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Women in Engineering and Science

Alice E. Smith Editor

Women in
Industrial
and Systems
Engineering
Key Advances and Perspectives on
Emerging Topics
Women in Engineering and Science

Series Editor
Jill S. Tietjen
Greenwood Village, Colorado, USA

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15424

Alice E. Smith
Editor

Women in Industrial and

Systems Engineering
Key Advances and Perspectives
on Emerging Topics

123
Editor
Alice E. Smith
Department of Industrial
and Systems Engineering
Auburn University
Auburn, AL, USA

ISSN 2509-6427 ISSN 2509-6435 (electronic)

Women in Engineering and Science
ISBN 978-3-030-11865-5 ISBN 978-3-030-11866-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11866-2

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This volume is dedicated to my parents, Lois
Elizabeth Krutsch Chupp and John Paul
Chupp, now both deceased. My mother was
the first in her family of immigrants from
Russia to attend college, and while she was a
mathematics student at Purdue University,
she had the good fortune to meet Dr. Lillian
Gilbreth. My father came from a humble
Swiss Amish farming stock, but his father had
advanced himself by earning a doctorate at
Cornell University and was then a professor
there for many years. My father, a PhD in
chemistry, was proud when I earned my
doctorate, making three generations of PhDs.
My parents’ examples and encouragement
facilitated my career in engineering
academia, and I am grateful to them for that,
as well as for so much more.
Foreword

Margaret L. Brandeau is the Coleman F. Fung Professor of Engineering and

Professor of Medicine (by Courtesy) at Stanford University. My research focuses on
the development of applied mathematical and economic models to support health
policy decisions. My recent work has examined HIV and drug abuse prevention
and treatment programs, programs to control the opioid epidemic, and preparedness
plans for public health emergencies.
My undergraduate studies were at MIT, in mathematics. I followed in my father’s
footsteps to MIT. However, while he studied electrical engineering, I chose math, a
subject I have always loved. I was finished with my degree by the end of junior
year, but did not want to graduate so soon, so I started taking some interesting
applied mathematics and systems analysis classes. Then, I found out that the courses
I was taking would fulfill the requirements for a master’s degree in operations
research—a discipline I had never heard of—so I also earned an MS degree in
operations research. After working for 2 years, I moved to Stanford, where I earned a
PhD in Engineering-Economic Systems—again taking interesting classes in applied
mathematics and systems analysis. Along the way, I published a number of papers
about the projects I was working on. I didn’t realize it then, but this was great
preparation for being a faculty member.

vii
viii Foreword

I joined the Stanford faculty in 1985 and have been there ever since, working on
interesting problems with amazingly talented students and colleagues. I wouldn’t
change a single day!
Broadly speaking, industrial engineering focuses on determining how best to
organize people, money, and material to produce and distribute goods and services.
Industrial engineering has its roots in the industrial revolution in the mid-18th
to early nineteenth century. As production shifted from small enterprises to large-
scale factories, and the production of goods became increasingly mechanized and
specialized, factory owners realized that improving the efficiency of these new
production processes could reduce waste and increase productivity.
One of the first scientific studies of work processes was The Principles of
Scientific Management by Frederick Taylor (1911). Taylor, who is known as the
father of industrial engineering, set forth principles for organizing, planning, and
standardizing work. Around this time, a young man named Frank Gilbreth, who
had started a job as a bricklayer’s helper, began to study the practices of different
bricklayers, trying to determine “the one best way” to perform the task. In 1904,
he married Lillian Moller, an engineer who also became his work partner in their
business and engineering consulting firm.
Lillian Moller Gilbreth was one of the first women engineers to earn a PhD (in
psychology). She worked for many years applying industrial engineering concepts
such as time and motion studies to improve work processes, first with her husband
and then on her own for many years after his death. Her work emphasized a human
approach to scientific management. During her career, Lillian Gilbreth published
numerous books and papers, some with her husband and some on her own. If
Frederick Taylor is the father of industrial engineering, Lillian Gilbreth is surely
the mother of industrial engineering.1
From this beginning nearly 100 years ago, it is wonderful to see an entire
volume of work by women industrial engineers. Since those early days, industrial
engineering has of course changed, and this is reflected in this volume. Once
focused on factory control, industrial engineering now focuses more broadly on
both manufacturing and services. Once focused on techniques such as time and
motion studies and Gantt charts, industrial engineering now includes a wide range
of modern computational and analytical techniques.
In this volume, 59 women (and 3 male coauthors) present their work in 25 chap-
ters covering such diverse topics as logistics costs in warehousing, container depot
operations, multimodal transportation systems, price contracts in manufacturing,
crop cultivation, food supply chains, healthcare operations, patient safety, clinical
decision-making, disease modeling, and education. Methodologies discussed in
these chapters are similarly broad and include human factors engineering, statistics,

1 Lillian
Gilbreth also had 12 children. Her family life was famously immortalized in the book
Cheaper by the Dozen, written by two of her children, Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth
Carey. Growing up, this was one of my favorite books. In 1994, I had the great pleasure of meeting
Ernestine.
Foreword ix

decision analysis, graph theory, simulation, optimization, stochastic modeling, and

machine learning.
Industrial engineering has come a long way since its beginnings on the shop
floors of England. Looking to the future, services are forming an ever-increasing
share of economic output, both in the United States and elsewhere. Entire industries
are being rapidly transformed via analytics and computation. Digitization and
machine learning in the workplace are changing the nature and structure of work and
the nature and structure of organizations. Automation and robotics have replaced
many jobs once done by people. Increasing numbers of people are employed as
“knowledge workers.” Digital platforms that allow for spontaneously matching
customer needs with available resources are becoming more pervasive. Industrial
engineering has evolved and will continue to evolve in the face of these and other
changes.
I hope that, as industrial engineering evolves, the numbers and roles of women
in industrial engineering will also continue to evolve. The field of industrial
engineering has been greatly enriched by the contributions of women. Women bring
a diversity of experiences and viewpoints and, often, creative new ways of solving
problems. This book showcases the work of 59 such women. I hope that many more
amazing women will contribute to solving the important problems of the future—
and help us determine how best to organize people, money, and material to produce
and distribute goods and services in our changing world.
Contents

Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Part I Background
1 Lillian Moller Gilbreth: An Industrial Engineering Pioneer . . . . . . . . . . 3
Jill S. Tietjen

Part II Analytics
2 Emergence of Statistical Methodologies with the Rise
of BIG Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Nedret Billor and Asuman S. Turkmen
3 Specifying and Validating Probabilistic Inputs for Prescriptive
Models of Decision Making over Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Sarah McAllister Ryan
4 Towards a Stable Graph Representation Learning Using
Connection Subgraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Saba A. Al-Sayouri and Sarah S. Lam
5 Parameter Tuning Problem in Metaheuristics: A Self-Adaptive
Local Search Algorithm for Combinatorial Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Cigdem Alabas-Uslu and Berna Dengiz
6 A Partition-Based Optimization Approach for Level Set
Approximation: Probabilistic Branch and Bound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Zelda B. Zabinsky and Hao Huang

Part III Education

7 Modeling Engineering Student Success Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Tracee Walker Gilbert, Janis Terpenny, and Tonya Smith-Jackson

xi
xii Contents

8 A Study of Critical Thinking and Cross-Disciplinary

Teamwork in Engineering Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Hulya Julie Yazici, Lisa A. Zidek, and Halcyon St. Hill

Part IV Health
9 Healthcare Teams Can Give Quality Patient Care, but at Lower
Environmental Impact: Patient-Centered Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Janet Twomey and Michael Overcash
10 Improving Patient Care Transitions at Rural and Urban
Hospitals Through Risk Stratification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Shan Xie and Yuehwern Yih
11 To Be Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Using Decision Modeling
to Personalize Policy in Health, Hunger Relief, and Education . . . . . . . 233
Julie Simmons Ivy, Muge Capan, Karen Hicklin, Nisha Nataraj,
Irem Sengul Orgut, Amy Craig Reamer, and Anita Vila-Parrish
12 Improving Patient Safety in the Patient Journey: Contributions
from Human Factors Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Pascale Carayon and Abigail R. Wooldridge
13 Advanced Medical Imaging Analytics in Breast Cancer Diagnosis . . . 301
Yinlin Fu, Bhavika K. Patel, Teresa Wu, Jing Li, and Fei Gao
14 Decision-Making in Sequential Adaptive Clinical Trials, with
Implications for Drug Misclassification and Resource Allocation . . . . 321
Alba C. Rojas-Cordova, Ebru K. Bish, and Niyousha Hosseinichimeh
15 Calibration Uncertainty and Model-Based Analyses with
Applications to Ovarian Cancer Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Jing Voon Chen and Julia L. Higle

Part V Logistics
16 Contributions to Humanitarian and Non-profit Operations:
Equity Impacts on Modeling and Solution Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Burcu Balcik and Karen Smilowitz
17 Simulation-Based Approach to Evaluate the Effects of Food
Supply Chain Mitigation and Compliance Strategies
on Consumer Behavior and Risk Communication Methods . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Jessye Talley and Lauren B. Davis
18 Contributions of Women to Multimodal Transportation Systems . . . . 417
Heather Nachtmann
Contents xiii

19 Combining Exact Methods to Construct Effective Hybrid

Approaches to Vehicle Routing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Rym M’Hallah
20 Modeling and Analysis of the Port Logistical Business
Processes and Categorization of Main Logistics Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
Carla Vairetti, Rosa G. González-Ramírez, Luisa Fernanda Spaggiari,
and Alejandra Gómez Padilla
21 Using Simulation to Improve Container Depot Operations . . . . . . . . . . . 487
Jimena Pascual and Alice E. Smith

Part VI Production
22 Sustainability and Life Cycle Product Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
Deborah Thurston and Sara Behdad
23 Dynamic Price and Lead Time Quotation Strategies to Match
Demand and Supply in Make-to-Order Manufacturing
Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
Esma S. Gel, Pinar Keskinocak, and Tuba Yilmaz
24 Oyster Mushroom Cultivation as an Economic and Nutritive
Alternative for Rural Low-Income Women in Villapinzón
(Colombia). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
Natalia Vargas, Carmen Gutierrez, Silvia Restrepo, and Nubia Velasco
25 Data-Driven Intelligent Predictive Maintenance of Industrial
Assets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
Olga Fink

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
 Part I
Background
Chapter 1
Lillian Moller Gilbreth: An Industrial
Engineering Pioneer

Jill S. Tietjen

Contents
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Early Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 The One Best Marriage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 On Her Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.5 Honors and Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

1.1 Introduction

Career interest tests. The butter dish, egg tray, and vegetable and meat drawers
in your refrigerator. The pump and return water hose on your washing machine.
The foot pedal trash can. The design of the kitchen triangle. Accommodations for
disabled people. What do these all have in common? They are the legacy of the
“First Lady of Engineering” also called “The Mother of Industrial Engineering,”
“the Mother of Ergonomics,” and “the greatest woman engineer in the world,”
one of the founders of the field of industrial engineering, Lillian Moller Gilbreth.
She and her husband, Frank Gilbreth, are considered two of the cornerstones of
the field of industrial engineering—a branch of engineering that is concerned with
optimizing complex systems, processes, and organizations. Frank’s focus was “The
One Best Way” to do any task or series of tasks. Lillian’s strength was bringing the
social sciences to bear in combination with the mathematical and physical sciences.
Popularized in books and movies as the mother of 12 children (Cheaper by the
Dozen and Belles on Their Toes), Gilbreth (see Fig. 1.1) was not only a mother but
also a significant force as a pioneering woman industrial psychologist and engineer.
Her story is fascinating and too rarely known (Des 2013; Lancaster 2004).

