their 
 victory by no such acts of vengeance for the 
 atrocities committed by the enemy as might have 
 been anticipated. ' Punish them with contempt 
 and make an offer of them to Pius ix.' so ran the 
 proclamation of the Council of War. The people 
 obeyed. For the name of Pius had not yet lost 
 its magical power. 
 
 The language of the Provisional Government 
 set up at Milan bears striking witness to the place 
 he still held in the hearts of Italian patriots. 
 
 ' The great cause of Italian independence, blessed
 
 214 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 by your Holiness, has triumphed in our city/ they 
 wrote, announcing their victory. ' In your name, 
 Holy Father, we prepared to fight. Your name 
 has been inscribed on our banners and on our 
 barricades. In your name, almost unprovided 
 with everything, but strong in the virtue of our 
 rights, we opposed the formidable military organi- 
 sation of the enemy ; in your name old men and 
 young fought and died ; in your name we speak 
 the joy of our hearts, and turn full of hope to the 
 future, certain of not being deceived, as it has 
 already received, O Holy Father, your blessing.' 
 
 Venice, Lombardy, Parma, were all in arms. 
 Mazzini, coming home from exile, was received 
 like a conqueror, the strong man weeping like a 
 child as he watched a regiment, two thousand 
 strong, of Italian deserters from the Austrian 
 forces, march through the throng. Volunteers 
 poured in. Naples itself was compelled to send 
 an army north. Priests blessed the colours ; the 
 war was a crusade. ' In the name of God and of 
 the Pope,' the King of Piedmont offered to the 
 revolted provinces the aid that 'brother expects 
 from brother, friend from friend.' 
 
 In Rome itself public spirit ran high. The 
 downfall of Metternich had raised the excitement 
 of the people to fever pitch. Demonstrations of 
 all kinds took place. Joy bells rang, the Austrian 
 arms were dragged through the streets and burnt 
 in the Piazzo del Popolo to the sound of a funeral 
 march. The mob, filing past the Austrian embassy 
 in procession, torches reversed and in dead silence,
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 215 
 
 repaired to the headquarters of the Jesuits, re- 
 garded as the symbols of absolutism, and there 
 sang the De Profundis before dispersing. The 
 ministry met and made preparations for war, 
 bestowing the command of the troops hastily 
 collected on General Durando, whose views were 
 strongly nationalist. Cardinals and princes shared 
 in the general enthusiasm, offering their horses for 
 the artillery ; women gave their jewels ; a girl of 
 Bologna, having nothing else to offer, cut off her 
 hair and sold it for the common cause. Two of 
 the Pope's own nephews were amongst the volun- 
 teers. And to Pius himself the eyes of all Italy 
 turned. 
 
 The consequence to the Papacy and to the 
 world at large, had he kept his place at the head 
 of the movement, and directed its course, can only 
 now be matter of conjecture. That the force 
 placed at his disposal was one of almost incalcul- 
 able volume, no man can doubt. ' The national 
 sentiment,' said Rossi, as usual sagacious and 
 unimpassioned, ' and its ardour for war, are a 
 sword, a weapon, a mighty force. Either Pius ix. 
 must take it regularly in hand, or the factions 
 hostile to him will seize it, and turn it against him 
 and against the Popedom.' The words read like a 
 prophecy. 
 
 Never had man a greater opportunity. Never 
 was a greater opportunity lost. 
 
 How far the Pope was himself carried away for 
 the moment by the infection of the general fervour 
 remains uncertain. His sentiments were through-
 
 216 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 out the crisis in some measure an unknown 
 quantity, furnishing a partial justification for the 
 epitome of his history furnished by an opponent 
 in the sentence, ' Mystification jusqua 1 848 : 
 malheur apres.' 1 It is more than possible that he 
 himself formed no clear conception of his desires 
 and anticipations. At one time events filling 
 moderate Liberals themselves with apprehension 
 appeared to cause him no disquiet ; and Minghetti 
 records that at the news of the Revolution in Paris 
 he seemed to feel nothing but satisfaction. His 
 sense of proportion appeared disturbed ; he in- 
 vested trivialities with undue importance and failed 
 to grasp the significance of serious events. In the 
 general movement towards democratic institutions 
 throughout Europe he saw the justification for 
 whatever might have been regarded as rash in his 
 own policy, and the solution of any doubt as to its 
 wisdom. ' He felt his spirit relieved from a 
 weight,' says Minghetti again. ' All he had done 
 seemed a providential inspiration.' 
 
 In reading the proclamation issued by him on 
 March 30, it is impossible to doubt that, for the 
 time at least, he was in genuine sympathy with 
 the popular sentiment. Coming at such a moment 
 it was invested with special importance, and in the 
 terms in which it was couched it is impossible to 
 discover a presage of his future attitude. In the 
 events so rapidly succeeding one another he dis- 
 cerned the Hand of God and the working of 
 Divine Providence ; and whilst expressing regret 
 
 1 Petruccelli della Gattina.
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 217 
 
 for the excesses committed in some places, he 
 mingled exhortation with encouragement. ' Re- 
 member,' he added, ' that righteousness alone can 
 build, that passion destroys, and that He who 
 adopts the name of King of Kings, entitles Him- 
 self likewise the Ruler of Nations.' 
 
 Such language was well calculated to appeal to 
 the spirit of the people to whom it was addressed. 
 Its effect was in fact such that every one, says Farini, 
 as he took up arms, felt himself to be a champion 
 at once of religion, of liberty, and of Italy. 
 
 Had the Pope maintained the attitude taken 
 up in that manifesto, history might have had a 
 different chapter. But not long after it had been 
 issued a change was discernible in his mind. The 
 
 o 
 
 thrill of excitement apparent in the March pro- 
 clamation had been succeeded by agitation and 
 doubt. Hopes, fears, scruples followed close upon 
 one another, and struggled for mastery. The old 
 fatal difficulty remained. A war, however righteous, 
 ranging Catholic against Catholic, was, in the eyes 
 of the man who owed equal duties to both, a civil 
 war, to be averted if possible at all costs ; and to 
 the struggle resulting from his dual position his 
 vacillations again bore witness. Had that position 
 then been simplified by the severance of spiritual 
 and temporal power all might yet have been well. 
 As temporal prince he might have led his subjects 
 with a clear conscience against the enemy. As 
 spiritual ruler, free from the suspicion of personal 
 aims and from national responsibilities, he would 
 have been at liberty to concern himself alone with
 
 218 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 the eternal interests of truth and justice. As it was 
 he wavered between the two courses. He blessed 
 the papal flag when the troops set out from Rome 
 as one witness narrates, with tears ; he forbade 
 them to cross the frontier ' Guardate la casa mia, 
 ma non altro' were his directions to the volunteers 
 who had enlisted in the cause, not of the Roman 
 States, but of a United Italy and he disclaimed 
 the action of General Durando when, giving his 
 soldiers the Cross as their badge, he told them 
 that the blessing of the Pope rested on their arms. 
 Bewildered and perplexed by his variations, no 
 man knew what to expect. Even his own Cabinet 
 were distracted with doubt as to his intentions, 
 their entreaties for enlightenment eliciting nothing 
 more satisfactory than vague assurances. 
 
 What was the strain of those days of uncertainty 
 to the men honestly endeavouring to serve both 
 the national cause and that of the Pope can be 
 gathered from contemporary records. Easter was 
 close at hand, and Pius had withdrawn to the 
 Vatican, his ministers being able but rarely to 
 obtain access to him. And as it became known 
 that an utterance was shortly to be expected by 
 means of which the general suspense would be 
 ended, the anxiety of those responsible for the 
 management of affairs increased in intensity. 
 Antonelli who, alone of the Cabinet, was in daily 
 intercourse with his master, declared to his col- 
 leagues, whether truly or not, that his ignorance 
 was equal to their own. When Pasolini succeeded 
 in forcing his way into the Vatican, he received no
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 219 
 
 more than a general intimation that he and the rest 
 of the Cabinet would be satisfied. 
 
 No further information could be obtained. To 
 a declaration drawn up and signed by the ministers, 
 as an expression of their unanimous and solemn 
 conviction that the appeal to arms was necessary, 
 and war the least of the evils threatened, no answer 
 whatever was returned. Nothing remained but 
 to await the development of affairs and to hope 
 against hope that the captain of the ship would 
 not, in the very stress of the storm, abandon his 
 place at the helm. 
 
 At length April 29 the day when the allocu- 
 tion so anxiously expected was to take place had 
 arrived. To Recchi, another minister, Minghetti 
 communicated his forebodings that that day would 
 likewise witness the close of the attempt to main- 
 tain the union of the temporal and spiritual power ; 
 expressing his conviction that by the failure of 
 the present Pope and ministry the impossibility 
 of the task would be finally proved. By midday 
 such apprehensions had been justified to the full. 
 The famous allocution had been made public. 
 The war to the prosecution of which every Italian 
 Liberal was pledged was declared wholly abhor- 
 rent to a Pope who regarded with equal affection 
 all peoples, races, and nations. The cause of Pius 
 and the Papacy was virtually separated from that 
 of United Italy. 'At last,' Cardinal Lambruschini 
 is reported to have said, ' at last he has spoken as 
 a Pope.' It was, from such lips, damning praise. 
 
