The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume
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Title: The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6)
The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3)
Author: Hippolyte A. Taine
Annotator: Svend Rom
Translator: John Durand, 1880
Posting Date: June 18, 2008 [EBook #2578]
Release Date: April, 2001
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH REVOLUTION V1 ***
Produced by Svend Rom
THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 2
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, VOLUME 1.
by Hippolyte A. Taine
CONTENTS:
ANARCHY
PREFACE
BOOK FIRST. Spontaneous Anarchy.
CHAPTER I. The Beginnings of Anarchy
CHAPTER II. Paris up to the 14th of July
CHAPTER III. Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789
CHAPTER IV. PARIS
BOOK SECOND. The constituent Assembly, and the Result of its Labors
CHAPTER I. The Constituent Assembly
CHAPTER II. The Damage
CHAPTER III. The Constructions--The Constitution of 1791.
BOOK THIRD. The Application of the Constitution
CHAPTER I. The Federations
CHAPTER II. Sovereignty of Unrestrained Passions
CHAPTER III. Development of the ruling Passion
PREFACE
This second part of "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" will
consist of two volumes.--Popular insurrections and the laws of the
Constituent Assembly end in destroying all government in France; this
forms the subject of the present volume.--A party arises around
an extreme doctrine, grabs control of the government, and rules in
conformity with its doctrine. This will form the subject of the second
volume.
A third volume would be required to criticize and evaluate the source
material. I lack the necessary space: I merely state the rule that I
have observed. The trustworthiest testimony will always be that of an
eyewitness, especially
* When this witness is an honorable, attentive, and intelligent man,
* When he is writing on the spot, at the moment, and under the dictate
of the facts themselves,
* When it is obvious that his sole object is to preserve or furnish
information,
* When his work instead of a piece of polemics planned for the needs
of a cause, or a passage of eloquence arranged for popular effect is a
legal deposition, a secret report, a confidential dispatch, a private
letter, or a personal memento.
The nearer a document approaches this type, the more it merits
confidence, and supplies superior material.--I have found many of
this kind in the national archives, principally in the manuscript
correspondence of ministers, intendants, sub-delegates, magistrates, and
other functionaries; of military commanders, officers in the army,
and gendarmerie; of royal commissioners, and of the Assembly; of
administrators of departments, districts, and municipalities, besides
persons in private life who address the King, the National Assembly, or
the ministry. Among these are men of every rank, profession, education,
and party. They are distributed by hundreds and thousands over the
whole surface of the territory. They write apart, without being able to
consult each other, and without even knowing each other. No one is so
well placed for collecting and transmitting accurate information. None
of them seek literary effect, or even imagine that what they write will
ever be published. They draw up their statements at once, under the
direct impression of local events. Testimony of this character, of the
highest order, and at first hand, provides the means by which all other
testimony ought to be verified.--The footnotes at the bottom of the
pages indicate the condition, office, name, and address of those
decisive witnesses. For greater certainty I have transcribed as often as
possible their own words. In this way the reader, confronting the texts,
can interpret them for himself, and form his own opinions; he will have
the same documents as myself for arriving at his conclusions, and, if he
is pleased to do so, he may conclude otherwise. As for allusions, if he
finds any, he himself will have introduced them, and if he applies them
he is alone responsible for them. To my mind, the past has features of
its own, and the portrait here presented resembles only the France of
the past. I have drawn it without concerning myself with the discussions
of the day; I have written as if my subject were the revolutions of
Florence or Athens. This is history, and nothing more, and, if I may
fully express myself, I esteem my vocation of historian too highly to
make a cloak of it for the concealment of another. (December 1877).
*****
BOOK FIRST. SPONTANEOUS ANARCHY.
CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANARCHY.
I.--Dearth the first cause.
Bad crops. The winter of 1788 and 1789.--High price and poor
quality of bread.--In the provinces.--At Paris.
During the night of July 14-15, 1789, the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt caused Louis XVI to be aroused to inform him of
the taking of the Bastille. "It is a revolt, then?" exclaimed the King.
"Sire!" replied the Duke; "it is a revolution!" The event was even more
serious. Not only had power slipped from the hands of the King, but also
it had not fallen into those of the Assembly. It now lay on the
ground, ready to the hands of the unchained populace, the violent and
over-excited crowd, the mobs, which picked it up like some weapon that
had been thrown away in the street. In fact, there was no longer any
government; the artificial structure of human society was giving way
entirely; things were returning to a state of nature. This was not a
revolution, but a dissolution.
Two causes excite and maintain the universal upheaval. The first one is
food shortages and dearth, which being constant, lasting for ten years,
and aggravated by the very disturbances which it excites, bids fair to
inflame the popular passions to madness, and change the whole course of
the Revolution into a series of spasmodic stumbles.
When a stream is brimful, a slight rise suffices to cause an overflow.
So was it with the extreme distress of the eighteenth century. A poor
man, who finds it difficult to live when bread is cheap, sees death
staring him in the face when it is dear. In this state of suffering the
animal instinct revolts, and the universal obedience which constitutes
public peace depends on a degree more or less of dryness or damp, heat
or cold. In 1788, a year of severe drought, the crops had been poor. In
addition to this, on the eve of the harvest,[1101] a terrible hail-storm
burst over the region around Paris, from Normandy to Champagne,
devastating sixty leagues of the most fertile territory, and causing
damage to the amount of one hundred millions of francs. Winter came on,
the severest that had been seen since 1709. At the close of December the
Seine was frozen over from Paris to Havre, while the thermometer stood
at 180 below zero. A third of the olive-trees died in Provence, and the
rest suffered to such an extent that they were considered incapable of
bearing fruit for two years to come. The same disaster befell Languedoc.
In Vivarais, and in the Cevennes, whole forests of chestnuts had
perished, along with all the grain and grass crops on the uplands. On
the plain the Rhone remained in a state of overflow for two months.
After the spring of 1789 the famine spread everywhere, and it increased
from month to month like a rising flood. In vain did the Government
order the farmers, proprietors, and corn-dealers to keep the markets
supplied. In vain did it double the bounty on imports, resort to all
sorts of expedients, involve itself in debt, and expend over forty
millions of francs to furnish France with wheat. In vain do individuals,
princes, noblemen, bishops, chapters, and communities multiply their
charities. The Archbishop of Paris incurring a debt of 400,000 livres,
one rich man distributing 40,000 francs the morning after the hailstorm,
and a convent of Bernardines feeding twelve hundred poor persons for six
weeks[1102]. But it had been too devastating. Neither public measures
nor private charity could meet the overwhelming need. In Normandy, where
the last commercial treaty had ruined the manufacture of linen and
of lace trimmings, forty thousand workmen were out of work. In many
parishes one-fourth of the population[1103] are beggars. Here, "nearly
all the inhabitants, not excepting the farmers and landowners, are
eating barley bread and drinking water;" there, "many poor creatures
have to eat oat bread, and others soaked bran, which has caused the
death of several children."--"Above all," writes the Rouen Parliament,
"let help be sent to a perishing people. . .. Sire, most of your
subjects are unable to pay the price of bread, and what bread is given
to those who do buy it "--Arthur Young,[1104] who was traveling through
France at this time, heard of nothing but the high cost of bread and the
distress of the people. At Troyes bread costs four sous a pound--that is
to say, eight sous of the present day; and unemployed artisans flock
to the relief works, where they can earn only twelve sous a day. In
Lorraine, according to the testimony of all observers, "the people are
half dead with hunger." In Paris the number of paupers has been trebled;
there are thirty thousand in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine alone. Around
Paris there is a short supply of grain, or it is spoilt[1105]. In the
beginning of July, at Montereau, the market is empty. "The bakers could
not have baked" if the police officers had not increased the price of
bread to five sous per pound; the rye and barley which the intendant
is able to send "are of the worst possible quality, rotten and in a
condition to produce dangerous diseases. Nevertheless, most of the small
consumers are reduced to the hard necessity of using this spoilt grain."
At Villeneuve-le-Roi, writes the mayor, "the rye of the two lots last
sent is so black and poor that it cannot be retailed without wheat." At
Sens the barley "tastes musty" to such an extent that buyers of it throw
the detestable bread, which it makes in the face of the sub-delegate. At
Chevreuse the barley has sprouted and smells bad; the "poor wretches,"
says an employee, "must be hard pressed with hunger to put up with it."
At Fontainebleau "the barley, half eaten away, produces more bran than
flour, and to make bread of it, one is obliged to work it over several
times." This bread, such as it is, is an object of savage greed; "it
has come to this, that it is impossible to distribute it except through
wickets." And those who thus obtain their ration, "are often attacked on
the road and robbed of it by the more vigorous of the famished people."
At Nangis "the magistrates prohibit the same person from buying more
than two bushels in the same market." In short, provisions are so
scarce that there is a difficulty in feeding the soldiers; the minister
dispatches two letters one after another to order the cutting down
of 250,000 bushels of rye before the harvest[1106]. Paris thus, in
a perfect state of tranquility, appears like a famished city put on
rations at the end of a long siege, and the dearth will not be greater
nor the food worse in December 1870, than in July 1789.
"The nearer the 14th of July approached," says an eyewitness,[1107] "the
more did the dearth increase. Every baker's shop was surrounded by a
crowd, to which bread was distributed with the most grudging economy.
This bread was generally blackish, earthy, and bitter, producing
inflammation of the throat and pain in the bowels. I have seen flour of
detestable quality at the military school and at other depots. I have
seen portions of it yellow in color, with an offensive smell; some
forming blocks so hard that they had to be broken into fragments
by repeated blows of a hatchet. For my own part, wearied with the
difficulty of procuring this poor bread, and disgusted with that offered
to me at the tables d'hôte, I avoided this kind of food altogether. In
the evening I went to the Café du Caveau, where, fortunately, they
were kind enough to reserve for me two of those rolls which are called
flutes, and this is the only bread I have eaten for a week at a time."
But this resource is only for the rich. As for the people, to get bread
fit for dogs, they must stand in a line for hours. And here they fight
for it; "they snatch food from one another." There is no more work to
be had; "the work-rooms are deserted;" often, after waiting a whole
day, the workman returns home empty-handed. When he does bring back a
four-pound loaf it costs him 3 francs 12 sous; that is, 12 sous for the
bread, and 3 francs for the lost day. In this long line of unemployed,
excited men, swaying to and fro before the shop-door, dark thoughts are
fermenting: "if the bakers find no flour to-night to bake with, we shall
have nothing to eat to-morrow." An appalling idea;--in presence of which
the whole power of the Government is not too strong; for to keep order
in the midst of famine nothing avails but the sight of an armed force,
palpable and threatening. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV there had been
even greater hunger and misery; but the outbreaks, which were roughly
and promptly put down, were only partial and passing disorders. Some
rioters were at once hung, and others were sent to the galleys. The
peasant or the workman, convinced of his impotence, at once returned to
his stall or his plow. When a wall is too high one does not even think
of scaling it.--But now the wall is cracking--all its custodians, the
clergy, the nobles, the Third-Estate, men of letters, the politicians,
and even the Government itself, making the breach wider. The wretched,
for the first time, discover an issue: they dash through it, at first
in driblets, then in a mass, and rebellion becomes as universal as
resignation was in the past.
II.--Expectations the second cause
Separation and laxity of the administrative forces.--
Investigations of local assemblies. --The people become
aware of their condition.--Convocation of the States-
General.--Hope is born. The coincidence of early Assemblies
with early difficulties.
It is just through this breach that hope steals like a beam of light,
and gradually finds its way down to the depths below. For the last fifty
years it has been rising, and its rays, which first illuminated the
upper class in their splendid apartments in the first story, and next
the middle class in their entresol and on the ground floor. They have
now for two years penetrated to the cellars where the people toil, and
even to the deep sinks and obscure corners where rogues and vagabonds
and malefactors, a foul and swarming herd, crowd and hide themselves
from the persecution of the law.--To the first two provincial assemblies
instituted by Necker in 1778 and 1779, Loménie de Brienne has in 1787
just added nineteen others; under each of these are assemblies of the
arrondissement, under each assembly of the arrondissement are parish
assemblies[1108]. Thus the whole machinery of administration has been
changed. It is the new assemblies which assess the taxes and superintend
their collection; which determine upon and direct all public works; and
which form the court of final appeal in regard to matters in dispute.
The intendant, the sub-delegate, the elected representative[1109], thus
lose three-quarters of their authority. Conflicts arise, consequently,
between rival powers whose frontiers are not clearly defined; command
shifts about, and obedience is diminished. The subject no longer feels
on his shoulders the commanding weight of the one hand which, without
possibility of interference or resistance, held him in, urged him
forward, and made him move on. Meanwhile, in each assembly of the
parish arrondissement, and even of the province, plebeians,
"husband-men,"[1110] and often common farmers, sit by the side of lords
and prelates. They listen to and remember the vast figure of the taxes
which are paid exclusively, or almost exclusively, by them--the taille
and its accessories, the poll-tax and road dues, and assuredly on their
return home they talk all this over with their neighbor. These figures
are all printed; the village attorney discusses the matter with his
clients, the artisans and rustics, on Sunday as they leave the mass,
or in the evening in the large public room of the tavern. These little
gatherings, moreover, are sanctioned, encouraged by the powers above.
In the earliest days of 1788 the provincial assemblies order a board
of inquiry to be held by the syndics and inhabitants of each parish.
Knowledge is wanted in detail of their grievances. What part of the
revenue is chargeable to each impost? What must the cultivator pay and
how much does he suffer? How many privileged persons there are in the
parish, what is the amount of their fortune, are they residents, and
what their exemptions amount to? In replying, the attorney who holds the
pen, names and points out with his finger each privileged individual,
criticizes his way of living, and estimates his fortune, calculates the
injury done to the village by his immunities, inveighs against the taxes
and the tax-collectors. On leaving these assemblies the villager broods
over what he has just heard. He sees his grievances no longer singly as
before, but in mass, and coupled with the enormity of evils under which
his fellows suffer. Besides this, they begin to disentangle the causes
of their misery: the King is good--why then do his collectors take so
much of our money? This or that canon or nobleman is not unkind--why
then do they make us pay in their place?--Imagine that a sudden gleam of
reason should allow a beast of burden to comprehend the contrast between
the species of horse and mankind. Imagine, if you can, what its first
ideas would be in relation to the coachmen and drivers who bridle
and whip it and again in relation to the good-natured travelers and
sensitive ladies who pity it, but who to the weight of the vehicle add
their own and that of their luggage.
Likewise, in the mind of the peasant, athwart his perplexed brooding, a
new idea, slowly, little by little, is unfolded:--that of an oppressed
multitude of which he makes one, a vast herd scattered far beyond the
visible horizon, everywhere ill used, starved, and fleeced. Towards the
end of 1788 we begin to detect in the correspondence of the intendants
and military commandants the dull universal muttering of coming
wrath. Men's characters seem to change; they become suspicious and
restive.--And just at this moment, the Government, dropping the reins,
calls upon them to direct themselves.[1111]. In the month of November
1787, the King declared that he would convoke the States-General. On the
5th of July 1788, he calls for memoranda (des mémoires) on this subject
from every competent person and body. On the 8th of August he fixes the
date of the session. On the 5th of October he convokes the notables,
in order to consider the subject with them. On the 27th of December he
grants a double representation to the Third-Estate, because "its cause
is allied with generous sentiments, and it will always obtain the
support of public opinion." The same day he introduces into the
electoral assemblies of the clergy a majority of curés[1112], "because
good and useful pastors are daily and closely associated with the
indigence and relief of the people," from which it follows "that they
are much more familiar with their sufferings" and necessities. On
the 24th January 1789, he prescribes the procedure and method of the
meetings. After the 7th of February writs of summons are sent out one
after the other. Eight days after, each parish assembly begins to draw
up its memorial of grievances, and becomes excited over the detailed
enumeration of all the miseries which it sets down in writing.--All
these appeals and all these acts are so many strokes, which reverberate,
in the popular imagination. "It is the desire of His Majesty," says the
order issued, "that every one, from the extremities of his kingdom, and
from the most obscure of its hamlets, should be certain of his wishes
and protests reaching him." Thus, it is all quite true: there can be
no mistake about it, the thing is sure. The people are invited to speak
out, they are summoned, and they are consulted. There is a disposition
to relieve them; henceforth their misery shall be less; better times
are coming. This is all they know about it. A few month after, in
July,[1113] the only answer a peasant girl can make to Arthur Young is,
"something was to be done by some great folks for such poor ones, but
she did not know who nor how." The thing is too complicated, beyond the
reach of a stupefied and mechanical brain.--One idea alone emerges, the
hope of immediate relief. The persuasion that one is entitled to it, the
resolution to aid it with every possible means. Consequently, an anxious
waiting, a ready fervor, a tension of the will simply due to the waiting
for the opportunity to let go and take off like a irresistible arrow
towards the unknown end which will reveal itself all of a sudden. Hunger
is to mark this sudden target out for them.
The market must be supplied with wheat; the farmers and land-owners must
bring it; wholesale buyers, whether the Government or individuals, must
not be allowed to send it elsewhere. The wheat must be sold at a low
price; the price must be cut down and fixed, so that the baker can sell
bread at two sous the pound. Grain, flour, wine, salt, and provisions
must pay no more duties. Seignorial dues and claims, ecclesiastical
tithes, and royal or municipal taxes must no longer exist. On the
strength of this idea disturbances broke out on all sides in March,
April, and May. Contemporaries "do not know what to think of such
a scourge;[1114] they cannot comprehend how such a vast number of
criminals, without visible leaders, agree amongst themselves everywhere
to commit the same excesses just at the time when the States-General are
going to begin their sittings." The reason is that, under the ancient
régime, the conflagration was smoldering in a closed chamber; the great
door is suddenly opened, the air enters, and immediately the flame
breaks out.
III.--The provinces during the first six months of 1789
Effects of the famine.
At first there are only intermittent, isolated fires, which are
extinguished or go out of themselves; but, a moment after, in the same
place, or very near it, the sparks again appear. Their number, like
their recurrence, shows the vastness, depth, and heat of the combustible
matter, which is about to explode. In the four months, which precede the
taking of the Bastille, over three hundred outbreaks may be counted in
France. They take place from month to month and from week to week, in
Poitou, Brittany, Touraine, Orléanais, Normandy, Ile-de-France, Picardy,
Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, Nivernais, Auvergne, Languedoc, and
Provence. On the 28th of May the parliament of Rouen announces robberies
of grain, "violent and bloody tumults, in which men on both sides have
fallen," throughout the province, at Caen, Saint-Lô, Mortain, Granville,
Evreux, Bernay, Pont-Andemer, Elboeuf; Louviers, and in other sections
besides. On the 20th of April Baron de Bezenval, military commander
in the Central Provinces, writes: "I once more lay before M. Necker a
picture of the frightful condition of Touraine and of Orléanais. Every
letter I receive from these two provinces is the narrative of three
or four riots, which are put down with difficulty by the troops and
constabulary,"[1115]--and throughout the whole extent of the kingdom a
similar state of things is seen. The women, as is natural, are generally
at the head of these outbreaks. It is they who, at Montlhéry, rip open
the sacks of grain with their scissors. On learning each week, on market
day that the price of a loaf of bread advances three, four, or seven
sous, they break out into shrieks of rage: at this rate for bread, with
the small salaries of the men, and when work fails,[1116] how can a
family be fed? Crowds gather around the sacks of flour and the doors of
the bakers. Amidst outcries and reproaches some one in the crowd makes a
push; the proprietor or dealer is hustled and knocked down. The shop
is invaded, the commodity is in the hands of the buyers and of the
famished, each one grabbing for himself, pay or no pay, and running
away with the booty.--Sometimes a party is made up beforehand[1117]
At Bray-sur-Seine, on the 1st of May, the villagers for four leagues
around, armed with stones, knives, and cudgels, to the number of four
thousand, compel the metayers and farmers, who have brought grain with
them, to sell it at 3 livres, instead of 4 livres 10 sous the bushel.
They threaten to do the same thing on the following market-day: but the
farmers do not return, the storehouse remains empty. Now soldiers must
be at hand, or the inhabitants of Bray will be pillaged. At Bagnols, in
Languedoc, on the 1st and 2nd of April, the peasants, armed with cudgels
and assembled by tap of drum, "traverse the town, threatening to burn
and destroy everything if flour and money are not given to them."
They go to private houses for grain, divide it amongst themselves at a
reduced price, "promising to pay when the next crop comes round," and
force the Consuls to put bread at two sous the pound, and to increase
the day's wages four sous.--Indeed this is now the regular thing; it is
not the people who obey the authorities, but the authorities who obey
the people. Consuls, sheriffs, mayors, municipal officers, town-clerks,
become confused and hesitating in the face of this huge clamor; they
feel that they are likely to be trodden under foot or thrown out of the
windows. Others, with more firmness, being aware that a riotous crowd
is mad, and having scruples to spill blood; yield for the time being,
hoping that at the next market-day there will be more soldiers
and better precautions taken. At Amiens, "after a very violent
outbreak,"[1118] they decide to take the wheat belonging to the Jacobin
monks, and, protected by the troops, to sell it to the people at a third
below its value. At Nantes, where the town hall is attacked, they are
forced to lower the price of bread one sou per pound. At Angoulême, to
avoid a recourse to arms, they request the Comte d'Artois to renounce
his dues on flour for two months, reduce the price of bread, and
compensate the bakers. At Cette they are so maltreated they let
everything take its course; the people sack their dwellings and get the
upper hand; they announce by sound of trumpet that all their demands are
granted. On other occasions, the mob dispenses with their services and
acts for itself. If there happens to be no grain on the market-place,
the people go after it wherever they can find it--to proprietors and
farmers who are unable to bring it for fear of pillage; to convents,
which by royal edict are obliged always to have one year's crop in
store; to granaries where the Government keeps its supplies; and to
convoys which are dispatched by the intendants to the relief of famished
towns. Each for himself--so much the worse for his neighbor. The
inhabitants of Fougères beat and drive out those who come from Ernée
to buy in their market; a similar violence is shown at Vitré to the
in-habitants of Maine.[1119] At Sainte-Léonard the people stop the grain
started for Limoges; at Bost that intended for Aurillac; at Saint-Didier
that ordered for Moulins; and at Tournus that dispatched to Macon. In
vain are escorts added to the convoys; troops of men and women, armed
with hatchets and guns, put themselves in ambush in the woods along the
road, and seize the horses by their bridles; the saber has to be used to
secure any advance. In vain are arguments and kind words offered, "and
in vain even is wheat offered for money; they refuse, shouting out that
the convoy shall not go on." They have taken a stubborn stand, their
resolution being that of a bull planted in the middle of the road and
lowering his horns. Since the wheat is in the district, it is theirs;
whoever carries it off or withholds it is a robber. This fixed idea
cannot be driven out of their minds. At Chant-nay, near Mans,[1120]
they prevent a miller from carrying that which he had just bought to
his mill. At Montdragon, in Languedoc, they stone a dealer in the act of
sending his last wagon load elsewhere. At Thiers, workmen go in force
to gather wheat in the fields; a proprietor with whom some is found
is nearly killed; they drink wine in the cellars, and leave the taps
running. At Nevers, the bakers not having put bread on their counters
for four days, the mob force the granaries of private persons, of
dealers and religious communities. "The frightened corn-dealers part
with their grain at any price; most of it is stolen in the face of the
guards," and, in the tumult of these searches of homes, a number of
houses are sacked.--In these days woe to all who are concerned in the
acquisition, commerce, and manipulation of grain! Popular imagination
requires living beings to who it may impute its misfortunes, and on whom
it may gratify its resentments. To it, all such persons are monopolists,
and, at any rate, public enemies. Near Angers the Benedictine
establishment is invaded, and its fields and woods are devastated.[1121]
At Amiens "the people are arranging to pillage and perhaps burn the
houses of two merchants, who have built labor-saving mills." Restrained
by the soldiers, they confine themselves to breaking windows; but other
"groups come to destroy or plunder the houses of two or three persons
whom they suspect of being monopolists." At Nantes, a sieur Geslin,
being deputized by the people to inspect a house, and finding no wheat,
a shout is set up that he is a receiver, an accomplice! The crowd rush
at him, and he is wounded and almost cut in pieces.--It is very evident
that there is no more security in France; property, even life, is in
danger. The primary possession, food, is violated in hundreds of places,
and is everywhere menaced and precarious. The local officials everywhere
call for aid, declare the constabulary incompetent, and demand
regular troops. And mark how public authority, everywhere inadequate,
disorganized, and tottering, finds stirred up against it not only the
blind madness of hunger, but, in addition, the evil instincts which
profit by every disorder and the inveterate lusts which every political
commotion frees from restraint.