J. S. Tietjen ()
Technically Speaking, Inc., Greenwood Village, CO, USA

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 3

A. E. Smith (ed.), Women in Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Women in Engineering and Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11866-2_1
4 J. S. Tietjen

Fig. 1.1 Portrait of Lillian

Moller Gilbreth. Courtesy of
Walter P. Reuther Library,
Wayne State University

1.2 Early Years

Growing up in a conventional household of the day, Lillian Moller (Gilbreth) (1878–

1972) was the oldest of nine children, expected to conform to what was then deemed
proper behavior for women. Very gifted academically, she was able to convince her
father to let her attend the University of California while she lived at home and cared
for the family. The first woman in the university’s history to speak at commencement
in 1900, Lillian received her B.A. in literature at the top of her class (although she
did not make Phi Beta Kappa due to her gender). After briefly attending Columbia
University, she reentered the University of California, earned her master’s degree in
literature in 1902 and began work on her Ph.D. (Des 2013; Proffitt 1999).
As was also common for women of her social class of her day, Lillian took
a trip abroad before delving too deeply into her doctoral work. While in Boston
preparing to board her ship, the chaperone for the trip—Miss Minnie Bunker, who
was a teacher in the Oakland, California schools—introduced Lillian to her cousin
Frank, who owned a construction business. Frank Bunker Gilbreth, who had not
attended college and whose passion was finding the “One Best Way” to do any task,
and Lillian became enamored with each other. Frank and Lillian decided to marry—
embarking on the One Best Marriage—which involved a sharing of home life and
work life. After their engagement was announced but before their marriage—Lillian
on the West Coast, Frank on the East Coast—Lillian was already editing Frank’s
manuscripts for publication and critiquing his advertising brochures which he sent
to her for this exact purpose. She edited his confidential management booklet “Field
1 Lillian Moller Gilbreth: An Industrial Engineering Pioneer 5

System,” reorganized it, fixed the grammar, and added an index. They were married
in October 1904 (Des 2013; Lancaster 2004; Proffitt 1999; Yost 1943; Gilbreth Jr
1970).

1.3 The One Best Marriage

After their marriage, it became apparent that Lillian’s selected areas of study
for her Ph.D.—English and Comparative Literature—were not going to work for
the couple’s idea of shared work life. Instead, she became Frank’s engineering
apprentice, learning the types of work he used in his construction business. That
education began in earnest on their honeymoon. As their family began to grow,
much of that apprenticeship actually occurred at home. And, it was decided that
her Ph.D. would be in the field of industrial psychology (Proffitt 1999; Yost 1943,
1949).
As Frank wrote about his original work methods, Lillian served as editor, thus
learning the business thoroughly. She also took care of all client calls. In addition,
Lillian was the researcher. She also went on site visits and met Kate Gleason, one
of the very few, if not the only, woman heading an engineering company at the
time, during a visit to Rochester, New York. Lillian located and sifted through the
materials that would be incorporated in Frank’s speeches at universities and at pitch
meetings to clients. Her role of editor and writer was such that she should have
been acknowledged as the co-author of Frank’s books including Concrete System
(1908), Bricklaying System (1909), and Motion Study (1911). Concrete System and
Bricklaying System were two books that Lillian insisted be written to document
methods already in practice on Frank’s jobs and to expand the Gilbreth system.
Bricklaying System described what Frank called “Motion Study” to cut product costs
and increase efficiency. Frank and Lillian said “Motion Study” should be applied to
all industries so that workers and management would share the benefits (Des 2013;
Lancaster 2004; Yost 1943; Gilbreth Jr 1970).
Lillian also became convinced that human beings in the industry needed to be
approached through psychology. The tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
in 1911 further reinforced her belief that the workers needed to be considered
and she worried that much damage had been done through the introduction of
efficiency mechanisms without consideration of the cost to human beings (Des
2013; Lancaster 2004; Yost 1943).
Her ideas began to appear in these works. For example, in Motion Study
(1911), there is mention of a worker’s physiology as well as his temperament and
contentment in the factory. Further, workers needed adequate tools, an environment
that was pleasing, some form of entertainment, and a clear understanding of the
reward and punishment system in place. [These same ideas appear in Lillian’s
first doctoral dissertation.] In Field System (1908), employers were encouraged
to set up suggestion boxes and to ensure that workers had periodicals that would
provide mental stimulation. All workers, including factory hands, office workers,
6 J. S. Tietjen

schoolteachers, homemakers, farmers and store clerks—a much broader range

of “worker” than incorporated in the new field of Scientific Management—were
included in the Gilbreths’ writings (Des 2013).
Their home became their office and laboratory. Their children shared family
responsibilities that included investigating the One Best Way. These included the
One Best Way for dusting, for setting and clearing the dinner table and for washing
dishes, among others. During summers, their efforts were filmed and the children
could watch themselves to determine how to do a task more efficiently and in less
time. Sometimes the tasks applied to work projects that Frank and Lillian were
working on—such as the best way to pack soap in boxes. One time, it involved
picking berries—which turned out to be one of the earliest films ever made to
show motions in agricultural processes. Another time it involved touch typing. The
children tested two theories—one of which involved color coding keys and fingers—
and went to school with multi-colored fingernails! (Yost 1943; Gilbreth Jr 1970).
Each person was expected to participate according to his or her aptitudes and
abilities. The 3-year-old participated, but only to the extent that worked and made
sense. Lillian believed that personal capabilities were a sacred trust that each
individual should develop. She helped management and workers understand the
benefits of collaboration and to accept the responsibility for working together and
not at odds with each other. She became an expert in the areas of worker fatigue
and production. Her expertise and insights were of great benefit as these were the
years during which scientific management was being developed and just coming
into general use (Proffitt 1999; Yost 1943).
Lillian’s remarks at the Tuck School of Dartmouth College for the first Confer-
ence on Scientific Management in 1911 at which she was probably the only female
presenter, where she reported on the key tenets of her first Ph.D. dissertation, offered
the perspective that humans were the most important element of engineering tasks
and thus psychology needed to be considered by industrial engineers in putting
together their programs. She had been introduced for her turn at the podium as
“We have all been watching the quiet work of one individual who has been working
along lines apparently absolutely different from those being followed by another
worker in the scientific management field and I wonder if Lillian Gilbreth would
like to say a few words about her work” (Des 2013; Proffitt 1999; Yost 1943, 1949).
Lillian remarks included (Lancaster 2004; Graham 1998):
I did not expect to speak in this place but I feel as though I must. I feel that the gap between
the problems of academic efficiency and industrial efficiency, which is after all only an
apparent gap, can be easily closed if only we will consider the importance of the psychology
of management. I spent several years examining and studying it and it seems to me that
Scientific Management as laid down by Mr. Taylor conforms absolutely with psychology.
Principles of vocational guidance may be studied along psychological lines to train the
individual so he will know exactly what he does want to do. It is the place of the colleges to
train the man so that when he comes into his work there will be no jar. Since the underlying
aim is the same and since psychology is the method by which we are all getting there, isn’t it
merely a question of difference of vocabulary between academic work and scientific work?
Why not bridge this gap and all go ahead together?
18 J. S. Tietjen

career achievement as she said it had done the most good (Perusek 2000). As she
lectured around the country as a psychologist and engineer, she said “The mental
state of the disabled is all-important. If a person has the normal American outlook,
the optimism, the belief in God, man and the future, it is a beginning.” She served
on committees for other Presidents as well including Eisenhower, Kennedy, and
Johnson dealing with topics including civil defense and the problems of aging
(Lancaster 2004; Gilbreth Jr 1970).
At the end of the postwar recession, she had numerous work assignments both
in the USA and overseas. She also was well known as a scientific researcher in
academic circles. Her work style was described thusly: (Lancaster 2004)
The pattern is always the same: first, Dr. Gilbreth has a helpful idea; next she inspires
someone to start a pilot project to explore the idea. She herself stands by to help if needed.
She offers few suggestions but asks many, many penetrating questions. As the pilot project
develops she spreads the news, mentions it in her talks, discusses it with people who have
something helpful to offer, particularly management people and generally stimulates an
exchange of ideas until finally the baby project is “born” into a welcoming climate where
it can grow and prosper and expand.

