Robespierre and Mirabeau at the Jacobins 17 



We have shown above why Mirabeau, from having been a 

 relentless critic of Lafayette, suddenly became his protector. Two 

 passages from the Oroteur du peuple of Freron illustrate the 

 manner in which he passed from one role to the other. On the 

 evening of December 3, this paper recounts, Lafayette sent one of 

 his aides to the Jacobins because he suspected that he would be 

 denounced. As this individual, Lacombe, w^as not a member of 

 the society the censors refused to allow him to remain. After he 

 had departed, Barnave and Mirabeau fell upon Lafayette in the 

 usual fashion. Then someone read a pamphlet atrociously libel- 

 ling the Lameths, D'Aiguillon and Robespierre. Against this no 

 one made any protest, but when Lafayette's name also was brought 

 in a commotion was created. The Orateur du peuple says : 



At that moment these adoring hydrophobes began their howling accord- 

 ing to their tactics in order to drown the voice of the reader and prevent 

 the truth from being heard; it was then that Riquetti (Mirabeau) ex- 

 claimed with the full power of his lungs, " What, gentlemen ! When names 

 dear to the country are in question you do not interrupt the speaker, and 

 you are pleased to cry scandal when they name whom ! Good God ! 

 Lafayette ! " It was also Mirabeau who, when the military almanac in 

 which the sieur Motier (Lafayette) is named generalissimo of the national 

 guards of the kingdom, was under discussion, and which almanac was 

 also denounced, said at the same assembly: "Is Lafayette then mayor of 

 the palace?" In order to characterize Lafayette's devouring ambition, 

 hidden under a gentle and cold bearing, Riquetti has given him among 

 the people the sobriquet of Cromwell-Grandisson. 



That is to say, then, Mirabeau on December 3 fell in with the 

 most radical of the Jacobins in sowing the impression that Lafay- 

 ette was a most dangerous conspirator who required close watch- 

 ing. There seemed at that moment no immediate prospect that 

 Lafayette would be displaced and that the guards would fall into 

 the hands of the radicals and the sections of Paris. Then, like a 

 thunderclap came Robespierre with the suggestion that since 

 Lafayette could not be lifted from his office his office be legis- 

 lated out from under him combined with a plan to make of the 

 guards a body which by its interests would have been of necessity 

 opposed to the constitution as then in process of creation. On 

 the fifteenth of the month we find Mirabeau has changed front 



359 