IV.--Intervention of ruffians and vagabonds.
We have seen how numerous the smugglers, dealers in contraband salt,
poachers, vagabonds, beggars, and escaped convicts[1122] have become,
and how a year of famine increases the number. All are so many recruits
for the mobs, and whether in a disturbance or by means of a disturbance
each one of them fills his pouch. Around Caux,[1123] even up to the
environs of Rouen, at Roncherolles, Quévrevilly, Préaux, Saint-Jacques,
and in the entire surrounding neighborhood bands of armed bandits force
their way into the houses, particularly the parsonages, and lay their
hands on whatever they please. To the south of Chartres "three or four
hundred woodcutters, from the forests of Bellème, chop away everything
that opposes them, and force grain to be given up to them at their own
price." In the vicinity of Étampes, fifteen bandits enter the
farmhouses at night and put the farmer to ransom, threatening him with
a conflagration. In Cambrésis they pillage the abbeys of Vauchelles, of
Verger, and of Guillemans, the château of the Marquis de Besselard, the
estate of M. Doisy, two farms, the wagons of wheat passing along the
road to Saint-Quentin, and, besides this, seven farms in Picardy.
"The seat of this revolt is in some villages bordering on Picardy and
Cambrésis, familiar with smuggling operations and to the license of
that pursuit." The peasants allow themselves to be enticed away by the
bandits. Man slips rapidly down the incline of dishonesty; one who
is half-honest, and takes part in a riot inadvertently or in spite of
himself; repeats the act, allured on by impunity or by gain. In fact,
"it is not dire necessity which impels them;" they make a speculation of
cupidity, a new sort of illicit trade. An old soldier, saber in hand, a
forest-keeper, and "about eight persons sufficiently lax, put themselves
at the head of four or five hundred men, go off each day to three or
four villages. Here they force everybody who has any wheat to give it
to them at 24 livres," and even at 18 livres, the sack. Those among the
band, who say that they have no money, carry away their portion without
payment. Others, after having paid what they please, re-sell at a
profit, which amounts to even 45 livres the sack. This is a good
business, and one in which greed takes poverty for its accomplice. At
the next harvest the temptation will be similar: "they have threatened
to come and do our harvesting for us, and also to take our cattle and
sell the meat in the villages at the rate of two sous the pound."--In
every important insurrection there are similar evil-does and vagabonds,
enemies to the law, savage, prowling desperadoes, who, like wolves, roam
about wherever they scent a prey. It is they who serve as the directors
and executioners of public or private malice. Near Uzès twenty-five
masked men, with guns and clubs, enter the house of a notary, fire a
pistol at him, beat him, wreck the premises, and burn his registers
along with the title-deeds and papers which he has in keeping for the
Count de Rouvres. Seven of them are arrested, but the people are on
their side, and fall on the constabulary and free them.[1124]--They
are known by their acts, by their love of destruction for the sake of
destruction, by their foreign accent, by their savage faces and their
rags. Some of them come from Paris to Rouen, and, for four days, the
town is at their mercy.[1125] The stores are forced open, train wagons
are discharged, wheat is wasted, and convents and seminaries are put to
ransom. They invade the dwelling of the attorney-general, who has begun
proceedings against them, and want to tear him to pieces. They break his
mirrors and his furniture, leave the premises laden with booty, and go
into the town and its outskirts to pillage the manufactories and break
up or burn all the machinery.--Henceforth these constitute the new
leaders: for in every mob it is the boldest and least scrupulous
who march ahead and set the example in destruction. The example is
contagious: the beginning was the craving for bread, the end is murder
and arson; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence
to the limited revolt of necessity.
V.--Effect on the Population of the New Ideas.
Bad as it is, this savagery might, perhaps, have been overcome, in spite
of the dearth and of the brigands; but what renders it irresistible is
the belief of its being authorized, and that by those whose duty it is
to repress it. Here and there words and actions of a brutal frankness
break forth, and reveal beyond the somber present a more threatening
future--After the 9th of January, 1789, among the mob which attacks the
Hôtel-de-Ville and besieges the bakers' shops of Nantes, "shouts of Vive
la Liberté![1126] mingled with those of Vive le Roi! are heard." A
few months later, around Ploërmel, the peasants refuse to pay tithes,
alleging that the memorial of their seneschal's court demands their
abolition. In Alsace, after March, there is the same refusal "in many
places;" many of the communities even maintain that they will pay no
more taxes until their deputies to the States-General shall have fixed
the precise amount of the public contributions. In Isère it is decided,
by proceedings, printed and published, that "personal dues" shall no
longer be paid, while the landowners who are affected by this dare
not prosecute in the tribunals. At Lyons, the people have come to the
conclusion "that all levies of taxes are to cease," and, on the 29th of
June, on hearing of the meeting of the three orders, "astonished by the
illuminations and signs of public rejoicing," they believe that the good
time has come." They think of forcing the delivery of meat to them at
four sous the pound, and wine at the same rate. The publicans insinuate
to them the prospective abolition of octrois.[1127] and that, meanwhile,
the King, in favor of the re-assembling of the three orders, has granted
three days' freedom from all duties at Paris, and that Lyons ought
to enjoy the same privilege." Upon this the crowd, rushing off to
the barriers, to the gates of Sainte-Claire and Perrache, and to the
Guillotière bridge, burn or demolish the bureaux, destroy the registers,
sack the lodgings of the clerks, carry off the money and pillage the
wine on hand in the depot. In the mean time a rumor has circulated all
round through the country that there is free entrance into the town for
all provisions. During the following days the peasantry stream in with
enormous files of wagons loaded with wine and drawn by several oxen, so
that, in spite of the re-established guard, it is necessary to let them
enter all day without paying the dues. It is only on the 7th of July
that these can again be collected.--The same thing occurs in the
southern provinces, where the principal imposts are levied on
provisions. There also the collections are suspended in the name of
public authority. At Agde,[1128] "the people, considering the so-called
will of the King as to equality of classes, are foolish enough to think
that they are everything and can do everything." Thus do they interpret
in their own way and in their own terms the double representation
accorded to the Third-Estate. They threaten the town, consequently, with
general pillage if the prices of all provisions are not reduced, and if
the duties of the province on wine, fish, and meat are not suppressed.
They also wish to nominate consuls who have sprung up out of their
body." The bishop, the lord of the manor, the mayor and the notables,
against whom they forcibly stir up the peasantry in the country, are
obliged to proclaim by sound of trumpet that their demands shall be
granted. Three days afterwards they exact a diminution of one-half of
the tax on grinding, and go in quest of the bishop who owns the mills.
The prelate, who is ill, sinks down in the street and seats himself on
a stone; they compel him forthwith to sign an act of renunciation,
and hence "his mill, valued at 15,000 livres, is reduced to 7,500
livres."--At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they
enter the houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their
registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of
their clerks.--In Provence it is worse; for most unjustly, and through
inconceivable imprudence, the taxes of the towns are all levied on
flour. It is therefore to this impost that the dearness of bread is
directly attributed. Hence the fiscal agent becomes a manifest enemy,
and revolts on account of hunger are transformed into insurrections
against the State.
VI.--The first jacquerie in Province
Feebleness or ineffectiveness of repressive measures.
Here, again, political novelties are the spark that ignites the mass
of gunpowder. Everywhere, the uprising of the people takes place on
the very day on which the electoral assembly meets. From forty to
fifty riots occur in the provinces in less than a fortnight. Popular
imagination, like that of a child, goes straight to its mark. The
reforms having been announced, people think them accomplished and, to
make sure of them, steps are at once taken to carry them out. Now
that we are to have relief, let us relieve ourselves. "This is not an
isolated riot as usual," writes the commander of the troops;[1129]
"here the faction is united and governed by uniform principles; the same
errors are diffused through all minds. . . . . The principles impressed
on the people are that the King desires equality. No more bishops
or lords, no more distinctions of rank, no tithes, and no seignorial
privileges. Thus, these misguided people fancy that they are exercising
their rights, and obeying the will of the King."--The effect of sonorous
phrases is apparent. The people have been told that the States-General
were to bring about the "regeneration of the kingdom" The inference is
"that the date of their assembly was to be one of an entire and absolute
change of conditions and fortunes." Hence, "the insurrection against the
nobles and the clergy is as active as it is widespread." "In many
places it was distinctly announced that there was a sort of war declared
against landowners and property," and "in the towns as well as in the
rural districts the people persist in declaring that they will pay
nothing, neither taxes, duties, nor debts."--Naturally, the first
assault is against the piquèt, or flour-tax. At Aix, Marseilles, Toulon,
and in more than forty towns and market-villages, this is summarily
abolished; at Aupt and at Luc nothing remains of the weighing-house but
the four walls. At Marseilles the home of the slaughter-house contractor
and at Brignolles that of the director of the leather excise, are
sacked. The determination is "to purge the land of excise-men. "--This
is only a beginning; bread and other provisions must become cheap, and
that without delay. At Arles, the Corporation of sailors, presided over
by M. de Barras, consul, had just elected its representatives. By way of
conclusion to the meeting, they pass a resolution insisting that M. de
Barras should reduce the price of all comestibles. On his refusal, they
"open the window, exclaiming, 'We hold him, and we have only to throw
him into the street for the rest to pick him up.'" Compliance is
inevitable. The resolution is proclaimed by the town-criers, and at each
article which is reduced in price the crowd shout, "Vive le Roi, vive M.
Barras!"--One must yield to brute force. But the inconvenience is great
for, through the suppression of the flour-tax, the towns have no longer
a revenue. On the other hand, as they are obliged to indemnify the
butchers and bakers, Toulon, for instance, incurs a debt of 2,500 livres
a day.
In this state of disorder, woe to those who are under suspicion of
having contributed, directly or indirectly, to the evils, which the
people endure! At Toulon a demand is made for the head of the mayor, who
signs the tax-list, and of the keeper of the records. They are trodden
under foot, and their houses are ransacked. At Manosque, the Bishop
of Sisteron, who is visiting the seminary, is accused of favoring
a monopolist. On his way to his carriage, on foot, he is hooted and
menaced. He is first pelted with mud, and then with stones. The consuls
in attendance, and the sub-delegate, who come to his assistance, are
mauled and repulsed. Meanwhile, some of the most furious begin, before
his eyes, "to dig a ditch to bury him in." Protected by five or six
brave fellows, amidst a volley of stones, and wounded on the head and
on many parts of his body, he succeeds in reaching his carriage. He is
finally only saved because the horses, which are likewise stoned, run
away. Foreigners, Italians, bandits, are mingled with the peasants and
artisans, and expressions are heard and acts are seen which indicate a
jacquerie.[1130] "The most excited said to the bishop, 'we are poor and
you are rich, and we mean to have all your property.'"[1131] Elsewhere,
"the seditious mob exacts contributions from all people in good
circumstances. At Brignolles, thirteen houses are pillaged from top to
bottom, and thirty others partly half.--At Aupt, M. de Montferrat, in
defending himself, is killed and "hacked to pieces."--At La Seyne, the
mob, led by a peasant, assembles by beat of drum. Some women fetch a
bier, and set it down before the house of a leading bourgeois, telling
him to prepare for death, and that "they will have the honor of burying
him." He escapes; his house is pillaged, as well as the bureau of
the flour-tax. The following day, the chief of the band "obliges the
principal inhabitants to give him a sum of money to indemnify, as he
states it, the peasants who have abandoned their work," and devoted the
day to serving the public.--At Peinier, the Président de Peinier, an
octogenarian, is "besieged in his chateau by a band of a hundred and
fifty artisans and peasants," who bring with them a consul and a notary.
Aided by these two functionaries, they force the president "to pass an
act by which he renounces his seignorial rights of every description
"--At Sollier they destroy the mills belonging to M. de Forbin-Janson.
They sack the house of his business agent, pillage the château, and
demolish the roof, chapel, altar, railings, and escutcheons. They enter
the cellars, stave in the casks, and carry away everything that can
be carried, "the transportation taking two days;" all of which cause
damages of a hundred thousand crowns to the marquis.--At Riez they
surround the episcopal palace with fagots, threatening to burn it, "and
compromise with the bishop on a promise of fifty thousand livres," and
want him to burn his archives.--In short, the sedition is social for it
singles out for attack all that profit by, or stand at the head of, the
established order of things.
Seeing them act in this way, one would say that the theory of the
Contrat-Social had been instilled into them. They treat magistrates as
domestics, promulgate laws, and conduct themselves like sovereigns.
They exercise public power, and establish, summarily, arbitrarily,
and brutally, whatever they think to be in conformity with natural
right.--At Peinier they exact a second electoral assembly, and, for
themselves, the right of suffrage.--At Saint-Maximin they themselves
elect new consuls and officers of justice.--At Solliez they oblige the
judge's lieutenant to give in his resignation, and they break his
staff of office.--At Barjols "they use consuls and judges as their town
servants, announcing that they are masters and that they will themselves
administer justice."--In fact, they do administer it, as they understand
it--that is to say, through many exactions and robberies! One man has
wheat; he must share it with him who has none. Another has money;
he must give it to him who has not enough to buy bread with. On this
principle, at Barjols, they tax the Ursulin nuns 1,800 livres, carry off
fifty loads of wheat from the Chapter, eighteen from one poor artisan,
and forty from another, and constrain canons and beneficiaries to give
acquittances to their farmers. Then, from house to house, with club
in hand, they oblige some to hand over money, others to abandon their
claims on their debtors, "one to desist from criminal proceedings,
another to nullify a decree obtained, a third to reimburse the expenses
of a lawsuit gained years before, a father to give his consent to the
marriage of his son."--All their grievances are brought to mind, and we
all know the tenacity of a peasant's memory. Having become the master,
he redresses wrongs, and especially those of which he thinks himself the
object. There must be a general restitution; and first, of the feudal
dues which have been collected. They take of M. de Montmeyan's business
agent all the money he has as compensation for that received by him
during fifteen years as a notary. A former consul of Brignolles had, in
1775, inflicted penalties to the amount of 1,500 or 1,800 francs, which
had been given to the poor; this sum is taken from his strong box.
Moreover, if consuls and law officers are wrongdoers, the title deeds,
rent-rolls, and other documents by which they do their business
are still worse. To the fire with all old writings--not only office
registers, but also, at Hyères, all the papers in the town hall and
those of the principal notary.--In the matter of papers none are
good but new ones--those which convey some discharge, quittance, or
obligation to the advantage of the people. At Brignolles the owners of
the gristmills are constrained to execute a contract of sale by which
they convey their mills to the commune in consideration of 5,000 francs
per annum, payable in ten years without interest--an arrangement which
ruins them. On seeing the contract signed the peasants shout and cheer,
and so great is their faith in this piece of stamped paper that they at
once cause a mass of thanksgiving to be celebrated in the Cordeliers.
Formidable omens these! Which mark the inward purpose, the determined
will, and the coming deeds of this rising power. If it prevails, its
first work will be to destroy all ancient documents, all title deeds,
rent-rolls, contracts, and claims to which force compels it to submit.
By force likewise it will draw up others to its own advantage, and the
scribes who do it will be its own deputies and administrators whom it
holds in its rude grasp.
Those who are in high places are not alarmed; they even find that there
is some good in the revolt, inasmuch as it compels the towns to suppress
unjust taxation.[1132] The new Marseilles guard, formed of young men, is
allowed to march to Aubagne, "to insist that M. le lieutenant criminel
and M. l'avocat du Roi release the prisoners." The disobedience of
Marseilles, which refuses to receive the magistrates sent under letters
patent to take testimony, is tolerated. And better still, in spite
of the remonstrances of the parliament of Aix, a general amnesty is
proclaimed; "no one is excepted but a few of the leaders, to whom is
allowed the liberty of leaving the kingdom." The mildness of the King
and of the military authorities is admirable. It is admitted that the
people are children, that they err only through ignorance, that faith
must be had in their repentance, and, as soon as they return to order,
they must be received with paternal effusions.--The truth is, that the
child is a blind Colossus, exasperated by sufferings. hence whatever it
takes hold of is shattered--not only the local wheels of the provinces,
which, if temporarily deranged, may be repaired, but even the incentive
at the center which puts the rest in motion, and the destruction of
which will throw the whole machinery into confusion.
*****
[Footnote 1101: Marmontel, "Mémoires," II. 221.--Albert Babeau,
"Histoire de la Révolution Française," I. 91, 187. (Letter by Huez Mayor
of Troyes, July 30, 1788.)--Archives Nationales, H. 1274. (Letter by M.
de Caraman, April 22, 1789.) H. 942 (Cahier des demandes des Etats de
Languedoc).--Buchez et Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," I. 283.]
[Footnote 1102: See "The Ancient Régime," p.34. Albert Babeau, I. 91.
(The Bishop of Troyes gives 12,000 francs, and the chapter 6,000, for
the relief workshops.)]
[Footnote 1103: "The Ancient Regime," 350, 387.--Floquet, "Histoire du
Parlement de Normandie," VII. 505-518. (Reports of the Parliament of
Normandy, May 3,1788. Letter from the Parliament to the King, July 15,
1789.)]
[Footnote 1104: Arthur Young, "Voyages in France," June 29th, July 2nd
and 18th--" Journal de Paris," January 2, 1789. Letter of the curé of
Sainte-Marguerite.]
[Footnote 1105: Buchez and Roux, IV. 79-82. (Letter from the
intermediary bureau of Montereau, July 9, 1789; from the maire of
Villeneuve-le-Roi, July 10th; from M. Baudry, July 10th; from M.
Prioreau, July 11th, etc.)--Montjoie, "Histoire de la Révolution de
France," 2nd part, ch. XXI, p. 5.]
[Footnote 1106: Roux et Buchez, ibid. "It is very unfortunate," writes
the Marquis d'Autichamp, "to be obliged to cut down the standing crops
ready to be gathered in; but it is dangerous to let the troops die of
hunger."]
[Footnote 1107: Montjoie, "Histoire de la Révolution de France,"
ch. XXXIX, V, 37.--De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant la
Révolution," p. 5l3.--Deposition of Maillard (Criminal Inquiry of the
Châtelet concerning the events of October 5th and 6th).]
[Footnote 1108: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution,"
272-290. De Lavergne, "Les Assemblées provinciales," 109. Procès-verbaux
des assemblées provinciales, passim.]
[Footnote 1109: A magistrate who gives judgment in a lower court in
cases relative to taxation. These terms are retained because there are
no equivalents in English. (Tr.)]
[Footnote 1110: "Laboureurs,"--this term, at this epoch, is applied to
those who till their own land. (Tr.)]
[Footnote 1111: Duvergier. "Collection des lois et décrets," I. 1 to 23,
and particularly p. 15.]
[Footnote 1112: Parish priests. (SR.)]
[Footnote 1113: Arthur Young, July 12th, 1789 (in Champagne).]
[Footnote 1114: Montjoie, 1st part, 102.]
[Footnote 1115: Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," VII.
508.--" Archives Nationales," H. 1453.]
[Footnote 1116: Arthur Young, June 29th (at Nangis).]
[Footnote 1117: "Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of the Duc
de Mortemart, Seigneur of Bray, May 4th; of M. de Ballainvilliers,
intendant of Languedoc, April 15th.]
[Footnote 1118: "Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of the intendant,
M. d'Agay, April 30th; of the municipal officers of Nantes, January
9th; of the intendant, M. Meulan d'Ablois, June 22nd; of M. de
Ballainvilliers, April 15th.]
[Footnote 1119: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the Count de
Langeron, July 4th; of M. de Meulan d'Ablois, June 5th; "Minutes of
the meeting of la Maréchaussée de Bost," April 29th. Letters of M. de
Chazerat, May 29th; of M. de Bezenval, June 2nd; of the intendant, M.
Amelot, April 25th.]
[Footnote 1120: '"Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of M. de
Bezenval, May 27th; of M. de Ballainvilliers, April 25th; of M. de
Foullonde, April 19th.]
[Footnote 1121: "Archives Nationales," H.1453. Letter of the intendant,
M. d'Aine, March 12th; of M. d'Agay, April 30th; of M. Amelot, April
25th; of the municipal authorities of Nantes, January 9th, etc.]
[Footnote 1122: "The Ancient Régime," pp. 380-389.]
[Footnote 1123: Floquet, VII. 508, (Report of February 27th).--Hippeau,
"La Gouvernement de Normandie," IV. 377. (Letter of M. Perrot, June
23rd.)--" Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. de Sainte-Suzanne,
April 29th. Ibid. F7, 3250. Letter of M. de Rochambeau, May 16th Ibid.
F7, 3250. Letter of the Abbé Duplaquet, Deputy of the Third Estate of
Saint-Quentin, May 17th. Letter of three husbandmen in the environs of
Saint-Quentin, May 14th.]
[Footnote 1124: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the Count de
Perigord, military commandant of Languedoc, April 22nd.]
[Footnote 1125: Floquet, VII. 511 (from the 11th to the 14th July).]
[Footnote 1126: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the municipal
authorities of Nantes, January 9th; of the sub-delegate of Ploërmel,
July 4th; ibid. F7, 2353. Letter of the intermediary commission of
Alsace, September 8th ibid. F7, 3227. Letter of the intendant, Caze de
la Bove, June 16th; ibid. H. 1453. Letter of Terray, intendant of Lyons,
July 4th; of the prévot des échevins, July 5th and 7th.]
[Footnote 1127: (A tax on all goods entering a town. SR.)]
[Footnote 1128: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the mayor and
councils of Agde, April 21st; of M. de Perigord, April 19th, May 5th.]
[Footnote 1129: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letters of M. de
Caraman, March 23rd, 26th 27th 28th; of the seneschal Missiessy, March
24th; of the mayor of Hyères, March 25th, etc.; ibid. H. 1274; of M. de
Montmayran, April 2nd; of M. de Caraman, March 18th, April 12th; of
the intendant, M. de la Tour, April 2nd; of the procureur-géneral, M.
d'Antheman, April 17th, and the report of June 15th; of the municipal
authorities of Toulon, April 11th; of the sub-delegate of Manosque,
March 14th; of M. de Saint-Tropez, March 21st.--Minutes of the meeting,
signed by 119 witnesses, of the insurrection at Aix, March 5th, etc.]
[Footnote 1130: An uprising of the peasants. The term is used to
indicate a country mob in contradistinction to a city or town mob.-Tr.]
[Footnote 1131: "Archives Nationales," H.1274. Letter of M. de la Tour,
April 2nd (with a detailed memorandum and depositions).]
[Footnote 1132: "Archives Nationales," H. 1274. Letter of M. de Caraman,
April 22nd:--"One real benefit results from this misfortune. . . The
well-to-do class is brought to sustain that which exceeded the strength
of the poor daily laborers. We see the nobles and people in good
circumstances a little more attentive to the poor peasants: they are now
habituated to speaking to them with more gentleness." M. de Caraman
was wounded, as well as his Son, at Aix, and if the Soldiery, who were
stoned, at length fired on the crowd, he did not give the order.--Ibid,
letter of M. d'Anthéman, April 17th; of M. de Barentin, June 11th.]
CHAPTER II. PARIS UP TO THE 14TH OF JULY.
I.--Mob recruits in the vicinity
Entry of vagabonds.--The number of paupers.
INDEED it is in the center that the convulsive shocks are strongest.
Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection--neither the liveliest
provocation to stimulate it, nor the most numerous bands to carry it
out. The environs of Paris all furnish recruits for it; nowhere are
there so many miserable wretches, so many of the famished, and so many
rebellious beings. Robberies of grain take place everywhere--at
Orleans, at Cosne, at Rambouillet, at Jouy, at Pont-Saint-Maxence, at
Bray-sur-Seine, at Sens, at Nangis.[1201] Wheat flour is so scarce at
Meudon, that every purchaser is ordered to buy at the same time an equal
quantity of barley. At Viroflay, thirty women, with a rear-guard of men,
stop on the main road vehicles, which they suppose to be loaded with
grain. At Montlhéry stones and clubs disperse seven brigades of the
police. An immense throng of eight thousand persons, women and men,
provided with bags, fall upon the grain exposed for sale. They force the
delivery to them of wheat worth 40 francs at 24 francs, pillaging the
half of it and conveying it off without payment. "The constabulary is
disheartened," writes the sub-delegate; "the determination of the people
is wonderful; I am frightened at what I have seen and heard."--After
the 13th of July, 1788, the day of the hail-storm, despair seized
the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have been, it was
impossible to assist them. "Not a workshop is open;[1202] the noblemen
and the bourgeois, obliged to grant delays in the payment of their
incomes, can give no work." Accordingly, "the famished people are on
the point of risking life for life," and, publicly and boldly, they
seek food wherever it can be found. At Conflans-Saint-Honorine, Eragny,
Neuville, Chenevières, at Cergy, Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and
Beaumont, men, women, and children, the hole parish, range the country,
set snares, and destroy the burrows. "The rumor is current that the
Government, informed of the damage done by the game to cultivators,
allows its destruction. . . and really the hares ravaged about a fifth
of the crop. At first an arrest is made of nine of these poachers; but
they are released, "taking circumstances into account." Consequently,
for two months, there is a slaughter on the property of the Prince de
Conti and of the Ambassador Mercy d'Argenteau; in default of bread
they eat rabbits.--Along with the abuse of property they are led, by a
natural impulse, to attack property itself. Near Saint-Denis the woods
belonging to the abbey are devastated. "The farmers of the neighborhood
carry away loads of wood, drawn by four and five horses;" the
inhabitants of the villages of Ville-Parisis, Tremblay, Vert-Galant,
Villepinte, sell it publicly, and threaten the wood-rangers with a
beating. On the 15th of June the damage is already estimated at 60,000
livres.--It makes little difference whether the proprietor has been
benevolent, like M. de Talaru,[1203] who had supported the poor on his
estate at Issy the preceding winter. The peasants destroy the dike which
conducts water to his communal mill; condemned by the parliament to
restore it, they declare that not only will they not obey. Should M. de
Talaru try to rebuild it they will return with three hundred armed men,
and tear it away the second time.
For those who are most compromised Paris is the nearest refuge. For the
poorest and most exasperated, the door of nomadic life stands wide
open. Bands rise up around the capital, just as in countries where human
society has not yet been formed, or has ceased to exist. During the
first two weeks of May[1204] near Villejuif a band of five or six
hundred vagabonds strive to force Bicêtre and approach Saint-Cloud. They
arrive from thirty, forty, and sixty leagues off, from Champagne, from
Lorraine, from the whole circuit of country devastated by the hailstorm.
All hover around Paris and are there engulfed as in a sewer, the
unfortunate along with criminals, some to find work, others to beg and
to rove about under the injurious prompting of hunger and the rumors
of the public thoroughfares. During the last days of April,[1205] the
clerks at the tollhouses note the entrance of "a frightful number of
poorly clad men of sinister aspect." During the first days of May a
change in the appearance of the crowd is remarked. There mingle in it
"a number of foreigners, from all countries, most of them in rags, armed
with big sticks, and whose very aspect announces what is to be feared
from them." Already, before this final influx, the public sink is
full to overflowing. Think of the extraordinary and rapid increase of
population in Paris, the multitude of artisans brought there by recent
demolition and constructions. Think of all the craftsmen whom the
stagnation of manufactures, the augmentation of octrois, the rigor of
winter, and the dearness of bread have reduced to extreme distress.
Remember that in 1786 "two hundred thousand persons are counted whose
property, all told, has not the intrinsic worth of fifty crowns."
Remember that, from time immemorial, these have been at war with the
city watchmen. Remember that in 1789 there are twenty thousand poachers
in the capital and that, to provide them with work, it is found
necessary to establish national workshops. Remember "that twelve
thousand are kept uselessly occupied digging on the hill of Montmartre,
and paid twenty sous per day. Remember that the wharves and quays are
covered with them, that the Hôtel-de-Ville is invested by them, and
that, around the palace, they seem to be a reproach to the inactivity of
disarmed justice." Daily they grow bitter and excited around the doors
of the bakeries, where, kept waiting a long time, they are not sure of
obtaining bread. You can imagine the fury and the force with which they
will storm any obstacle to which their attention may be directed.
II. The Press.
Excitement of the press and of opinion.--The people make
their choice.
Such an obstacle has been pointed out to them during the last two years,
it is the Ministry, the Court, the Government, in short the entire
ancient régime. Whoever protests against it in favor of the people is
sure to be followed as far, and perhaps even farther, than he chooses
to lead.--The moment the Parliament of a large city refuses to register
fiscal edicts it finds a riot at its service. On the 7th of June 1788,
at Grenoble, tiles rain down on the heads of the soldiery, and the
military force is powerless. At Rennes, to put down the rebellious city,
an army and after this a permanent camp of four regiments of infantry
and two of cavalry, under the command of a Marshal of France, is
required.[1206]--The following year, when the Parliaments now side
with the privileged class, the disturbances again begin, but this time
against the Parliaments. In February 1789, at Besançon and at Aix, the
magistrates are hooted at, chased in the streets, besieged in the town
hall, and obliged to conceal themselves or take to flight.--If such
is the disposition in the provincial capitals, what must it be in the
capital of the kingdom? For a start, in the month of August, 1788, after
the dismissal of Brienne and Lamoignon, the mob, collected on the Place
Dauphine, constitutes itself judge, burns both ministers in effigy,
disperses the watch, and resists the troops: no sedition, as bloody as
this, had been seen for a century. Two days later, the riot bursts out
a second time; the people are seized with a resolve to go and burn the
residences of the two ministers and that of Dubois, the lieutenant of
police.--Clearly a new ferment has been infused among the ignorant and
brutal masses, and the new ideas are producing their effect. They have
for a long time imperceptibly been filtering downwards from layer
to layer After having gained over the aristocracy, the whole of the
lettered portion of the Third-Estate, the lawyers, the schools, all the
young, they have insinuated themselves drop by drop and by a thousand
fissures into the class which supports itself by the labor of its own
hands. Noblemen, at their toilettes, have scoffed at Christianity, and
affirmed the rights of man before their valets, hairdressers, purveyors,
and all those that are in attendance upon them. Men of letters, lawyers,
and attorneys have repeated, in the bitterest tone, the same diatribes
and the same theories in the coffee-houses and in the restaurants, on
the promenades and in all public places. They have spoken out before
the lower class as if it were not present, and, from all this eloquence
poured out without precaution, some bubbles besprinkle the brain of the
artisan, the publican, the messenger, the shopkeeper, and the soldier.
Hence it is that a year suffices to convert mute discontent into
political passion. From the 5th of July 1787, on the invitation of the
King, who convokes the States-General and demands advice from everybody,
both speech and the press alter in tone.[1207] Instead of general
conversation of a speculative turn there is preaching, with a view
to practical effect, sudden, radical, and close at hand, preaching as
shrill and thrilling as the blast of a trumpet. Revolutionary pamphlets
appear in quick succession: "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers?" by Sieyès;
"Mémoire pour le Peuple Français," by Cerutti; "Considerations sur les
Intérêts des Tiers-Etat," by Rabtau Saint-Etienne; "Ma Pétition," by
Target; "Les Droits des Etats-généraux," by M. d'Entraigues, and, a
little later, "La France libre," par Camille Desmoulins, and others by
hundreds and thousands.[1208] All of which are repeated and amplified
in the electoral assemblies, where new-made citizens come to declaim and
increase their own excitement.[1209] The unanimous, universal and daily
shout rolls along from echo to echo, into barracks and into faubourgs,
into markets, workshops, and garrets. In the month of February, 1789,
Necker avows "that obedience is not to be found anywhere, and that
even the troops are not to be relied on." In the month of May, the
fisherwomen, and next the greengrocers, of the town market halls come to
recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to
sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate. In the month of June pamphlets
are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring over them at the gates
of hotels." In the month of July, as the King is signing an order, a
patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it over his shoulder.--There
is no illusion here; it is not merely the bourgeoisie which ranges
itself against the legal authorities and against the established regime.
It is the entire people as well. The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and
the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the mob underneath the
people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude,
which, bound down by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted
its eyes to look at the great social order of which it is the lowest
stratum, and the whole weight of which it bears.
III.--The Réveillon affair.
Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters. It
is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and maddened
by suspicion.--Have paid hands, which are invisible goaded it on from
beneath? Contemporaries are convinced of this, and it is probably the
case.[1210] But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone
suffice to make it shy, and explain its arousal.--On the 21st of April
the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; there is one in each
quarter, one for the clergy, one for the nobles, and one for the
Third-Estate. Every day, for almost a month, files of electors are seen
passing along the streets. Those of the first degree continue to meet
after having nominated those of the second: the nation must needs
watch its mandatories and maintain its imprescriptible rights. If this
exercise of their rights has been delegated to them, they still belong
to the nation, and it reserves to itself the privilege of interposing
when it pleases. A pretension of this kind travels fast; immediately
after the Third-Estate of the Assemblies it reaches the Third-Estate
of the streets. Nothing is more natural than the desire to lead one's
leaders: the first time any dissatisfaction occurs, they lay hands on
those who halt and make them march on as directed. On a Saturday,
April 25th,[1211] a rumor is current that Réveillon, an elector
and manufacturer of wall-paper, Rue Saint-Antoine, and Lerat, a
commissioner, have "spoken badly" at the Electoral Assembly of
Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people.
What has Réveillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination with
its terrible powers of invention and precision, readily fabricates or
welcomes a murderous phrase. He said that "a working-man with a wife and
children could live on fifteen sous a day." Such a man is a traitor, and
must be disposed of at once; "all his belongings must be put to fire and
sword." The rumor, it must be noted, is false.[1212] Réveillon pays
his poorest workman twenty-five sous a day, he provides work for three
hundred and fifty, and, in spite of a dull season the previous winter,
he kept all on at the same rate of wages. He himself was once a workman,
and obtained a medal for his inventions, and is benevolent and respected
by all respectable persons.--All this avails nothing; bands of vagabonds
and foreigners, who have just passed through the barriers, do not
look so closely into matters, while the Journeymen, the carters, the
cobblers, the masons, the braziers, and the stone-cutters whom they
go to solicit in their lodgings are just as ignorant as they are. When
irritation has accumulated, it breaks out haphazardly.
Just at this time the clergy of Paris renounce their privileges in way
of imposts,[1213] and the people, taking friends for adversaries, add in
their invectives the name of the clergy to that of Réveillon. During
the whole of the day, and also during the leisure of Sunday, the
fermentation increases; on Monday the 27th, another day of idleness and
drunkenness, the bands begin to move. Certain witnesses encounter one of
these in the Rue Saint-Sévérin, "armed with clubs," and so numerous as
to bar the passage. "Shops and doors are closed on all sides, and the
people cry out, 'There's the revolt!'" The seditious crowd belch out
curses and invectives against the clergy, "and, catching sight of an
abbé, shout 'Priest!'" Another band parades an effigy of Réveillon
decorated with the ribbon of the order of St. Michael, which undergoes
the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Grève, after which
they threaten his house. Driven back by the guard, they invade that of
a manufacturer of saltpeter, who is his friend, and burn and smash his
effects and furniture.[1214] It is only towards midnight that the crowd
is dispersed and the insurrection is supposed to have ended. On the
following day it begins again with greater violence; for, besides the
ordinary stimulants of misery[1215] and the craving for license, they
have a new stimulant in the idea of a cause to defend, the conviction
that they are fighting "for the Third-Estate." In a cause like this each
one should help himself; and all should help each other. "We should be
lost," one of them exclaimed, "if we did not sustain each other." Strong
in this belief, they sent deputations three times into the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs
they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter. Others, at the
gate of Saint-Antoine, arrest people who are returning from the races,
demanding of them if they are for the nobles or for the Third-Estate,
and force women to descend from their vehicles and to cry "Vive le
Tiers-Etat "[1216]. Meanwhile the crowd has increased before Réveillon's
dwelling; the thirty men on guard are unable to resist; the house
is invaded and sacked from top to bottom; the furniture, provisions,
clothing, registers, wagons, even the poultry in the back-yard, all
is cast into blazing bonfires lighted in three different places; five
hundred louis d'or, the ready money, and the silver plate are stolen.
Several roam through the cellars, drink liquor or varnish at haphazard
until they fall down dead drunk or expire in convulsions. Against
this howling horde, a corps of the watch, mounted and on foot, is seen
approaching;[1217] also a hundred cavalry of the "Royal Croats," the
French Guards, and later on the Swiss Guards. "Tiles and chimneys are
rained down on the soldiers," who fire back four files at a time. The
rioters, drunk with brandy and rage, defend themselves desperately
for several hours; more than two hundred are killed, and nearly three
hundred are wounded; they are only put down by cannon, while the mob
keeps active until far into the night.--Towards eight in the evening, in
the rue Vieille-du-Temple, the Paris Guard continue to make charges in
order to protect the doors which the miscreants try to force. Two doors
are forced at half-past eleven o'clock in the Rue Saintonge and in the
Rue de Bretagne, that of a pork-dealer and that of a baker. Even to
this last wave of the outbreak which is subsiding we can distinguish the
elements which have produced the insurrection, and which are about
to produce the Revolution.--Starvation is one of these: in the Rue de
Bretagne the band robbing the baker's shop carries bread off to the
women staying at the corner of the Rue Saintonge.--Brigandage is
another: in the middle of the night M. du Châtelet's spies, gliding
alongside of a ditch, "see a group of ruffians" assembled beyond the
Barrière du Trône, their leader, mounted on a little knoll, urging them
to begin again; and the following days, on the highways, vagabonds are
saying to each other, "We can do no more at Paris, because they are
too sharp on the look-out; let us go to Lyons!" There are, finally, the
patriots: on the evening of the insurrection, between the Pont-au-Change
and the Pont-Marie, the half-naked ragamuffins, besmeared with dirt,
bearing along their hand-barrows, are fully alive to their cause; they
beg alms in a loud tone of voice, and stretch out their hats to the
passers, saying, "Take pity on this poor Third-Estate!"--The starving,
the ruffians, and the patriots, all form one body, and henceforth
misery, crime, and public spirit unite to provide an ever-ready
insurrection for the agitators who desire to raise one.
IV.--The Palais-Royal.
But the agitators are already in permanent session. The Palais-Royal is
an open-air club where, all day and even far into the night, one excites
the other and urges on the crowd to blows. In this enclosure, protected
by the privileges of the House of Orleans, the police dare not enter.
Speech is free, and the public who avail themselves of this freedom seem
purposely chosen to abuse it.--The public and the place are adapted to
each other.[1218] The Palais-Royal, the center of prostitution, of
play, of idleness, and of pamphlets, attracts the whole of that uprooted
population which floats about in a great city, and which, without
occupation or home, lives only for curiosity or for pleasure--the
frequenters of the coffee-houses, the runners for gambling halls,
adventurers, and social outcasts, the runaway children or forlorn
hopefuls of literature, arts, and the bar, attorneys' clerks, students
of the institutions of higher learning, the curious, loungers,
strangers, and the occupants of furnished lodgings, these amounting,
it is said, to forty thousand in Paris. They fill the garden and the
galleries; "one would hardly find here one of what were called the
"Six Bodies,"[1219] a bourgeois settled down and occupied with his
own affairs, a man whom business and family cares render serious and
influential. There is no place here for industrious and orderly bees; it
is the rendezvous of political and literary drones. They flock into it
from every quarter of Paris, and the tumultuous, buzzing swarm covers
the ground like an overturned hive. "Ten thousand people," writes Arthur
Young,[1220] "have been all this day in the Palais-Royal;" the press
is so great that an apple thrown from a balcony on the moving floor of
heads would not reach the ground. The condition of these heads may
be imagined; they are emptier of ballast than any in France, the
most inflated with speculative ideas, the most excitable and the most
excited. In this pell-mell of improvised politicians no one knows who
is speaking; nobody is responsible for what he says. Each is there as
in the theater, unknown among the unknown, requiring sensational
impressions and strong emotions, a prey to the contagion of the passions
around him, borne along in the whirl of sounding phrases, of ready-made
news, growing rumors, and other exaggerations by which fanatics keep
outdoing each other. There are shouting, tears, applause, stamping and
clapping, as at the performance of a tragedy; one or another individual
becomes so inflamed and hoarse that he dies on the spot with fever and
exhaustion. In vain has Arthur Young been accustomed to the tumult of
political liberty; he is dumb-founded at what he sees.[1221] According
to him, the excitement is "incredible. . . . We think sometimes that
Debrett's or Stockdale's shops at London are crowded; but they are mere
deserts compared to Desenne's and some others here, in which one can
scarcely squeeze from the door to the counter. . . . Every hour produces
its pamphlet; 13 came out to-day, 16 yesterday, and 92 last week. 95% of
these productions are in favor of liberty;" and by liberty is meant the
extinction of privileges, numerical sovereignty, the application of
the Contrat-Social, "The Republic", and even more besides, a universal
leveling, permanent anarchy, and even the jacquerie. Camille Desmoulins,
one of the orators, commonly there, announces it and urges it in precise
terms:
"Now that the animal is in the trap, let him be battered to death...
Never will the victors have a richer prey. Forty thousand palaces,
mansions, and châteaux, two-fifth of the property of France, will be
the recompense of valor. Those who pretend to be the conquerors will be
conquered in turn. The nation shall be purged."
Here, in advance, is the program of the Reign of Terror.
Now all this is not only read, but declaimed, amplified, and turned
to practical account. In front of the coffee-houses "those who have
stentorian lungs relieve each other every evening."[1222] "They get
up on a chair or a table, they read the strongest articles on current
affairs, . . . the eagerness with which they are heard, and the thunder
of applause they receive for every sentiment of more than common
hardiness or violence against the present Government, cannot easily
be imagined." "Three days ago a child of four years, well taught and
intelligent, was promenaded around the garden, in broad daylight, at
least twenty times, borne on the shoulders of a street porter, crying
out, 'Verdict of the French people: Polignac exiled one hundred leagues
from Paris; Condé the same; Conti the same; Artois the same; the
Queen,--I dare not write it.'" A hall made of boards in the middle of
the Palais-Royal is always full, especially of young men, who carry
on their deliberations in parliamentary fashion: in the evening the
president invites the spectators to come forward and sign motions
passed during the day, and of which the originals are placed in the Café
Foy.[1223] They count on their fingers the enemies of the country; "and
first two Royal Highnesses (Monsieur and the Count d'Artois), three Most
Serene Highnesses (the Prince de Condé, Duc de Bourbon, and the Prince
de Conti), one favorite (Madame de Polignac), MM. de Vandreuil, de la
Trémoille, du Châtelet, de Villedeuil, de Barentin, de la Galaisière,
Vidaud de la Tour, Berthier, Foulon, and also M. Linguet." Placards are
posted demanding the pillory on the Pont-Neuf for the Abbeé Maury.
One speaker proposes "to burn the house of M. d'Espréménil, his wife,
children and furniture, and himself: this is passed unanimously."--No
opposition is tolerated. One of those present having manifested some
horror at such sanguinary motions, "is seized by the collar, obliged to
kneel down, to make an apology, and to kiss the ground. The punishment
inflicted on children is given to him; he is ducked repeatedly in one of
the fountain-basins, after which they him over to the mob, who roll him
in the mud." On the following day an ecclesiastic is trodden under foot,
and flung from hand to hand. A few days after, on the 22nd of June,
there are two similar events. The sovereign mob exercises all the
functions of sovereign authority, with those of the legislator those of
the judge, and those of the judge with those of the executioner.--Its
idols are sacred; if any one fails to show them respect he is guilty of
lése-majesté, and at once punished. In the first week of July, an abbé
who speaks ill of Necker is flogged; a woman who insults the bust of
Necker is stripped by the fishwomen, and beaten until she is covered
with blood. War is declared against suspicious uniforms. "On the
appearance of a hussar," writes Desmoulins, "they shout, 'There goes
Punch!' and the stone-cutters fling stones at him. Last night two
officers of the hussars, MM. de Sombreuil and de Polignac, came to the
Palais-Royal. . . chairs were flung at them, and they would have been
knocked down if they had not run away. The day before yesterday they
seized a spy of the police and gave him a ducking in the fountain. They
ran him down like a stag, hustled him, pelted him with stones, struck
him with canes, forced one of his eyes out of its socket, and finally,
in spite of his entreaties and cries for mercy, plunged him a second
time in the fountain. His torments lasted from noon until half-past
five o'clock, and he had about ten thousand executioners."--Consider
the effect of such a focal center at a time like this. A new power has
sprung up alongside the legal powers, a legislature of the highways
and public squares, anonymous, irresponsible, without restraint. It
is driven onward by coffeehouse theories, by strong emotions and
the vehemence of mountebanks, while the bare arms which have just
accomplished the work of destruction in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, form
its bodyguard and ministerial cabinet.
V.--Popular mobs become a political force.
Pressure on the Assembly.--Defection of the soldiery.
This is the dictatorship of a mob, and its proceedings, conforming to
its nature, consist in acts of violence, wherever it finds resistance,
it strikes.--The people of Versailles, in the streets and at the
doors of the Assembly, daily "come and insult those whom they call
aristocrats."[1224] On Monday, June 22nd, "d'Espréménil barely escapes
being knocked down; the Abbé Maury. . . owes his escape to the strength
of a curé, who takes him up in his arms and tosses him into the carriage
of the Archbishop of Arles." On the 23rd, "the Archbishop of Paris and
the Keeper of the Seals are hooted, railed at, scoffed at, and derided,
until they almost sink with shame and rage." So formidable is the
tempest of rage with which they are greeted, that Passeret, the King's
secretary, who accompanies the minister, dies of the excitement that
very day. On the 24th, the Bishop of Beauvais is almost knocked down by
a stone striking him on the head. On the 25th, the Archbishop of Paris
is saved only by the speed of his horses, the multitude pursuing him and
pelting him with stones. His mansion is besieged, the windows are all
shattered, and, notwithstanding the intervention of the French Guards,
the peril is so great that he is obliged to promise that he will join
the deputies of the Third-Estate. This is the way in which the rude hand
of the people effects a reunion of the Orders. It bears as heavily on
its own representatives as on its adversaries. "Although our hall was
closed to the public," says Bailly, "there were always more than six
hundred spectators."[1225] These were not respectful and silent, but
active and noisy, mingling with the deputies, raising their hands to
vote in all cases, taking part in the deliberations, by their applause
and hisses: a collateral Assembly which often imposes its own will on
the other. They take note of and put down the names of their opponents,
transmit them to the chair-bearers in attendance at the entrance of
the hall, and from them to the mob waiting for the departure of the
deputies, these names are from now considered as the names of public
enemies.[1226] Lists are made out and printed, and, at the Palais-Royal
in the evening, they become the lists of the proscribed.--It is under
this brutal pressure that many decrees are passed, and, amongst them,
that by which the commons declare themselves the National Assembly
and assume supreme power. The night before, Malouet had proposed to
ascertain, by a preliminary vote, on which side the majority was. In an
instant all those against had gathered around him to the number of three
hundred. "Upon which a mans springs out from the galleries, falls upon
him and takes him by the collar exclaiming, 'Hold your tongue, you false
citizen!'" Malouet is released and the guard comes forward, "but terror
has spread through the hall, threats are uttered against opponents, and
the next day we were only ninety." Moreover, the lists of their names
had been circulated; some of them, deputies from Paris, went to see
Bailly that very evening. One amongst them, "a very honest man and good
patriot," had been told that his house was to be set on fire. Now his
wife had just given birth to a child, and the slightest tumult
before the house would have been fatal. Such arguments are decisive.