From 1954 to 1958, she worked with Harold Smalley to apply industrial
engineering to hospitals. In his textbook, issued in 1966, he stated “one of the most
significant developments in the methods improvement movement occurred in 1945
when Dr. Lillian M. Gilbreth . . . began to urge that hospitals take advantage of the
tools and techniques of industrial engineering.” With Smalley, Lillian researched
nursing, organization of hospital supplies and the best types of hospital beds
(Lancaster 2004).
Her postwar work also extended her efforts with the disabled; her audience was
now primarily “handicapped homemakers” in lieu of the “crippled soldiers” with
whom she was involved after World War I. For almost 10 years, she worked in
this area which she regarded as her most important contribution to motion study.
She demonstrated how disabled women could perform a variety of tasks around the
house including keeping house in a wheelchair, peeling a potato with one hand,
and making a bed while on crutches. The Heart Kitchen, which she developed
in collaboration with the New York Heart Association, was an outgrowth of the
Kitchen Practical where the kitchen was fitted to the height of its occupants. She
taught courses at Rutgers where students learned to place items requiring water near
the sink and those implements needed for cooking near the stove. She worked with
teams comprised of industrial engineers, home economists, rehabilitation experts,
psychologists, and architects to build a model kitchen. Many non-disabled people
would see the kitchen and wonder if it was possible for them to acquire the Heart
Kitchen (Lancaster 2004; Gilbreth Jr 1970).
From 1953 to 1964, Lillian served as a consultant to the University of Connecti-
cut. Originating from a conference she organized on work simplification for the
handicapped, Lillian helped the University procure a vocational rehabilitation grant
to study work simplification for handicapped homemakers. Part of the grant was
the production of a movie Where There’s a Will and Lillian appeared on camera
at the beginning and end of the film. Her efforts in work simplification led to
1 Lillian Moller Gilbreth: An Industrial Engineering Pioneer 19

her 1954 book Management in the Home: Happier Living Through Saving Time
and Energy. In 1957, she was instrumental in ensuring that a conference of home
economists and psychologists was organized to discuss the feasibility and contents
of a course on work simplification for working women. This led to a book issued
by the U.S. Office of Education titled Management Problems for Homemakers
(Lancaster 2004).
In 1955, the University of Wisconsin named her the Knapp Visiting Professor
(Lancaster 2004). She maintained a torrid pace of consulting, travel and lectures for
20 years after her “retirement”—from Purdue—until 1968 when her doctor forced
her to rest (Des 2013; Lancaster 2004).
In 1952, she was described as “The World’s Greatest Woman Engineer” because
of “her impact on management, her innovations in industrial design, her method-
ological contributions to time and motion studies, her humanization of management
principles, and her role in integrating the principles of science and management.
Although we may be unaware today, she influenced the way we work, the way we
arrange our houses, and our attitude toward time” (Lancaster 2004).

1.5 Honors and Awards

The recipient of 23 honorary degrees, her first honorary doctorate of engineering

