The French Revvie, Part VI: Toads of the Marsh

Toads in the Middle have a bad rep, but they frequently decide the outcome.

Toad thinking: Which way should I jump? Who might kill me? What’re the other toads doing?

Pierre Joseph Duhem was reputed to have said, “The toads of the Marsh are raising their heads! All the better: it will be easier to cut them off.” Duhem was a member of the Mountain (les Montagnards) in the National Convention during the last phase of the Terror. The Montagnards sat high up, to the left; their opponants, the Girondins, sat to the right, until a lot of them were executed. In the middle was a flat area known as the Plain, or the Marsh, or — if you really didn’t like them — the Swamp.

The Marsh, whose members were for the most part moderates, held the majority of the seats. In order for any motion to pass, a speaker would have to win over enough of the Marsh. Making a forceful and convincing speech might do it, so oratory was a good skill to have. Fear might do it, as well: votes were taken by raising the hand and were thus visible, so once heads started rolling you needed to calculate your chances. Robespierre was rumoured to have a list — just like the scene in Julius Caesar in which Octavius, Mark Antony, and Lepidus are figuring out who to proscribe and assassinate, and the scene in the film The Death of Stalin in which Stalin too has a list, and like the Hitler list used during the Night of the Long Knives, and, it is said, like The Orange One Who Must Not Be Named…. We could go on. Point being, you want to avoid being on such a list if at all possible. Either that, or you have to eliminate the list-maker before he eliminates you.

Julius Caesar. Octavius, Antonius, and Lepidus haggling over who is to be condemned.

Robespierre made the mistake of saying in a speech of 8 Thermidor (July 26), 1793, that there were traitors all around and he knew who they were. When challenged to reveal the names, he said that now was not the time. He thought he was safe — didn’t the virtuous People love him? Wasn’t he the Revolution incarnate? Hadn’t he stuffed the Committee of Public Safety – by that time virtually a dictatorship– full of his own loyalists? Surely no one would dare to oppose him! But because he had named no names, everyone feared they were on his list, even the Montagnards.

During the tumultuous scene in the Convention next day — 9 Thermidor — Robespierre was shouted down, and the ringleaders were members of his own Montagnard/Jacobin faction. He rushed down to appeal to the Toads of the Marsh - they must save the Revolution, namely him! But they too were afraid that they were on his list, and they rejected him. Anyway, he’d killed too many of their friends.

Robespierre being shouted down in the Convention. (Painting: Monvoisin.) Robespierre’s in the middle, with the red shirt, appealing to the Toads. Around him are his immediate circle, who got arrested and executed along with him. Above him, with the dagger, is an accuser. Lower right and off to the left, some Toads, deciding they’ve had enough of him.

Duhem, the fellow who’d threatened to cut off the heads of any unruly Toads, barely avoided having his own head cut off once the coup had taken place. These things can turn on a dime. Lesson: the Toads of the Marsh may not be flamboyant — it’s hard to make extreme speeches about moderation, or to say you’ll vote on things individually without being held to a party line — but they frequently determine who wins.

“The American election will be decided by the Independants,” I said recently to a friend. In this I was merely echoing a number of other opinions. “Oh no,” said he. “40% for Trump, 40% for Biden, unless they’re actually dead. The Independants don’t have a majority, as they did in France.” “That leaves 20,” I said. I did not add that by the Independants I really meant the moderates, and by now — as the vote on the appropriations bill just demonstrated — that includes some moderate Republicans. They were bravely willing to put country before party, and vote not to throw the USA and a whole bunch of their fellow citizens into chaos. They too know there’s an orange-guy list of those to be expunged, and that by now they themselves are probably on it: the Republican extremists would be all too happy to hang them, metaphorically or literally; as some were willing to hang Mike Pence, who also put country before party.

As for Robespierre, he was overthrown by members of his own party when he got too tyrannical. Just sayin’.