 The blow had fallen. That same evening,
 
 220 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 meeting in mournful silence, the ministers tendered 
 their resignations to Antonelli, then an untrust- 
 worthy and ambiguous figure, as warlike as any 
 of the Cabinet in his professions at their head. 
 
 'You are happy in being able to go,' he is said 
 to have told his lay colleagues ; ' but this habit ! ' 
 indicating his own ecclesiastical garb. 'Ah, Pius 
 will have me in his service no more.' As Pope, 
 indeed, he would obey, but never again, as sove- 
 reign, serve him. 
 
 Face to face with Pius next morning, Minghetti 
 justified the course he had taken. 
 
 'The Pope,' he says, 'looked at me fixedly, 
 with tears in his eyes,' feeling, it may well be, the 
 one severance the earnest of many to come ; and 
 so the two parted, the memory of his master re- 
 maining, in spite of all, ' revered and beloved ' to 
 the man who could no longer be his servant. 
 
 It is strange how blindly, and without any true 
 conception of the importance of the occasion, men 
 sometimes take the most momentous steps of their 
 lives. The allocution of April 1848 unquestion- 
 ably marked the turning-point in the career of 
 Pope Pius ix. By some it was welcomed as the 
 earnest of his return to paths of wisdom and 
 prudence. To others it contained the death- 
 blow of the hopes which had centred in him. 
 The Liberal and national party was left to find 
 another leader, and whether or not their cause 
 was to triumph it would not be under his command. 
 From whatever differing points of view the matter 
 was regarded, all were alive to the supreme
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 221 
 
 importance of what had taken place all save, it 
 would seem, the Pope himself. He alone appeared 
 unaware of the weighty nature of his own 
 action. To the retiring ministers he expressed 
 genuine surprise at the interpretation placed by 
 them upon his utterance. The manifesto had 
 hitherto been published in Latin alone; the lan- 
 guage was obscure, and might have been mis- 
 understood, so he suggested, showing a disposition 
 to explain away the pronouncement which had 
 caused so much consternation in the Cabinet. He 
 likewise a curious sign of weakness laid stress 
 upon the fact that, whilst denouncing the war, he 
 had professed his inability to restrain the ardour 
 of those amongst his subjects who should never- 
 theless follow the example of other Italians and 
 take up arms. 
 
 The argument was a singular one, appearing 
 as it did to reckon upon disobedience to neutralise 
 his own policy. The ministers, however, clinging 
 to the last spar of hope, consented to suspend 
 action until the issue of the allocution in the 
 vulgar tongue should have set its meaning beyond 
 doubt. Whether or not it had been Pius's inten- 
 tion, even then, to withdraw or to modify the ex- 
 pressions inconsistent with his position as national 
 leader will never be known. Some curious in- 
 cidents would seem to point to the probability 
 that it was so, A scene is recorded in which the 
 Pope is set before us, walking in the gardens of 
 the Quirinal with two of his ministers, of whom 
 one, Pasolini, tells the story. The three, whilst the
 
 222 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 evening darkens and the dews begin to fall, are 
 waiting for the proofs of the manifesto in Italian. 
 All is to be well and the ministers satisfied. Three 
 times Pius sends to the printing-office, stating his 
 intention not to leave the gardens until the proofs 
 have been placed in his hands ; and three times the 
 answer is returned that they are not yet ready. 
 At last the ministers leave, without having seen the 
 text. The next morning the confirmation, in the 
 Italian language, of all the sentiments that had 
 produced most dismay in the Latin, was legible to 
 those who cared to read it. The influence of the 
 counsellors who had the Pope's ear would seem to 
 have availed once more, during the brief interval 
 between his parting with the ministers and the 
 time when the fatal manifesto was posted in the 
 streets of Rome, to turn him from his purpose. 1 
 The die was irrevocably cast. 
 
 Crushing as was the disappointment, it was 
 perhaps of less consequence than appeared at the 
 time. Had the ministers succeeded in gaining a 
 momentary triumph, in the modification of the 
 Pope's language, their victory could but have been 
 a passing and hollow one. Pius ix., in heart and 
 will, had gone over to the enemy. 
 
 On that eventful second of May Rome was in 
 tumult. A tempest of anger and sorrow swept 
 over the city. 'He has deceived us/ cried the 
 
 1 Pasolini states, on the authority of the Monsignor in charge of 
 the printing works, that the proclamation sent to press was such as 
 Pius had given his ministers to understand. Antbnelli, however, 
 had intervened, and had introduced corrections completely altering 
 its significance.
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 223 
 
 patriot priests who had preached the crusade of 
 independence. ' He has betrayed us,' repeated, 
 with tears, Ciceruacchio, the popular leader. 
 Though both the one charge and the other may 
 have been undeserved, though Pius may have been 
 guiltless alike of deliberate and conscious decep- 
 tion and of betrayal, the men who, in the bitterness 
 of their disappointment, made the accusations, can 
 scarcely be blamed. It was clear that Italy was to 
 choose between allegiance to the Pope, with the 
 sacrifice of the national ideal, or disobedience to 
 his temporal authority. She was to be left to work 
 out her own salvation independently of the captain 
 upon whom she had counted to pilot the ship into 
 the haven of peace and liberty. Fiorentina, in a 
 contemporary pamphlet, epitomised the situation. 
 'Since Pius will not save Italians,' he wrote, 
 ' Italians must save themselves.' 
 
 The end, from that day, can scarcely have been 
 uncertain. What has been termed the permanent 
 duel between temporal and spiritual power had 
 reached a stage when the issue was no longer 
 doubtful. The next six months contain the history 
 of the agony of the people's faith in Pius as leader 
 of the national hope. They are the history, in 
 domestic affairs, of his vain and fruitless en- 
 deavours to reconcile the aspirations of the 
 Romans after a guaranteed liberty with the pre- 
 servation of absolute power on the part of the 
 Papacy ; in relation to Austria, of futile attempts 
 to compass by peaceful methods what it was idle 
 to expect her to yield uncompelled by force of
 
 224 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 arms. It is unnecessary to dwell at length upon 
 the steps leading up to the inevitable result ; upon 
 the efforts of successive ministers to steer the 
 vessel clear of the rocks ; or to enter in detail into 
 the charges of duplicity brought against the Pope. 
 As to these accusations it is sufficient to observe 
 that when it is borne in mind that not only were 
 his opinions frequently at variance with those held 
 by his ministers, but that he had never acquiesced 
 in the doctrine of a responsible Cabinet and in the 
 consequent obligation of the sovereign to take no 
 independent action, it is likely enough that com- 
 munications to foreign powers from Pope and 
 ministry should have been out of harmony. How 
 far Pius was personally responsible for such disson- 
 ance is difficult to determine. 
 
 Thus that melancholy summer wore itself out. 
 In its history one or two incidents, significant of 
 much, stand out in especial the annual procession 
 in honour of the Pope's accession passing through 
 the silent streets, empty of even the pageant-loving 
 Roman crowd, and the blessing of Pius, only a year 
 before their idol, descending upon a people cold, 
 apathetic, and dull. Truly, if Pius had prized his 
 popularity, he had not flinched from the sacrifice 
 of it. 
 
 Or again, after the disaster of Custoza, there 
 pierces, through the discord of opposing factions, the 
 poignant note sounded by the last despairing appeal 
 addressed by the Council of Deputies to the Pope. 
 
 'O Holy Father' so it ran 'confide, confide 
 in the representatives of your people . . . confide
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 225 
 
 in our religion, in the love we bear you, which is 
 itself a religion. Succour us, succour Italy, in the 
 name of God. . . . O listen, most blessed Father, 
 to the voice of your devoted sons. O let it not be 
 that, in the reign of Pius ix., the recollection of a 
 disaster to an Italian army should weigh upon our 
 consciences with remorse.' 
 
 The appeal, couched in such terms, must surely 
 have struck home to the heart of the man to whom 
 it was addressed. But it proved useless. Already 
 the words will have sounded in Pius's ears like 
 echoes from a past from which he had cut himself 
 hopelessly adrift. 
 
 Ministry succeeded ministry, each in turn failing 
 in the attempt to reconcile the hostile elements in 
 the State. A few more months, and the end was 
 come. 
 