degree came from the University of Michigan—the first time a woman was so
honored. The institution that had refused to grant her a Ph.D.—the University of
California at Berkeley—named her its Outstanding Alumnus in 1954, while praising
the work which they had refused to acknowledge earlier. In 1931, she received
the first Gilbreth Medal, awarded by The Society of Industrial Engineers, “For
distinguished contribution to management.” In 1940, she was made an honorary
life member of the Engineering Women’s Club of New York. That citation read:
“For your scientific achievements in the field of industrial psychology, for your
pioneer work in applying these principles to the practical problems of the efficiency
of human labor, for your intelligent womanhood, and for the esteem in which you
are held by your fellow members” (Des 2013; Lancaster 2004; Yost 1949; Goff
1946; Chaffin n.d.).
Lillian and Frank were both honored (Frank, posthumously) with the 1944
Gantt Gold Medal: “To Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth, and to Frank B. Gilbreth
posthumously . . . the 1944 Gantt Medal, in recognition of their pioneer work in
management, their development of the principles and techniques of motion study,
their application of those techniques in industry, agriculture and the home, and
their work in spreading that knowledge through courses of training and classes at
universities.” Lillian said receipt of the Gantt Gold Medal was the best news of her
life as it meant Motion Study and the Gilbreth System had been acknowledged by
the arbiter of professional accomplishment—the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (Des 2013; Lancaster 2004; Gilbreth Jr 1970; Yost 1949; Goff 1946).
The Western Society of Engineers presented her with its Washington Award in
1954 “for accomplishments which pre-eminently promote the happiness, comfort
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whom the rising opposition hoped to make the spokesman of their
protest against the Commune and the Terror alike.
Danton, like so many of his contemporaries, had soon wearied of the
system of the Terror. He watched with repugnance the ruin which it
spread. He had no liking for political intrigue. He felt strongly the
need of stability and order, if there were ever again to be a settled
government in France. It is true that in the earlier days Danton had
taken a chief part in securing the Jacobin triumph. In the heat of the
revolutionary struggle, in the moment of national danger, no one had
been readier to act. He had encouraged and organised the
insurrection of the 10th August. He had grasped the helm of State
during the perilous days which followed. Many of the characteristic
Jacobin measures—the wholesale arrest of the suspected in
September, the foundation of the Committee of Public Safety, the
establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal, of the Maximum and of
the tax on the rich, the formation of the Revolutionary Army, the
proclamation of the Terror, the conscription and the defence of
France—had been largely due to his initiative or support. In common
with the rest of his party, Danton had opposed the declaration of war,
but as soon as the invaders appeared upon the frontier, he had
thrown himself into the battle heart and soul. He cared little for party
jangles; but he cared intensely for the honour and greatness of his
country. Free alike from narrow theories, from absorbing jealousies
and from morbid ambition, Danton had always viewed events with a
statesman's eye. He had seen Dumouriez' failings, but he had seen
also his conspicuous ability, and he had supported him staunchly to
the end. He had seen, as Mirabeau had seen before him, that the
government of the country could never prosper until a strong
Executive were formed, and accordingly, like Mirabeau, he had
endeavoured to induce the Convention to give the Ministers seats in
the House. Only when that scheme had failed, had he fallen back on
the device of a powerful committee. He had realised much sooner
than his colleagues the folly of the reckless decree by which, in
November, 1792, the Convention had declared war on all the kings
of Europe, and four months later he had secured its repeal. He had
discerned the uses of diplomacy, had negotiated the withdrawal of
Brunswick, had tried to detach Prussia from the coalition, had
secured an alliance with Sweden, and had steadily laboured, in spite
of the wild talk of his colleagues, to bring France back into the comity
of nations. From the time of the king's death, Danton had done all
that eloquent persuasion could do to heal divisions and to unite
parties in the work of defending the Republic. He would gladly have
worked with the Girondists, had they not driven him by their
intemperate charges into the opposing camp. 'If we must shed
blood,' he once pleaded nobly, 'let us shed the blood of the enemies
of our country.'
But when the danger of invasion passed away, Danton's energies
passed with it. When the Jacobins had conquered and the State was
saved, he felt that he had no employment left. He had little sympathy
with the Government of the Terror. He wearied of the long tale of
violence and outrage. Unscrupulous and hardened as he was, he
turned disgusted from the methods of Carrier and Hébert. After his
second marriage, in June, 1793, his young wife and the delights of
home called him away to purer things than politics. He knew the
limits of his own capacity, and that he could not bring to the work of
political manœuvring the irresistible vigour and conviction by which
he had roused the country and had swept his colleagues into power.
Even to the last, when Philippeaux and Desmoulins forced him to the
front, and made him the unwilling leader round whom the party of
reaction gathered, he was inclined to urge them to put up their
weapons, and to fall back on his old plea for unity. He hated personal
animosities and was not made to be a faction chief. But he was too
conspicuous and too honest to remain altogether in the background,
when his comrades were risking their lives in a cause which he knew
to be the cause of mercy, and believed to be the cause of France.
Between Hébert and his adherents in the Commune, and the party
which gradually ranged itself behind Danton in opposition to the
whole system of the Terror, there stood, as a third party, the
Government of the day. The Government, that is the Committee of
Public Safety, was not, it is true, entirely united. Some of its
members, like Collot d'Herbois and in a lesser degree Billaud-
Varennes, approved of the methods of the Commune, and were
closely leagued with its chiefs. On the other hand, Robespierre
detested the brutal license of many of the Communist party, and his
feelings were shared by Couthon and St. Just. Others, again, like
Carnot, had little liking for either Robespierre or Hébert. Hérault de
Séchelles was a friend of Danton and sympathised with his ideas.
But, divided as they were, most of the members of the Committee
felt that things were going too far. They were responsible for the
government of the country, and they could not, therefore, view with
unconcern the anarchy and public plunder which marked the course
of the agents of the Commune. They were for the moment kings of
France, and they had no intention of surrendering their throne to the
ambitious municipality of Paris, or of permitting any reaction in the
Convention which would deprive them of the power which it had
suffered them to usurp.
Accordingly, in the month of November, when Collot d'Herbois was
absent in Lyons, a decided movement against the Commune
appeared. Robespierre, with his strong sense of decorum and his
reverence for the sentimental theology of Rousseau, was shocked
by the excesses of the materialist party, and encouraged by the
signs of opposition in the Convention, he began to make his opinions
felt. As usual, he proceeded with great caution, but by significant
hints and phrases he showed his resentment at the conduct of
Hébert. On the 17th November, in a long report upon the foreign
policy of France, he took occasion to denounce both the 'cruel
moderantism and the systematic exaggeration of false patriots.' Four
days later, at the Jacobin Club, in answer to a challenge from
Hébert, he delivered a singular speech on the religious question, and
ended by proposing the purging of the Club. The grounds on which
Robespierre attacked his enemies were characteristically circuitous
and astute. 'Atheism,' he argued, 'is aristocratic. The idea of a
Supreme Being, who watches over oppressed innocence and
punishes triumphant crime, is essentially the idea of the people.'
Cautious as Robespierre's action was, the majority quickly rallied
round him. Danton returned to Paris and ranged himself at
Robespierre's side. 'We did not destroy superstition,' he cried, 'in
order to establish the rule of the atheist.' In the Convention he
pleaded for milder measures, and urged that the sword of the Terror
should be pointed only at those convicted of crime. As the scrutiny at
the Jacobins proceeded, the victory of the opponents of the
Commune became more distinct. The attacks made upon Danton
and Desmoulins collapsed. Robespierre defended them with spirit
and enthusiasm, and asked to be judged by Danton's side. On the
4th December, a new law was adopted by the Convention,
consolidating the power of the Committee of Public Safety, bringing
all constituted authorities more directly under its control, suppressing
the revolutionary armies and the agents of the Commune in the
departments, forbidding the raising of taxes except by decree of the
Assembly, and extending the Government's supervision over the
committees in the Sections of Paris. The effect of this decisive
measure was largely to increase the authority of the Committee, and
to diminish the influence of the Commune both in the provinces and
in the capital itself.
The reaction against the Commune had unmistakably begun. On the
day after the decree of the Convention the first number of the Vieux
Cordelier appeared. The Hébertists, defeated in the Jacobins, had
made their headquarters at the Cordeliers Club; and in order to
emphasise the difference between the new doctrines and the spirit
which had inspired the Cordeliers in their earlier days, Camille
Desmoulins gave to his protest the title of the club, where his wit and
Danton's eloquence had once held undisputed sway. Danton and his
friends were known to sympathise with the opinions of the new
journal. Robespierre corrected the first number in proof. Desmoulins
began by denouncing the Hébertists, but as the tide of reaction rose
and the friends of moderation gathered courage, he passed on to
attack the whole system of the Terror, and in the famous third
number of his paper he boldly arraigned its tyranny and crimes. Two
days later, on the 17th December, the Convention, on the motion of
Danton's adherents, decreed the arrest of three agents of the
Commune, Vincent, Ronsin and Maillard. Proposals were freely put
forward for renewing and remodelling the Government itself. Bodies
of petitioners appeared at the bar of the Convention asking for mercy
towards the suspects. Robespierre proposed the appointment of a
commission to consider all cases of unjust arrest. Camille
Desmoulins appealed to Robespierre and passionately urged the
cause of mercy. 'The liberty I worship is no unknown God.... It is
happiness, reason, equality, justice.... Robespierre, friend and
comrade of my schooldays, whose eloquent words our children will
read often, recall the history and philosophy that we learned.
Remember that love is stronger and lives longer than fear, that
reverence and religion spring from kindly treatment ... and that no
men can mount on blood-stained steps to heaven. Why,' cried the
writer bitterly, as he wound up his powerful appeal, 'why has
compassion become a crime in France?'
To such a height had the reaction attained, when, on the 21st
December, Collot d'Herbois suddenly arrived in Paris. He was
welcomed by the Hébertists as a deliverer. 'The giant has arrived,'
cried Hébert gladly, 'the faithful defender of the Sansculottes,' and
Collot at once espoused the cause of his allies. Full of vigour and
self-confidence, the executioner of Lyons entertained no scruples
about the Terror. He denounced all ideas of moderation. His
presence reanimated the Committee, cheered the party of the
Commune, and abashed the hopes of the reaction. The capture of
Toulon, which occurred about the same time, served to increase the
prestige of the Government. Many who had welcomed Desmoulins'
appeal began to feel that they had been too precipitate. The
Commune, gathering courage, demanded and obtained the release
of its imprisoned agents. The commission to enquire into cases of
unjust arrest was cancelled. Collot d'Herbois quickly made his
influence felt at the Jacobins and in the Committee, and all the
waverers, as usual, rallied to the stronger side. Robespierre,