Consequently, three days afterwards, at the Tennis-court, but one
deputy, Martin d'Auch, dares to write the word "opposing" after his
name. Insulted by many of colleagues, "at once denounced to the people
who had collected at the entrance of the building, he is obliged to
escape by a side door to avoid being cut to pieces," and, for several
days, to keep away from the meetings.[1227]--Owing to this intervention
of the galleries the radical minority, numbering about thirty,[1228]
lead the majority, and they do not allow them to free themselves.--On
the 28th of May, Malouet, having demanded a secret session to discuss
the conciliatory measures which the King had proposed, the galleries
hoot at him, and a deputy, M. Bourche, addresses him in very plain
terms. "You must know, sir, that we are deliberating here in the
presence of our masters, and that we must account to them for our
opinions." This is the doctrine of the Contrat-Social. Through timidity,
fear of the Court and of the privileged class, through optimism and
faith in human nature, through enthusiasm and the necessity of adhering
to previous actions, the deputies, who are novices, provincial, and
given up to theories, neither dare nor know how to escape from the
tyranny of the prevailing dogma.--Henceforth it becomes the law. All
the Assemblies, the Constituent, the Legislative, the Convention,[1229]
submit to it entirely. The public in the galleries is the admitted
representatives of the people, under the same title, and even under
a higher title, than the deputies. Now, this public is that of the
Palais-Royal, consisting of strangers, idlers, lovers of novelties,
Paris romancers, leaders of the coffee-houses, the future pillars of the
clubs, in short, the wild enthusiasts among the middle-class, just as
the crowd which threatens doors and throws stones is recruited from
among the wild enthusiasts of the lowest class. Thus by an involuntary
selection, the faction which constitutes itself a public power is
composed of nothing but violent minds and violent hands. Spontaneously
and without previous concert dangerous fanatics are joined with
dangerous brutes, and in the increasing discord between the legal
authorities this is the illegal league which is certain to overthrow
all.
When a commanding general sits in council with his staff-officers and
his counselors, and discusses the plan of a campaign, the chief public
interest is that discipline should remain intact, and that intruders,
soldiers, or menials, should not throw the weight of their turbulence
and thoughtlessness into the scales which have to be cautiously
and firmly held by their chiefs. This was the express demand of the
Government;[1230] but the demand was not regarded; and against the
persistent usurpation of the multitude nothing is left to it but the
employment of force. But force itself is slipping from its hands, while
growing disobedience, like a contagion, after having gained the people
is spreading among the troops.--From the 23rd of June,[1231] two
companies of the French Guards refused to do duty. Confined to their
barracks, they on the 27th break out, and henceforth "they are seen
every evening entering the Palais-Royal, marching in double file." They
know the place well; it is the general rendezvous of the abandoned women
whose lovers and parasites they are.[1232] "The patriots all gather
around them, treat them to ice cream and wine, and debauch them in the
face of their officers."--To this, moreover, must be added the fact that
their colonel, M. du Châtelet, has long been odious to them, that he has
fatigued them with forced drills, worried them and diminished the number
of their sergeants; that he suppressed the school for the education of
the children of their musicians; that he uses the stick in punishing the
men, and picks quarrels with them about their appearance, their board,
and their clothing. This regiment is lost to discipline: a secret
society has been formed in it, and the soldiers have pledged themselves
to their ensigns not to act against the National Assembly. Thus the
confederation between them and the Palais-Royal is established.--On the
30th of June, eleven of their leaders, taken off to the Abbaye, write to
claim their assistance. A young man mounts a chair in front of the Café
Foy and reads their letter aloud; a band sets out on the instant, forces
the gate with a sledge-hammer and iron bars, brings back the prisoners
in triumph, gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around
them to prevent their being re-taken.--When disorders of this kind go
unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of the
14th of July, five out of six battalions had deserted.--As to the other
corps, they are no better and are also seduced. "Yesterday," Desmoulins
writes, "the artillery regiment followed the example of the French
Guards, overpowering the sentinels and coming over to mingle with
the patriots in the Palais-Royal. . .. We see nothing but the rabble
attaching themselves to soldiers whom they chance to encounter. 'Allons,
Vive le Tiers-Etat!' and they lead them off to a tavern to drink the
health of the Commons." Dragoons tell the officers who are marching
them to Versailles: "We obey you, but you may tell the ministers on our
arrival that if we are ordered to use the least violence against our
fellow-citizens, the first shot shall be for you." At the Invalides
twenty men, ordered to remove the cocks and ramrods from the guns stored
in a threatened arsenal, devote six hours to rendering twenty guns
useless; their object is to keep them intact for plunder and for the
arming of the people.
In short, the largest portion of the army has deserted. However kind
a superior officer might be, the fact of his being a superior officer
secures for him the treatment of an enemy. The governor, "M. de
Sombreuil, against whom these people could utter no reproach," will soon
see his artillerists point their guns at his apartment, and will just
escape being hung on the iron-railings by their own hands. Thus the
force which is brought forward to suppress insurrection only serves to
furnish it with recruits. And even worse, for the display of arms
that was relied on to restrain the mob, furnished the instigation to
rebellion.
VI.--July 13th and 14th 1789.
The fatal moment has arrived; it is no longer a government which falls
that it may give way to another; it is all government which ceases to
exist in order to make way for an intermittent despotism, for factions
blindly impelled on by enthusiasm, credulity, misery, and fear.[1233]
Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the mob throws off it
ordinary driver, and the new guides who it tolerates perched on its neck
are there simply for show. In future it will move along as it pleases,
freed from control, and abandoned to its own feelings, instincts, and
appetites.--Apparently, there was no desire to do more than anticipate
its aberrations. The King has forbidden all violence; the commanders
order the troops not to fire;[1234] but the excited and wild animal
takes all precautions for insults; in future, it intends to be its own
conductor, and, to begin, it treads its guides under foot.--On the 12th
of July, near noon,[1235] on the news of the dismissal of Necker, a cry
of rage arises in the Palais-Royal; Camille Desmoulins, mounted on
a table, announces that the Court meditates "a St. Bartholomew of
patriots." The crowd embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he has
proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and theaters to close in sign
of mourning: they hurry off to the residence of Curtius, and take the
busts of the Duke of Orleans and of Necker and carry them about in
triumph.--Meanwhile, the dragoons of the Prince de Lambesc, drawn up on
the Place Louis-Quinze, find a barricade of chairs at the entrance
of the Tuileries, and are greeted with a shower of stones and
bottles.[1236] Elsewhere, on the Boulevard, before the Hôtel
Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped from their barracks,
fired on a loyal detachment of the "Royal Allemand."--The alarm bell is
sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are sold are pillaged,
and the Hôtel-de-Ville is invaded; fifteen or sixteen well-disposed
electors, who meet there, order the districts to be assembled and
armed.--The new sovereign, the people in arms and in the street, has
declared himself.
The dregs of society at once come to the surface. During the night
between the 12th and 13th of July,[1237] "all the barriers, from the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, besides those of
the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel and Saint-Jacques, are forced and set on
fire." There is no longer an octroi; the city is without a revenue just
at the moment when it is obliged to make the heaviest expenditures; but
this is of no consequence to the mob, which, above all things, wants
to have cheap wine. "Ruffians, armed with pikes and sticks, proceed
in several parties to give up to pillage the houses of those who are
regarded as enemies to the public welfare." "They go from door to door
crying, 'Arms and bread!' During this fearful night, the bourgeoisie
kept themselves shut up, each trembling at home for himself and those
belonging to him." On the following day, the 13th, the capital appears
to be given up to bandits and the lowest of the low. One of the
bands hews down the gate of the Lazarists, destroys the library and
clothes-presses, the pictures, the windows and laboratory, and rushes
to the cellars; where it staves in the casks and gets drunk: twenty-four
hours after this, about thirty of them are found dead and dying, drowned
in wine, men and women, one of these being at the point of childbirth.
In front of the house[1238] the street is full of the wreckage, and of
ruffians who hold in their hands, "some, eatables, others a jug, forcing
the passers-by to drink, and pouring out wine to all comers. Wine
runs down into the gutter, and the scent of it fills the air;" it is a
drinking bout: meanwhile they carry away the grain and flour which the
monks kept on hand according to law, fifty-two loads of it being
taken to the market. Another troop comes to La Force, to deliver those
imprisoned for debt; a third breaks into the Garde Meuble, carrying away
valuable arms and armour. Mobs assemble before the hotel of Madame de
Breteuil and the Palais-Bourbon, which they intend to ransack, in order
to punish their proprietors. M. de Crosne, one of the most liberal and
most respected men of Paris, but, unfortunately for himself a lieutenant
of the police, is pursued, escaping with difficulty, and his hotel is
sacked.--During the night between the 13th and 14th of May, the baker's
shops and the wine shops are pillaged; "men of the vilest class, armed
with guns, pikes, and turnspits, make people open their doors and give
them something to eat and drink, as well as money and arms." Vagrants,
ragged men, several of them "almost naked," and "most of them armed
like savages, and of hideous appearance;" they are "such as one does not
remember to have seen in broad daylight;" many of them are strangers,
come from nobody knows where.[1239] It is stated that there were
50,000 of them, and that they had taken possession of the principal
guard-houses.
During these two days and nights, says Bailly, "Paris ran the risk of
being pillaged, and was only saved from the marauders by the National
Guard." Already, in the open street,[1240] "these creatures tore off
women's shoes and earrings," and the robbers were beginning to have
full sway.--Fortunately the militia organized itself and the principal
inhabitants and gentlemen enrolled themselves; 48,000 men are formed
into battalions and companies; the bourgeoisie buy guns of the vagabonds
for three livres apiece, and sabers or pistols for twelve sous. At last,
some of the offenders are hung on the spot, and others disarmed, and
the insurrection again becomes political. But, whatever its object, it
remains always wild, because it is in the hands of the mob. Dusaulx, its
panegyrist, confesses[1241] that "he thought he was witnessing the total
dissolution of society." There is no leader, no management. The electors
who have converted themselves into the representatives of Paris seem to
command the crowd, but it is the crowd which commands them. One of them,
Legrand, to save the Hôtel-de-Ville, has no other resource but to send
for six barrels of gun-powder, and to declare to the assailants that
he is about to blow everything into the air. The commandant whom they
themselves have chosen, M. de Salles, has twenty bayonets at his breast
during a quarter of an hour, and, more than once, the whole committee is
near being massacred. Let the reader imagine, on the premises where the
discussions are going on, and petitions are being made, "a concourse of
fifteen hundred men pressed by a hundred thousand others who are forcing
an entrance," the wainscoting cracking, the benches upset one over
another, the enclosure of the bureau pushed back against the president's
chair, a tumult such as to bring to mind 'the day of judgment," the
death-shrieks, songs, yells, and "people beside themselves, for the most
part not knowing where they are nor what they want."--Each district
is also a petty center, while the Palais-Royal is the main center.
Propositions, "accusations, and deputations travel to and fro from one
to the other, along with the human torrent which is obstructed or rushes
ahead with no other guide than its own inclination and the chances
of the way. One wave gathers here and another there, their strategy
consisting in pushing and in being pushed. Yet, their entrance is
effected only because they are let in. If they get into the Invalides it
is owing to the connivance of the soldiers.--At the Bastille, firearms
are discharged from ten in the morning to five in the evening against
walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance that
one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are treated
the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as possible. The
governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders the cannon to be
withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear not to fire
if it is not attacked; he invites the first of the deputations to lunch;
he allows the messenger dispatched from the Hôtel-de-Ville to inspect
the fortress; he receives several discharges without returning them, and
lets the first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[1242] When, at
length, he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second
bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to do
so. In short, his forbearance and patience are excessive, in conformity
with the humanity of the times. The people, in turn, are infatuated
with the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with the smell of
gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they can think of
doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their expedients being on a
level with their tactics. A brewer fancies that he can set fire to this
block of masonry by pumping over it spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed
with phosphorus. A young carpenter, who has some archaeological notions,
proposes to construct a catapult. Some of them think that they have
seized the governor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to make
the father surrender. Others set fire to a projecting mass of buildings
filled with straw, and thus close up the passage. "The Bastille was not
taken by main force," says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; "it
surrendered before even it was attacked,"[1243] by capitulation, on
the promise that no harm should be done to anybody. The garrison, being
perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to fire on human beings while
themselves risking nothing,[1244] and, on the other hand, they were
unnerved by the sight of the immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred
men only[1245] were concerned in the attack, most of them workmen or
shopkeepers belonging to the faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers
and wine-dealers, mixed with the French Guards. The Place de la
Bastille, however, and all the streets in the vicinity, were crowded
with the curious who came to witness the sight; "among them," says
a witness,[1246] "were a number of fashionable women of very good
appearance, who had left their carriages at some distance." To the
hundred and twenty men of the garrison looking down from their parapets
it seemed as though all Paris had come out against them. It is they,
also, who lower the drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has
lost his head, the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more
completely because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory.
Scarcely have they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and
the latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each
one fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden
omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human
nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their frenzy ends in
ferocity.
For the peculiarity of a popular insurrection is that nobody obeys
anybody; the bad passions are free as well as the generous ones; heroes
are unable to restrain assassins. Elie, who is the first to enter the
fortress, Cholat, Hulin, the brave fellows who are in advance, the
French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of war, try to keep their
word of honor; but the crowd pressing on behind them know not whom to
strike, and they strike at random. They spare the Swiss soldiers who
have fired at them, and who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to
be prisoners; on the other hand, by way of compensation, they fall
furiously on the invalides who opened the gates to them; the man who
prevented the governor from blowing up the fortress has his wrist
severed by the blow of a saber, is twice pierced with a sword and is
hung, and the hand which had saved one of the districts of Paris is
promenaded through the streets in triumph. The officers are dragged
along and five of them are killed, with three soldiers, on the spot, or
on the way. During the long hours of firing, the murderous instinct has
become aroused, and the wish to kill, changed into a fixed idea,
spreads afar among the crowd which has hitherto remained inactive. It is
convinced by its own clamor; a hue and cry is all that it now needs; the
moment one strikes, all want to strike. "Those who had no arms," says
an officer, "threw stones at me;[1247] the women ground their teeth and
shook their fists at me. Two of my men had already been assassinated
behind me. I finally got to within some hundreds of paces of the
Hôtel-de-Ville, amidst a general cry that I should be hung, when a head,
stuck on a pike, was presented to me to look at, while at. the same
moment I was told that it was that of M. de Launay," the governor.--The
latter, on going out, had received the cut of a sword on his right
shoulder; on reaching the Rue Saint-Antoine "everybody pulled his hair
out and struck him." Under the arcade of Saint-Jean he was already
"severely wounded." Around him, some said, "his head ought to be struck
off;" others, "let him be hung;" and others, "he ought to be tied to
a horse's tail." Then, in despair, and wishing to put an end to his
torments, he cried out, "Kill me," and, in struggling, kicked one of the
men who held him in the lower abdomen. On the instant he is pierced with
bayonets, dragged in the gutter, and, striking his corpse, they exclaim,
"He's a scurvy wretch (galeux) and a monster who has betrayed us; the
nation demands his head to exhibit to the public," and the man who
was kicked is asked to cut it off.--This man, an unemployed cook, a
simpleton who "went to the Bastille to see what was going on," thinks
that as it is the general opinion, the act is patriotic, and even
believes that he "deserves a medal for destroying a monster." Taking a
saber which is lent to him, he strikes the bare neck, but the dull
saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his
pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he
finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end
of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred
armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue
Saint-Honoré, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate
without mistake whose head it is.--They grow merry over it: after filing
alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession arrives at the Pont-Neuf,
where, before the statue of Henry IV., they bow the head three times,
saying, "Salute thy master!"--This is the last joke: it is to be found
in every triumph, and inside the butcher, we find the rogue.
VII.--Murders of Foulon and Berthier.
Meanwhile, at the Palais-Royal, other buffoons, who with the levity of
gossips sport with lives as freely as with words, have drawn u. During
the night between the 13th and 14th of July, a list of proscriptions,
copies of which are hawked about. Care is taken to address one of
them to each of the persons designated, the Comte d'Artois, Marshal
de Broglie, the Prince de Lambesc, Baron de Bezenval, MM. de Breteuil,
Foulon, Berthier, Maury, d'Espréménil, Lefèvre d'Amécourt, and others
besides.[1248] A reward is promised to whoever will bring their heads to
the Café de Caveau. Here are names for the unchained multitude; all
that now is necessary is that some band should encounter a man who is
denounced; he will go as far as the lamppost at the street corner, but
not beyond it.--Throughout the day of the 14th, this improvised tribunal
holds a permanent session, and follows up its decisions with its
actions. M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants and president of
the electors at the Hôtel-de-Ville, having shown himself somewhat
lukewarm,[1249] the Palais-Royal declares him a traitor and sends him
off to be hung. On the way a young man fells him with a pistol-shot,
others fall upon his body, while his head, borne upon a pike, goes to
join that of M. de Launay.--Equally deadly accusations and of equally
speedy execution float in the air and from every direction. "On the
slightest pretext," says an elector, "they denounced to us those whom
they thought opposed to the Revolution, which already signified the same
as enemies of the State. Without any investigation, there was only talk
of the seizure of their persons, the ruin of their homes, and the razing
of their houses. One young man exclaimed: 'Follow me at once, let us
start off at once to Bezenval's!'"--Their brains are so frightened, and
their minds so distrustful, that at every step in the streets "one's
name has to be given, one's profession declared, one's residence, and
one's intentions. . .. One can neither enter nor leave Paris without
being suspected of treason." The Prince de Montbarrey, advocate of the
new ideas, and his wife, are stopped in their carriage at the barrier,
and are on the point of being cut to pieces. A deputy of the nobles, on
his way to the National Assembly, is seized in his cab and conducted to
the Place de Grève; the corpse of M. de Launay is shown to him, and he
is told that he is to be treated in the same fashion.--Every life hangs
by a thread, and, on the following days, when the King had sent away
his troops, dismissed his Ministers, recalled Necker, and granted
everything, the danger remains just as great. The multitude, abandoned
to the revolutionaries and to itself, continues the same bloody antics,
while the municipal chiefs[1250] whom it has elected, Bailly, Mayor of
Paris, and Lafayette, commandant of the National Guard, are obliged to
use cunning, to implore, to throw themselves between the multitude and
the unfortunates whom they wish to destroy.
On the 15th of July, in the night, a woman disguised as a man is
arrested in the court of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and so maltreated that she
faints away; Bailly, in order to save her, is obliged to feign anger
against her and have her sent immediately to prison. From the 14th to
the 22nd of July, Lafayette, at the risk of his life, saves with his
own hand seventeen persons in different quarters.[1251]--On the 22nd of
July, upon the denunciations which multiply around Paris like trains
of gunpowder, two administrators of high rank, M. Foulon, Councillor
of State, and M. Berthier, his son-in-law, are arrested, one near
Fontainebleau, and the other near Compiègne. M. Foulon, a strict
master,[1252] but intelligent and useful, expended sixty thousand francs
the previous winter on his estate in giving employment to the poor. M.
Berthier, an industrious and capable man, had officially surveyed
and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize the taxes, and had reduced the
overcharged quotas first one-eighth and then a quarter. But both of
these gentlemen have arranged the details of the camp against which
Paris has risen; both are publicly proscribed for eight days previously
by the Palais-Royal, and, with a people frightened by disorder,
exasperated by hunger, and stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is
a guilty one.--With regard to Foulon, as with Réveillon, a story is made
up, coined in the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation,
and which the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic
expression the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[1253] "He
said that we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no
bread we had only to eat grass."--The old man of seventy-four is brought
to Paris, with a truss of hay on his head, a collar of thistles around
his neck, and his mouth stuffed with hay. In vain does the electoral
bureau order his imprisonment that he may be saved; the crowd yells out:
"Sentenced and hung!" and, authoritatively, appoints the judges. In
vain does Lafayette insist and entreat three times that the judgment be
regularly rendered, and that the accused be sent to the Abbaye. A new
wave of people comes up, and one man, "well dressed," cries out: "What
is the need of a sentence for a man who has been condemned for thirty
years?" Foulon is carried off; dragged across the square, and hung
to the lamp post. The cord breaks twice, and twice he falls upon the
pavement. Re-hung with a fresh cord and then cut down, his head is
severed from his body and placed on the end of a pike.[1254] Meanwhile,
Berthier, sent away from Compiègne by the municipality, afraid to
keep him in his prison where he was constantly menaced, arrives in a
cabriolet under escort. The people carry placards around him filled with
opprobrious epithets; in changing horses they threw hard black bread
into the carriage, exclaiming, "There, wretch, see the bread you made us
eat!" On reaching the church of Saint-Merry, a fearful storm of insults
burst forth against him. He is called a monopolist, "although he had
never bought or sold a grain of wheat." In the eyes of the multitude,
who has to explain the evil as caused by some evil-doer, he is the
author of the famine. Conducted to the Abbaye, his escort is dispersed
and he is pushed over to the lamp post. Then, seeing that all is lost,
he snatches a gun from one of his murderers and bravely defends himself.
A soldier of the "Royal Croats" gives him a cut with his saber across
the stomach, and another tears out his heart. As the cook, who had cut
off the head of M. de Launay, happens to be on the spot, they hand him
the heart to carry while the soldiers take the head, and both go to
the Hôtel-de-Ville to show their trophies to M. de Lafayette. On their
return to the Palais-Royal, and while they are seated at table in a
tavern, the people demand these two remains. They throw them out of the
window and finish their supper, whilst the heart is marched about below
in a bouquet of white carnations.--Such are the spectacles which this
garden presents where, a year before, "good society in full dress" came
on leaving the Opera to chat, often until two o'clock in the morning,
under the mild light of the moon, listening now to the violin of
Saint-Georges, and now to the charming voice of Garat.
VIII.--Paris in the hands of the people.
Henceforth it is clear that no one is safe: neither the new militia nor
the new authorities suffice to enforce respect for the law. "They did
not dare," says Bailly,[1255] "oppose the people who, eight days before
this, had taken the Bastille."--In vain, after the last two murders, do
Bailly and Lafayette indignantly threaten to withdraw; they are forced
to remain; their protection, such as it is, is all that is left, and, if
the National Guard is unable to prevent every murder, it prevents some
of them. People live as they can under the constant expectation of fresh
popular violence. "To every impartial man," says Malouet, "the Terror
dates from the 14th of July".--On the 17th, before setting out for
Paris, the King attends communion and makes his will in anticipation
of assassination. From the 16th to the 18th, twenty personages of high
rank, among others most of those on whose heads a price is set by the
Palais-Royal, leave France: The Count d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the
Princes de Condé, de Conti, de Lambesc, de Vaudemont, the Countess
de Polignac, and the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche.--The day
following the two murders, M. de Crosne, M. Doumer, M. Sureau, the most
zealous and most valuable members of the committee on subsistence, all
those appointed to make purchases and to take care of the storehouses,
conceal themselves or fly. On the eve of the two murders, the notaries
of Paris, being menaced with a riot, had to advance 45,000 francs which
were promised to the workmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; while the
public treasury, almost empty, is drained of 30,000 livres per day to
diminish the cost of bread.--Persons and possessions, great and small,
private individuals and public functionaries, the Government itself,
all is in the hands of the mob. "From this moment," says a deputy,[1256]
"liberty did not exist even in the National Assembly. . . France stood
dumb before thirty factious persons. The Assembly became in their hands
a passive instrument, which they forced to serve them in the execution
of their projects."--They themselves do not lead, although they seem to
lead. The great brute, which has taken the bit in its mouth, holds on to
it, and it's plunging becomes more violent. Not only do both spurs which
maddened it, I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity
of food, continue to prick it on. But also the political hornets which,
increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which
it revels for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it,
urges it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified.
Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the conspiracy of
Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry. Rewards are bestowed
upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved
France. All honors are awarded to the people-to their good sense, their
magnanimity, and their justice. Adoration is paid to this new sovereign:
he is publicly and officially told, in the Assembly and by the press,
that he possesses every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills
blood it is inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible
instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?" The
greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to the
experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they have
fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the
present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the Constitution is
complete, the people, made happy, will again become wise: let us endure
the storm, which leads us on to so noble a harbor.
Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly,
disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people--that is
to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand individuals
gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm, suddenly and
irresistibly made legislators, judges, and executioners. A formidable
power, undefined and destructive, on which no one has any hold, and
which, with its mother, howling and misshapen Liberty, sits at the
threshold of the Revolution like Milton's two specters at the gates of
Hell.
. . . Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
but ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. . .
........the other shape,
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd
For each seem'd either: black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
*****
[Footnote 1201: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M.
Miron, lieutenant de police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury,
procureur-général, May 29th; of MM. Marchais and Berthier, April 18th
and 27th, March 23rd, April 5th, May 5th.--Arthur Young, June 10th
and 29th. "Archives Nationales," H. 1453 Letter of the sub-delegate of
Montlhéry, April 14th.]
[Footnote 1202: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the
sub-delegate Gobert, March 17th; of the officers of police, June
15th:--" On the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of March the inhabitants of
Conflans generally rebelled against the game law in relation to the
rabbit."]
[Footnote 1203: Montjoie, 2nd part, ch. XXI. p.14 (the first week in
June). Montjoie is a party man; but he gives dates and details, and his
testimony, when it is confirmed elsewhere, deserves, to be admitted.]
[Footnote 1204: Montjoie, 1st part, 92-101.--"Archives Nationales,"
H. 1453. Letter of the officer of police of Saint-Denis: "A good many
workmen arrive daily from Lorraine as well as from Champagne," which
increases the prices.]
[Footnote 1205: De Bezenval, "Mémoires," I.353. Cf. "The Ancient
Regime," p.509.--Marmontel, II, 252 and following pages.--De Ferrières,
I. 407.]
[Footnote 1206: Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788]
[Footnote 1207: Barrère, "Mémoires," I. 234.]
[Footnote 1208: See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of
those which have survived.]
[Footnote 1209: Malouet, I. 255. Bailly, I. 43 (May 9th and
19th).--D'Hezecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis XV." 293.--De
Bezenval, I. 368.]
[Footnote 1210: Marmontel, II, 249.--Montjoie, 1st part, p. 92.--De
Bezenval, I. 387: "These spies added that persons were seen exciting the
tumult and were distributing money."]
[Footnote 1211: "Archives Nationales," Y.11441. Interrogatory of the
Abbé Roy, May 5th.--Y.11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th)
of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the Hôtel-Dieu--These two
documents are of prime importance in presenting the true aspect of the
insurrection; to these must be added the narrative of M. de Bezenval,
who was commandant at this time with M. de Châtelet. Almost all other
narratives are amplified or falsified through party bias.]
[Footnote 1212: De Ferrières, vol. III. note A. (justificatory
explanation by Réveillon).]
[Footnote 1213: Bailly I. 25 (April 26th).]
[Footnote 1214: Hippeau, IV. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th).]
[Footnote 1215: Letter to the King by an inhabitant of the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine--"Do not doubt, sire, that our recent misfortunes are due
to the dearness of bread"]
[Footnote 1216: Dampmartin, "Evénements qui se sont passés sous mes
yeux," etc. I. 25: "We turned back and were held up by small bands of
scoundrels, who insolently proposed to us to shout 'Vive Necker! Vive
le Tiers-Etat!'" His two companions were knights of St. Louis, and
their badges seemed an object of "increasing hatred." "The badge excited
coarse mutterings, even on the part of persons who appeared superior to
the agitators."]
[Footnote 1217: Dampmartin, ibid. i. 25: "I was dining this very day at
the Hôtel d'Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis." He leaves the house
on foot and witnesses the disturbance. "Fifteen to Sixteen hundred
wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful vices,
covered with rags, and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting
and revolting spectacle. More than a hundred thousand persons of
both sexes and of all ages and conditions interfered greatly with the
operations of the troops. The firing soon commenced and blood flowed:
two innocent persons were wounded near me."]
[Footnote 1218: De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant la
Révolution." Thirty-one gambling-houses are counted here, while a
pamphlet of the day is entitled "Pétition des deux mill cent filles du
Palais-Royal."]
[Footnote 1219: Montjoie, 2nd part, 144.--Bailly, II, 130.]
[Footnote 1220: Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789.--Montjoie, 2nd part, 69.]
[Footnote 1221: Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th.--"La France
libre," passim, by C. Desmoulins.]
[Footnote 1222: C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young,
June 9th.]
[Footnote 1223: Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins,
letter, of June 24th and the following days.]
[Footnote 1224: Etienne Dumont, "Souvenirs," p.72.--C. Desmoulins,
letter of; June 24th.--Arthur Young, June 25th.--Buchez and Roux, II.
28.]
[Footnote 1225: Bailly, I. 227 and 179.--Monnier, "Recherches sur les
causes," etc. I. 289, 291; II.61;--Malouet, I. 299; II. 10.--"Actes
des Apôtres," V.43. (Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31st,
1790).--Marmontel, I. 28: "The people came even into the Assembly, to
encourage their partisans, to select and indicate their victims, and to
terrify the feeble with the dreadful trial of open balloting."]
[Footnote 1226: Manuscript letters of M. Boullé, deputy, to the
municipal authorities of Pontivy, from May 1st, 1789, to September 4th,
1790 (communicated by M. Rosenzweig, archivist at Vannes). June 16th,
1789: "The crowd gathered around the hall. . . was, during these days,
from 3,000 to 4,000 persons."]
[Footnote 1227: Letters of M. Boullé, June 23rd. "How sublime the
moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country
by a new oath!. . . . Why should this moment be selected by one of our
number to dishonor himself? His name is now blasted throughout France.
And the unfortunate man has children! Suddenly overwhelmed by public
contempt he leaves, and falls fainting at the door, exclaiming, 'Ah!
this will be my death!' I do not know what has become of him since. What
is strange is, he had not behaved badly up to that time, and he voted
for the Constitution."]
[Footnote 1228: De Ferrières, I. 168.--Malouet, I. 298 (according to
him the faction did not number more than ten members),--idem II.
10.--Dumont, 250.]
[Footnote 1229: "Convention nationale" governed France from 21st
September 1792 until Oct. 26th 1796. We distinguish between three
different assemblies, "la Convention Girondine" 1792-93, "the Mountain,"
1793-94 and "la Thermidorienne," from 1794-1795. (SR).]
[Footnote 1230: Declaration of June 23rd, article 15.]
[Footnote 1231: Montjoie, 2nd part, 118.--C. Desmoulins, letters of June
24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-Fère,
formerly an officer in the French Guard, p.9.--De Bezenval,
III, 413.--Buchez and Roux, II. 35.--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER
(Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie
Plon, Paris 1893..]
[Footnote 1232: Peuchet ("Encyclopédie Méthodique," 1789, quoted by
Parent Duchâtelet): "Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to
that class (the procurers of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in
the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates."]
[Footnote 1233: Gouverneur Morris, "Liberty is now the general cry;
authority is a name and no longer a reality." (Correspondence with
Washington, July 19th.)]
[Footnote 1234: Bailly. I. 302. "The King was very well-disposed; his
measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace. .
. Du Châtelet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts
against the people and the country."--Cf. Marmontel, IV. 183; Mounier,
II, 40.]
[Footnote 1235: Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Buchez and Roux,
II. 83.]
[Footnote 1236: Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the
eighty-three depositions and the discussion of the testimony.--It is the
crowd which began the attack. The troops fired in the air. But one
man, a sieur Chauvel, was wounded slightly by the Prince de Lambesc.
(Testimony of M. Carboire, p.84, and of Captain de Reinack, p. 101.) "M.
le Prince de Lambesc, mounted on a gray horse with a gray saddle without
holsters or pistols, had scarcely entered the garden when a dozen
persons jumped at the mane and bridle of his horse and made every effort
to drag him off. A small man in gray clothes fired at him with a pistol.
. . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his
horse rear up and by flourishing his sword; without, however, up to this
time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike
a man on the head with the flat of his saber who was trying to close the
turning-bridge, which would have cut off the retreat of his troops The
troops did no more than try to keep off the crowd which assailed them
with stones, and even with firearms, from the top of the terraces."--The
man who tried to close the bridge had seized the prince's horse with one
hand; the wound he received was a scratch about 23 lines long, which was
dressed and cured with a bandage soaked in brandy. All the details of
the affair prove that the patience and humanity of the officer, were
extreme. Nevertheless "on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a
written placard on the crossing Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris
to seize the prince and quarter him at once."--(Deposition of M. Cosson,
p.114.)]
[Footnote 1237: Bailly, I. 3, 6.--Marmontel, IV. 310]
[Footnote 1238: Montjoie, part 3, 86. "I talked with those who guarded
the château of the Tuileries. They did not belong to Paris. . . . A
frightful physiognomy and hideous apparel." Montjoie, not to be trusted
in many places, merits consultation for little facts of which he was an
eye-witness.--Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 374.--Dusaulx, "L'oeuvre des sept
jours," 352.--Revue Historique," March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot.
His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey).]
[Footnote 1239: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," I. 531. "Peaceable people
fled at the sight of these groups of strange, frantic vagabonds.
Everybody closed their houses. . .. When I reached home, in the
Saint-Denis quarter, several of these brigands caused great alarm by
firing off guns in the air."]
[Footnote 1240: Dusaulx, 379.]
[Footnote 1241: Dusaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. "In effect their
entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to
resist them."]
[Footnote 1242: Dusaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides).--"Revue
Rétrospective," IV. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two
Swiss Guards).]
[Footnote 1243: Marmontel, IV. 317.]
[Footnote 1244: Dusaulx, 454. "The soldiers replied that they would
accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a
number of their fellow-citizens."]
[Footnote 1245: Dusaulx, 447. The number of combatants, maimed, wounded,
dead, and living, is 825.--Marmontel, IV. 320. "To the number of
victors, which has been carried up to 800, people have been added who
were never near the place."]
[Footnote 1246: "Memoires", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc,
1767-1862), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris
1893. Vol. I. p.52. Pasquier was eye-witness. He leaned against the
fence of the Beaumarchais garden and looked on, with mademoiselle
Contat, the actress, at his side, who had left her carriage in the
Place-Royale.--Marat, "L'ami du peuple," No. 530. "When an unheard-of
conjunction of circumstances had caused the fall of the badly defended
walls of the Bastille, under the efforts of a handful of soldiers and
a troop of unfortunate creatures, most of them Germans and almost all
provincials, the Parisians presented themselves the fortress, curiosity
alone having led them there."]
[Footnote 1247: Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two
Swiss.--Narrative of Cholat, wine-dealer, one of the
victors.--Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay).]
[Footnote 1248: Montjoie, part 3, 85.--Dusaulx, 355, 287, 368.]
[Footnote 1249: Nothing more. No Witness states that he had seen the
pretended note to M. do Launay. According to Dusaulx, he could not have
had either the time or the means to write it.]
[Footnote 1250: Bailly, II. 32, 74, 88, 90, 95, 108, 117, 137, 158, 174.
"I gave orders which were neither obeyed nor listened to. . . . They
gave me to understand that I was not safe." (July 15th.) "In these
sad times one enemy and one calumnious report sufficed to excite the
multitude. All who had formerly held power, all who had annoyed or
restrained the insurrectionists, were sure of being arrested."]
[Footnote 1251: M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," III. 264. Letter of July
16th, 1789. "I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they
were hanging in different quarters."]
[Footnote 1252: Poujoulat. "Histoire de la Révolution Française," p.100
(with supporting documents). Procès-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly,
lle-de-France (1787), p.127.]
[Footnote 1253: For instance: "He is severe with his peasants."--"He
gives them no bread, and he wants them then to eat grass." "He wants
them to eat grass like horses."--"He has said that they could very well
eat hay, and that they are no better than horses."--The same story is
found in many of the contemporary jacqueries.]
[Footnote 1254: Bailly, II. 108. "The people, less enlightened and as
imperious as despots, recognize no positive signs of good administration
but success."]
[Footnote 1255: Bailly, II, 108, 95.--Malouet, II, 14.]
[Footnote 1256: De Ferrières, I. 168.]
CHAPTER III.
I.--Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789
Destruction of the Government.--To whom does real power
belong?
However bad a particular government may be, there is something still
worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing
to government that human wills form a harmony instead of chaos.
It serves society as the brain serves a living being. Incapable,
inconsiderate, extravagant, engrossing, it often abuses its position,
overstraining or misleading the body for which it should care, and which
it should direct. But, taking all things into account, whatever it may
do, more good than harm is done, for through it the body stands erect,
marches on and guides its steps. Without it there is no organized
deliberate action, serviceable to the whole body. In it alone do we find
the comprehensive views, knowledge of the members of which it consists
and of their aims, an idea of outward relationships, full and accurate
information, in short, the superior intelligence which conceives what is
best for the common interests, and adapts means to ends. If it falters
and is no longer obeyed, if it is forced and pushed from without by a
violent pressure, it ceases to control public affairs, and the social
organization retrogrades by many steps. Through the dissolution of
society, and the isolation of individuals, each man returns to his
original feeble state, while power is vested in passing aggregates that
like whirlwinds spring up from the human dust.--One may divine how this
power, which the most competent find it difficult to apply properly, is
exercised by bands of men springing out of nowhere. It is a matter of
supplies, of their possessions, price and distribution. It is a matter
of taxes, its proportion, apportionment and collection; of private
property, its varieties, rights, and limitations It is a problem of
public authority, its allocation and its limits; of all those delicate
cogwheels which, working into each other, constitute the great economic,
social, and political machine. Each band in its own canton lays its
rude hands on the wheels within its reach. They wrench or break them
haphazardly, under the impulse of the moment, heedless and indifferent
to consequences, even when the reaction of to-morrow crushes them in the
ruin that they cause to day. Thus do unchained Negroes, each pulling and
hauling his own way, undertake to manage a ship of which they have just
obtained mastery.--In such a state of things white men are hardly worth
more than black ones. For, not only is the band, whose aim is violence,
composed of those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and
most inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band
tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual the most
brutal, the most irrational, and most corrupt, descends lower than
himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the
dregs of society. In fact, a man who in the interchange of blows, would
resist the excitement of murder, and not use his strength like a
savage, must be familiar with arms. He must be accustomed to danger, be
cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honor, and above all, sensitive
to that stern military code which, to the imagination of the soldier,
ever holds out to him the provost's gibbet to which he is sure to rise,
should he strike one blow too many. Should all these restraints, inward
as well as outward, be wanting, the man plunges into insurrection. He is
a novice in the acts of violence, which he carries out. He has no
fear of the law, because he abolishes it. The action begun carries him
further than he intended to go. Peril and resistance exasperate his
anger. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered,
and follows robbers who have become his comrades.[1301] Add to this
the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous
tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we
can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the bourgeois,
pacified and tamed by an old civilization, we see all of a sudden spring
forth the barbarian. Or still worse, the primitive animal, the grinning,
sanguinary, wanton baboon, who giggles while he slays, and gambols over
the ruin he has accomplished. Such is the actual government to which
France is given up, and after eighteen months' experience, the best
qualified, most judicious and profoundest observer of the Revolution
will find nothing to compare it to but the invasion of the Roman Empire
in the fourth century.[1302] "The Huns, the Heruli, the Vandals, and the
Goths will come neither from the north nor from the Black Sea; they are
in our very midst."
II.--The provinces
Destruction of old Authorities.--Inadequacy of new
Authorities
When in a building the principal beam gives way, cracks follow and
multiply, and the secondary joists fall in one by one for lack of the
prop, which supported them. In a similar manner the authority of the
King being broken, all the powers, which he delegated, fall to the
ground.[1303] Intendants, parliaments, military commands, grand
provosts, administrative, judicial, and police functionaries in every
province, and of every branch of the service, who maintain order and
protect property, taught by the murder of M. de Launey, the imprisonment
of M. de Besenval, the flight of Marshal de Broglie, the assassinations
of Foullon and Bertier, know what it costs should they try to perform
their duties. Should it be forgotten local insurrections intervene, and
keep them in mind of it.
The officer in command in Burgundy is a prisoner at Dijon, with a
guard at his door; and he is not allowed to speak with any one without
permission, and without the presence of witnesses.[1304] The Commandant
of Caen is besieged in the old palace and capitulates. The Commandant of
Bordeaux surrenders Château-Trompette with its guns and equipment. The
Commandant at Metz, who remains firm, suffers the insults and the orders
of the populace. The Commandant of Brittany wanders about his province
"like a vagabond," while at Rennes his people, furniture, and plate are
kept as pledges. As soon as he sets foot in Normandy he is surrounded,
and a sentinel is placed at his door.--The Intendant of Besançon takes
to flight; that of Rouen sees his dwelling sacked from top to bottom,
and escapes amid the shouts of a mob demanding his head.--At Rennes, the
Dean of the Parliament is arrested, maltreated, kept in his room with
a guard over him, and then, although ill, sent out of the town under an
escort.--At Strasbourg "thirty-six houses of magistrates are marked
for pillage."[1305]--At Besançon, the President of the Parliament is
constrained to let out of prison the insurgents arrested in a late
out-break, and to publicly burn the whole of the papers belonging to
the prosecution.--In Alsace, since the beginning of the troubles, the
provosts were obliged to fly, the bailiffs and manorial judges hid
themselves, the forest-inspectors ran away, and the houses of the guards
were demolished. One man, sixty years of age, is outrageously beaten and
marched about the village, the people, meanwhile, pulling out his hair;
nothing remains of his dwelling but the walls and a portion of the roof.
All his furniture and effects are broken up, burnt or stolen. He is
forced to sign, along with his wife, an act by which he binds himself
to refund all penalties inflicted by him, and to abandon all claims
for damages for the injuries to which he has just been subjected.--In
Franche-Comté the authorities dare not condemn delinquents, and the
police do not arrest them; the military commandant writes that "crimes
of every kind are on the increase, and that he has no means of punishing
them." Insubordination is permanent in all the provinces; one of the
provincial commissions states with sadness:
"When all powers are in confusion and annihilated, when public force
no longer exists, when all ties are sundered, when every individual
considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation, when public
authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a crime to have
been clothed with it, what can be expected of our efforts to restore
order?"[1306]
All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand
groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market
villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised
National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.--But these local
chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by
acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they
feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd.
"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the
municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses
rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they
may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . . . Municipal bodies
have no longer the power to resist anything."
Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic, who is a farmer,
makes it his first aim to make no enemies, and would resign his place
if it were to bring him any "unpleasantness" with it. His rule in
the towns, and especially in large cities, is almost as lax and more
precarious, because explosive material is accumulated here to a much
larger extent, and the municipal officers, in their arm-chairs at the
town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any time. To-morrow,
perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some
incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the
spark.--No other defense against the populace is at hand than the
sentimental proclamations of the National Assembly, the useless presence
of troops who stand by and look on, and the uncertain help of a National
Guard which will arrive too late. Occasionally these townspeople, who
are now the rulers, utter a cry of distress from under the hands of
the sovereigns of the street who grasp them by the throat. At
Puy-en-Velay,[1307] a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, the
présidial,[1308] the committee of twenty-four commissioners, a body of
two hundred dragoons, and eight hundred men of the guard of burgesses,
are "paralyzed, and completely stupefied, by the vile populace. A
mild treatment only increases its insubordination and insolence." This
populace proscribes whomsoever it pleases, and six days ago a gibbet,
erected by its hands, has announced to the new magistrates the fate that
awaits them.
" What will become of us this winter," they exclaim, "in our
impoverished country, where bread is not to be had! We shall be the prey
of wild beasts!"
III.--Public feeling.--Famine
These people, in truth, are hungry, and, since the Revolution, their
misery has increased. Around Puy-en-Velay the country is laid waste,
and the soil broken up by a terrible tempest, a fierce hailstorm, and
a deluge of rain. In the south, the crop proved to be moderate and even
insufficient.
"To trace a picture of the condition of Languedoc," writes the
intendant,[1309] "would be to give an account of calamities of every
description. The panic which prevails in all communities, and which is
stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine even in
the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously expensive, and there is
a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormous outlays to which
they are exposed: The payment of the deputies to the seneschal's court,
the establishment of the burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia,
and the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and
permanent councils. To this must be add the cost of the printing of all
kinds, and the publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss
of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and
the utter stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes
combined "have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."--In the Center,
and in the North, where the crops are good, provisions are not less
scarce, because wheat is not put in circulation, and is kept concealed.
"For five months," writes the municipal assembly of Louviers,[1310] "not
a farmer has made his appearance in the markets of this town. Such a
circumstance was never known before, although, from time to time, high
prices have prevailed to a considerable extent. On the contrary, the
markets were always well supplied in proportion to the high price of
grain."
In vain the municipality orders the surrounding forty-seven parishes to
provide them with wheat. They pay no attention to the mandate; each for
himself and each for his own house; the intendant is no longer present
to compel local interests to give way to public interests.
"In the wheat districts around us," says a letter from one of the
Burgundy towns, "we cannot rely on being able to make free purchases.
Special regulations, supported by the civic guard, prevent grain from
being sent out, and put a stop to its circulation. The adjacent markets
are of no use to us. Not a sack of grain has been brought into our
market for about eight months."
At Troyes, bread costs four sous per pound, at Bar-sur-Aube, and in the
vicinity, four and a half sous per pound. The artisan who is out of work
now earns twelve sous a day at the relief works, and, on going into the
country, he sees that the grain crop is good. What conclusion can he
come to but that the dearth is due to the monopolists, and that, if he
should die of hunger, it would be because those scoundrels have
starved him?--By virtue of this reasoning whoever has to do with these
provisions, whether proprietor, farmer, merchant or administrator, all
are considered traitors. It is plain that there is a plot against
the people: the government, the Queen, the clergy, the nobles are all
parties to it; and likewise the magistrates and the wealthy amongst the
bourgeoisie and the rich. A rumor is current in the Ile-de-France that
sacks of flour are thrown into the Seine, and that the cavalry horses
are purposely made to eat unripe wheat in stalk. In Brittany, it is
maintained that grain is exported and stored up abroad. In Touraine, it
is certain that this or that wholesale dealer allows it to sprout in his
granaries rather than sell it. At Troyes, a story prevails that another
has poisoned his flour with alum and arsenic, commissioned to do so
by the bakers.--Conceive the effect of suspicions like these upon a
suffering multitude! A wave of hatred ascends from the empty stomach to
the morbid brain. The people are everywhere in quest of their imaginary
enemies, plunging forward with closed eyes no matter on whom or on what,
not merely with all the weight of their mass, but with all the energy of
their fury.
IV.--Panic.
General arming.
From the earliest of these weeks they were already alarmed. Accustomed
to being led, the human herd is scared at being left to itself; it
misses its leaders who it has trodden under foot; in throwing off their
trammels it has deprived itself of their protection. It feels lonely,
in an unknown country, exposed to dangers of which it is ignorant, and
against which it is unable to guard itself. Now that the shepherds are
slain or disarmed, suppose the wolves should unexpectedly appear!--And
there are wolves--I mean vagabonds and criminals--who have but just
issued out of the darkness. They have robbed and burned, and are to be
found at every insurrection. Now that the police force no longer puts
them down, they show themselves instead of keeping themselves concealed.
They have only to lie in wait and come forth in a band, and both life
and property will be at their mercy.--Deep anxiety, a vague feeling of
dread, spreads through both town and country: towards the end of July
the panic, like a blinding, suffocating whirl of dusts, suddenly sweeps
over hundreds of leagues of territory. The brigands are coming! They are
burning the crops! They are only six leagues off, and then only two--the
refugees who have run away from the disorder prove it.