 In September Count Rossi, sometime ambas- 
 sador of Louis Philippe to the Papal Court, had 
 been induced reluctantly to assume the direction 
 of affairs. It was a wise choice. Had it been 
 possible to save the situation, Rossi might have 
 saved it. A Liberal, yet attached to the Papacy ; 
 upright and a man of honour, yet possessing 'Tart 
 de paraitre parfaitement obscur? a bold man and a 
 strong one, he had many qualifications for the task. 
 But one was wanting. He lacked the gift of 
 inspiring love or trust. In dislike of the new 
 minister all parties were agreed. By reactionaries 
 he was hated as a revolutionary, by revolution- 
 aries he was regarded as a foe. Stern, austere, 
 and unsocial, he was unpopular with all, and he 
 
 p
 
 226 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 disdained the arts of conciliation. As proud as he 
 was fearless, he pursued his way, reckless of the 
 fierce hostility aroused by his resolute determina- 
 tion to put an end to the prevailing anarchy and 
 to reduce to order the condition of demoralisation 
 and chaos prevailing in the city. And yet, had he 
 had fair play, it was possible that he might have 
 succeeded. But he was not given the chance. 
 
 On the 1 5th November Parliament was to meet. 
 Sinister rumours were afloat. The mob had been 
 infuriated by the measures taken to repress dis- 
 order, and the unpopular minister's life was said to 
 be in danger. He had not been left unwarned. 
 A priest waited outside his house to administer 
 a caution ; and the Count's impatient acknowledg- 
 ments were heard as he passed rapidly on. To 
 his colleagues he showed, with a smile, a letter 
 containing a similar warning. It was likewise 
 reported that in the Chamber itself he would be 
 received with hisses ; but he negatived, once more 
 smiling, the suggestion that the ministry should on 
 that account make their entry in a body. It 
 would be better, he observed, that he should be 
 hissed alone. And so, alone, he went to meet his 
 doom. As he ascended the steps of the Chamber 
 amid the hostile demonstrations of the crowd to 
 which it is said he again replied by an ironical 
 smile and a gesture of contempt he was struck 
 down by an unknown assassin, and never spoke 
 again. 
 
 It remained uncertain who had been guilty of 
 the crime. But upon whomsoever the responsi-
 
 THE ROMAN TRAGEDY OF '48 227 
 
 bility rested, the death-blow had been given, not 
 only to the Pope's minister, but so far as it can be 
 said to have been still in existence to his liberal 
 policy. Ten days later an interval of tumult and 
 wild disorder, of resistance on the part of Pius to 
 the popular demands, enforced by arms, followed 
 by his final acquiescence, under protest, in the 
 concessions required of him he had fled from the 
 city ; to return, when he did so, no longer as the 
 symbol of liberty, but as the representative of re- 
 action. His reign as a liberal Pope was over. 
 
 One scene more. As, in disguise and by night, 
 he was passing through the palace on the way to 
 make his escape, the taper carried by his single 
 attendant was extinguished by a gust of wind ; and 
 the Pope, alone and in total darkness, was left to 
 wait whilst his companion retraced his steps in 
 order to rekindle it. That Pius was not free from 
 superstition is shown by more than one incident 
 occurring at this very time and regarded by him in 
 the light of an omen. To the imagination of a man 
 subject to such influences, did the sudden darkness 
 overtaking his flight, one wonders, suggest any 
 hidden significance ? Did any doubt, at that last 
 moment, cloud his mind ? The question will never 
 be answered. 
 
 The pioneers of a movement are easily forgotten. 
 More especially in the case of a man who has out- 
 lived his own work has indeed set his hand to the 
 undoing of it the permanent result of his labour 
 is likely to escape recognition. Yet, in spite of
 
 228 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 himself, the work of Pius remains. In spite of 
 personal failure, of disappointment, of a wasted 
 opportunity, he bequeathed to those who were to 
 come after him the heritage of a vindicated prin- 
 ciple and a demonstrated possibility. It was in the 
 two years closed by the flight to Gaeta that the 
 seed of which the harvest remains to be reaped 
 was sown.
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 A STRANGE and apparently inextinguishable element 
 of hope, surviving disappointment after disappoint- 
 ment, is characteristic of the true revolutionist. 
 Though apt at first sight to strike the student 
 with surprise, it is in fact a natural and almost 
 necessary condition of his existence. To embark 
 on an enterprise without a fair expectation of carry- 
 ing it to a prosperous conclusion is the act of a 
 hero, or of a fool ; and though members of each 
 class are doubtless to be found in the revolutionary 
 ranks, it is not of such men that the main body is 
 made up, but of those who throw themselves into 
 the adventure with the anticipation, more or less 
 reasonable and more or less assured, of success. 
 
 The revolutionist is besides, for the most part, 
 at the season of life when hope is easily culti- 
 vated, and even when his years are no longer 
 few, as men count age, there is often to be found 
 in him a survival of youth that time and failure 
 have been powerless to destroy. It may chance 
 indeed that these forces have acted in an opposite 
 direction. 'The disappointed,' says Arthur Helps, 
 'are ever young.' Paradoxical though the asser- 
 tion may sound, it is not seldom borne out by the 
 presence of some at least of the features of youth, 
 
 229
 
 230 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 by the restless discontent which spurs them on to 
 fresh endeavour; by the longing to redeem, by 
 one more cast of the dice, the wasted fortunes of 
 life ; and by the fact that the future continues to 
 lie, an unconquered territory, before them. 
 
 Even those, however, who have learnt to reckon 
 youth, moral or actual, amongst the necessary 
 factors of any revolutionary movement, can scarcely 
 fail to be struck by the exaggeration of this charac- 
 teristic to be met with in the annals of the Italian 
 struggle for independence. To the young, indeed, 
 Mazzini had specially addressed himself when first 
 he stood forth as the champion of liberty. To 
 them he had looked as the main hope of the cause. 
 They were to be placed at the head of the in- 
 surgent masses ; their voice had magic power with 
 the crowd ; in them he discerned the apostles of 
 the new religion he desired to inaugurate ; and 
 he gave singular expression to his faith when he 
 excluded from the association of young Italy 
 save in exceptional cases all above forty years of 
 age. 
 
 The youth of its promoters continued, in a 
 measure, to be characteristic of the movement in 
 its later stages. Here and there, it is true, the 
 figure of some veteran of a Garibaldi or a 
 Mazzini himself stands out, doomed to survive 
 generation after generation of disciples, and to 
 watch, like the captain of a sinking ship, one 
 subordinate after another gain the raft of death 
 before he is himself released from his post. But, 
 taken as a whole, the armies of deliverance are
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 231 
 
 largely made up of lads scarcely emerged from 
 childhood. 
 
 In no instance is this more conspicuously the 
 case than in that of the Lombard volunteers, who, 
 beginning their brilliant career in the Five Days of 
 Milan, ended it many at least of the most dis- 
 tinguished of the band some fourteen months 
 later at the siege of Rome. It was at that melan- 
 choly time that Luciano Manara, Colonel of the 
 Lombard Rifles and Chief of Garibaldi's Staff, was 
 shot at the age of twenty-four, Enrico Dandolo 
 when not yet twenty-two, and Morosini, the pure- 
 hearted, saintly boy, died of his wounds before he 
 had completed his eighteenth year. The episode 
 containing their history might almost be termed 
 the Children's Crusade of the Italian war of inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 In the spring of the year 1848, the city of 
 Milan, goaded to active resistance by the unex- 
 ampled brutalities of the Austrian Government, 
 was banded together in one vast network of con- 
 spiracy. There, as in every place throughout the 
 length and breadth of Italy, men were preparing 
 themselves for the struggle for liberty as men 
 make ready for a holy war. God, the Pope, Italy, 
 were the watchwords of the fight. The more 
 cautious leaders of the movement were, it is true, 
 endeavouring to restrict the agitation for the 
 present to legal methods and thus to postpone a 
 conflict which might well seem desperate. But it 
 was becoming daily clearer that the inevitable
 
 232 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 catastrophe could not be far distant, and that the 
 rasher and more intemperate spirits would not 
 much longer submit to restraint. There is a limit 
 
 o 
 
 to endurance. After that limit has been reached 
 the counsels of prudence fall upon deaf ears. 
 
 Amongst the most ardent of the Milanese con- 
 spirators were to be counted a gay little company 
 of boys, students and friends, of whom the eldest 
 was only nineteen. Of the number of this band, 
 not more than ten or twelve, all told, were Enrico 
 and Emilio Dandolo, two of the chief heroes of 
 the coming fight, and friends and brothers in arms 
 of Luciano Manara, slightly their senior. 
 
 The two were motherless boys, who had received 
 their education chiefly at home, public schools 
 being out of fashion at the time. Of Enrico, the 
 elder of the brothers, there is little to be told save 
 the story of his brief and gallant military career, 
 lasting over scarcely more than fourteen months. 
 Emilio, however, the younger by two years, lived 
 to be something besides a soldier ; and has left 
 behind him, in his published writings and in letters 
 to his family, evidence of the tender and sensitive 
 nature of the boy who, at nineteen, was doomed to 
 see his brother, his leader, and his dearest friend, 
 all slain in the vain defence of Rome, he himself 
 lingering on for some nine or ten years longer, 
 attacked by a mortal malady, and haunted besides 
 by the memory of that early experience, apparent 
 in the moods of bitter melancholy to which he 
 remained subject to the end of his short life. 
 