alarmed at the turn events were taking, began to dissociate himself
from his new allies, lamented the bitterness of party feeling, and
declared that his object was 'to overwhelm factions, foreigners and
moderates, but not to ruin patriots.' Even Danton took occasion to
declare his loyalty to the Government, and endeavoured to restrain
the incautious declarations of his friends.
All through January and February, 1794, the struggle of parties
continued, and the fiercest animosities prevailed. At the Jacobins,
Desmoulins' colleagues renewed their onslaught on the followers of
Hébert, but no longer with the same success. Robespierre laboured
steadily by perpetual speeches to secure his ascendency in the club,
and studiously avoided committing himself to either side. But his
position changed. He began to display undisguised hostility towards
Philippeaux and Fabre d'Églantine, the most outspoken members of
the moderate party. He assumed a tone of paternal reproach
towards Camille Desmoulins, and proposed that the Vieux Cordelier,
which he had once cordially welcomed, should be burned. Danton,
disheartened, and embarrassed, relapsed into listless inactivity, and
contented himself with deprecating personal attacks. The chances of
a reaction against the Terror passed away, and the Government daily
offered a stronger front to the enmity of Hébertists and Dantonists
alike.
At last, after many weeks of struggle and intrigue, the crisis came. At
the end of February, St. Just returned to Paris from a mission in the
provinces, and brought a new influence to bear upon events. St. Just
was the loyal disciple of Robespierre, but he possessed far more
energy and decision than his chief. He shared Robespierre's dislike
of Hébert, but he did not share his kindly feeling towards Danton.
Desmoulins had ridiculed the stiff pomposity of the young
Committee-man's demeanour, and to St. Just ridicule was an
unpardonable wrong. While Robespierre pleaded indisposition and
held aloof from the meetings of the Committee, St. Just declared
himself without disguise. He proposed to enforce the authority of the
Government by sacrificing Dantonists and Hébertists alike. He
denounced significantly 'the greatest criminals, who are only trying to
destroy the scaffold because they dread the prospect of mounting it
themselves.' His presence seems to have roused his colleagues, as
the arrival of Collot had roused them before. The Commune was
once more made to feel the weight of the Committee's authority. A
decree of the Convention confiscated the property of the suspects in
order to provide for destitute patriots, and by this great bribe
diminished the influence which the Commune enjoyed with the
needy poor. The Hébertists, now thoroughly alarmed, made a last
effort to assert themselves. They held stormy meetings at the
Cordeliers Club, and indulged in reckless schemes of insurrection.
But even Collot d'Herbois seems to have felt that the leaders of the
Commune had gone too far, and he gave his consent to the policy of
the Committee. St. Just took the lead in the attack. On the night of
the 13th March, Hébert and his principal colleagues were arrested.
Next day, Robespierre reappeared in the Convention and resumed
his place at the Jacobin Club. For the first time in the history of the
Revolution the less extreme party, with legitimate authority behind it,
had asserted itself against the forces of insurrection, had assumed
the offensive and had won the day.
On the one side the enemies of the Government had fallen. It only
remained for them to dispose of the rest. The extreme Terrorists had
consented to allow their friends in the Commune to perish, but only
on condition that the advocates of mercy should perish too. The
moderate party had many supporters in the Convention, and were a
serious danger to the supremacy of the Committee. They counted on
the support of Danton, and though Danton gave them little
encouragement, they used his great name to forward their designs.
'Danton sleeps,' said Desmoulins, as he took up his pen again to
attack the system and the agents of the Terror, 'Danton sleeps, but it
is the sleep of a lion, and he will wake to defend us.' But Danton's
power and energy seemed destined never to wake again. Heartily
weary of conspiracies and factions, discerning plainly enough the
danger which confronted him but unable to rouse himself to avert it,
disdaining to take measures to defend himself or to fight his
opponents with their own weapons of intrigue, Danton remained
undecided and inert. He would not compass his enemies'
destruction, and he did not believe that his enemies would dare to
compass his. Perhaps he relied on Robespierre's friendship, and
forgot that Robespierre was not the man to risk his own ascendency
in order to save another's life. At any rate when the crisis came,
Robespierre swallowed any scruples that he felt, and consented to
unite the Government by abandoning Danton to his opponents. On
the night of the 30th March, Danton, Desmoulins and their
colleagues were arrested, and next day Robespierre came forward
and denounced the 'broken idol' in the Convention. Danton's bearing
before the Revolutionary Tribunal was marked by his habitual
scornful courage. 'My abode,' he said, in answer to the judge's
questions, 'will soon be in eternity; my name you will find in the
Pantheon of history.' He defended himself hotly and proudly against
the ridiculous charges of royalist conspiracy. His vigorous eloquence
created so profound an impression that his accusers trembled for the
consequences, and took exceptional measures to cut the trial short.
On the 5th April, Danton was guillotined. 'I see now,' he said, 'that in
times of Revolution, power falls ultimately to the greatest
scoundrels.... Ah, better be a poor fisherman than meddle with the
governing of men!'
The fall of Danton left Robespierre by far the most conspicuous man
in France. For character and reputation he had no rival in the
Committees, and it was largely on his popularity that the
Government rested for support. In some points Robespierre
compared favourably with his colleagues. His life was frugal, pure
and decent. His dress was always neat. His sense of decorum never
deserted him. His devotion to his principles and his hatred of license
and irreverence were sincere. He represented admirably the
complacent Philistinism of a certain type of French bourgeois. His
language breathed of virtue and emotion. His long-winded, didactic
generalities, his perpetual appeals to morality and conscience
imposed on well-intentioned, narrow minds, and, no doubt, imposed
upon his own. Robespierre's followers, women especially, with whom
his influence was great, took him at his own valuation. They did not
discover his amazing egotism. They did not resent the qualities
which make him appear to us the typical prig of history. They liked
the long abstract discourses, which were the fashion of his time and
sect. They liked his plain respectability. They liked his war upon
corruption. They liked his feeling for religion and his copious
sentiment. They were charmed by his high-sounding and unpractical
ideals. They marvelled when he recited, as he never tired of doing,
the tale of his own virtues. Robespierre was essentially a priest, and
he exercised a priest's fascination, preaching unceasingly and
claiming without scruple the admiration of his flock. 'I have never
bowed,' he cried, 'beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption.'
'Surrounded by assassins, I have little to reconcile me to life except
my love for my country and my thirst for justice.' 'I am a living martyr
to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime.' 'If such
truths must be dissembled, then bring me the hemlock.' He was for
ever proclaiming himself the champion of morality, for ever protesting
his readiness to die in its cause. He reiterated it so often, and he
believed it so intensely, that he made his followers believe it too.
Moreover, Robespierre's sentiment was genuine. He had brought
with him from Arras the reputation of a young provincial lawyer,
upright, industrious and tender-hearted, fond of indifferent verse and
of pet-birds. In his early days he had resigned an honourable office
rather than condemn a man to death. He had from the first figured as
the friend of humanity, as the defender of the unfortunate and the
oppressed. If any question arose of suppressing disorder, he had
always raised his voice against severity. He had pleaded for the
abolition of the penalty of death. He had championed the cause of
coloured men. He had more than once shown his sympathy for
priests. Later on, he had defended the seventy-three members of the
Convention, who were attacked for protesting against the arrest of
the Gironde. He was known to have resented the treatment of
Madame Elizabeth and the insults offered by Hébert to the Queen.
He had taken no part personally in the enormities of the proconsuls
of the Terror. He had repudiated the immorality and materialism of
the leaders of the Commune. He had helped to secure the recall of
Carrier. Conscious cruelty had no place in his speeches or ideals.
But when one turns from Robespierre's speeches to his actions, a
different tale is told. In vain his apologists recapitulate his language,
and dwell on his protestations of virtue, on his ceaseless iteration of
benevolent designs. His career stands out in flagrant contrast to his
oft-repeated principles, and the record of his career no apologies can
explain away. The most noticeable characteristics of Robespierre's
public life were his lack of initiative, his disingenuous reserve, and
his profound incompetence as a practical politician. There is hardly a
single great measure of the Terror, except the development of the
Revolutionary Tribunal, in which Robespierre took a leading part. His
method was to combat every proposal and every party, but rarely to
make a proposal himself. If a critical occasion came, Robespierre
always waited to see the issue before he declared himself. He never
threw off his nervous hesitation. He never committed himself to
violent risks, or took the initiative in violent courses. These
characteristics are illustrated at each stage of his career. In the
difficult days of July, 1791, at the time of the 'Massacre of the Champ
de Mars,' he conducted himself with exemplary caution. A year later,
on the 10th August, he remained in the background till the battle was
decided, but he joined the Commune openly on the 11th, when the
victory was won. Later still, though he detested the doctrines of the
Hébertists, he did not venture to attack them straightforwardly. He
only threw out hints against them until he saw which way the tide
was running, and then he tried to discredit them by arguing that
atheism was an aristocratic idea! He was absent, on the plea of
illness, while their fate was being decided in the Committee, but he
was well enough to re-appear in public the morning after their arrest.
He encouraged Desmoulins cordially in his crusade against the
Commune; but he changed his tone as soon as Collot d'Herbois'
reappearance turned the scale against Desmoulins' views, and he
finally threw over without a struggle the man who had been for years
his warm admirer and friend. With equal treachery he sacrificed
Danton as soon as it was evident that the strongest party was bent
on Danton's destruction, and directly the arrest was made, he came
forward to denounce a colleague, at whose side, only a few weeks
before, he had proudly asked to stand. Of course it is possible that
Robespierre was able, with his remarkable faculty of self-deception,
to persuade his conscience in every case that he was acting as the
interests of virtue required. But it is difficult by any sophisms to
excuse such heartless opportunism, and to avoid the conviction that,
whoever fell, Robespierre was determined to be upon the winning
side.
Hardly less noticeable than his tortuous manœuvring was his
incompetence in practical affairs. His speeches were treatises full of
vague and abstract speculation, in which the same forms and
phrases constantly appeared, but singularly lacking in definiteness
and meaning, with very little bearing upon facts, and generally
without any practical conclusions or result. He seemed to talk for the
sake of talking, but the listeners, who accepted his theory as their
gospel, never seemed to tire of the voice of the priest. At the height
of the struggle between the rival parties in January, 1794,
Robespierre solemnly invited the Jacobins to consider 'the crimes of
the English Government and the vices of the British Constitution.' At
another time of stirring interest and activity, he busied himself with
drawing up a lengthy indictment of the monarchs of the world. At
another time, he contributed to a practical discussion some luminous
remarks, in which he insisted that the outbreak of the Revolution had
been largely due to the determination of 'the London Cabinet ... to