On the 28th of July, at Angoulême,[1311] the alarm bell is heard about
three o'clock in the afternoon; the drums beat to arms, and cannon are
mounted on the ramparts. The town has to be put in a state of defense
against 15,000 bandits who are approaching, and from the walls a cloud
of dust on the road is discovered with terror. It proves to be the
post-wagon on its way to Bordeaux. After this the number of brigands
is reduced to 1,500, but there is no doubt that they are ravaging the
country. At nine o'clock in the evening 20,000 men are under arms, and
thus they pass the night, always listening without hearing anything.
Towards three o'clock in the morning there is another alarm, the church
bells ringing and the people forming a battle array. They are convinced
that the brigands have burned Ruffec, Vernenil, La Rochefoucauld, and
other places. The next day countrymen flock in to give their aid against
bandits who are still absent. "At nine o'clock," says a witness, "we had
40,000 men in the town, to whom we showed our gratitude." As the bandits
do not show themselves, it must be because they are concealed; a hundred
horsemen, a large number of men on foot, start out to search the forest
of Braçonne, and to their great surprise they find nothing. But the
terror is not allayed; "during the following days a guard is kept
mounted, and companies are enrolled among the townsmen," while Bordeaux,
duly informed, dispatches a courier to offer the support of 20,000 men
and even 30,000. "What is surprising," adds the narrator, is that at ten
leagues off in the neighborhood, in each parish, a similar disturbance
took place, and at about the same hour."--All that is required is that a
girl, returning to the village at night, should meet two men who do
not belong to the neighborhood. The case is the same in Auvergne. Whole
parishes, on the strength of this, betake themselves at night to the
woods, abandoning their houses, and carrying away their furniture; "the
fugitives trod down and destroyed their own crops; pregnant women were
injured in the forests, and others lost their wits." Fear lends them
wings. Two years after this, Madame Campan was shown a rocky peak on
which a woman had taken refuge, and from which she was obliged to be let
down with ropes.--The people at last return to their homes, and resume
their usual routines. But such large masses are not unsettled with
impunity; a tumult like this is, in itself, a lively source of alarm. As
the country did rise, it must have been on account of threatened danger
and if the peril was not due to brigands, it must have come from some
other quarter. Arthur Young, at Dijon and in Alsace,[1312] hears at the
public dinner tables that the Queen had formed a plot to undermine the
National Assembly and to massacre all Paris. Later on he is arrested in
a village near Clermont, and examined because he is evidently conspiring
with the Queen and the Comte d'Entraigues to blow up the town and send
the survivors to the galleys.
No argument, no experience has any effect against the multiplying
phantoms of an over-excited imagination. Henceforth every commune, and
every man, provide themselves with arms and keep them ready for use. The
peasant searches his hoard, and "finds from ten to twelve francs for
the purchase of a gun." "A national militia is found in the poorest
village." Burgess guards and companies of volunteers patrol all the
towns. Military commanders deliver arms, ammunition, and equipment,
on the requisition of municipal bodies, while, in case of refusal,
the arsenals are pillaged, and, voluntarily or by force, four
hundred thousand guns thus pass into the hands of the people in six
months.[1313] Not content with this they must have cannon. Brest
having demanded two, every town in Brittany does the same thing;
their self-esteem is at stake as well as a need of feeling themselves
strong.--They lack nothing now to render themselves masters. All
authority, all force, every means of constraint and of intimidation
is in their hands, and in theirs alone; and these sovereign hands have
nothing to guide them in this actual interregnum of all legal powers,
but the wild or murderous suggestions of hunger or distrust.
V.--Attacks on public individuals and public property.
At Strasbourg.--At Cherbourg.--At Mauberge.--At Rouen.--At
Besançon.--At Troyes.
It would take too much space to recount all the violent acts which were
committed,--convoys arrested, grain pillaged, millers and corn merchants
hung, decapitated, slaughtered, farmers called upon under the threats of
death to give up even the seed reserved for sowing, proprietors ransomed
and houses sacked.[1314] These outrages, unpunished, tolerated and even
excused or badly suppressed, are constantly repeated, and are, at first,
directed against public men and public property. As is commonly the
case, the rabble head the march and stamp the character of the whole
insurrection.
On the 19th of July, at Strasbourg, on the news of Necker's return to
office, it interprets after its own fashion the public joy, which
it witnesses. Five or six hundred beggars,[1315] their numbers soon
increased by the petty tradesmen, rush to the town hall, the magistrates
only having time to fly through a back door. The soldiers, on their
part, with arms in their hands, allow all these things to go on, while
several of them spur the assailants on. The windows are dashed to pieces
under a hailstorm of stones, the doors are forced with iron crowbars,
and the populace enter amid a burst of acclamations from the spectators.
Immediately, through every opening in the building, which has a facade
frontage of eighty feet, "there is a shower of shutters, sashes,
chairs, tables, sofas, books and papers, and then another of tiles,
boards, balconies and fragments of wood-work." The public archives are
thrown to the wind, and the surrounding streets are strewed with them;
the letters of enfranchisement, the charters of privileges, all the
authentic acts which, since Louis XIV, have guaranteed the liberties of
the town, perish in the flames. Some of the rabble in the cellars stave
in casks of precious wine; fifteen thousand measures of it are lost,
making a pool five feet deep in which several are drowned. Others,
loaded with booty, go away under the eyes of the soldiers without
being arrested. The havoc continues for three days; a number of houses
belonging to some of the magistrates "are sacked from garret to cellar."
When the honest citizens at last obtain arms and restore order, they are
content with the hanging of one of the robbers; although, in order to
please the people, the magistrates are changed and the price of bread
and meat is reduced.--It is not surprising that after such tactics, and
with such rewards, the riot should spread through the neighborhood far
and near: in fact, starting from Strasbourg it overruns Alsace, while in
the country as in the city, there are always drunkards and rascals found
to head it.
No matter where, be it in the East, in the West, or in the North, the
instigators are always of this stamp. At Cherbourg, on the 21st of
July,[1316] the two leaders of the riot are "highway robbers," who place
themselves at the head of women of the suburbs, foreign sailors, the
populace of the harbor, and it includes soldiers in workmen's smocks.
They force the delivery of the keys of the grain warehouses, and
wreck the dwellings of the three richest merchants, also that of M. de
Garantot, the sub-delegate: "All records and papers are burnt; at M. de
Garantot's alone the loss is estimated at more than 100,000 crowns at
least."--The same instinct of destruction prevails everywhere, a sort
of envious fury against all who possess, command, or enjoy anything.
At Maubeuge, on the 27th of July, at the very assembly of the
representatives of the commune,[1317] the rabble interferes directly in
its usual fashion. A band of nail and gun-makers takes possession of the
town-hall, and obliges the mayor to reduce the price of bread. Almost
immediately after this another band follows uttering cries of death,
and smashes the windows, while the garrison, which has been ordered out,
quietly contemplates the damage done. Death to the mayor, to all rulers,
and to all employees! The rioters force open the prisons, set the
prisoners free, and attack the tax-offices. The octroi offices are
demolished from top to bottom: they pull down the harbor offices and
throw the scales and weights into the river. All the custom and
excise stores are carried off; and the officials are compelled to give
acquaintances. The houses of the registrar and of the sheriff, that of
the revenue comptroller, two hundred yards outside the town, are sacked;
the doors and the windows are smashed, the furniture and linen is torn
to shreds, and the plate and jewelry is thrown into the wells. The same
havoc is committed in the mayor's town-house, also in his country-house
a league off. "Not a window, not a door, not one article or eatable,"
is preserved; their work, moreover, is conscientiously done, without
stopping a moment, "from ten in the evening up to ten in the morning on
the following day." In addition to this the mayor, who has served
for thirty-four years, resigns his office at the solicitation of the
well-disposed but terrified people, and leaves the country.--At
Rouen, after the 24th of July,[1318] a written placard shows, by its
orthography and its style, what sort of intellects composed it and what
kind of actions are to follow it:
"Nation, you have here four heads to strike off, those of Pontcarry
(the first president), Maussion (the intendant), Godard de Belboeuf (the
attorney-general), and Durand (the attorney of the King in the town).
Without this we are lost, and if you do not do it, people will take you
for a heartless nation."
Nothing could be more explicit. The municipal body, however, to whom
the Parliament denounces this list of proscriptions, replies, with its
forced optimism, that
"no citizen should consider himself or be considered as proscribed; he
may and must believe himself to be safe in his own dwelling, satisfied
that there is not a person in the city who would not fly to his rescue."
This is equal to telling the populace that it is free to do as it
pleases. On the strength of this the leaders of the riot work on in
security for ten days. One of them is a man named Jourdain, a lawyer of
Lisieux, and, like most of his brethren, a demagogue in principles; the
other is a strolling actor from Paris named Bordier, famous in the part
of harlequin,[1319] a bully in a house of ill-fame, "a night-rover
and drunkard, and who, fearing neither God nor devil," has taken up
patriotism, and comes down into the provinces to play tragedy, and that,
tragedy in real life. The fifth act begins on the night of the 3rd of
August, with Bordier and Jourdain as the principal actors, and behind
them the rabble along with several companies of fresh volunteers. A
shout is heard, "Death to the monopolists! death to Maussion! we must
have his head!" They pillage his hotel: many of them become intoxicated
and fall asleep in his cellar. The revenue offices, the toll-gates of
the town, the excise office, all buildings in which the royal revenue is
collected, are wrecked. Immense bonfires are lighted in the streets and
on the old market square; furniture, clothes, papers, kitchen utensils,
are all thrown in pell-mell, while carriages are dragged out and tumbled
into the Seine. It is only when the town-hall is attacked that the
National Guard, beginning to be alarmed, makes up its mind to seize
Bordier and some others. The following morning, however, at the shout of
Carabo, and led by Jourdain, the prison is forced, Bordier set free, and
the intendant's residence, with its offices, is sacked a second time.
When, finally, the two rascals are taken and led to the scaffold, the
populace is so strongly in their favor as to require the pointing of
loaded cannon on them to keep them down.--At Besançon,[1320] on the 13th
of August, the leaders consist of the servant of an exhibitor of
wild animals, two goal-birds of whom one has already been branded in
consequence of a riot, and a number of "inhabitants of ill-repute," who,
towards evening, spread through the town along with the soldiers. The
gunners insult the officers they meet, seize them by the throat and want
to throw them into the Doubs. Others go to the house of the commandant,
M. de Langeron, and demand money of him; on his refusing to give it
they tear off their cockades and exclaim, "We too belong to the
Third-Estate!" in other words, that they are the masters: subsequently
they demand the head of the intendant, M. de Caumartin, forcibly enter
his dwelling and break up his furniture. On the following day the rabble
and the soldiers enter the coffee-houses, the convents, and the inns,
and demand to be served with wine and eatables as much as they want, and
then, heated by drink, they burn the excise offices, force open several
prisons, and set free all the smugglers and deserters. To put an end to
this saturnalia a grand banquet in the open air is suggested, in which
the National Guard is to fraternize with the whole garrison; but the
banquet turns into a drinking-bout, entire companies remaining under the
tables dead drunk; other companies carry away with them four hogsheads
of wine, and the rest, finding themselves left in the lurch, are
scattered abroad outside the walls in order to rob the cellars of the
neighboring villages. The next day, encouraged by the example set them,
a portion of the garrison, accompanied by a number of workmen, repeat
the expedition in the country. Finally, after four days of this orgy, to
prevent Besançon and its outskirts from being indefinitely treated as a
conquered country, the burgess guard, in alliance with the soldiers who
have remained loyal, rebel against the rebellion, go in quest of
the marauders and hang two of them that same evening.--Such is
rioting![1321] an irruption of brute force which, turned loose on the
habitations of men, can do nothing but gorge itself, waste, break,
destroy, and do damage to itself; and if we follow the details of local
history, we see how, in these days, similar outbreaks of violence might
be expected at any time.
At Troyes,[1322] on the 18th of July, a market-day, the peasants refuse
to pay the entrance duties; the octroi having been suppressed at Paris,
it ought also to be suppressed at Troyes. The populace, excited by this
first disorderly act, gather into a mob for the purpose of dividing the
grain and arms amongst themselves, and the next day the town-hall is
invested by seven or eight thousand men, armed with clubs and stones.
The day after, a band, recruited in the surrounding villages, armed
with flails, shovels, and pitch-forks, enters under the leadership of
a joiner who marches at the head of it with a drawn saber; fortunately,
"all the honest folks among the burgesses "immediately form themselves
into a National Guard, and this first attempt at a Jacquerie is put
down. But the agitation continues, and false rumors constantly keep
it up.--On the 29th of July, on the report being circulated that five
hundred "brigands" had left Paris and were coming to ravage the country,
the alarm bell sounds in the villages, and the peasants go forth armed.
Henceforth, a vague idea of some impending danger fills all minds; the
necessity of defense and of guarding against enemies is maintained.
The new demagogues avail themselves of this to keep their hold on the
people, and when the time comes, to use it against their chiefs.--It is
of no use to assure the people that the latter are patriots; that the
recently welcomed Necker with enthusiastic shouts; that the priests, the
monks, and canons were the first to adopt the national cockade; that
the nobles of the city and its environs are the most liberal in France;
that, on the 20th of July, the burgess guard saved the town; that
all the wealthy give to the national workshops; that Mayor Huez, "a
venerable and honest magistrate," is a benefactor to the poor and to
the public. All the old leaders are objects of distrust.--On the 8th
of August, a mob demands the dismissal of the dragoons, arms for
all volunteers, bread at two sous the pound, and the freedom of all
prisoners. On the 19th of August the National Guard rejects its old
officers as aristocrats, and elects new ones. On the 27th of August, the
crowd invade the town-hall and distribute the arms amongst themselves.
On the 5th of September, two hundred men, led by Truelle, president of
the new committee, force the salt depot and have salt delivered to them
at six sous per pound.--Meanwhile, in the lowest quarters of the city,
a story is concocted to the effect that if wheat is scarce it is
because Huez, the mayor, and M. de St. Georges, the old commandant, are
monopolists, and now they say of Huez what they said five weeks before
of Foulon, that "he wants to make the people eat hay." The many-headed
brute growls fiercely and is about to spring. As usual, instead of
restraining him, they try to manage him.
"You must put your authority aside for a moment," writes the deputy of
Troyes to the sheriffs," and act towards the people as to a friend; be
as gentle with them as you would be with your equals, and rest assured
that they are capable of responding to it."
Thus does Huez act, and he even does more, paying no attention to their
menaces, refusing to provide for his own safety and almost offering
himself as a sacrifice.
"I have wronged no one," he exclaimed; "why should any one bear me
ill-will?"
His sole precaution is to provide something for the unfortunate poor
when he is gone: he bequeaths in his will 18,000 livres to the poor,
and, on the eve of his death, sends 100 crowns to the bureau of charity.
But what avail self-abnegation and beneficence against blind, insane
rage! On the 9th of September, three loads of flour proving to be
unsound, the people collect and shout out,
"Down with the flour-dealers! Down with machinery! Down with the mayor!
Death to the mayor, and let Truelle be put in his place!"
Huez, on leaving his court-room, is knocked down, murdered by kicks and
blows, throttled, dragged to the reception hall, struck on his head
with a wooden-shoe and pitched down the grand staircase. The municipal
officers strive in vain to protect him; a rope is put around his neck
and they begin to drag him along. A priest, who begs to be allowed at
least to save his soul, is repulsed and beaten. A woman jumps on
the prostrate old man, stamps on his face and repeatedly thrusts her
scissors in his eyes. He is dragged along with the rope around his neck
up to the Pont de la Selle, and thrown into the neighboring ford, and
then drawn out, again dragged through the streets and in the gutters,
with a bunch of hay crammed in his mouth.[1323]
In the meantime, his house as well as that of the lieutenant of police,
that of the notary Guyot, and that of M. de Saint-Georges, are sacked;
the pillaging and destruction lasts four hours; at the notary's house,
six hundred bottles of wine are consumed or carried off; objects of
value are divided, and the rest, even down to the iron balcony, is
demolished or broken; the rioters cry out, on leaving, that they have
still to burn twenty-seven houses, and to take twenty-seven heads. "No
one at Troyes went to bed that fatal night."--During the succeeding
days, for nearly two weeks, society seems to be dissolved. Placards
posted about the streets proscribe municipal officers, canons, divines,
privileged persons, prominent merchants, and even ladies of charity; the
latter are so frightened that they throw up their office, while a number
of persons move off into the country; others barricade themselves in
their dwellings and only open their doors with saber in hand. Not
until the 26th does the orderly class rally sufficiently to resume the
ascendancy and arrest the miscreants.--Such is public life in France
after the 14th of July: the magistrates in each town feel that they are
at the mercy of a band of savages and sometimes of cannibals. Those of
Troyes had just tortured Huez after the fashion of Hurons, while those
of Caen did worse; Major de Belzance, not less innocent, and under sworn
protection,[1324] was cut to pieces like Laperouse in the Fiji Islands,
and a woman ate his heart.
VI.--Taxes are no longer paid.
Devastation of the Forests.--The new game laws.
It is, under such circumstances, possible to foretell whether taxes come
in, and whether municipalities that sway about in every popular breeze
will have the authority to collect the odious revenues.--Towards the end
of September,[1325] I find a list of thirty-six committees or municipal
bodies which, within a radius of fifty leagues around Paris, refuse
to ensure the collection of taxes. One of them tolerates the sale
of contraband salt, in order not to excite a riot. Another takes the
precaution to disarm the employees in the excise department. In a
third the municipal officers were the first to provide themselves with
contraband salt and contraband tobacco.
At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses,
the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the employees
to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four hours, under
penalty of death. After twenty months' resistance Paris will end the
matter by forcing the National Assembly to give in and by obtaining the
final suppression of its octroi.[1326]--Of all the creditors whose hand
each one felt on his shoulders, that of the exchequer was the heaviest,
and now it is the weakest; hence this is the first whose grasp is to
be shaken off; there is none which is more heartily detested or which
receives harsher treatment. Especially against collectors of the
salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal.
These, everywhere,[1327] are in danger of their lives and are obliged to
fly. At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to "cut to pieces
the director of the excise." At Baignes, in Saintonge, his house is
devastated and his papers and effects are burned; they put a knife to
the throat of his son, a child six years of age, saying, "Thou must
perish that there may be no more of thy race." For four hours the clerks
are on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the
lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabers aimed at his own
head, they are released only on the condition that they "abjure
their employment."--Again, for two months following the taking of
the Bastille, insurrections break out by hundreds, like a volley
of musketry, against indirect taxation. From the 23rd of July the
Intendant of Champagne reports that "the uprising is general in almost
all the towns under his command." On the following day the Intendant of
Alençon writes that, in his province, "the royal dues will no longer be
paid anywhere." On the 7th of August, M. Necker states to the National
Assembly that in the two intendants' districts of Caen and Alençon it
has been necessary to reduce the price of salt one-half; that "in
an infinity of places" the collection of the excise is stopped or
suspended; that the smuggling of salt and tobacco is done by "convoys
and by open force" in Picardy, in Lorraine, and in the Trois-Évêchés;
that the indirect tax does not come in, that the receivers-general and
the receivers of the taille are "at bay" and can no longer keep their
engagements. The public income diminishes from month to month; in the
social body, the heart, already so feeble, faints; deprived of the
blood which no longer reaches it, it ceases to propel to the muscles the
vivifying current which restores their waste and adds to their energy.
"All controlling power is slackened," says Necker, "everything is a prey
to the passions of individuals." Where is the power to constrain them
and to secure to the State its dues?--The clergy, the nobles, wealthy
townsmen, and certain brave artisans and farmers, undoubtedly pay, and
even sometimes give spontaneously. But in society those who possess
intelligence, who are in easy circumstances and conscientious, form a
small select class; the great mass is egotistic, ignorant, and needy,
and lets its money go only under constraint; there is but one way to
collect the taxes, and that is to extort them. From time immemorial,
direct taxes in France have been collected only by bailiffs and
seizures; which is not surprising, as they take away a full half of the
net income. Now that the peasants of each village are armed and form
a band, let the collector come and make seizures if he dare!--"
Immediately after the decree on the equality of the taxes," writes the
provincial commission of Alsace,[1328] "the people generally refused
to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should
have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the peasants
threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments, while in
others they insist that the decree should be retrospective and that the
new rate-payers should pay for the past year. "No collector dare send an
official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission."--"
It is not the good bourgeois" of whom there is any fear, "but the rabble
who make the latter and every one else afraid of them;" resistance and
disorder everywhere come from "people that have nothing to lose."--Not
only do they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare
that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to
them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as
communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or
of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods,
they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the
ashes."--After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which
licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the impulse
to break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can procure a gun
begins operations;[1329] the crops which are still standing are trodden
under foot, the lordly residences are invaded and the palings are
scaled; the King himself at Versailles is wakened by shots fired in his
park. Stags, fawns, deer, wild boars, hares, and rabbits, are slain by
thousands, cooked with stolen wood, and eaten up on the spot. There is
a constant discharge of musketry throughout France for more than two
months, and, as on an American prairie, every living animal belongs to
him who kills it. At Choiseul, in Champagne, not only are all the hares
and partridges of the barony exterminated, but the ponds are exhausted
of fish; the court of the chateau even is entered, to fire on the
pigeon-house and destroy the pigeons, and then the pigeons and fish, of
which they have too many, are offered to the proprietor for sale--It
is "the patriots" of the village with "smugglers and bad characters"
belonging to the neighborhood who make this expedition; they are seen
in the front ranks of every act of violence, and it is not difficult
to foresee that, under their leadership, attacks on public persons
and public property will be followed by attacks on private persons and
private property.
VII.--Attack upon private individuals and private property.
Aristocrats denounced to the people as their enemies.
--Effect of news from Paris.--Influence of the village
attorneys.--Isolated acts of violence.--A general rising of
the peasantry in the east.--War against the castles, feudal
estates, and property.--Preparations for other Jacqueries.
Indeed, an outlawed class already exists, they are called "aristocrats."
This deadly term, applied at first to the nobles and prelates in the
States-General who declined to take part in the reunion of the three
orders, is extended so as to embrace all whose titles, offices,
alliances, and manner of living distinguish them from the multitude.
That which entitled them to respect is that which marks them out as
objects of ill-will; while the people, who, though suffering from their
privileges, did not regard them personally with hatred, are now taught
to consider them as their enemies. Each, on his own estate, is
held accountable for the evil designs attributed to his brethren at
Versailles, and, on the false report of a plot at the center, the
peasants classify him as one of the conspirators.[1330] Thus does the
peasant jacquerie commence, and the fanatics who have fanned the flame
in Paris are to do the same in the provinces. "You wish to know the
authors of the agitation," writes a sensible man to the committee
of investigation; "you will find them amongst the deputies of the
Third-Estate," and especially among the attorneys and advocates. "These
dispatch incendiary letters to their constituents, which letters
are received by municipal bodies alike composed of attorneys and of
advocates.... they are read aloud in the public squares, while copies of
them are distributed among all the villages. In these villages, if any
one knows how to read besides the priest and the lord of the manor, it
is the legal practitioner," the born enemy of the lord of the manor,
whose place he covets, vain of his oratorical powers, embittered by
his power, and never failing to blacken everything.[1331] It is highly
probable that he is the one who composes and circulates the placards
calling on the people, in the King's name, to resort to violence.--At
Secondigny, in Poitou, on the 23rd of July,[1332] the laborers in the
forest receive a letter "which summons them to attack all the country
gentlemen round about, and to massacre without mercy all those who
refuse to renounce their privileges.... promising them that not only
will their crimes go unpunished, but that they will even be rewarded."
M. Despretz-Montpezat, correspondent of the deputies of the nobles,
is seized, and dragged with his son to the dwelling of the
procurator-fiscal, to force him to give his signature; the inhabitants
are forbidden to render him assistance "on pain of death and fire."