 When scarcely emerging from childhood, Emilio
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 233 
 
 had spent three years at a Barnabite College, 
 where he fell much under the influence of one 
 of the Fathers, to whom he remained devotedly 
 attached in later years. By this teacher he had 
 been first indoctrinated with the principles of that 
 gospel of liberty which afterwards, with the love of 
 his country, became the ruling passion of his life. 
 Priests in those days were in the forefront of the 
 battle, and children Emilio was not more than 
 twelve when he returned to finish his education at 
 home were politicians. 
 
 It had become the custom of the Dandolos and 
 their comrades to assemble day by day in one 
 of the gardens of the city, where the hours of 
 daylight were passed in the practice of military 
 exercises which should fit them to take their part 
 in the coming struggle ; whilst the nights were 
 devoted to the preparation of bullets and cartridges. 
 In holes dug in the soil a store of weapons, bought 
 by the hoarded pocket-money of the confederates, 
 was safely concealed. 
 
 No doubt there was no little impatience amongst 
 the boyish recruits, as they practised their art of 
 war under the shade of the trees and amongst the 
 flower-beds. There must have been eager ques- 
 tioning, anxious observation of the signs of the 
 times. Would the anticipated rising take place 
 to-night, or to-morrow, or possibly next week ? 
 They were not, however, to endure any lengthened 
 period of waiting. 
 
 A crisis was plainly at hand. In January 1848 
 the tobacco riots had taken place, resulting from the
 
 234 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 determination of the Milanese, by abstaining from 
 smoking, to put an end to a principal source of 
 Austrian revenue. The vengeance of the Govern- 
 ment, wreaked upon an unarmed and defenceless 
 populace, had only served to aggravate the loathing 
 of the city for its foreign oppressors, and throughout 
 Italy religious services were held in memory of the 
 eighty victims. By March the excitement, sup- 
 pressed though it was, had reached such a pitch that 
 Count Huebner, describing a fete given on the 7th 
 of the month by the Austrian authorities, recorded 
 his conviction that the dance had taken place upon 
 a volcano. He was right. Ten days later the 
 flames had burst through the thin crust of lava and 
 the day of reckoning had arrived. On the I7th, 
 news of the Viennese Revolution had given the 
 last impulse to the popular enthusiasm, and Milan 
 was ready to break into insurrection. 
 
 It must have been a day of wild excitement for 
 the boy conspirators of the garden. That evening 
 they met together at the house of Don Angelo 
 Fava, the Dandolos' former tutor ; and the follow- 
 ing morning, Don Angelo himself leading the way, 
 the lads started gaily for the Corso, with shouts of 
 'Italy,' 'Freedom,' and 'that name of Pius ix. at 
 which God Himself then seemed to descend from 
 Heaven, and to do battle for freedom and for 
 Italy.' 1 The Revolution had begun. 
 
 The history of those Five Days is well known. 
 Manara and his comrades bore their full part in 
 it. Round the tricolour flag they set up the people 
 
 1 Farini.
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 235 
 
 quickly rallied, the prudent counsels of older 
 men giving way before the popular spirit. Fight- 
 ing by day and keeping watch by night, those 
 engaged in the desperate struggle lost, says 
 Dandolo, all count of time. The enterprise might 
 well have seemed hopeless. What expectation of 
 success could be indulged by some dozens of armed 
 citizens, ranged against twenty thousand disci- 
 plined troops ; an untrained mob opposed to the 
 generalship of Radetsky strangely described by 
 Huebner as 'the most amiable of old men' and 
 his veteran soldiers ? The amazing victory of the 
 Milanese remains a monument for ever of the 
 strength of a common hope or a common despair. 
 David once more slew his Goliath. And wher- 
 ever the battle raged most fiercely, there were to 
 be found Manara and his little band of followers. 
 On the last day of the fight their crowning feat was 
 performed. Rushing forward amidst a shower of 
 bullets, the tricolour banner in his hand, their 
 leader gained possession of the house adjoining 
 the Porto Tosa, put the enemy stationed there to 
 flight, and gave admission to the armed populace 
 who had collected without the gates to assist the 
 combatants within the city. 
 
 Then, in the darkness of the night, the Austrian 
 forces abandoned their post. The victory had been 
 won. Milan was free. 
 
 The people went mad with joy. The foreigner 
 had been expelled ; the oppressor was driven out. 
 One miracle performed, all marvels became pos- 
 sible. The conquerors imagined, with a con-
 
 236 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 fidence as blind as it was strange, that their 
 triumph was final, the Austrian gone for ever. So 
 little necessary was it considered to take measures 
 to secure the fruits of their success, that when 
 Manara, with more foresight than the rest, under- 
 took the formation of a corps of volunteers who 
 should pursue the enemy and harass them in their 
 retreat, not more than a hundred and twenty-nine 
 young men at first responded to his appeal. Nor 
 did even that small band form any just conception 
 of the work before them. Light-hearted and gay, 
 with a confidence almost incredible, except read in 
 the light of the wonders already performed, the 
 young soldiers took leave of their friends, assuring 
 those they left behind them that a fortnight at 
 most would witness their triumphant return. 
 
 To trace in detail the fortunes of the volunteers 
 during the following months would take up too 
 much space. The disappointment of the hopes 
 which had been so high, with its causes, belongs to 
 history. The vacillations, the hesitation, and the 
 delays of Charles Albert allowed the moment to 
 pass when a decisive blow might have been struck 
 at Austrian domination. The liberation of Italy 
 was put off for ten years. On the 5th of August, 
 scarcely five months after the expulsion of the enemy 
 from Milan, the city was once more in their hands. 
 
 The intervening campaign had opened with 
 brilliant anticipations, justified here and there by 
 temporary successes. So far as the volunteers 
 are concerned, it is a story of splendid heroism, of 
 reckless gallantry, of patient endurance of every
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 237 
 
 species of hardship, on the one hand ; on the other 
 of that insubordination and jealousy which could 
 scarcely fail to find a place in a body described by 
 Dandolo himself, looking on with boyish disdain, 
 as composed of alike the flower and the dregs 
 of society, of patriots, nobles, artists, mechanics, 
 and adventurers of those who had sacrificed for 
 the cause of freedom and of Italian independence 
 all man has to give, and of those others who had 
 engaged in the enterprise from the lowest of 
 motives, all banded together in one incongruous 
 and heterogeneous mass. To handle such a body 
 with success might have taxed the skill of a 
 veteran, and its inexperienced leader was more 
 than once on the point of throwing up his com- 
 mand in the bitter impatience of despair. 
 
 In the history of the campaign pictures stand 
 out here and there, serving as samples of the rest. 
 Now it is Manara himself and a few friends who 
 have taken refuge at Lasize, after the gallant and 
 desperate defence of Castelnuovo. The steam- 
 boat which should have ensured their escape, 
 whether by mistake or treachery, has vanished, 
 and the night is passed, in imminent danger of 
 capture, under the roof of the parish priest ; one 
 of the lads playing, on an old pianoforte, the 
 familiar songs in honour of Pius ix., still the 
 popular idol, while his companions join in the 
 chorus, and the sky is lit with the flames of blazing 
 Castelnuovo. 
 
 At another time, ' frontier-keeper ' on the 
 summit of a mountain, Manara is busy with
 
 238 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 devices for sustaining the spirits of his troops, 
 exposed to every kind of privation ; while on the 
 mountain-top, under the open sky, mass is cele- 
 brated week by week, two fir-trees forming a 
 gigantic cross over the rude altar. Or a more 
 melancholy picture we witness the vain en- 
 deavours of the leader, amid the jeers of mutineers, 
 to secure respect for the safe conduct granted at 
 headquarters to a Tyrolese convoy. 
 
 So the months passed by. If Manara, as was 
 perhaps inevitable in a commander of twenty-two, 
 sometimes lacked the power to impress his authority 
 on his turbulent and undisciplined troops, he was 
 not wanting in qualities calling forth enthusiastic 
 attachment, and Dandolo records that at one time 
 scarcely a day passed that one or another of the 
 volunteers would not risk his life by swimming 
 the river separating the Italian forces from the 
 enemy, in order to gather flowers for their young 
 leader from a garden close to the Austrian camp. 
 
 Once only is it recorded that the captain himself, 
 surrounded by men untrained in the very rudi- 
 ments of military obedience, and prompt to enforce 
 their will, was betrayed into a breach of discipline. 
 It was a time of trial and anxiety. News of 
 failure elsewhere had, in spite of all he could 
 do, spread discouragement amongst his soldiers. 
 Rumours of disaster, the more disquieting by 
 reason of the uncertain nature of the tidings, daily 
 reached the camp. 
 
 One subordinate after another would seek their 
 commander with fresh reports of impending ruin.
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 239 
 
 Was he aware that it was said that they were 
 surrounded, that defence would in that case be 
 impossible, that the corps would be cut to pieces ? 
 And Manara would listen with what patience he 
 could muster. What if it were so, he would reply ; 
 what had the volunteers expected when they 
 engaged in the fight? Return to Milan? He 
 would return there as soon as he received orders 
 to do so, but not before. 
 