place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI,' and that Pitt was
'an imbecile ... who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an
island placed haphazard in the ocean,' conceived plans only worthy
of a madhouse. It is no wonder if his colleagues in the Government,
who were nearly all of them vigorous men of action, came to regard
him with something like contempt. All through the Revolution
Robespierre's attitude was the same. He never displayed much
practical ability. The overthrow of the monarchy, the establishment of
the Republic, the defeat of the invaders, the triumph of the
Revolutionary Government, the organisation of the national defence,
owed little to him. On the Committee of Public Safety his services,
apart from matters of police, were unimportant. He did little useful
work himself, and his jealous interference only hampered and
embarrassed those who did. He never went on mission. The
equipment of the army and navy, the management of the food
supply, the control of the proconsuls, the administration of the
country, the heroic labours of the terrible Committee, rested in other
hands. Robespierre was only its tireless rhetorician, watching,
manœuvring, expatiating incessantly on his ideals, his virtues and
himself. Even after the fall of Danton, when he had ample scope for
his designs, all that he contributed as a practical reformer to the
Utopia which he had described a hundred times, was a masquerade
to the discredit of religion and the most sanguinary police-law which
the world has seen.
But wrapped as Robespierre was in self-complacency, he was
always sufficiently awake to suspect and envy others. The doctrine
of mistrust was a part of the Jacobin creed. The habit of suspecting
others seemed to grow upon all those who professed the faith, and
gradually to distort their views and to discolour their judgment. The
Robespierre of 1794, the jealous, nervous, inflated fanatic, was a
very different being from the earnest, narrow-minded lawyer, who
had set out from Arras five years before to take his part in
regenerating France. As Marat had developed, under the influence
of the Jacobin theory and amid the desperate excitements of the
time, from a soured idealist into the furious advocate of murder, so
Robespierre had developed too. The mania of panic and suspicion
had settled upon him. The peril which he and his colleagues
encountered had convinced him that he was a martyr, and that all
who did not recognise his virtues were conspirators seeking for his
death. 'Gazing on the multitude of vices which the torrent of the
Revolution has rolled down,' he cried in his last great speech in the
Convention, 'I have sometimes trembled lest I should be soiled by
the impure neighbourhood of wicked men.... I know that it is easy for
the leagued tyrants of the world to overwhelm a single individual; but
I know also what is the duty of a man who can die in defence of
humanity.' In the latter part of Robespierre's career it seemed that
nothing was too innocent for him to mistrust or too improbable for
him to suspect. 'I am not obliged to reflect,' he told Garat, 'I always
rely on first impressions.' He believed that his instinct could not err,
and his instinct always was to think the worst. 'Evidently,' he said one
day to Garat, early in the spring of 1793, 'the Girondists are
conspiring.' 'Where?' asked Garat. 'Everywhere,' answered
Robespierre. He needed no facts to prove it. His virtue, the
watchdog of the Republic, told him it was true. At one moment
Lafayette was the traitor, at another Brissot, at another Dumouriez,
at another Hébert. Servan, he insisted, was given a command in the
Pyrenees, in order to hand over the keys of France to Spain. 'Is
there no doubt of this in your mind?' asked Garat. 'None whatever,'
replied the infallible pedant. Again and again Robespierre
denounced mysterious conspiracies and treasons in Paris, in the
departments, in the Commune, in the Convention. He had no doubt
whatever that he was unmasking traitors, and traitors he could not
scruple to send to the guillotine. In particular, the generals of the
Republic were singled out by Robespierre as objects of alarm. It was
he who sent Custine to the scaffold, and scouted the suggestion that
it was necessary to offer written proofs of his guilt. It was he who
took the chief part in denouncing Houchard and in consigning him to
a similar fate. It was he who first threw doubts on the good faith of
Kellermann. It was he who, upon no evidence whatever, ordered the
arrest of Hoche upon a charge of treason[11].
The growth of this fever of suspicion, which was common to most of
the Jacobin party, but which was specially marked in Marat and in
Robespierre, enables one to understand how a man naturally neither
cruel nor unprincipled became so largely responsible for the
bloodshed of the Terror. Robespierre's apologists have vainly
endeavoured to defend him against this reproach, and to maintain
that he always wished to stop it. But even their defence of
Robespierre contains conclusive evidence of his guilt. His position,
after the fall of Danton, was unquestionably strong. In the two
governing Committees, though he had enemies and critics, he was
closely supported by Couthon and St. Just. His popularity in Paris
was considerable. His reputation within his own party stood higher
than that of any of his colleagues. The Jacobin Club was his
stronghold. On the triumph of the Committee in March, 1794, the
Commune had been reconstituted, and its new heads, Fleuriot and
Payan, were devoted to Robespierre's interest. The Revolutionary
Army of the capital had been dissolved, but Hanriot, Robespierre's
firm friend, retained his command in the National Guard, and was
zealous in Robespierre's service. The ministries also had been
suppressed. Twelve new commissions had been appointed to
administer affairs in their place, and in the appointments to these
commissions Robespierre's influence was naturally large. Had
Robespierre really cared to use his power to mitigate the Terror, it is
difficult to believe that he could not have done so with success. In
the existing state of public opinion he could, for such an enterprise,
have commanded overwhelming support. The great majority of the
Convention, as their conduct both before and after proved, were only
waiting for an opportunity to throw their weight into the scale of
mercy.
But the fact is that Robespierre's influence was used throughout in
the opposite direction. He detested, it is true, the disorderly excesses
that had accompanied the Terror in the departments. He wished to
centralise and regulate the system, to make it uniform, moral and
decorous, to take the power of the sword out of the hands of men
whom he distrusted and disliked. But he did not wish to end it. The
police-law of April, 1794, which directed that all conspirators should
be brought to Paris for trial, and the establishment of a new Bureau
of police under the supervision of St. Just and of Robespierre
himself, were designed to prevent the occurrence of enormities like
those of Carrier in the provinces, and to deprive Robespierre's
opponents in the Committee of General Security of their monopoly in
matters of police. But they were not measures of compassion. From
the first, Robespierre had taken a prominent part in founding and
developing the Revolutionary Tribunal. Again and again he had
protested against its delays and its unnecessary forms. When he
attained the climax of his power, he swept those forms away. In the
Revolutionary Tribunal he had staunch adherents. His work in the
Committee of Public Safety was always largely concerned with
questions of police. The Terror was an essential part of his system.
He honestly believed that his Utopia could not flourish until he had
consumed the wicked, and against the wicked accordingly he
sharpened the sword of death.
With this crusade against the enemies of his ideal he mingled
schemes of arbitrary benevolence. Both St. Just and Robespierre
were determined to found the State which Rousseau had conceived,
wherein all should be equal, virtuous, enlightened, without poverty or
riches, irreverence or sin. As a step towards it they determined to
establish Rousseau's Church. On the 18th Floréal (7th May),
Robespierre induced the Convention to decree its belief in a
Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. On the 20th
Prairial (8th June), he celebrated, in one of the strangest pageants of
history, the festival of the new Deity in France. Arrayed in a brilliant
uniform, and carrying a bouquet of flowers and corn sheaves,
Robespierre marched at the head of a procession out to the Champ
de Mars, burned the symbols of Atheism and Vice, and inaugurated
the new religion. 'Here,' he cried, 'is the Universe assembled. O
Nature, how sublime, how exquisite, thy power! How tyrants will pale
at the tidings of our feast.' And within two days of this ideal festival
he set to work to re-organise the machinery of the guillotine. A few
weeks before he had taken a chief part in establishing, on the
demand of his adherent Maignet, an extraordinary tribunal at Orange
in the South, and had drawn up with his own hand a paper of
instructions, which laid it down that the conscience of the judges was
to be the only test of the guilt of the accused. In the law of the 22nd
Prairial this monstrous principle was carried further. The decree
provided that the Revolutionary Tribunal should be divided into four
sections to expedite its work, that prisoners should thenceforward be
tried in batches, that they should no longer have counsel to defend
them or be allowed to call witnesses for their defence, and that the
question of their guilt should be left to the enlightened conscience of
the jury! The results of this proposal were that, in the six or seven
weeks which followed, the number of victims guillotined mounted to
over thirteen hundred, a number considerably exceeding the total
reached during the first fifteen months of the tribunal's existence. In
face of this measure, which was unquestionably Robespierre's work,
it is idle to pretend that he wished to check the Terror. No doubt he
disliked its extravagance and license. No doubt he wished to strike
some of the Terrorists. But apart from that there is no evidence that
he attempted to stop it, and against him there is the whole tenour of
his policy and the testimony of this nefarious decree.
But Robespierre's ascendency was destined to be brief. The majority
of his colleagues had begun to dread him. They knew that he was
jealous of their authority. After the 10th June he held himself more
and more aloof[12]. He did not resign his place on the Committee; but
finding that he could not make its members accept his ascendency,
he began to form schemes for purging the Government afresh, to
dissociate himself from his colleagues, and to concentrate his forces
in the Commune and at the Jacobin Club. At last, aware that a
breach was inevitable, St. Just and others urged him to take
vigorous measures against his opponents. But Robespierre, always
incapable of decisive action, preferred to confine himself to
speeches and to vague hints of conspiracy and treason. On the 8th
Thermidor (26th July), in a long and mysterious speech, marked by
his habitual and astonishing egotism, he denounced the plots
against the Convention, and demanded the punishment of evil men.
But he named no one, and his threats frightened all. That night the
combination which had been gradually forming against him came to
a head. Tallien, Billaud, Bourdon and others, Dantonists and
Hébertists, all parties alike determined to unite, to save their lives.
On the morrow, the 9th Thermidor, the crisis came, and the
Convention, for once acting with unanimity and vigour, rejected
Robespierre's appeal and boldly ordered his arrest. For a few hours
the issue of the struggle hung doubtful. The Commune rallied to
Robespierre's defence. He was delivered from prison and carried to
the Hôtel de Ville in triumph. Hanriot summoned his artillerymen to
the rescue, and once again the Commune proposed to raise an
insurrection. But the name of the Commune was no longer a
watchword in the capital. The Convention held its ground with
unusual courage. It outlawed all the chief conspirators. It took prompt
measures to organise resistance, to rouse Paris, to summon the
forces of the Sections to its aid. The prestige of the National
Assembly, when united, was still redoubtable, and Hanriot's troops
hesitated to attack it. Early in the dawn of the following day the
Conventional forces assumed the offensive, and marched on the
Hôtel de Ville. The insurrection collapsed, and Robespierre and his
confederates died. At last the lawful authority in France, so long
paralysed and broken, had dared to act decisively, and to use force
to make itself obeyed. From the moment that its vigour revived its
triumph was assured, and with its triumph the reaction began.