"Sign," they exclaim, "or we will tear out your heart, and set fire to
this house!" At this moment the neighboring notary, who is doubtless an
accomplice, appears with a stamped paper, and says to him, "Monsieur,
I have just come from Niort, where the Third-Estate has done the same
thing to all the gentlemen of the town; one, who refused, was cut to
pieces before our eyes."--"We are compelled to sign renunciations of our
privileges, and give our assent to one and the same taxation, as if
the nobles had not already done so." The band gives notice that it will
proceed in the same fashion with all the chateaux in the vicinity, and
terror precedes or follows them. "Nobody dares write," M. Despretz
sends word; "I attempt it at the risk of my life."--Nobles and prelates
become objects of suspicion everywhere; village committees open their
letters, and they have to suffer their houses to be searched.[1333] They
are forced to adopt the new cockade: to be a gentleman, and not wear it,
is to deserve hanging. At Mamers, in Maine, M. de Beauvoir refuses to
wear it, and is at the point of being put into the pillory and felled.
Near La F1èche, M. de Brissac is arrested, and a message is sent
to Paris to know if he shall be taken there, "or be beheaded in the
meantime." Two deputies of the nobles, MM. de Montesson and de Vassé who
had come to ask the consent of their constituents to their joining the
Third-Estate, are recognized near Mans; their honorable scruples and
their pledges to the constituents are considered of no importance, nor
even the step that they are now taking to fulfill them; it suffices that
they voted against the Third-Estate at Versailles; the populace pursues
them and breaks up their carriages, and pillages their trunks.--Woe to
the nobles, especially if they have taken any part in local rule, and
if they are opposed to popular panics! M. Cureau, deputy-mayor of
Mans,[1334] had issued orders during the famine, and, having retired to
his chateau of Nouay, had told the peasants that the announcement of
the coming of brigands was a false alarm; he thought that it was not
necessary to sound the alarm bell, and all that was necessary was that
they should remain quiet. Accordingly he is set down as being in league
with the brigands, and besides this he is a monopolist, and a buyer of
standing crops. The peasants lead him off; along with his son-in-law, M.
de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there are judges. On the
way "they dragged their victims on the ground, pummeled them, trampled
on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared them with filth." M. de
Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed by degrees; a carpenter
cuts off the two heads with a double-edged ax, and children bear them
along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judges of the
place, brought by force, draw up an official report stating the finding
of thirty louis and several bills of the Banque d'Escompte in the
pockets of M. de Cureau, on the discovery of which a shout of triumph is
set up: this evidence proves that they were going to buy up the standing
wheat!--Such is the course of popular justice. Now that the Third-Estate
has become the nation, every mob thinks that it has the right to
pronounce sentences, which it carries out, on lives and on possessions.
These explosions are isolated in the western, central and southern
provinces; the conflagration, however, is universal in the east. On a
strip of ground from thirty to fifty leagues broad, extending from
the extreme north down to Provence. Alsace, Franche-Comté, Burgundy,
Mâconnais, Beaujolais, Auvergne, Viennois, Dauphiny, the whole of this
territory resembles a continuous mine which explodes at the same time.
The first column of flame which shoots up is on the frontiers of Alsace
and Franche-Comté, in the vicinity of Belfort and Vésoul, a feudal
district, in which the peasant, over-burdened with taxes, bears the
heavier yoke with greater impatience. An instinctive argument is going
on in his mind without his knowing it. "The good Assembly and the good
King want us to be happy, suppose we help them! They say that the King
has already relieved us of the taxes, suppose we relieve ourselves
of paying rents! Down with the nobles! They are no better than the
tax-collectors!"--On the 16th of July, the chateau of Sancy, belonging
to the Princesses de Beaufremont, is sacked, and on the 18th those of
Lure, Bithaine, and Molans.[1335] On the 29th, an accident which occurs
with some fire-works at a popular festival at the house of M. de Mesmay,
leads the lower class to believe that the invitation extended to
them was a trap, and that there was a desire to get rid of them by
treachery.[1336] Seized with rage they set fire to the chateau, and
during the following week[1337] destroy three abbeys, ruin eleven
chateaux and pillage others. "All records are destroyed, the registers
and court-rolls are carried off; and the deposits violated."--Starting
from this spot, "the hurricane of insurrection" stretches over the
whole of Alsace from Huningue to Landau.[1338] The insurgents display
placards, signed Louis, stating that for a certain lapse of time they
shall be permitted to exercise justice themselves, and, in Sundgau, a
well-dressed weaver, decorated with a blue belt, passes for a prince,
the King's second son. They begin by falling on the Jews, their
hereditary leeches; they sack their dwellings, divide their money among
themselves, and hunt them down like so many fallow-deer. At Bâle alone,
it is said that twelve hundred of these unfortunate fugitives arrived
with their families.--The distance between the Jew creditor and the
Christian proprietor is not great, and this is soon cleared. Remiremont
is only saved by a detachment of dragoons. Eight hundred men attack
the chateau of Uberbrünn. The abbey of Neubourg is taken by storm. At
Guebwiller, on the 31st of July, five hundred peasants, subjects of the
abbey of Murbach, make a descent on the abbot's palace and on the house
of the canons. Cupboards, chests, beds, windows, mirrors, frames, even
the tiles of the roof and the hinges of the casements are hacked
to pieces: "They kindle fires on the beautiful inlaid floors of the
apartments, and there burn up the library and the title-deeds." The
abbot's superb carriage is so broken up that not a wheel remains entire.
"Wine streams through the cellars. One cask of sixteen hundred measures
is half lost; the plate and the linen are carried off."--Society is
evidently being overthrown, while with the power, property is changing
hands.
These are their very words. In Franche-Comte[1339] the inhabitants of
eight communes come and declare to the Bernardins of Grâce-Dieu and of
Lieu-Croissant "that, being of the Third-Estate, it is time now for the
people to rule over abbots and monks, considering that the domination
of the latter has lasted too long," and thereupon they carry off all
the titles to property and to rentals belonging to the abbey in their
commune. In Upper Dauphiny, during the destruction of M. de Murat's
chateau, a man named Ferréol struck the furniture with a big stick,
exclaiming, "Hey, so much for you, Murat; you have been master a good
while, now it's our turn!"[1340] Those who rifle houses, and steal like
highway robbers, think that they are defending a cause, and reply to
the challenge, "Who goes there?" "We are for the brigand
Third-Estate!"--Everywhere the belief prevails that they are clothed
with authority, and they conduct themselves like a conquering horde
under the orders of an absent general. At Remiremont and at Luxeuil
they produce an edict, stating that "all this brigandage, pillage, and
destruction" is permitted. In Dauphiny, the leaders of the bands
say that they possess the King's orders. In Auvergne, "they follow
imperative orders, being advised that such is his Majesty's will."
Nowhere do we see that an insurgent village exercises personal vengeance
against its lord. If the people fire on the nobles they encounter, it is
not through personal hatred. They are destroying the class, and do not
pursue individuals. They detest feudal privileges, holders of charters,
the cursed parchments by virtue of which they are made to pay, but not
the nobleman who, when he resides at home, is of humane intentions,
compassionate, and even often beneficent. At Luxeuil, the abbot, who
is forced with uplifted ax to sign a relinquishment of his seignorial
rights over twenty-three estates, has dwelt among them for forty-six
years, and has been wholly devoted to them.[1341] In the canton of
Crémieu, "where the havoc is immense," all the nobles, write the
municipal officers, are "patriots and benevolent." In Dauphiny, the
engineers, magistrates, and prelates, whose chateaux are sacked, were
the first to espouse the cause of the people and of public liberties
against the ministers. In Auvergne, the peasants themselves "manifest a
good deal of repugnance to act in this way against such kind masters."
But it must be done; the only concession which can be made in
consideration of the kindness which had been extended to them is, not to
burn the chateau of the ladies of Vanes, who had been so charitable; but
they burn all their title-deeds, and torture the business agent at three
different times by fire, to force him to deliver a document which
he does not possess; they then only withdraw him from the fire
half-broiled, because the ladies, on their knees, implore mercy for
him. They are like the soldiers on a campaign who execute orders
with docility, for which necessity is the only plea, and who, without
regarding themselves as brigands, commit acts of brigandage.
But here the situation is more tragic, for it is war in the midst of
peace, a war of the brutal and barbaric multitude against the highly
cultivated, well-disposed and confiding, who had not anticipated
anything of the kind, who had not even dreamt of defending themselves,
and who had no protection. The Comte de Courtivron, with his family,
was staying at the watering-place of Luxeuil with his uncle, the Abbé
of Clermont-Tonnerre, an old man of seventy years. On the 19th of July,
fifty peasants from Fougerolle break into and demolish everything in the
houses of an usher and a collector of the excise. Thereupon the mayor
of the place intimates to the nobles and magistrates who are taking the
waters, that they had better leave the house in twenty-four hours, as
"he had been advised of an intention to burn the houses in which they
were staying," and he did not wish to have Luxeuil exposed to this
danger on account of their presence there. The following day, the guard,
as obliging as the mayor, allows the band to enter the town and to force
the abbey: the usual events follow, renunciations are extorted, records
and cellars are ransacked, plate and other effects are stolen. M. de
Courtivron escaping with his uncle during the night, the alarm bell
is sounded and they are pursued, and with difficulty obtain refuge
in Plombières. The bourgeoisie of Plombières, however, for fear of
compromising themselves, oblige them to depart. On the road two hundred
insurgents threaten to kill their horses and to smash their carriage,
and they only find safety at last at Porentruy, outside of France.
On his return, M. de Courtivron is shot at by the band which has just
pillaged the abbey of Lure, and they shout out at him as he passes,
"Let's massacre the nobles!" Meanwhile, the chateau of Vauvilliers, to
which his sick wife had been carried, is devastated from top to bottom;
the mob search for her everywhere, and she only escapes by hiding
herself in a hay-loft. Both are anxious to fly into Burgundy, but word
is sent them that at Dijon "the nobles are blockaded by the people," and
that, in the country, they threaten to set their houses on fire.--There
is no asylum to be had, either in their own homes nor in the homes of
others, nor in places along the roads, fugitives being stopped in all
the small villages and market-towns. In Dauphiny[1342] "the Abbess of
St. Pierre de Lyon, one of the nuns, M. de Perrotin, M. de Bellegarde,
the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin, and the Chevalier de Moidieu, are
arrested at Champier by the armed population, led to the Côte
Saint-André, confined in the town-hall, whence they send to Grenoble
for assistance," and, to have them released, the Grenoble Committee is
obliged to send commissioners. Their only refuge is in the large cities,
where some semblance of a precarious order exists, and in the ranks of
the City Guards, which march from Lyons, Dijon, and Grenoble, to keep
the inundation down. Throughout the country scattered chateaux are
swallowed up by the popular tide, and, as the feudal rights are often in
plebeian hands, it insensibly rises beyond its first overflow.--There
is no limit to an insurrection against property. This one extends from
abbeys and chateaux to the "houses of the bourgeoisie."[1343] The grudge
at first was confined to the holders of charters; now it is extended to
all who possess anything. Well-to-do farmers and priests abandon their
parishes and fly to the towns. Travelers are put to ransom. Thieves,
robbers, and returned convicts, at the head of armed bands, seize
whatever they can lay their hands on. Cupidity becomes inflamed by such
examples; on domains which are deserted and in a state of confusion,
where there is nothing to indicate a master's presence, all seems to
lapse to the first comer. A small farmer of the neighborhood has carried
away wine and returns the following day in search of hay. All the
furniture of a chateau in Dauphin is removed, even to the hinges of the
doors, by a large reinforcement of carts.--" It is the war of the
poor against the rich," says a deputy, "and, on the 3rd of August, the
Committee on Reports declares to the National Assembly "that no kind of
property has been spared." In Franche-Comté, "nearly forty chateaux and
seignorial mansions have been pillaged or burnt."[1344] From Lancers
to Gray about three out of five chateaux are sacked. In Dauphin
twenty-seven are burned or destroyed; five in the small district of
Viennese, and, besides these, all the monasteries--nine at least in
Auvergne, seventy-two, it is said, in Mâconnais and Beaujolais, without
counting those of Alsace. On the 31st of July, Lally-Tollendal, on
entering the tribune, has his hands full of letters of distress, with
a list of thirty-six chateaux burnt, demolished, or pillaged, in one
province, and the details of still worse violence against persons:[1345]
"in Languedoc, M. de Barras, cut to pieces in the presence of his
wife who is about to be confined, and who is dead in consequence; in
Normandy, a paralytic gentleman left on a burning pile and taken off
from it with his hands burnt; in Franche-Comté, Madame de Bathilly
compelled, with an ax over her head, to give up her title-deeds and even
her estate; Madame de Listenay forced to do the same, with a pitchfork
at her neck and her two daughters in a swoon at her feet; Comte de
Montjustin, with his wife, having a pistol at his throat for three
hours; and both dragged from their carriage to be thrown into a pond,
where they are saved by a passing regiment of soldiers; Baron de
Montjustin, one of the twenty-two popular noblemen, suspended for an
hour in a well, listening to a discussion whether he shall be dropped
down or whether he should die in some other way; the Chevalier d'Ambly,
torn from his chateau and dragged naked into the village, placed on a
dung-heap after having his eyebrows and all his hair pulled out, while
the crowd kept on dancing around him."
In the midst of a disintegrated society, under the semblance only of a
government, it is manifest that an invasion is under way, an invasion
of barbarians which will complete by terror that which it has begun by
violence, and which, like the invasions of the Normans in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, ends in the conquest and dispossession of an entire
class. In vain the National Guard and the other troops that remain loyal
succeed in stemming the first torrent; in vain does the Assembly hollow
out a bed for it and strive to bank it in by fixed boundaries. The
decrees of the 4th of August and the regulations which follow are but so
many spiders' webs stretched across a torrent. The peasants, moreover,
putting their own interpretation on the decrees, convert the new laws
into authority for continuing in their course or beginning over again.
No more rents, however legitimate, however legal!
"Yesterday,"[1346] writes a gentleman of Auvergne, we were notified
that the fruit-tithe (percières) would no longer be paid, and that the
example of other provinces was only being followed which no longer, even
by royal order, pay tithes." In Franche-Comté "numerous communities
are satisfied that they no longer owe anything either to the King or to
their lords. . . . The villages divide amongst themselves the fields and
woods belonging to the nobles."--
It must be noted that charter-holding and feudal titles are still intact
in three-fourths of France, that it is the interest of the peasant to
ensure their disappearance, and that he is always armed. To secure a
new outbreak of jacqueries, it is only necessary that central control,
already thrown into disorder, should be withdrawn. This is the work of
Versailles and of Paris; and there, at Paris as well as at Versailles,
some, through lack of foresight and infatuation, and others, through
blindness and indecision--the latter through weakness and the former
through violence--all are laboring to accomplish it.
*****
[Footnote 1301: Dusaulx, 374. "I remarked that if there were a few
among the people at that time who dared commit crime, there were several
who wished it, and that every one endured it."--" Archives Nationales,"
DXXIX, 3. (Letter of the municipal authorities of Crémieu, Dauphiny,
November 3, 1789.) "The care taken to lead them first to the cellars
and to intoxicate them, can alone give a conception of the incredible
excesses of rage to which they gave themselves up in the sacking and
burning of the chateaux."]
[Footnote 1302: Mercure de France, January 4, 1792. ("Revue politique de
l'année 1791," by Mallet du Pan.)]
[Footnote 1303: Albert Babeau, I. 206. (Letter of the deputy Camuzet
de Belombre, August 22, 1789.) The executive power is absolutely gone
to-day."--Gouverneur Morris, letter of July 31, 1789: "This country is
now as near in a state of anarchy as it is possible for a community to
be without breaking up."]
[Footnote 1304: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. Amelot,
July 24th; H. 784, of M. de Langeron, October 16th and 18th.--KK.
1105. correspondence of M. de Thiard, October 7th and 30th, September
4th.--Floquet, VII. 527, 555.--Guadet, "Histoire des Girondins" (July
29, 1789).]
[Footnote 1305: M. de Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I. 353 (July
18th).--Sauzay, "Histoire de la Persécution Révolutionnaire dans le
Département de Doubs," I. 128 (July 19th.)--"Archives Nationales," F7,
3253. (Letter of the deputies of the provincial commission of Alsace,
September 8th.) D. XXIX. I. note of M. de Latour-du-Pin, October
28, 1789.--Letter of M. de Langeron, September 3rd; of Breitman,
garde-marteau, Val Saint-Amarin (Upper Alsace), July 26th.]
[Footnote 1306: Léonce de Lavergne, 197. (Letter of the intermediate
commission of Poitou, the last month in 1789.)--Cf. Brissot (Le patriote
français, August, 1789). "General insubordination prevails in the
provinces because the restraints of executive power are no longer felt.
What were but lately the guarantees of that power? The intendants,
tribunals, and the army. The intendants are gone, the tribunals are
silent, and the army is against the executive power and on the side of
the people. Liberty is not a nourishment for unprepared stomachs."]
[Footnote 1307: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. (Letter of the
clergy, consuls, présidial-councillors and principal merchants of
Puy-en-Velay, September 16, 1789.)--H. 1453. (letter of the Intendant
or Alençon, July 18th). "I must not leave you in ignorance of the
multiplied outbreaks we have in all parts of my jurisdiction. The
impunity with which they flatter themselves, because the judges are
afraid of irritating the people by examples of severity, only emboldens
them. Mischief-makers, confounded with honest folks, spread false
reports about particular persons whom they accuse of concealing grain,
or of not belonging to the Third-Estate, and, under this pretext, they
pillage their houses, taking whatever they can find, the owners only
avoiding death by flight."]
[Footnote 1308: A body of magistrates forming one of the lower
tribunals.]
[Footnote 1309: "Archives Nationales," H. 942. (Observations of M. de
Ballainvilliers, October 30, 1789.)]
[Footnote 1310: "Archives Nationales," D, XXIX. 1. Letter of the
municipal assembly of Louviers, the end of August, 1789.--Letter of
the communal assembly of Saint-Bris (bailiwick of Auxerre),
September 25th.--Letter of the municipal officers of Ricey-Haut, near
Bar-sur-Seine, August 25th; of the Chevalier d'Allouville, September
8th.]
[Footnote 1311: "Archives Nationales," D, XXIX. I. Letter of
M. Briand-Delessart (Angoulême, August 1st).--Of M. Bret,
Lieutenant-General of the provostship of Mardogne, September 5th.--Of
the Chevalier de Castellas (Auvergue), September 15th (relating to the
night between the 2nd and 3rd of August).--Madame Campan, II. 65.]
[Footnote 1312: Arthur Young, "Voyages in France," July 24th and 31st,
August 13th and 19th.]
[Footnote 1313: De Bouillé, 108.--"Archives Nationales," KK. 1105.
Correspondence of M. deThiard, September 20, 1789 (apropos of one
hundred guns given to the town of Saint-Brieuc). "They are not of the
slightest use, but this passion for arms is a temporary epidemic which
must be allowed to subside of itself. People are determined to believe
in brigands and in enemies, whereas neither exist."--September 25th,
"Vanity alone impels them, and the pride of having cannon is their sole
motive."]
[Footnote 1314: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letters of M. Amelot,
July 17th and 24th. "Several wealthy private persons of the town
(Auxonne) have been put to ransom by this band, of which the largest
portion consists of ruffians."--Letter of nine cultivators of Breteuil
(Picardy) July 23rd (their granaries were pillaged up to the last grain
the previous evening). "They threaten to pillage our crops and set our
barns on fire as soon as they are full. M. Tassard, the notary, has been
visited in his house by the populace, and his life has been threatened."
Letter of Moreau, Procureur du Roi at the Senechal's Court at
Bar-le-Duc, September 15, 1789, D, XXIX, 1. "On the 27th of July the
people rose and most cruelly assassinated a merchant trading in wheat.
On the 27th and 28th his house and that of another were sacked," etc.]
[Footnote 1315: Chronicle of Dominick Schmutz ("Revue d'Alsace," V.
III. 3rd series). These are his own expressions: Gesindel,
Lumpen-gesindel.--De Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I. 353.--Arthur Young (an
eye-witness), July 21st.--Of Dampmartin (eye-witness), I. 105. M. de
Rochambeau shows the usual indecision and want of vigor: whilst the mob
are pillaging houses and throwing things out of the windows, he passes
in front of his regiments (8,000 men) drawn up for action, and says, "My
friends, my good friends, you see what is going on. How horrible! Alas!
these are your papers, your titles and those of your parents." The
soldiers smile at this sentimental prattle.]
[Footnote 1316: Dumouriez (an eye-witness), book III. ch. 3.--The trial
was begun and judgment given by twelve lawyers and an assessor, whom the
people, in arms, had themselves appointed.--Hippeau, IV. 382.]
[Footnote 1317: "Archives Nationales," F7 3248. (Letter of the mayor, M.
Poussiaude de Thierri, September 11th.)]
[Footnote 1318: Floquet, VII. 551.]
[Footnote 1319: De Goncourt, "La Société française pendant la
Révolution," 37.]
[Footnote 1320: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of the
officers of the bailiwick of Dôle, August 24th.--Sauzay I. 128.]
[Footnote 1321: There is a similar occurrence at Strasbourg, a few days
after the sacking of the town-hall. The municipality having given each
man of the garrison twenty sous, the soldiers abandon their post, set
the prisoners free at the Pont-Couvert, feast publicly in the streets
with the women taken out of the penitentiary, and force innkeepers and
the keepers of drinking-places to give up their provisions. The shops
are all closed, and, for twenty-four hours, the officers are not obeyed.
(De Dampmartin, I. 105.)]
[Footnote 1322: Albert Babeau, I. 187-273.--Moniteur, II. 379. (Extract
from the provost's verdict of November 27, 1789.)]
[Footnote 1323: Moniteur, ibid. Picard, the principal murderer,
confessed "that he had made him suffer a great deal; that the said
sieur Huez did not die until they came near the Chaudron Inn; that he
nevertheless intended to make him suffer more by stabbing him in the
neck at the corner of each street, (and) by contriving it so that he
might do it often, as long as there was life in him; that the day on
which M. Huez died yielded him ten francs, together with the neck-buckle
of M. Hues, found on him when he was arrested in his flight."]
[Footnote 1324: Mercure de France,, September 26, 1789. Letters of the
officers of the Bourbon regiment and of members of the general committee
of Caen.--Floquet, VII. 545.]
[Footnote 1325: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453.--Ibid. D. XXIX. I. Note
of M. de la Tour-du-Pin, October 28th.]
[Footnote 1326: Decree, February 5, 1789, enforced May 1st following.]
[Footnote 1327: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of the count
de Montausier, August 8th, with notes by M. Paulian, director of the
excise (an admirable letter, modest and liberal, and ending by demanding
a pardon for people led astray).--H. 1453. Letter of the attorney of the
election district of Falaise, July 17th, etc.--Moniteur, I. 303, 387,
505 (sessions of August 7th and 27th and of September 23rd). "The royal
revenues are diminishing steadily."--Buchez and Roux, III. 219 (session
of October 24, 1789). Discourse of a deputation from Anjou: "Sixty
thousand men are armed; the barriers have been destroyed, the clerks'
horses have been sold by auction; the employees have been told to
withdraw from the province within eight days. The inhabitants have
declared that they will not pay taxes so long as the salt-tax exists.]
[Footnote 1328: "Archives Nationales," F7 3253 (Letter of September 8,
1789).]
[Footnote 1329: Arthur Young, September 30th. "It is being said that
every rusty gun in Provence is at work, killing all sorts of birds;
the shot has fallen five or six times in my chaise and about my
ears."--Beugnot, I.142.--"Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of
the Chevalier d'Allonville, September 8, 1789 (Near Bar-sur-Aube). "The
peasants go in armed bands into the woods belonging to the Abbey of
Trois-Fontaines, which they cut down. They saw up the oaks and transport
them on wagons to Pont-Saint-Dizier, where they sell them. In other
places they fish in the ponds and break the embankments."]