 Thus the endless, profitless, discussions went 
 on, wearing to temper and spirits. Yet in spite 
 of opposition and discontent, Manara still held out, 
 doing what was possible to supply his troops with 
 employment and to inspire them with courage. 
 It was with this object that, on one occasion, 
 a daring reconnaissance was organised, though it 
 can have been with little hope of doing more than 
 diverting the attention of the men from their 
 grievances. 
 
 From the top of a hill, Manara himself directed 
 the fire of his riflemen, the younger Dandolo 
 standing at his side and holding the standard 
 aloft, a mark for the bullets of the enemy. 
 
 ' Thinking it shame,' he wrote afterwards with 
 characteristic bravado, 'for the tricolour of Italy 
 to bow to the Austrian flag, I held it erect and as 
 high as possible.' 
 
 They were still boys, playing their game of war, 
 as before at an earlier date in the Milanese garden. 
 But the forfeits were now become the lives of men. 
 A retreat was effected barely in time to save 
 the battalion from falling into the hands of the
 
 240 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 enemy a catastrophe, it must be remembered, 
 which would have meant the death by hanging 
 or, 'by a particular favour,' by shooting of 
 prisoners who, denied by Austria the rights of 
 belligerents, were treated as rebels when they fell 
 into her hands. 
 
 Adventures such as these could only act as 
 temporary expedients for quelling disaffection. 
 The troops once back in camp and condemned to 
 inaction, discontent again became noisy. The 
 news from Milan was bad, and the men were 
 clamorous to be taken home, the battalion assem- 
 bling of its own accord to make the demand. 
 Manara at length hesitated. Then, in the absence 
 of any directions from headquarters, he yielded to 
 the pressure brought to bear upon him. Possibly 
 to the leader himself, no less than to his comrades, 
 may have come visions of his home in danger, of 
 his wife and little children already at twenty- 
 three he was a husband and father with none 
 at hand to protect them from Austrian brutality 
 should the city once more fall into the hands of 
 the enemy. However that might be, he was 
 induced to consent to the abandonment of the 
 post, Emilio Dandolo being dispatched to acquaint 
 General Durando with the fact. 
 
 It was night when the messenger reached the 
 General's quarters. His face burning with shame, 
 he made, in the bedroom of the Commander-in- 
 chief, the communication with which he was 
 charged. The answer came, stern and uncom- 
 promising.
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 241 
 
 'Tell Signer Manara,' said Durando, ' that one 
 day I shall write the history of these times, and 
 that it is not upon my head that the infamy of 
 certain events will rest. Signer Manara may go. 
 Even without him I shall do my duty.' 
 
 The rebuke was faithfully delivered. The blood 
 rose to Manara's face as he listened to it. His 
 response was prompt. 
 
 ' Take the standard,' he ordered Emilio, his 
 standard-bearer. Emilio obeyed. Then, standing 
 in their midst, he addressed the soldiers. 
 
 ' The General commands me to remain at my 
 post,' he said. ' I return thither. Let whoever has 
 a sense of honour follow me.' 
 
 One by one the soldiers obeyed. When the 
 roll-call was made, not a man was missing from 
 the ranks. The single shadow which might have 
 clouded Manara's fair fame was averted. 
 
 But Milan, meanwhile, had capitulated. Once 
 more she had fallen into the hands of the foreigner. 
 Grey-headed men were weeping like children ; 
 young men were uttering curses ; the work of the 
 Five Days was undone. 
 
 It was the end of the first part of Manara's 
 career. Intrusted by the government of Piedmont 
 with the formation of a battalion of Lombard 
 Rifles, he set himself steadily to the task. To 
 fight for Italy, wherever the struggle was to be 
 carried on, was the object for which he lived. It 
 was the body thus formed and trained that, upon 
 the abdication of the King, he led to Rome, to fight 
 a last battle in the defence of the republic there 
 
 Q
 
 242 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 set up. Manara, it was true, was no republican, 
 but it was not a time when Italians could afford 
 to dwell upon minor points of difference. Italy 
 was their watchword ; her unity and independence 
 their aim. 
 
 ' You are Lombards,' objected Oudinot, General 
 of the French forces, when Manara, detained in 
 the harbour of Civita Vecchia, demanded, on 
 behalf of the soldiers he commanded, liberty to 
 proceed to their destination. ' By what right do 
 you meddle in the affairs of Rome ? ' 
 
 'And you, General,' retorted the Italian, 'is it 
 from Paris, from Lyons, or from Bordeaux that 
 you come ? ' 
 
 Italy, as France, was henceforth to be a single 
 nation, whatever might be the special political 
 conditions of one or another part of it. On their 
 first entry into Rome the young Milanese gave 
 his followers the keynote of co-operation. 
 
 'Viva la Republic a /' had been the words of the 
 General of the Roman forces as he concluded his 
 address of welcome to the newly arrived con- 
 tingent. 
 
 The Lombards remained obstinately mute, 
 refusing to respond ; till Manara, with ready tact, 
 threw himself into the breach. 
 
 ' Present arms ! ' he cried. ' Viva I' Italia ! ' 
 
 And 'Viva I' Italia!' shouted the soldiers in re- 
 turn. The situation was saved ; and though the 
 Lombard battalion retained the badge of the 
 cross of Savoy, and were nicknamed by the 
 Romans the corps of aristocrats, there was in
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 243 
 
 future no lack of cordiality between the republicans 
 and their allies. 
 
 How far indeed was Manara, now chief of Gari- 
 baldi's staff, from indulging in the jealousies which 
 were unfortunately to be found amongst the various 
 bodies banded together in the defence of Rome, 
 is to be seen from his last letter to Mazzini. ' I 
 have spoken to Pisacani ' (chief of the staff of 
 Roselli, the Roman General), he writes. ' We are 
 perfectly agreed. Animated by the same spirit, 
 it is impossible for petty jealousies to come 
 between us.' Mazzini, for his part, expressed his 
 opinion of the man with whom he had to deal 
 when he wrote to him on June 22, while blaming 
 the decision of Garibaldi as to a detail of the 
 defence, 'but come, I have received your account 
 and have nothing to say to it. I esteem you, and 
 you begin to love me. I can swear that your 
 thoughts are my thoughts.' 
 
 It is well to dwell upon the brighter features 
 of that sorrowful time a time of turmoil and 
 passion, when men looked round them, and knew 
 not whom to trust ; when crimes were committed 
 in the name of the noblest ideals, when religion 
 consecrated oppression, liberty itself was not seldom 
 the watchword of violence, and those who had 
 been maddened by long years of wrong sometimes 
 took the execution of vengeance into their own 
 hands. Men who carry white banners should be 
 careful how they stain them. Otherwise, to 
 quote words of Michelet's, used in another con- 
 nection, a terrible force is set in motion against
 
 244 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 ideas themselves that of ' la sensibility qui marche 
 sur les principes, qui, pour venger le sang, en verse 
 des fleuves, qui tuerait des nations pour sauver des 
 hommes. ' 
 
 No doubt, in the general confusion, the last 
 drop of bewildered bitterness was added to the 
 Roman defeat by the causes to which it was due. 
 For Catholics to find themselves ranged against 
 those who termed themselves the allies and 
 defenders of the Pope was hard ; but for men 
 making their desperate stand on behalf of liberty 
 to meet as their foes the soldiers of the very nation 
 from whom they had looked for support, of the 
 country which had led the van of revolution, was 
 a paradox so strange that at first sight it was found 
 almost incredible. Even when it could no longer 
 be open to doubt that official Paris was against 
 them, Italians refused to charge the apostasy upon 
 the French nation or army. ' Our young officers,' 
 wrote Mazzini to the enemy, ' our improvised 
 soldiers, our townspeople, fall beneath your fire, 
 crying "Viva la Republica!" The courageous 
 soldiers of France fall beneath our own without a 
 cry, without a murmur, like dishonoured men. I 
 am certain that there is not one amongst them 
 who, dying, does not exclaim, as one of your 
 deserters did to-day, "We feel as though we were 
 fighting against brothers." ... If France repre- 
 sented, as we do, a principle . . . the valour of 
 her sons would not fail when they have to face 
 our young recruits.' 
 
 France, however, had for the time become, as
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 245 
 
 Jules Favre indignantly declared in the Chamber, 
 le gendarme de fabsolutisme. Nor was it in fair 
 fight alone that she strove to crush the new-born 
 liberty of Rome. The treachery by which the 
 doomed city was deprived of its last chance, in the 
 refusal of Oudinot to ratify the agreement to a 
 suspension of hostilities signed by the French 
 plenipotentiary, and, further, by his evasion of his 
 own concession of a truce, are facts too well known 
 to need recapitulation. From the hour that the 
 Roman outposts, trusting in the honour of the 
 enemy, were surprised, the ultimate fate of the 
 city was practically sealed. ' I consider Rome as 
 fallen,' wrote Mazzini to Manara some three weeks 
 later. It only remained for her defenders to sell 
 her liberty dear. And in achieving that object 
 none have accused the Lombard Brigade of back- 
 wardness. Despair, sapping as it does the courage 
 of some men, only added to theirs. ' They clung 
 to their standard without any hope of victory,' 
 says Farini, writing not of their body alone, but 
 of all those soldiers who, having drawn their 
 swords in the cause of Italian independence, re- 
 fused to sheathe them so long as the struggle was 
 carried on in any part of Italy. 'They endured 
 unheard-of fatigue ; they suffered and died for their 
 own honour, for the honour of Italy.' 
 
