When Danton carried through this statute he
supposed himself to be at the apex of power and popularity, and to be
safe, if any man in France were safe. Very shortly he learned the error
In his calculation. Billaud was a member of the Committee of Public
Safety, while Danton had allowed himself to be dropped from membership.
Danton had just been married, and to an aristocratic wife, and the
turmoil of office had grown to be distasteful to him. On March 30, 1794,
Billaud somewhat casually remarked, "We must kill Danton;" for in truth
Danton, with conservative leanings, was becoming a grave danger to the
extreme Jacobins. Had he lived a few months longer he would have been a
Thermidorist. Billaud, therefore, only expressed the prevailing Jacobin
opinion; so the Jacobins arrested Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and his
other friends, and Danton at once anticipated what would be his doom. As
he entered his cell he said to his jailer: "I erected the Tribunal. I
ask pardon of God and men." But even yet he did not grasp the full
meaning of what he had done. At his trial he wished to introduce his
evidence fully, protesting "that he should understand the Tribunal since
he created it;" nevertheless, he did not understand the Tribunal, he
still regarded it as more or less a court.
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