Dunno how accurate, but I Englished it with Google Translate...
COMPROMISE WITH THE COMMITTEES
A patch-up of the Committee of Public Safety appeared to be the least bad solution to safeguard the Revolution, at least in the short term. Committed for a year, despite their differences, to a policy that brought them together, their members had restored the state and saved the homeland. One would have had to be very blind not to perceive the danger of disunity. Their adversaries seized the first opportunity to regain the initiative. In the last ten days of June, the Mountain section had opened a register and invited citizens who approved the 1793 constitution to register: the maneuver was obviously aimed at calling into question the emergency government, which then had the document burned. During the first half of July, civic meals were organized, under the pretext of celebrating the victories and the impending peace. The national agent of the Paris Commune dissuaded patriots from participating. "Which one of you, after drinking to the health of the Republic with moderates, will denounce them the next day with such courage?" On the 16th, Barère at the Convention and Robespierre at the Jacobins also denounced these fraternizations, and on July 20, a certain Legray, a member of the revolutionary committee of the Museum section, was arrested for violently criticizing the excesses of the government and specifically accusing Saint-Just and Barère of being nobles.
Aware of the Robespierrists' weak position, Saint-Just maintained correct relations with the members of the Committee, except for Carnot. "I have no reason to complain, he confided; I was left undisturbed, like an unpretentious citizen walking alone." Thus, on July 14, he had Billaud countersign a decree ordering the levying of 50 million in cash from the city of Brussels, and on the 21st, he asked Collot to arrest the woman Lambert who had come to insult him. But his partners wanted assurances that he and Robespiere would not seek to play the sans-culottes against the Convention and the Committees. He then gave assurances. On the 20th, he had also signed the order to disarm the Surveillance Committees. A significant detail: while the author had indicated that the weapons would be deposited at the "Police Office," he had corrected it in his own hand: "Committee of Public Safety," no doubt to show that the said weapons would be placed at the disposal of the entire government. It was this gesture that seemed to have unblocked the implementation of the Ventôse policy so dear to Saint-Just: from July 19 to 21, the two commissions already in operation submitted their first lists of prisoners and had them approved by the Committees.
But this rapprochement was somewhat artificial because, on the 21st, at the Jacobins, Couthon, very close to Robespierre, spoke differently: "No one respects and honors the Convention more than we do. We are all willing to shed our blood a thousand times over for it. I invite my colleagues to present their thoughts to the National Convention. It is pure, it will not allow itself to be subjugated by four or five scoundrels." It is true that, on the same day, newspaper vendors were shouting: "Great arrest of Robespiere." Who had released this sensational news?
But these differences between the Robespierrists did not hinder the negotiations. On 4 Thermidor (July 22), in the absence of Couthon and Robespierre, the two Committees finally established the last four popular commissions provided for by the Ventôse decrees. Lindet himself eventually signed. Barère, whose role as conciliator is evident here, invited the Assembly "to put an end to the slander and oppression under which they sought to place the most ardent patriots who had rendered the greatest services to the Republic," which amounted to paying homage to Robespierre. Billaud-Varenne, who had gone so far as to draw up the indictment of the Incorruptible, agreed; a new plenary meeting, with Robespierre and Couthon, was scheduled for the following day.
Saint-Just therefore seems to have been able to relaunch the Ventôse policy that the Committees had been sabotaging for four months and to prepare Robespierre's return to the government.
ESTABLISH A DICTATORSHIP?
On 5 Thermidor, the two Committees met as planned. Testimonies on the content and progress of the discussion were divergent and contradictory. Saint-Just claimed to have, from the beginning, asked for a frank explanation. The evil, fueled and exploited by foreign powers, lay, he said, in the absence of institutions; The most virtuous—he was thinking of Maximilien—were suspected of aspiring to tyranny, even though they dominated neither the army, nor the finances, nor the administration. David supported the deputy from Aisne, and Billaud-Varenne said to Robespierre: "We are your friends; we have always marched together." Charged with presenting a report on the situation to the Assembly, Saint-Just would do so, he said, with respect for "the Convention and its members" and would draw attention to "public morality." Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois, always sensitive to anything that might evoke spiritualism, asked him not to speak of the Supreme Being or the immortality of the soul, to which Saint-Just reluctantly agreed.
But Saint-Just does not mention that he also signed, with Barère, Billaud, and Carnot, a decree removing from the capital four companies of sectional gunners devoted to the Robespierrists and that he apparently agreed to recognize the police prerogatives of the Committee of General Security at the expense of the Police Bureau.