 It was not in courage only that the Manara 
 Brigade, in especial, excelled. Manara, since the 
 bitter experiences of his apprenticeship on the 
 mountain heights, had mastered the art of com- 
 mand. Garibaldi has left upon record his verdict
 
 246 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 that the Lombard corps, notwithstanding the youth 
 of its commander, was the best disciplined body of 
 soldiers in Rome. It was also once more to 
 quote the great leader of 'perfect bravery.' 
 ' Our troops,' he wrote, describing the struggle, 
 'and particularly the Manara Brigade and the 
 Italian Legion, fought the enemy several times 
 breast to breast and hand to hand.' Of Enrico 
 Dandolo he recorded that his death had been the 
 death of a hero. Many young soldiers in those 
 days would have laid down their lives to win that 
 tribute from his lips. 
 
 Emilio, the brother who survived, has given a 
 detailed account, not only of Enrico's end, but of 
 other matters connected with the siege. It is a 
 description full of pathos, enhanced rather than the 
 contrary by the touches of boyish bombast recalling 
 the youth of the narrator. The brothers, united 
 by so close a bond of affection that, in the words of 
 Emilio, it had seemed impossible that death itself 
 should separate them, were seated together on the 
 ground, sharing a piece of bread, when the order 
 was delivered to the elder to lead his company to 
 the attack of the Villa Corsini, then in the posses- 
 sion of the enemy. Starting up at once, Enrico 
 obeyed. It was their last parting. As the little 
 band, led by its Captain, reached the terrace before 
 the house a shower of bullets thinned its ranks. 
 Closing up, however, the survivors pressed on, and 
 it was by another act of treachery that their defeat 
 was ensured. ' Siamo amid we are friends, ' cried an 
 officer, advancing at the head of his company, from
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 247 
 
 within. Dandolo, preserving to the last the faith in 
 French honour which in Italians died so hard, had 
 already given the word to his men to cease firing, 
 when, at thirty paces distant, the enemy sent a 
 volley amongst them, killing a third of their number. 
 Dandolo himself was one of the victims. He fell, 
 shot through the chest, and as a couple of his 
 soldiers rushed forward to lift him from the ground 
 their leader breathed his last. 
 
 Emilio, meanwhile, remaining where his brother 
 had left him, watched dead and wounded as they 
 were carried past, fearing each moment in spite 
 of that 'vague and unwarrantable conviction' that 
 separation was a thing impossible to recognise his 
 brother amongst those borne by. At length the 
 melancholy tidings were brought that the Captain 
 had fallen, mortally wounded. And still Emilio, 
 mindful of a soldier's duty, remained, bound to his 
 post. But not for long ; for presently Garibaldi, 
 passing by, brought release. 
 
 ' I heard him say, " I shall require twenty 
 resolute men and one officer for a difficult under- 
 taking." ' 
 
 Dandolo sprang forward to volunteer. His offer 
 was accepted ; the orders were given. Twenty of 
 the bravest soldiers of his company were to be led 
 once more to the attack of the Villa Corsini. It 
 was to be taken at the point of the bayonet. The 
 enterprise might well have seemed not only diffi- 
 cult but impossible. For a moment Dandolo was 
 staggered by the lack of correspondence between 
 the task assigned him and the means at his com-
 
 248 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 mand for its performance. It was not, however, 
 for him to point out its impracticability. 
 
 'Have no fear, General,' he replied. 'They 
 have, perhaps, killed my brother, and I shall do 
 my best.' 
 
 He did it. Followed by the twenty chosen men, 
 he rushed up the long avenue leading to the villa 
 which was to be the object of the assault. When, 
 their fire delivered, they were beaten back, not 
 more than six out of the twenty remained. 
 
 Dandolo himself, wounded in the thigh, was 
 carried to the hospital. There he lay, eagerly 
 awaiting the result of the inquiries he had set on 
 foot as to the fate of his brother ; until, unable 
 longer to endure the agony of suspense, he crept 
 out to prosecute his search in person. For two 
 long hours he dragged himself from corpse to 
 corpse, examining each in turn. At length, from 
 the window of a house from which the enemy had 
 just been dislodged, Manara signed to him to enter. 
 All who were present went sorrowfully out, leaving 
 the two alone. 
 
 ' Seek your brother no longer,' Manara bade him. 
 1 It is too late. I will be a brother to you.' 
 
 The shock of certainty was too great. Exhausted 
 by his wound, and worn out by his long search, the 
 boy fell fainting to the ground. 
 
 So the days went by, the carnage only serving 
 to render the survivors more desperate in their 
 resistance. 
 
 1 What are you doing here ? ' Manara asked 
 his quarter-master, aged eighteen, who, wounded
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 249 
 
 in his hand, had nevertheless reappeared at his 
 side. 
 
 'Colonel, let me stay,' entreated the lad. 'I 
 shall serve, at least, to make up the number.' 
 
 His wish was granted. Struck by a bullet in 
 the head, he did, in fact, go to make up the 
 number of the slain. 
 
 One scene after another lends each its touch of 
 vivid colour to the story of those days. Now a 
 Pole one of the brotherhood of liberty by whom 
 no sundering limitations of race or nation are 
 recognised stands hurling stones, in default of 
 ammunition, from the barricades upon the assail- 
 ants below. Pointing, not without a touch of 
 theatrical effect, to the Cross of the Legion of 
 Honour upon his breast, won fighting the battles 
 of the Republic in Africa, he bids the enemy 
 direct their fire there. 
 
 'Aim at my breast,' he shouts, 'aim at this 
 Cross,' and, struck by a ball in his head, 'fire 
 lower, traitors,' he cries again, 'fire lower,' until 
 the bullets did, at length, take effect, and he fell. 
 
 Men were known to remain on duty for two 
 consecutive days and three nights, without inter- 
 mission. But there are limits to what man can do. 
 It was becoming clear that the desperate struggle 
 was approaching its end. In the Manara Brigade 
 there were many gaps, but still it fought on. 
 Young Morosini, seventeen years old, and called 
 by the battalion their guardian angel, had so far 
 escaped. His lips moving in prayer, he had ever 
 been in the thick of the fight, taking his part in
 
 250 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 it with the coolness of a veteran. To him, as to 
 many, it was a holy war. At the side of Enrico 
 Dandolo when he had met his death, he had 
 kept his place, exposed to the fire of the enemy, 
 until his friend needed him no more. But his 
 own time was come. On the evening of the 
 2 Qth of June he parted for the last time from the 
 unfortunate Emilio Dandolo, doomed to see one 
 comrade after another disappear from the ranks 
 and to remain behind to mourn them. 
 
 The rain was falling in torrents, night closing in 
 in darkness and tempest. Dandolo, a mortal sad- 
 ness oppressing him, like a premonition of coming 
 disaster, had accompanied Morosini to his post. 
 An hour before midnight, Dandolo's own duty 
 calling him elsewhere, it became necessary for 
 them to part. The two lads kissed each other in 
 the darkness, the elder entreating Morosini to do 
 what lay within his power to preserve himself for 
 those who loved him. 
 
 His friend's forebodings were justified. That 
 night, or rather in the early morning of the fatal 
 3oth of June the day when Manara also met his 
 death Morosini fell, struck by a bullet. Rushing 
 forward, four of his soldiers succeeded in lifting 
 him on to a litter and carrying him out of the fight. 
 But on their way to the Villa Spada they were met 
 and stopped by a party of the enemy. 
 
 ' Qui vive ? ' cried the Frenchmen. 
 
 ' Prisoniers' replied Morosini faintly. 
 
 The men, however, suspicious of a fraud, pressed 
 on ; when the boy, raising himself from his blood-
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 251 
 
 stained litter and already mortally wounded, drew 
 his sword and defended himself, until compelled by 
 a second wound to give up the fight. 
 
 Moved by his gallantry, the French soldiers 
 carried him to their ambulance ; and thirty hours 
 later he passed quietly away, serene and calm, ' il 
 piu fanciullo di tutti noi? as Dandolo records. 
 
 In the Villa Spada, meanwhile, to which his men 
 had attempted to carry Morosini, Manara and some 
 thirty of his faithful followers had barricaded them- 
 selves. The defence of the place had already 
 lasted a couple of hours when, as he stood by the 
 side of his chief, Dandolo was, for the second time, 
 wounded, though on this occasion only in his arm. 
 
 ( Per Dio,' exclaimed the Colonel, 'are you 
 always to be the one to be struck? Am I to 
 take nothing away from Rome ? ' 
 
 His jealousy was premature. A few minutes 
 later, as he stood reconnoitring the position from 
 the window, he was shot through the body. 
 
