Once, says Lamartine, the truth became manifest. He (Robespierre) exclaimed, with a gesture of despair, "_No, I was not made to govern, I was made to combat the enemies of the people!_"
These meditations on the character of Robespierre, show sufficiently that Lamartine, though he may not as yet have taken a positive direction in politics, has at least, from his vague poetical conceptions, returned to a sound state of political criticism, the inevitable precursor of sound theories. His views on the execution of the royal family are severe but just.
"Had the French nation a right to judge Louis XVI. as a legal tribunal?" demands Lamartine. "No! Because the judge ought to be impartial and disinterested--and the nation was neither the one nor the other. In this terrible but inevitable combat, in which, under the name of revolution, royalty and liberty were engaged for emancipating or enslaving the citizen, Louis XVI. personified the throne, the nation personified liberty. This was not their fault, it was their nature. All attempts at a mutual understanding were in vain. Their natures warred against each other in spite of their inclination toward peace. Between these two adversaries, the king and the people, of whom the one, by instinct, was prompted to retain, the other to wrest from its antagonist the rights of the nation, there was no tribunal but combat, no judge but victory. We do not mean to say that there was not above the parties a moral of the case, and acts which judge even victory itself. This justice never perishes in the eclipse of the law, and the ruin of empires; but it has no tribunal before which it can legally summon the accused; it is the justice of state, the justice which has neither regularly appointed judges, nor written laws, but which pronounces its sentences in men's consciences, and whose code is equity."
"Louis XVI. could not be judged in politics or equity, but by a process of state. Had the nation a right to judge him thus? As well might we demand whether she had a right to fight and conquer, in other words, as well might we ask whether despotism is inviolable--whether liberty is a revolt--whether there is no justice here below but for kings--whether there is, for the people, no other right than to serve and obey? The mere doubt is an act of impiety toward the people."