FOOTNOTES:
[11] Even M. Hamel admits this (Hist. de Robespierre, III. p. 499
et seq.), although he endeavours, in a manner that is not
convincing, to throw the responsibility on to Carnot. Carnot
claimed to have saved Hoche's life. He certainly joined in ordering
his release from prison almost immediately after Robespierre's
fall.
[12] Robespierre himself said, on the 8th Thermidor, that for the
last six weeks he had 'absolutely abandoned his functions as a
member of the Committee of Public Safety.' Louis Blanc argues
that he was therefore not responsible for the Terror. But another
of Robespierre's admirers, Hamel, has taken pains to prove that
Robespierre was constantly present at the Committee's meetings
up to the 9th Thermidor, and decides that his alleged retirement
 must consequently have been 'toute morale' (vol. III. pp. 594-
601).

CHAPTER XI.
The Reaction.
With the fall of Robespierre the Terror came to an end. The men
who overthrew him were many of them worse men than he. They did
not intend to repudiate his system. They had acted from personal
motives, from a desire to save their lives and to maintain themselves
in power. But without Robespierre the Terror could not continue. It
was his reputation for moral earnestness and for disinterested
conviction which alone had reconciled to it many honest, narrow-
minded men, who accepted his theory, believed in his sincerity, and
had not the capacity to criticise his actions. In him and his associates
the principles of the Terror perished. There remained no one to throw
over the system the veil of sentimental virtue, and without that veil its
uglier aspects stood disclosed. Men who to the last had respected
Robespierre could not respect Collot d'Herbois or Billaud-Varennes.
The Convention which had revolted against Robespierre was not
likely, when once it had tasted freedom, to replace on its neck the
yoke of his colleagues. The Committee of Public Safety had
appeared irresistible so long as it was undivided. But when it broke
up into parties and appealed to the Convention to protect it, its
dictatorship necessarily expired.
Accordingly, in the weeks which followed the 9th Thermidor, a
number of measures testified to the growing reaction. The
Committee of Public Safety was remodelled, and a system was
enforced under which three of its members retired, without the right
of re-election, every month. The Convention and its Committees
resumed the powers of government. The Revolutionary Tribunal was
reconstituted and the law of the 22nd Prairial repealed. The
redoubtable Commune was abolished, and for purposes of local
government Paris was placed under the authority of the Department
of the Seine. The staff of the National Guard was reorganised. The
Revolutionary Committees in Paris and elsewhere were reduced in
number and shorn of their powers. The meetings of the Sections
were limited to three a month, and the decree which provided a
payment of forty sous for all citizens who attended them was
repealed. In the departments the officials of the Communes and of
the Clubs were sifted and replaced. Everywhere the prison doors
were opened and hundreds of prisoners were set free. Before the
end of August, voices were raised in the Convention against the
Terrorists who continued in the Government, and at the beginning of
September, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois and the remaining
Terrorists retired.
As the autumn went on, the pace of the reaction increased. The
Jacobins, it is true, were still numerous and active. Although the
reputation of the leading Terrorists was shaken, the Mountain was
still a force in the Convention. Besides the members of the old
Committees, many deputies, like Romme and Soubrany, Goujon and
Bourbotte, maintained without flinching extreme Jacobin views.
Others, like Thuriot and Cambon, were not prepared to go too far
with the reaction. The Jacobin Club, though weakened by the fall of
Robespierre, had resumed its old activity, and, supported by some of
its confederates in the provinces, determined not to surrender its
power without a struggle. Billaud-Varennes declared passionately
that the old lion was not dead. But the tide flowed heavily against the
Mountain. The majority of the Convention was determined at all
costs to break with the system of the Terror. The deputies of the
Right and of the Centre recovered their voices under the courageous
leadership of Boissy-d'Anglas and Thibeaudeau. The Thermidorians,
under Tallien and Fréron, rallied to the side of the moderate
members, and gathered round them many old Dantonists and many
old adherents of the Mountain, Legendre, Lecointre and Bourdon de
l'Oise, Merlin of Thionville and Merlin of Douai, Cambacères, and
André Dumont. Sieyès, released from the necessity of silence,
brought to the same side his affectation of inscrutable wisdom.
Encouraged by the divisions in the Assembly, public opinion
expressed itself outside. The independence of the Press revived.
Fréron's paper, the Orateur du Peuple boldly took the lead of the
reactionary journals. The trial of the prisoners sent up from Nantes to
be tried at Paris revealed for the first time to the public the worst
iniquities of Carrier's rule, and in the weeks and months which
followed, evidence began to pour in against the agents of the Terror.
The indignation against the Terrorists in Paris increased every day.
Reactionary feeling showed itself overwhelmingly strong in the
Sections, in the cafés, in the streets. Bodies of young men, some of
them men of family and wealth, but most of them drawn from the
ranks of tradesmen, clerks and artisans, representing the great
majority of respectable people which had allowed itself to be
tyrannised over so long, and which had shown its readiness to rise
as early as May, 1793, gathering in the Palais Royal, once the
headquarters of revolutionary agitation, organised themselves into
an effective force, armed themselves with short and heavy sticks,
and led by Lacretelle and encouraged by Fréron and Tallien, began
to parade the streets, to suppress Jacobin speakers and meetings,
to pour contempt on Jacobin opinions, and to wage war against
Jacobinism in whatever shape it might be found. Extravagant and
ridiculous in some respects the 'Jeunes Gens' were, and in later
days it suited the Thermidorians to turn their affectation into ridicule,
and to denounce them as 'Jeunesse Dorée,' as 'Elégants' and
Muscadins.' But in their origin at any rate they represented a genuine
popular movement, and up to April, 1795, they acted cordially with
the moderate party, and rendered valuable service in destroying the
terrorism which the Jacobins had established in Paris. With the new
movement a new song came into fashion, and the Jeunes Gens,
rejecting the Marseillaise, sang in the streets the 'Réveil du Peuple':
—
'Quelle est cette lenteur barbare?
Hâte-toi, peuple souverain,
De rendre aux monstres de Ténare
Tous ces buveurs de sang humain.'
The reaction in Paris soon made itself felt in the Assembly. The
attacks upon the Terrorists and their supporters redoubled. In
October a law was passed forbidding the federation of popular clubs.
On the 12th November, the Committee of Public Safety announced
that it had closed the Jacobin Club. In the same month Carrier was
arrested. He was sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal and
a few weeks later to the scaffold. On the 8th December, the seventy-
three deputies who had been imprisoned for protesting against the
expulsion of the Gironde, were readmitted to their places in the
Convention. At the end of that month the Assembly decided that
there was ground for investigating the charges against Billaud-
Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère. As the winter went
on, the members of the Right, reinforced by the seventy-three, and
determined to undo the work of the Terror, demanded a
reconsideration of the laws against Emigrants and priests, and the
restoration in certain cases of property confiscated for political
offences. In February, 1795, the Convention decreed the freedom of
all forms of religious opinion; but at the same time it continued the
penal enactments against non-juring priests, imposed a variety of
restrictions on the exercise of public worship, and, while refusing to
contribute towards the maintenance of any religion, retained its hold
upon the buildings and property of the old Church. A further advance
made in June towards the principles of complete toleration was
afterwards repealed by the influence of the Left. On the 2nd March,
Legendre carried a motion for the arrest of Billaud-Varennes, Collot
d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère. On the 8th, the survivors of the
Girondist leaders proscribed on the 31st May, including Isnard,
Lanjuinais and Louvet, were recalled to their seats in the Assembly.
The triumph of the reaction seemed to be assured.
But the Jacobins were not to fall without a struggle. They had more
than once secured the victory by appealing to the physical
necessities of the poor, and it was by that means that they
endeavoured to conquer again. In the spring of 1795 the distress in
Paris was exceptionally keen. With the political reaction an economic
reaction had begun. After Thermidor it became evident that the
economic system of the Terror could not stand. Its drastic laws were
on all sides disregarded. No penalties or prohibitions could force
men to observe laws which they were resolutely determined to
infringe. The State might fix the price of food, but the producers
would not produce it at that price, and when the guillotine had
ceased to compel submission, the vain attempts of the State to fix
prices broke down. Economic causes more powerful than any laws
overthrew the Maximum, and at last, towards the end of December,
the Convention recognised the fact and repealed the Maximum
decrees. With the repeal of the Maximum the whole system of
Terrorist finance collapsed. The practice of requisition was
abandoned. The restrictions upon foreign trade and upon the
exportation of specie were removed. In a short time the Bourse was
reopened. The intrepid experiment by which the economists of the
Terror had endeavoured to concentrate in the hands of the
Government the whole commercial system of the country, fell to the
ground, and the old methods of monopoly and competition, which
the Terrorists had so constantly denounced, and which they had so
boldly but recklessly attacked, reasserted their sway and exacted
their penalty. The financial system of the Terror was ruinously
mistaken, but by its draconian methods it had to some extent
checked the rise in prices, and had perhaps saved from extinction
the vanishing credit of the Assignats. Yet even under the Terror the
Assignats had deteriorated in value. In spite of the imperious
demands of the Terrorist Exchequer, in spite of its forced loans and
wholesale confiscations, in spite of the plunder which it drew from its
victims and of the money which, as Barère boasted, it coined on the
Place de la Révolution, the Jacobin Government had never been
free from financial troubles. The non-payment of taxes, the
peculation of local authorities, the failure of the forced loans to bring
in anything like the sum expected, the depreciation in value of
national property, the ignorance of economics which prevailed
among the ruling party, and above all the enormous expenses of the
war, of the administration, and of supplying Paris and the great
towns with food, had created a perpetual deficit. 'The Revolution and
the war,' said Cambon, the chief financier of the Terror, in a report of
January, 1795, 'have cost in four years five thousand three hundred
and fifty millions above the ordinary expenses;' and Cambon's
estimate was probably much below the fact. In vain had Cambon by
a partial bankruptcy put out of circulation fifteen hundred million
francs of Assignats which bore the image of the King. In vain had the
Convention, in August 1794, decreed, on Cambon's proposal, the
Republicanisation of the National Debt, ordered all the creditors of
the State to send in their claims, entered their titles in a Great Ledger
of the Public Debt, declared the capital borrowed by the State to be
irrecoverable, and, regardless of all engagements entered into and
of all promises of high interest previously made, informed them that
in future the State would pay five per cent interest to all its creditors
alike. This summary method of escaping liabilities had introduced, it
is true, some order into the finances, but it had not improved the
credit of the State. The chief resource of the Government had
continued to be the Assignats, and not even the drastic legislation of
the Terror had been able to keep their credit up.
The repeal of that drastic legislation and the financial policy of the
Convention in the winter of 1794-95 accelerated their decline[13].
Prices, no longer fixed by law, rose rapidly, as the value of the paper
money fell. The Government, no longer able to rely on the methods
which the Terrorists had used to swell their income, and face to face
with high prices and diminishing credit, could think of no better
resource than to issue Assignats faster than before; and of course
with every fresh issue the depreciation increased. At the end of
1794, some seven thousand million francs of Assignats were in
circulation. In May, 1795, these had risen to ten thousand millions, in
the August following, to sixteen thousand millions, and in the
October following that, to many thousand millions more. In proportion
to these enormous issues, the value of the currency declined. At the
end of the reign of Terror, Assignats had been worth 33 or 34 per
cent of their nominal value. In December, 1794, they had fallen to 22
per cent. In the ensuing May they stood at 7 per cent, and in the
months which followed they fell to 4, to 2, and even to less than 1
per cent. In vain different members of the Convention proposed
schemes for diminishing the number. The Government had no other
resource to look to, and its expenses seemed daily to increase, as
claims for compensation poured in upon it from those who had
suffered under the Terror. With the fall of the Assignats, prices rose
to an alarming height. All wage-earners who could not raise their
wages in proportion to the rapid rise in prices, all who lived upon
fixed incomes, all who depended on the paper-money and whose
small savings consisted of Assignats, suffered acutely from the
economic crisis. A certain number of people, tenant farmers for
instance, who paid their rent in Assignats, and who made it many
times over by the high prices fetched by corn, debtors who could pay
off long-standing debts in Assignats at their nominal value, and
speculators, who sprang up on all sides to traffic in the fluctuations of
the currency, made heavy profits and enriched themselves. But to
the great majority of people the fall of the Assignats meant grave
distress. The prices of bread, of meat, of fuel, of all the necessaries
of life, rose as in a siege. One reads of the most fantastic payments,
of thousands of francs paid for a dinner, a cab-fare or a load of
wood. The sense of the value of money vanished, when its
purchasing power declined every day. But it was only those who had
plenty of it who possessed the power to purchase at all.
There is overwhelming evidence of the general distress in the winter
of 1794-95. From all sides complaints came in of the exorbitant
dearness of food, and that trouble was aggravated by the intense
cold. In Paris and many great cities the authorities bought up food at
ruinous prices and distributed it in meagre rations to the poor. But as
the year advanced, these rations constantly diminished. The country
districts bitterly complained that they were starved in order that the
big towns might be fed. 'Many families, entire communes,' wrote an
official from Laon, in the summer of 1795, 'have been without bread
two or three months and are living on bran or herbs.' Around Caen
the peasants were living on unripe peas, beans and green barley. In
Picardy 'the great majority of people' overran the woods for food.
From all sides the same reports poured in upon the Government.
'Yesterday,' wrote the authorities of Montreuil-sur-Mer, 'more than
two hundred of our citizens set out to beg in the country;' and those
who could not get food in other ways took it by force. Nor, in spite of
the efforts of the authorities, were the large towns better off. Lyons,
in January, was without bread 'for five full days.' At Troyes, in March,
the public distribution of bread fell to two ounces a day. At Amiens, a
few months later, it ceased altogether. At Nancy a traveller noticed a
crowd of 'three thousand persons imploring in vain a few pounds of