 From the first it was clear that the wound was 
 mortal. 
 
 'I am a dead man,' he said to Dandolo. 'I 
 commend my children to you. . . . Do not leave 
 me,' he entreated, letting his hand fall into his 
 friend's, as they carried him through a broken 
 window to the ambulance in the open country be- 
 yond. ' Let me die in peace. Do not move me.' 
 
 The battle was still going on. All around the 
 air was filled with the sounds of strife. But 
 Manara's last fight was over, and possibly the pro- 
 portionate value of earthly issues was already
 
 252 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 undergoing for him that notable change effected by 
 the approach of death. 
 
 With Emilio Dandolo too the duties of the soldier 
 had given temporary place to those of the friend. 
 It was clear that these last would not long detain 
 him. 
 
 ' Think of the Lord,' said the convent-bred boy, 
 bending over the dying man and striving to pre- 
 pare him for the gran passaggio. 
 
 1 Oh, I do think of Him,' was Manara's answer, 
 ' and much.' 
 
 His desire for the Viaticum was granted. From 
 a Capuchin he received the Sacraments of the 
 dying. Afterwards there was silence ; until, rous- 
 ing himself, he spoke of his little sons, bidding his 
 friend bring them up in the love of religion and 
 of their country. Then, as Dandolo's tears fell, 
 thick and fast, 'It grieves you that I die?' he 
 asked, adding simply, ' I, also, am sorry. . . .' 
 
 One wish expressed by him could not, alas, be 
 gratified. It was that Morosini, himself dying, 
 though Manara was ignorant of the fact, at the 
 time in the camp of the enemy, might be near him 
 in this last hour. For the rest, he was at peace 
 with all, causing his orderly to be summoned, that 
 he might obtain his forgiveness for any impatience 
 he had shown him. 
 
 Nor was he, in his agony, forgetful either of the 
 comrade who had preceded him to the unknown 
 country, or of the brother who was left to mourn 
 alone. 
 
 * Saluterb tuo fratello per te, rie vero ? ' he
 
 MANARA AND HIS FRIENDS 253 
 
 promised Dandolo. Then, as the pain grew 
 intolerable, ' O Bertini,' he implored his friend 
 and surgeon, ' let me die quickly I suffer too 
 much/ 
 
 Faint from grief and exhaustion, Emilio, the 
 narrator of the scene, lost consciousness. When 
 he recovered it, the end was at hand. 
 
 Four hundred men, the remnant of the nine who 
 had made up the regiment, haggard and worn and 
 unofficered, followed their boy-colonel to his grave, 
 and Ugo Bassi, the Barnabite friar, Garibaldi's 
 friend, pronounced the funeral oration. Of Enrico 
 Dandolo's company there remained no more than 
 ten or twelve men, all told, nor was one lieutenant 
 left to lead them. The bier was covered with a 
 blood-stained tunic, and a hundred wounded 
 soldiers dragged themselves painfully after it. 
 
 Out of the quartette of friends made up by 
 Manara, the two Dandolos, and young Morosini, 
 Emilio Dandolo alone survived the siege of Rome. 
 For a few years his life was prolonged, haunted 
 by the memory of the scenes through which he had 
 passed, and shadowed by a melancholy never, for 
 long together, dispelled. Then, falling a victim to 
 gradual decline, he too died. Till the last he had 
 cherished the hope of being permitted to strike 
 another blow for Italy, and had clung to the possi- 
 bility that he might take part in the fresh struggle 
 for liberty then impending. 
 
 'Do what you will with me,' he implored, 'so 
 that I am able to mount a horse in two months.'
 
 254 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 But it was not to be. At twenty-eight he went 
 to swell the number of those whose warfare is 
 over. 
 
 Suspicious and hostile, the Austrians watched 
 the crowds collected to do honour to his memory. 
 A dead Dandolo, with the memories clustering 
 round the name, was still to be feared. In the 
 middle of the funeral service a message from the 
 authorities forbade his burial in the suburban 
 cemetery to which it had been arranged that his 
 body should be borne. But the prohibition was 
 disregarded. The original intention was carried 
 out, an innumerable multitude following the coffin, 
 with its tricoloured wreath, to the place where it 
 was to find sepulture. And a sudden cry arose 
 a cry which must have sounded ominously in the 
 ears of the Austrians as they looked on, armed 
 but afraid to interfere ' Viva Italia, viva gli eroi 
 Italiani ! '
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 SUCH a series of sketches as have been given here 
 are, in some sort, melancholy reading. Nor is it 
 possible, by the nature of the case, that it should 
 be otherwise. For the revolutionist, flinging him- 
 self against the solid obstructive mass presented 
 by the society of his day, can scarcely fail to be 
 shattered in the process, and whether or not his 
 work survive, it is unlikely that he himself will 
 escape destruction. 
 
 Out of those whose stories have been told in 
 the present volume, Harrison and Saint-Just 
 perished upon the scaffold ; Toussaint in prison ; 
 Mitchel, after less than three years of the fight, 
 was sent to finish the rest of his life in exile ; 
 Manara, at twenty-three, died, with most of his 
 comrades, upon the field of battle. Nor is there 
 anything exceptional in such terminations to the 
 revolutionist's career. They represent, on the 
 contrary, its natural and logical end. 
 
 If he does not make his reckoning with such 
 chances, and enter upon his hazardous enterprise 
 with a full appreciation of the perils of the way, it 
 is not that he has been left without warning. To 
 say nothing of the standing menace contained in 
 the facts of history, it is astonishing how large a 
 
 255
 
 256 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 number of persons have made it their special busi- 
 ness, ever since man took his place as a wayfarer 
 upon this globe, to deface the highways and by- 
 ways of life by the multitudinous finger-posts 
 pointing out the dangers of every road. Each 
 prophet of evil has a discovery of his own in this 
 line to proclaim. Death, intending travellers are 
 admonished, lies in this direction, disaster in that ; 
 and since every thoroughfare hitherto explored has 
 been found to lead in the end to the first, and with 
 a scarcely inferior degree of certainty to the second, 
 it is manifest that an attempt to controvert the 
 statement is labour lost. But a single truth is not 
 seldom a lie, and its complement is necessary be- 
 fore it can be accepted as a sound working maxim. 
 If danger lies on the right hand, the left is not there- 
 fore exempt from peril ; and you must be ready to 
 promise a man immortality before you can scare 
 him into inaction by the menace of death. 
 
 But though all this may be theoretically ad- 
 mitted, the practice of setting up these danger 
 signals still continues, and has moreover an air of 
 benevolence about it that makes a protest come 
 near to an act of irreligion. The world's path- 
 ways, it is contended, are strewn with the bones of 
 those whose destruction might at least have been 
 retarded by a timely attention to the cautions thus 
 bestowed ; and the fates of those vindicators of 
 rights of way who go by the name of revolution- 
 ists are, in particular, cited to deter others from 
 following in their steps. 
 
 It is true that these adventurers are precluded
 
 CONCLUSION 257 
 
 by natural causes from giving evidence in the case. 
 It is not possible to put a Harrison, a Toussaint, 
 or a Saint-Just into the witness-box, and elicit 
 their regrets for the path they elected to pursue ; 
 and in the absence of testimony so conclusive, it 
 may be pardonable to question whether, were it 
 forthcoming, it would be found to point altogether 
 in the anticipated direction. There is no subject 
 upon which men are more likely to differ than upon 
 the method to be pursued in order to get the 
 most out of life. ' I did not want to find, when I 
 came to die,' said Thoreau, justifying his own 
 experiment, ' that I had never lived . . . living is 
 so dear.' With the sentiment thus expressed few 
 will disagree ; but when it comes to settling upon 
 the surest means of profiting by the span of life 
 allotted to man here below, there will scarcely be 
 fewer opinions than there are those to form them. 
 
 Nor is it so simple a matter as might be expected, 
 to turn men, by a mathematical demonstration of 
 probable consequences, from their course. ' God,' 
 says Sir Walter Raleigh, ' Who is the Author of 
 all our tragedies, hath written out for us, and ap- 
 pointed us all the parts we have to play ' ; and in 
 this supreme Ruler of destinies, by whatever name 
 they may elect to call Him, a Saint-Just, laying with 
 blood-stained hands the foundations of the paradise 
 upon earth on which his eyes were set, may have 
 been scarcely less a believer than a Toussaint, as 
 he responded with simple faith to a call from 
 heaven. There are dreams rendering men in- 
 different to danger, and aims which supersede the 
 
 R
 
 258 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 allurements of paths of pleasantness and peace. 
 To anticipate that the adventurer will be turned 
 from his purpose by a prediction of misfortune is 
 to betray a confidence in the docility of human 
 nature, far from being borne out by facts. It is, 
 on the contrary, scarcely too much to assert that 
 the majority of men, at the period of life when 
 such warnings are oftenest called for, certified that 
 death was lying in wait for them at the other side 
 of the wall, would only be stimulated the more to 
 try a fall with the enemy. 
 