It has been claimed in the entourage of Carnot and Prieur that he also called for the strengthening of the Executive. The historian Toulongeon, a former Constituent who knew many revolutionaries, reports this, and Barère asserts that, supported by David, Le Bas, and Couthon, he requested dictatorial powers for Robespierre: "The evil is at its height [said Saint-Just], you are in the most complete anarchy of powers and wills. The Convention is flooding France with unenforced and often even unenforceable laws. The representatives to the armed forces dispose of public wealth and our military destinies as they please. Representatives on mission usurp all powers, make laws, and collect gold, which they substitute with assignats. How can such political and legislative disorder be regularized? As for me, I declare on my honor and conscience, I see only one way: of salvation: this means is the concentration of power (...) A dictatorial power other than that of the two Committees is needed; a man is needed who has enough genius, strength, patriotism, and generosity to accept this use of public power (...) This man, I declare, is Robespierre: he alone can save the State. I demand that he be invested with the dictatorship and that the two Committees, meeting together, make a proposal to the Convention tomorrow."
Nothing in this speech, reported by Barère, resembles the formulas of Saint-Just, generally more political and more nuanced. But the Gascon deputy probably did not entirely invent these remarks. College teaching had long exalted the dictatorship that, in Rome, had saved the Republic on several occasions. Rousseau himself wrote: "...If the danger is such that the legal system is an obstacle to protecting oneself from it, then a supreme leader is appointed who silences all laws and temporarily suspends sovereign authority; in such a case, the general will is not in doubt, and it is evident that the people's primary intention is that the State not perish..."
Barère and the Thermidorians certainly did not understand the word in the same way and exploited its pejorative connotations to discredit their adversaries and justify their own actions. But it must be noted that the Robespierrists constantly attempted to expand their power to implement their ideas. It is entirely possible that, on 5 Thermidor, Saint-Just once again lamented the impotence of the Executive. Certainly, it was not easy not to raise the specter of despotism. Five months earlier, the deputy from Aisne had declared to the Convention: "Marat had some happy ideas about representative government that I regret he took with him; he was the only one who could have expressed them; only necessity will allow them to be heard from the lips of anyone else." The Friend of the People had lamented that power had not been concentrated in a few virtuous hands. Saint-Just believed, with Rousseau, that "a dictator could in certain cases defend public liberty without ever being able to attack it, and that the chains of Rome would not be forged in Rome itself, but in its armies." While awaiting the establishment of institutions, Robespierre appeared to him to be precisely in a position to control the victorious armies and strengthen the revolutionary legacy.
Whether or not the issue of dictatorship was raised, the meeting of 5 Thermidor was very negative for Saint-Just, who was duped. The decree on the four popular commissions was not followed by implementing texts. Maximilien received only a few polite tributes. In return, his young colleague had accepted the partial disarmament of the sections, renounced the centralization of the police, the purge of the Convention, and the publicity of his religious policy. With composure, he concealed his bitterness and did not decline responsibility for the report. That same evening, Barère was able to celebrate the restored governmental unity. But Robespierre persisted in not believing in an agreement with the Vadiers, the Billauds, the Collots, and the atheists of the two Committees. For him, much more than for Saint-Just, the question of the Supreme Being was non-negotiable. The Aisne deputy had to implicitly acknowledge that Maximilien's political analysis had been more lucid and realistic than his own. More worryingly, on the same day, a delegation from the Committee of General Security, led by Amar and Voulland, visited the 75 imprisoned "protesters" to inquire about their treatment: a seduction operation was well underway by the Committees aimed at Plaine.
Thus, in a few days, the Robespierrists had just lost the battle of the Committees, compromised their appeal to the people through their concessions, and already found themselves on the defensive at the Convention. Time was against them.
On the evening of the 6th, at the Jacobins, Couthon certainly reaffirmed the unity of the Committees but, forgetting the promise made by Saint-Just, persisted in wanting to crush "five or six small human figures whose hands were full of the riches of the Republic and dripping with the blood of the innocents they had sacrificed." He only blamed corrupt representatives and showered "the national representation" with very emphatic tributes. A speech in line with Robespierrism, but moderate enough not to displease Plaine. Maximilien, for his part, was now aware of the unfortunate consequences of his absence. Feeling the noose tightening around him, while Dubois-Crancé demanded that he explain why he had him expelled from the Jacobins, he took the podium of the Convention on the 8th.