flour.' In Paris the police reported case after case of misery and
starvation. 'Every day,' wrote a friend to Mallet du Pan, 'I see people
of the poorer class dying of starvation in the streets.... Workmen
generally have to work short time, owing to the weakness and
exhaustion caused by want of food.'
It is no wonder if this acute distress resulted in an outbreak. Many of
those who suffered the most had sympathised with the Jacobin party,
and the arrest of the Terrorist leaders gave a certain political colour
to the agitation which famine had produced. But in the main the
insurrection which broke out on the 12th Germinal (1st April), which
for a time threatened the safety of the Convention, and which joined
to its demand for bread a demand for the Constitution of '93, was a
spontaneous movement due to the pressure of starvation rather than
to political intrigue. The leaders of the Mountain failed to turn it to
account. The Jeunes Gens and the battalions of the Sections
enabled the Government to win an easy victory, and the failure of the
rising helped the reaction on. Motions were quickly passed for the
transportation of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and
Barère, and for the arrest of Cambon, Thuriot, Amar, and other
prominent members of the Mountain. Pichegru restored order in the
streets. The Convention decreed the disarming of the Terrorists and
the reorganisation of the National Guard. The officials of the
Departments and of the Districts were restored to their old authority.
The State, which had already undertaken to pay the debts of
Emigrants whose possessions it had confiscated, now resolved to
restore to the families of the victims the property of all persons who
had been executed for political offences since the 10th March, 1793.
A commission of eleven members was appointed to consider the
bases of a new constitution. Early in May, Fouquier-Tinville and
several of his associates in the old Tribunal were sent to the
guillotine.
But the Jacobins were not yet silenced. The rapid progress of the
reaction disquieted many. The reappearance of Emigrants and of
non-juring priests, the extravagance of the Jeunes Gens, the revival
of Royalist opinions in Paris, the terrible excesses which began to
stain the reaction in the South-East of France, and which, under the
direction of the 'Compagnies de Jésus' and the 'Compagnies du Sol,'
had already made Lyons the scene of murder and of civil war,
alarmed the Thermidorians and many other members of the
Convention. The majority oscillated from day to day between their
fear of the Mountain and their fear of a Royalist reaction, and
displayed to all the world the vacillation and weakness of the ruling
powers in France. At the beginning of May, the Jacobins so far
prevailed as to carry a decree for the immediate arrest of returned
Emigrants and refractory priests, and for the prosecution of Royalist
publications. The disarming of Terrorists practically ceased. The high
prices of food and the distress which they occasioned became more
serious every day, and Jacobin agents laboured persistently to rouse
the workmen to another insurrection. On the 1st Prairial (20th May),
their efforts succeeded. A second rising, more formidable and better
organised than that of Germinal, confronted the Government, and
the Convention, after a sharp struggle, only saved itself by yielding to
the demands of the insurrectionary leaders. Fair promises, however,
gained the Assembly time to bring up troops for its defence. On the
evening of the 22nd May, a strong force of cavalry and infantry
arrived in Paris. The next day, the Faubourg St. Antoine was
besieged and compelled to surrender at discretion. Numerous
arrests were made. The disarming of the Terrorists was completed.
All pikes were seized. The reorganisation of the National Guard was
accomplished, and the right of serving in it was once more restricted
to members of the bourgeois class. A temporary military commission
was established to try those accused of complicity in the
insurrection, and the Revolutionary Tribunal was abolished. Six
prominent deputies of the Mountain, including Goujon, Romme,
Soubrany and Bourbotte, were sent to the scaffold. Lebon, long
since put under arrest, Panis, almost forgotten, Lindet, Jean Bon St.
André, Guffroy and Rühl, all except three of the members of the two
redoubtable Committees, Pache, Bouchotte, and several of their
associates in the former Ministry of War, shared in the proscription of
their party. The influence of the extreme Jacobins was finally
destroyed, and once again the policy of the reaction triumphed.
The decisive success of the moderate party was not without its effect
upon European politics. At the time of the insurrection of Prairial, the
French arms were completely victorious and many had begun to
hope for the cessation of the war. The history of the revolutionary
armies is the finest part of the French Revolution. There the spirit
which the Revolution had inspired, and which had spent itself so
fruitlessly in Paris, was seen at its best in the enthusiasm, the
devotion and the gallantry of the troops. There too the high qualities
of the Jacobin administrators appeared, their determined patriotism,
their dauntless vigour and resource. There the Government which in
Paris seemed to be only a Government of tyrants, revealed itself as
a Government of heroes. There the politicians and intriguers of the
Terror turned to the nobler work of national defence. Carnot and St.
Just, Merlin of Thionville, Rewbell and Barras, Milhaud and
Soubrany, Richard, Drouet, Cavaignac and Fabre d'Hérault are only
some among the many brave men who, as Representatives on
Mission with the armies, inspired the French troops with their own
lofty courage, and both by precept and example taught them the
impossibility of defeat. The enthusiasm which political intrigues had
wasted found a deeper expression in the war, and the levelling
freedom of the Republic threw open to all ranks alike the prospects
of a great career. In the campaigns of 1793-94, Hoche, Pichegru and
Jourdan had already reached the highest place, and Moreau and
Kléber, Bernadotte, Ney, Davoût, Augereau and Victor, Soult,
Masséna, Bonaparte were winning their way to notice and
command. It is true that at the first the French levies were ill-
organised and ill-disciplined, and that their earlier successes were
due chiefly to the disunion or incapacity of their opponents. But the
progress of the war and the vigorous measures of the Jacobin
Government soon produced a remarkable change. There was no
lack of material upon which to draw. To the old royal army there had
in turn been added the battalions of national guards, the volunteers
raised in 1792, the levée en masse of the same year, which was,
however, of very little use, the levy of 300,000 men formed, largely
by conscription, in the spring of 1793, and the forces raised in the
following summer by the imperious decrees of the Government,
which claimed the services of all men between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-five. On this material the Convention set to work, and the
efforts of Dubois-Crancé and Carnot, seconded by their able
advisers, and perfected by the strenuous action and wide powers of
the great Committee, met with complete success. To Dubois-Crancé
especially belongs the credit. It was he who, in the winter of 1793-94,
at last carried through the Convention the great scheme for the
reorganisation of the army which he had advocated so long, who
committed the Government to the principle of conscription and to the
amalgamation of the regulars with the volunteers, and who fused the
two elements together by dividing the army into demi-brigades made
up of one battalion of regulars and four of volunteers. The result of
these measures appeared before long in the formation of a
magnificent army, which for numbers, discipline and the spirit of its
troops, was a match for the united forces of Europe.
The campaign of 1793, which at one time threatened France with
serious danger, ended in complete success. The valuable victories of
Houchard and of Jourdan on the North-Eastern frontier in September
and October, drove the Allies back upon Belgium. The equally
notable successes of Hoche and Pichegru, which followed in Alsace,
drove the victorious Austrians and Prussians again across the Rhine.
The brave insurgents of La Vendée found themselves at last
opposed by a powerful army under a general of high ability, and
were defeated by Kléber at Chollet in October, and subsequently
routed at Le Mans. By the end of the year France had ten armies for
service in the field and an effective force of some six hundred
thousand men. On the North-East, four armies, those of the Rhine,
of the Moselle, of the Ardennes, and of the North, stretched from
Strasbourg to the sea. Further to the South, the army of the Alps
occupied Savoy, and the army of Italy, which had just reduced
Toulon, waited for a new commander to launch it on an illustrious
career. In the West, two more armies held the Pyrenees, and a third
watched the insurgents of La Vendée; while on the Northern coast,
the army of Normandy, not yet organised into a definite force,
guarded the sea-board and dreamed vainly of invading England.
With these resources the Allies could not compete. But even had the
troops been forthcoming, their disunion would have rendered victory
impossible. In 1794, when France was preparing with the brightest
prospects to reopen the campaign, the long-standing jealousy
between Austria and Prussia reached its climax. Thugut, the Austrian
minister, disliked his Prussian allies even more than his French
enemies, and carrying to an extreme pitch the traditional selfishness
of Austrian policy, intrigued on all sides for territorial
aggrandisement, and meditated schemes for extending the Austrian
dominions in every quarter of Europe, in Flanders and Alsace, in
Turkey and Poland, in Bavaria and Venice. In the North, Russia drew
nearer every day to the completion of her long-prepared attack on
Polish freedom, and Prussia, determined not to be left aside when
her rivals shared the spoils of Poland, turned her attention and her
energies towards the Vistula, when the sympathies of her king would
gladly have turned towards the Rhine. In vain the English
Government threw itself with fresh energy into the war, laboured to
draw the coalition together, and promised generous supplies. In
April, 1794, at the very moment when Malmesbury, the English
envoy at the Hague, was pledging England, Holland and Prussia to
renewed efforts in the war with France, the Polish revolt broke out at
Warsaw, and Kosciusko's brave struggle for freedom diverted the
attention of the Central Powers. It was evident that until the Polish
question was settled, neither Prussia nor Austria would act with
vigour against the French. Accordingly, the French armies on the
North-Eastern frontier, now under the command of Pichegru and
Jourdan, advanced against the divided Allies, defeated them at
Turcoign and Fleurus, and entered Brussels on the 11th July. The
conquest of Belgium and the invasion of Holland followed. While
Suvórof stamped out the insurrection in Poland, and Austria and
Russia drew up plans for the partition of that unhappy country, to
which Prussia was afterwards compelled to accede, the French
troops advanced into Holland, drove the Prince of Orange into flight
and occupied the Hague and Amsterdam. At last Prussia, isolated
and alarmed, consented to open negotiations, and on the 5th April,
she definitely separated herself from Austria, and made peace with
France in the Treaty of Bâle.
There were many who hoped that the Treaty of Bâle might prove the
beginning of a general peace, and so prepare the way for a Royalist
restoration. The fresh disturbances among the peasants of La
Vendée and their allies the Chouans of Brittany, which had been
provoked in 1794 by the merciless policy of the Republic, by
Turreau's 'Hellish Columns' and by Carrier's tyranny at Nantes, had
been quieted, in the spring of 1795, by the conciliatory policy of the
Republican generals, and the long struggle in the West seemed to
be drawing to a close. In the Pyrenees the advance of the French
brought the Spanish Government to terms, and a peace between
France and Spain was concluded in July. In Paris the suppression of
the insurrection of Prairial had raised very high the hopes of the
Royalists. Many things seemed to point towards the restoration of
the Constitution of '91, which at that time, as at an earlier date,
would probably have satisfied the wishes of the majority of the
nation. But events ordered otherwise. The high demands of the
French Government, the vigour of English diplomacy, and the
settlement of the Polish difficulty, which left the Emperor free to act,
disappointed the expectations of a general peace. In the summer of
1795, England, Russia and Austria drew closer together and formed
a fresh alliance for the prosecution of the war. Early in June, the
unhappy little Dauphin died in prison, and his death dealt a heavy
blow to the hopes of the Constitutional party. Many who would have
welcomed the son of Louis XVI as Constitutional King, could not
reconcile themselves to the restoration of the Comte de Provence,
the chief of the Emigrants in arms against France, the prince who,
learning nothing from adversity, still condemned in the bitterest
language all the changes which the Revolution had introduced, and
still denounced as an enemy of the Bourbons every advocate of
moderation or of liberal ideas. The French people had not made the
Revolution in order to restore the Ancien Régime. The attempt of the
Emigrants to renew the war in the West by an ill-timed descent upon
Quiberon, although stamped out by Hoche in July, and punished with
terrible severity by the Convention, revived the deep-seated hostility
which all friends of the Revolution entertained towards the
Emigrants. The fresh tidings which came in from the South of terrible
excesses committed in the name of the reaction at Marseilles and
Avignon, Tarascon and Aix, tended to check the flowing tide. The
rapid advance of Royalist opinions in Paris, and the threatening
demeanour of the Jeunes Gens and of the Sections at length
alarmed the Thermidorians. The members of the Convention
recalled to themselves that they were committed to the measures of
the Revolution, and began to fear lest the march of events should
carry them too far and involve them in a policy perilous to
themselves.
Finally the Convention chose a middle course. The Constitution of
1795 retained the Republican form, and divided the supreme
executive power among a Directory of five persons. The legislative
power it committed to a Parliament consisting of two Houses, a
Council of Five Hundred, who must be over thirty years of age, and a
Council of Ancients, who must be over forty. The Parliament was to
elect the Directory, but the functions of each were strictly defined; the
legislative and the executive powers were kept jealously distinct, and
cordial co-operation between them was rendered almost impossible.
The Convention had learned from the experience of the past the
necessity of making the Executive strong, but it had not yet learned
the folly of making the legislature and the Executive independent
rivals instead of harmonious allies. The new Parliament was to last
for three years, but one-third of its members were renewable yearly.
Apart from these new regulations, the Convention, rejecting a series
of fantastic proposals brought forward by Sieyès, adhered to the
main lines of the Constitution of 1791. The system of double election
was re-established. The franchise was limited by a slight property
qualification. In the local administration the division into Departments
and Communes was retained. But the Communes were strictly
subordinated to the Departments, the Districts were abolished
altogether, and the numbers and powers of the officials were so
reduced, as to simplify the whole system, and to increase the
authority of the central Government. Other articles established
freedom of worship, the freedom of labour, and the freedom of the
Press, prohibited political clubs and federations, and forbade the
return of the Emigrants to France.
But although the majority of the Convention yielded to the demand
for the establishment of a settled Government, they had no wish to
extinguish themselves. They knew that in the existing temper of the
nation they had little chance of being returned to power, and they
feared the lengths to which the reaction might run. Accordingly, they
proceeded to apply at once the principles laid down by the new
constitution for the renewal of the legislative body, and by the