 Even, however, when the unlikelihood of the 
 deterrent effect of remonstrance is admitted, it 
 will probably be urged, in defence of the finger- 
 post, that a man likes to choose his course with 
 open eyes, and to know where he is going. But, 
 granted that the argument is founded upon a general 
 truth and there are dissenters enough from the 
 assumed desire to constitute a minority worth 
 taking into account moralists and philosophers 
 will be ready to agree, with quite uncommon 
 unanimity, that what a man imagines himself to 
 want is by no means invariably that which it will 
 profit him to possess, and that circumstances may 
 easily occur when the exercise of a discriminating 
 charity will withhold it. The exchange of ignor- 
 ance for knowledge is in particular not seldom a 
 doubtful bargain, and it will scarcely be denied 
 that to take it for granted that the generality of 
 human kind will be the happier for being told 
 whither they are bound, unfortunately implies alto- 
 gether too optimistic a view of the situation. If
 
 CONCLUSION 259 
 
 we are fated to be lost in a morass, it will not 
 materially minister to our cheerfulness to be 
 apprised beforehand of our approaching doom ; nor 
 will a man fight the better for being convinced 
 that he will fall. 
 
 Furthermore, if it be allowed that the prophecy 
 of evil is unlikely to increase the sum of human 
 happiness, it is still less open to question that to 
 reduce dreams to certainty, were the transmutation 
 possible, would be the destruction of quite an incal- 
 culable amount of hope. The mist which covers 
 to-morrow, even if to-morrow is not to be wholly a 
 day of disaster, is a possession of no little value ; 
 and taking the possibilities of life, good and bad, 
 fairly into account, and weighing them against anti- 
 cipation, we may well hesitate before robbing our 
 neighbour of his uncertainties. It is better, if he 
 is minded for adventure, that he should set out 
 with a sanguine heart on the quest of the unattain- 
 able, than that learning beyond possibility of doubt 
 that his ideal is not to be realised, and taking that 
 melancholy conviction home, he should resign him- 
 self, in sullen submission, to toil all his life as a city 
 clerk, or accept a post at the receipt of custom. 
 The worldly wise, from their unenviable vantage- 
 ground of knowledge if knowledge it be cannot 
 be too careful how they destroy other men's hopes. 
 
 Neither must it be forgotten that the man who 
 seeks a better country, spiritual or temporal, for 
 himself or for his race, already since faith, as we 
 know, is the substance of things hoped for in a 
 sense enjoys the possession of it. It is a treasure
 
 260 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 of which those who labour to discourage his enter- 
 prise will do ill to deprive him. How large a pro- 
 portion, one wonders, of the Israelitish army would 
 have set out from Egypt had a sign-post, telling as 
 usual a half truth, warned them that the road they 
 were pursuing terminated at the Red Sea ? Or how 
 many wanderers might have retraced their steps 
 and gone back into bondage, had mile-stones 
 after our officious modern fashion indicating their 
 rate of progress, demonstrated to each pilgrim the 
 improbability that he would take personal pos- 
 session of the promised land ? Yet who will deny 
 that death in the desert, with that illuminating 
 hope to cheer him, was better than the lifelong 
 labour of making bricks without straw ; just as 
 Manara's heroic failure, or L'Ouverture's protracted 
 agony, or the melancholy ends of some at least of 
 those ' sceptiques pleins defoi^\MQ served as pioneers 
 in the reconstruction of French society, were surely 
 to be preferred to the ignoble and selfish lives of men 
 who lifted no hand to emancipate a race, or regen- 
 erate a nation, or who had never made the attempt 
 to materialise the dream of liberty and brother- 
 hood. There is a generosity and a faith in breasting 
 the unknown, and in stepping forward in the night, 
 that can never be equalled by action based upon a 
 nice calculation of chances ; and, to quote a saying 
 of Cromwell's, a man never rises so high as when 
 he knows not whither he is going. Though failure 
 should be the result, it is better to have been 
 beaten than never to have fought, better to expect 
 than even to have ; nor can a man be pronounced
 
 CONCLUSION 261 
 
 wholly unfortunate till he has lost the second of 
 the theological virtues. 
 
 It will therefore be seen that the rashness of 
 those who, as the saying is, go out to meet mis- 
 fortune and it cannot be denied that the revolu- 
 tionist belongs to that class has something to be 
 said for it, even from the standpoint of those to 
 whom the happiness of the adventurer himself is 
 the object principally to be considered. The truth 
 is, that the eagerness displayed to prevent the 
 taking of a wrong turning this over-heedful hus- 
 bandry of force is based upon a misconception, 
 and is due to the fallacy which places success at 
 the problematical goal alone. Whereas meaning 
 by the term anything that is worth striving for it 
 is in truth scattered all along the path, and laurels 
 grow in every wayside hedge ; so that whether 
 the traveller falls out of the march at the outset, or 
 in the middle, or at the end, is no such great 
 matter after all. One would sometimes imagine, 
 from the safeguards with which existence is sur- 
 rounded, that an eternity was at stake. But once 
 master the fact so certain, yet so strangely, be- 
 wilderingly elusive that the end, as far as life on 
 this planet is concerned, is one of hurrying and 
 predestined failure, and that indefinite prolongation 
 of happiness here below, with the skull and cross- 
 bones staring us in the face, is out of the question, 
 and it is astonishing how affairs are simplified and 
 anxieties dwindle, until the issues, resolving them- 
 selves into the alternatives of a roadside grave, or 
 a decent funeral in the cemetery, or a sepulchre
 
 262 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 with a fitting inscription in the family vault, do 
 not seem worth taking seriously into account. 
 
 A more important question than that of ultimate 
 success again from the point of view of personal 
 happiness is concerned with the inquiry whether, 
 in the generality of instances, it is possible for the 
 revolutionist, confronted with the realities of the 
 struggle, and gradually learning to measure the 
 nature and limitation of the probable results, 
 to preserve the sanguine temper he set out with 
 upon his quest. In his case, more than in that 
 of other men, the saying is probably true, that 
 the loved of the gods die young. It is well that 
 Manara and his comrades did not live to com- 
 pare reality with their dreams. In the case of 
 those, like Toussaint or John Mitchel, whose days 
 are prolonged till they have seen the lights shift, 
 morning become noonday, and noon fade into 
 evening, disappointment is inevitable ; whilst a 
 more bitter experience still must be the lot of 
 toilers who, as in the French Revolution, were 
 doomed to see the work they had begun disfigured 
 almost beyond recognition. Even for the more 
 fortunate, whose labours have been crowned with 
 success, the objects for which their lives have 
 been given may, likely enough, change their 
 relative values, and lose part at least of their 
 glamour. But to conclude that hope is therefore 
 extinguished would be rash. ' Experience,' says 
 St. Paul, ' worketh hope.' Though the words may 
 seem to some of us to contain a paradox, there 
 are men who have proved them true.
 
 CONCLUSION 263 
 
 Of those who have thrown in their lot with the 
 ranks of revolution or reform, some, finding the 
 taxes of the outlaw too heavy, have doubtless re- 
 pented their choice. Others, going further, have 
 taken their hands from the plough ; whether, like 
 Pius ix., confronted with consequences not included 
 in their reckoning ; or lured by the vision of ease 
 and comfort ; or, like Benedict Arnold, swayed by 
 still baser motives. Others, it may be, have, not 
 inexcusably, shrunk from the defacement of their 
 own work, and the marring of the ideal inseparable 
 from human endeavour. Desertion from the camp 
 is an inevitable feature of the struggle. The path 
 of the honest reformer is beset with difficulties. 
 No respectable mediocrity avails him. 'The virtues 
 of society,' says Emerson, 'are vices of the saint. 
 The terror of reform is the discovery that we must 
 cast away our virtues, or what we have always 
 esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed 
 our grosser vices.' It needs a courageous as well as 
 a strong spirit, to persevere through weariness and 
 disillusion, and to retain faith in a truth, notwith- 
 standing the accretions by which it is obscured. 
 It is no wonder if some, failing to stand the test, 
 have abandoned their place at the helm. Others, 
 however, have been gifted with a clearer vision. 
 4 To my mind,' wrote Frederick Robertson, at a 
 time when revolution was in the very air, and had 
 been caricatured in some instances, to use his own 
 expression, into devilry, ' to my mind it is a world 
 full of hope, even to bursting. . . . Some outlines 
 of a Kingdom of Christ begin to glimmer, albeit
 
 264 REVOLUTIONARY TYPES 
 
 very faintly, and far off, perhaps, by many centuries. 
 Nevertheless, a few strokes of the rough sketch by 
 a master hand are worth the seeing, though no one 
 knows yet how they shall be filled up. And those 
 bold, free, dashing marks are made too plainly to 
 be ever done out again. Made in blood as they 
 always are, and made somewhat rudely ; but the 
 Master Hand is visible through the great red 
 splotches on the canvas of the universe.' 
 
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