[Footnote 1330: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of the
assessor of the police of Saint-Flour, October 3, 1789. On the 31st
of July, a rumor is spread that the brigands are coming. On the 1st of
August the peasants arm themselves. "They amuse themselves by drinking,
awaiting the arrival of the brigands; the excitement increases to such
an extent as to make them believe that M. le Comte d'Espinchal had
arrived in disguise the evening before at Massiac, that he was the
author of the troubles disturbing the province at this time, and that he
was concealed in his chateau." On the strength of this shots are fired
into the windows, and there are searches, etc.]
[Footnote 1331: "Archives Nationales," D, XXIX, I, Letter of Etienne
Fermier, Naveinne, September 18th (it is possible that the author,
for the sake of caution, took a fictitious name).--The manuscript
correspondence of M. Boullé, deputy of Pontivy, to his constituents,
is a type of this declamatory and incendiary writing.--Letter of the
consuls, priests, and merchants of Puy-en-Velay, September 16th.--" The
Ancient Régime," p. 396.]
[Footnote 1332: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of M.
Despretz-Montpezat, a former artillery officer, July 24th (with several
other signatures). On the same day the alarm bell is sounded In fifty
villages on the rumor spreading that 7,000 brigands, English and Breton,
were invading the country.]
[Footnote 1333: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of
Briand-Delessart, August 1st (domiciliary visits to the Carmelites
of Angoulême where it is pretended that Mme. de Polignac has just
arrived.--Beugnot, I. 140.--Arthur Young, July 20th, etc.--Buchez and
Roux, IV. 166. Letter of Mamers, July 24th; of Mans, July 26th.]
[Footnote 1334: Montjoie, ch. LXXII, p. 93 (according to acts of legal
procedure). There was a soldier in the band who had served under M. de
Montesson and who wanted to avenge himself for the punishments he had
undergone in the regiment.]
[Footnote 1335: Mercure de France, August 20th (Letter from Vésoul,
August 13th).]
[Footnote 1336: M. de Memmay proved his innocence later on, and was
rehabilitated by a public decision after two years' proceedings (session
of June 4, 1791; Mercure of June 11th).]
[Footnote 1337: Journal des Débats et Décrets, I. 258. (Letter of the
municipality of Vésoul, July 22nd.--Discourse of M. de Toulougeon, July
29th.)]
[Footnote 1338: De Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I. 353.--"Archives
Nationales," F7, 3253. (Letter of M. de Rochamheau, August
4th.)--Chronicle of Schmutz (ibid. ), p. 284. "Archives Nationales," D.
XXIX. I. (Letter of Mme. Ferrette, of Remiremont, August 9th.)]
[Footnote 1339: Sauzay, I. 180. (Letters of monks, July 22nd and 26th.)]
[Footnote 1340: "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. (Letter of M. de
Bergeron, attorney to the présidial of Valence, August 28th, with the
details of the verdict stated.) Official report of the militia of Lyons,
sent to the president of the National Assembly, August 10th. (Expedition
to Serrière, in Dauphiny, July 31st.)]
[Footnote 1341: Letter of the Count of Courtivron, deputy substitute
(an eye-witness).--"Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of the
municipal officers of Crémieu (Dauphiny), November 3rd. Letter of the
Vicomte de Carbonnière (Auvergne), August 3rd.--Arthur Young, July 30th
(Dijon) says, apropos of a noble family which escaped almost naked
from its burning chateau, "they were esteemed by the neighbors;
their virtues ought to have commanded the love of the poor, for whose
resentment there was no cause."]
[Footnote 1342: "Archives Nationales," XXIX. I. (Letter of the
commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.)]
[Footnote 1343: "Désastres du Mâconnais," by Puthod de la Maison-Rouge
(August, 1789). "Ravages du Mâconnais."--Arthur Young, July
27th.--Buchez and Roux, IV. 215, 214.--Mercure de France, September
12, 1789. (Letter by a volunteer of Orleans.) "On the 15th of August,
eighty-eight ruffians, calling themselves reapers, present themselves at
Bascon, in Beauce, and, the next day, at a chateau in the neighborhood,
where they demand within an hour the head of the son of the lord of the
manor, M. Tassin, who can only redeem himself by a contribution of 1,600
livres and the pillaging of his cellars.]
[Footnote 1344: Letter of the Count de Courtivron.--Arthur Young, July
31st.--Buchez and Roux, II. 243.--Mercure de France, August 15, 1789
(sitting of the 8th, discourse of a deputy from Dauphiné.)--Mermet,
"Histoire de la Ville de Vienne," 445--" Archives Nationales," ibid.
(Letter of the commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.)--"The
list of burnt or devastated chateaux is immense." The committee already
cites sixteen of them.--Puthod de la Maison-Rouge, ibid.: "Were all
devastated places to be mentioned, it would be necessary to cite the
whole province" (Letter from Mâcon). "They have not the less destroyed
most of the chateaux and bourgeois dwellings, either burning them and or
else tearing them down."]
[Footnote 1345: Lally-Tollendal, "Second Letter to my Constituents,"
104.]
[Footnote 1346: Doniol, "La Révolution et la Féodalité," p.60 (a few
days after the 4th of August).--"Archives Nationales," H. 784. Letters
of M. de Langeron, military commander at Besançon, October 16th and
18th.--Ibid. , D. XXIX. I. Letter of the same, September 3rd.--Arthur
Young (in Provence, at the house of Baron de la Tour-d'Aignes). "The
baron is an enormous sufferer by the Revolution; a great extent of
country which belonged in absolute right to his ancestors, has been
granted for quit-rents, ceus, and other feudal payments, so that there
is no comparison between the lands retained and those thus granted by
his family. . . . The solid payments which the Assembly have declared
to be redeemable are every hour falling to nothing, without a shadow
of recompense. . . The situation of the nobility in this country is
pitiable; they are under apprehensions that nothing will be left them,
but simply such houses as the mob allows to stand unburned; that the
small farmers will retain their farms without paying the landlord his
half of the produce; and that, in case of such a refusal, there is
actually neither law nor authority in the country to prevent it. This
chateau, splendid even in ruins, with the fortune and lives of the
owners, is at the mercy of an armed rabble."]
CHAPTER IV. PARIS.
I.--Paris.
Powerlessness and discords of the authorities.--The people,
king.
The powerlessness, indeed, of the heads of the Government, and the
lack of discipline among all its subordinates, are much greater in the
capital than in the provinces.--Paris possesses a mayor, Bailly; but
"from the first day, and in the easiest manner possible,"[1401] his
municipal council, that is to say, "the assembly of the representatives
of the commune, has accustomed itself to carry on the government alone,
overlooking him entirely." There is a central administration, the
municipal council, presided over by the mayor; but, "at this time,
authority is everywhere except where the preponderating authority should
be; the districts have delegated it and at the same time retained it;"
each of them acts as if it were alone and supreme.--There are secondary
powers, the district-committees, each with its president, its clerk, its
offices, and commissioners; but the mobs of the street march on without
awaiting their orders; while the people, shouting under their" windows,
impose their will on them;--in short, says Bailly again, "everybody knew
how to command, but nobody knew how to obey."
"Imagine," writes Loustalot[1402] himself; "a man whose feet, hands, and
limbs possessed each its own intelligence and will, whose one leg would
wish to walk when the other one wanted to rest, whose throat would close
when the stomach demanded food, whose mouth would sing when the eyelids
were weighed down with sleep; and you will have a striking picture of
the condition of things in the capital"
There are "sixty Republics"[1403] in Paris; each district is an
independent, isolated power, which receives no order without criticizing
it, always in disagreement and often in conflict with the central
authority or with the other districts. It receives denunciations, orders
domiciliary visits, sends deputations to the National Assembly, passes
resolutions, posts its bills, not only in its own quarter but throughout
the city, and sometimes even extends its jurisdiction outside of Paris.
Everything comes within its province, and particularly that which
ought not to do so.--On the 18th of July, the district of
Petits-Augustins[1404] "decrees in its own name the establishment of
justices of the peace," under the title of tribunes, and proceeds at
once to elect its own, nominating the actor Molé. On the 30th, that of
the Oratoire annuls the amnesty which the representatives of the commune
in the Hôtel-de-Ville had granted, and orders two of its members to go
to a distance of thirty leagues to arrest M. de Bezenval. On the 19th of
August, that of Nazareth issues commissions to seize and bring to Paris
the arms deposited in strong places. From the beginning each assembly
sent to the Arsenal in its own name, and "obtained as many cartridges
and as much powder as it desired." Others claim the right of keeping a
watchful eye over the Hôtel-de-Ville and of reprimanding the National
Assembly. The Oratoire decides that the representatives of the commune
shall be invited to deliberate in public. Saint-Nicholas des Champs
deliberates on the veto and begs the Assembly to suspend its vote.--It
is a strange spectacle, that of these various authorities each
contradicting and destroying the other. To-day the Hôtel-de-Ville
appropriates five loads of cloth which have been dispatched by the
Government, and the district of Saint-Gervais opposes the decision of
the Hôtel-de-Ville. To-morrow Versailles intercepts grain destined
for Paris, while Paris threatens, if it is not restored, to march on
Versailles. I omit the incidents that are ridiculous:[1405] anarchy
in its essence is both tragic and grotesque, and, in this universal
breaking up of things, the capital, like the kingdom, resembles a
bear-garden when it does not resemble a Babel.
But behind all these discordant authorities the real sovereign, who is
the mob, is very soon apparent.--On the 15th of July it undertakes the
demolition of the Bastille of its own accord, and this popular act is
sanctioned; for it is necessary that appearances should be kept up;
even to give orders after the blow is dealt, and to follow when it is
impossible to lead.[1406] A short time after this the collection of
the octroi at the barriers is ordered to be resumed; forty armed
individuals, however, present themselves in their district and say, that
if guards are placed at the octroi stations, "they will resist force
with force, and even make use of their cannon."--On the false rumor that
arms are concealed in the Abbey of Montmartre, the abbess, Madame de
Montmorency, is accused of treachery, and twenty thousand persons invade
the monastery.--The commander of the National Guard and the mayor are
constantly expecting a riot; they hardly dare absent themselves a day
to attend the King fête at Versailles. As soon as the multitude can
assemble in the streets, an explosion is imminent. "On rainy days," says
Bailly, "I was quite at my ease."--It is under this constant pressure
that the Government is carried on; and the elect of the people, the most
esteemed magistrates, those who are in best repute, are at the mercy of
the throng who clamor at their doors. In the district of St. Roch,[1407]
after many useless refusals, the General Assembly, notwithstanding all
the reproaches of its conscience and the resistance of its reason, is
obliged to open letters addressed to Monsieur, to the Duke of Orleans,
and to the Ministers of War, of Foreign Affairs, and of the Marine. In
the committee on subsistence, M. Serreau, who is indispensable and who
is confirmed by a public proclamation, is denounced, threatened,
and constrained to leave Paris. M. de la Salle, one of the strongest
patriots among the nobles, is on the point of being murdered for having
signed an order for the transport of gunpowder;[1408] the multitude, in
pursuit of him, attach a rope to the nearest street-lamp, ransack the
Hôtel-de-Ville, force every door, mount into the belfry, and seek for
the traitor even under the carpet of the bureau and between the legs of
the electors, and are only stayed in their course by the arrival of the
National Guard.
The people not only sentence but they execute, and, as is always the
case, blindly. At Saint-Denis, Chatel, the mayor's lieutenant, whose
duty it is to distribute flour, had reduced the price of bread at
his own expense: on the 3rd of August his house is forced open at two
o'clock in the morning, and he takes refuge in a steeple; the mob follow
him, cut his throat and drag his head along the streets.--Not only do
the people execute, but they pardon--and with equal discernment. On the
11th of August, at Versailles, as a parricide is about to be broken on
the wheel, the crowd demand his release, fly at the executioner, and set
the man free.[1409] Veritably this is sovereign power like that of the
oriental sovereign who arbitrarily awards life or death! A woman who
protests against this scandalous pardon is seized and comes near being
hung; for the new monarch considers as a crime whatever is offensive to
his new majesty. Again, he receives public and humble homage. The
Prime Minister, on imploring the pardon of M. de Bezenval at the
Hôtel-de-Ville, in the presence of the electors and of the public, has
put it in appropriate words:
"It is before the most unknown, the obscurest citizen of Paris that I
prostrate myself; at whose feet I kneel."
A few days before this, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and at Poissy, the
deputies of the National Assembly not only kneel down in words, but
actually, and for a long time, on the pavement in the street, and
stretch forth their hands, weeping, to save two lives of which only
one is granted to them.--Behold the monarch by these brilliant signs!
Already do the young, who are eager imitators of all actions that are
in fashion, ape them in miniature; during the month which follows the
murder of Berthier and Foulon, Bailly is informed that the gamins in the
streets are parading about with the heads of two cats stuck on the ends
of two poles.[1410]
II.--The distress of the people.
The dearth and the lack of work.--How men of executive
ability are recruited.
A pitiable monarch, whose recognized sovereignty leaves him more
miserable than he was before! Bread is always scarce, and before the
baker's doors the row of waiting people does not diminish. In vain
Bailly passes his nights with the committee on supplies; they are always
in a state of terrible anxiety. Every morning for two months there is
only one or two days' supply of flour, and often, in the evening, there
is not enough for the following morning.[1411] The life of the capital
depends on a convoy which is ten, fifteen, twenty leagues off; and which
may never arrive: one convoy of twenty carts is pillaged on the 18th of
July, on the Rouen road; another, on the 4th of August, in the vicinity
of Louviers. Were it not for Salis' Swiss regiment, which, from the 14th
of July to the end of September, marches day and night as an escort,
not a boat-load of grain would reach Paris from Rouen.[1412]--The
commissaries charged with making purchases or with supervising the
expeditions are in danger of their lives. Those who are sent to
provinces are seized, and a column of four hundred men with cannon has
to be dispatched to deliver them. The one who is sent to Rouen learns
that he will be hung if he dares to enter the place. At Mantes a mob
surrounds his cabriolet, the people regarding whoever comes there for
the purpose of carrying away grain as a public pest; he escapes with
difficulty out of a back door and returns on foot to Paris.--From the
very beginning, according to a universal rule, the fear of a short
supply helps to augment the famine. Every one lays in a stock for
several days; on one occasion sixteen loaves of four pounds each are
found in an old woman's garret. The bakings, consequently, which are
estimated according to the quantity needed for a single day, become
inadequate, and the last of those who wait at the bakers' shops for
bread return home empty-handed.--On the other hand the appropriations
made by the city and the State to diminish the price of bread simply
serve to lengthen the rows of those who wait for it; the countrymen
flock in thither, and return home loaded to their villages. At
Saint-Denis, bread having been reduced to two sous the pound, none
is left for the inhabitants. To this constant anxiety add that of
unemployment. Not only is there no certainty of there being bread at the
bakers' during the coming week, but many know that they will not have
money in the coming week with which to buy bread. Now that security has
disappeared and the rights of property are shaken, work is wanting. The
rich, deprived of their feudal dues, and, in addition thereto of their
rents, have reduced their expenditure; many of them, threatened by the
committee of investigation, exposed to domiciliary visits, and liable to
be informed against by their servants, have emigrated. In the month of
September M. Necker laments the delivery of six thousand passports in
fifteen days to the wealthiest inhabitants. In the month of October
ladies of high rank, refugees in Rome, send word that their domestics
should be discharged and their daughters placed in convents. Before the
end of 1789 there are so many fugitives in Switzerland that a house,
it is said, brings in more rent than it is worth as capital. With this
first emigration, which is that of the chief spendthrifts, the Count
d'Artois, Prince de Conti, Duc de Bourbon, and so many others, the
opulent foreigners have left, and, at the head of them, the Duchesse
de l'Infantado, who spent 800,000 livres a year. There are only three
Englishmen in Paris.
It used to be a city of luxury, it was the European hot-house of costly
and refined pleasures, but once the glass was broken then the delicate
plants perish, their lovers leave, and there is no employment now for
the innumerable hands which cultivated them. Fortunate are they who at
the relief works obtain a miserable sum by handling a pick-axe! "I saw,"
says Bailly, "mercers, jewellers, and merchants implore the favor of
being employed at twenty sous the day." Enumerate, if you can, in one or
two recognized callings, the hands which are doing nothing:[1413] 1,200
hair-dressers keep about 6,000 journeymen; 2,000 others follow the same
calling in private-houses; 6,000 lackeys do but little else than this
work. The body of tailors is composed of 2,800 masters, who have under
them 5,000 workmen. "Add to these the number privately employed--the
refugees in privileged places like the abbeys of Saint-Germain and
Saint-Marcel, the vast enclosure of the Temple, that of Saint-John the
Lateran, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and you will find at least
12,000 persons cutting, fitting, and sewing." How many in these two
groups are now idle! How many others are walking the streets, such
as upholsterers, lace-makers, embroiderers, fan-makers, gilders,
carnage-makers, binders, engravers, and all the other producers of
Parisian nick-nacks! For those who are still at work how many days are
lost at the doors of bakers' shops and in patrolling as National
Guards! Gatherings are formed in spite of the prohibitions of the
Hôtel-de-Ville,[1414] and the crowd openly discuss their miserable
condition: 3,000 journeymen-tailors near the Colonnade,
as many journeymen-shoemakers in the Place Louis XV., the
journeymen-hairdressers in the Champs-Elysees, 4,000 domestics without
places on the approaches to the Louvre,--and their propositions are on a
level with their intelligence. Servants demand the expulsion from
Paris of the Savoyards who enter into competition with them.
Journeymen-tailors demand that a day's wages be fixed at forty sous, and
that the old-clothes dealers shall not be allowed to make new ones. The
journeymen-shoemakers declare that those who make shoes below the fixed
price shall be driven out of the kingdom. Each of these irritated and
agitated crowds contains the germ of an outbreak--and, in truth, these
germs are found on every pavement in Paris: at the relief works, which
at Montmartre collect 17,000 paupers; in the Market, where the bakers
want to hang the flour commissioners, and at the doors of the bakers,
of whom two, on the 14th of September and on the 5th of October, are
conducted to the lamp post and barely escape with their lives.--In this
suffering, mendicant crowd, enterprising men become more numerous every
day: they consist of deserters, and from every regiment; they reach
Paris in bands, often 250 in one day. There, "caressed and fed to the
top of their bent,"[1415] having received from the National Assembly
50 livres each, maintained by the King in the enjoyment of their
advance-money, entertained by the districts, of which one alone incurs
a debt of 14,000 livres for wine and sausages furnished to them, "they
accustom themselves to greater expense," to greater license, and are
followed by their companions. "During the night of the 31st of July the
French Guards on duty at Versailles abandon the custody of the King and
betake themselves to Paris, without their officers, but with their arms
and baggage," that "they may take part in the cheer which the city of
Paris extends to their regiment." At the beginning of September, 16,000
deserters of this stamp are counted.[1416] Now, among those who commit
murder these are in the first rank; and this is not surprising when we
take the least account of their antecedents, education, and habits. It
was a soldier of the "Royal Croat" who tore out the heart of Berthier.
They were three soldiers of the regiment of Provence who forced the
house of Chatel at Saint-Denis, and dragged his head through
the streets. It is Swiss soldiers who, at Passy, knock down the
commissioners of police with their guns. Their headquarters are at the
Palais-Royal, amongst women whose instruments they are, and amongst
agitators from whom they receive the word of command. Henceforth, all
depends on this word, and we have only to contemplate the new popular
leaders to know what it will be.
III.--The new popular leaders.
Their ascendancy.--Their education.--Their sentiments.
--Their situation.--Their councils.--Their denunciations.
Administrators and members of district assemblies, agitators of
barracks, coffee-houses, clubs and public thoroughfares, writers of
pamphlets, penny-a-liners are multiplying as fast as buzzing insects are
hatched on a sultry night. After the 14th of July thousands of jobs have
become available for released ambitions; "attorneys, notaries'
clerks, artists, merchants, shopkeepers, comedians and especially
advocates;[1417] each wants to be either an officer, a director, a
councillor, or a minister of the new reign; while journals, which are
established by dozens,[1418] form a permanent tribune, where speakers
come to court the people to their personal advantage." Philosophy,
fallen into such hands, seems to parody itself; and nothing equals its
emptiness, unless it be its mischievousness and success. Lawyers, in
the sixty assembly districts, roll out the high-sounding dogmas of the
revolutionary catechism. This or that one, passing from the question
of a party wall to the constitution of empires, becomes the improvised
legislator, so much the more inexhaustible and the more applauded as
his flow of words, showered upon his hearers, proves to them that every
capacity and every right are naturally and legitimately theirs.
"When that man opened his mouth," says a cold-blooded witness, "we were
sure of being inundated with quotations and maxims, often apropos of
street lamp posts, or of the stall of a herb-dealer. His stentorian
voice made the vaults ring; and after he had spoken for two hours,
and his breath was completely exhausted, the admiring and enthusiastic
shouts which greeted him amounted almost to frenzy. Thus the orator
fancied himself a Mirabeau, while the spectators imagined themselves the
Constituent Assembly, deciding the fate of France."
The journals and pamphlets are written in the same style. Every brain
is filled with the fumes of conceit and of big words; the leader of the
crowd is he who raves the most, and he guides the wild enthusiasm which
he increases.
Let us consider the most popular of these chiefs; they are the green or
the dry fruit of literature, and of the bar. The newspaper is the
stall which every morning offers them for sale, and if they suit the
overexcited public it is simply owing to their acid or bitter flavor.
Their empty, unpracticed minds are wholly void of political conceptions;
they have no capacity or practical experience. Desmoulins is twenty-nine
years of age, Loustalot twenty-seven, and their intellectual ballast
consists of college reminiscences, souvenirs of the law schools, and the
common-places picked up in the houses of Raynal and his associates.
As to Brissot and Marat, who are ostentatious humanitarians, their
knowledge of France and of foreign countries consists in what they have
seen through the dormer windows of their garrets, and through utopian
spectacles. In minds like these, empty or led astray, the Contrat-Social
could not fail to become a gospel; for it reduces political science to
a strict application of an elementary axiom which relieves them of all
study, and hands society over to the caprice of the people, or, in other
words, delivers it into their own hands.--Hence they demolish all
that remains of social institutions, and push on equalization until
everything is brought down to the same level.
"With my principles," writes Desmoulins,[1419] "is associated the
satisfaction of putting myself where I belong, of showing my strength to
those who have despised me, of lowering to my level all whom fortune has
placed above me: my motto is that of all honest people: 'No superiors!'"
Thus, under the great name of Liberty, each vain spirit seeks its
revenge and finds its nourishment. What is sweeter and more natural than
to justify passion by theory, to be factious in the belief that this is
patriotism, and to cloak the interests of ambition with the interests of
humanity?
Let us picture to ourselves these directors of public opinion as they
were three months earlier: Desmoulins, a briefless barrister, living in
furnished lodgings with petty debts, and on a few louis extracted from
his relations. Loustalot, still more unknown, was admitted the previous
year to the Parliament of Bordeaux, and has landed at Paris in search of
a career. Danton, another second-rate lawyer, coming out of a hovel in
Champagne, borrowed the money to pay his expenses, while his stinted
household is kept up only by means of a louis which is given to him
weekly by his father-in-law, who is a coffee-house keeper. Brissot, a
strolling Bohemian, formerly employee of literary pirates, has roamed
over the world for fifteen years, without bringing back with him either
from England or America anything but a coat out at elbows and false
ideas; and, finally, Marat; a writer that has been hissed, an abortive
scholar and philosopher, a misrepresenter of his own experiences, caught
by the natural philosopher Charles in the act of committing a scientific
fraud, and fallen from the top of his inordinate ambition to the
subordinate post of doctor in the stables of the Comte d'Artois.--At the
present time, Danton, President of the Cordeliers, can arrest any one he
pleases in his district, and his violent gestures and thundering voice
secure to him, till something better turns up, the government of his
section of the city. A word of Marat's has just caused Major Belzunce at
Caen to be assassinated. Desmoulins announces, with a smile of triumph,
that "a large section of the capital regards him as one among the
principal instigators of the Revolution, and that many even go so far as
to say that he is the author of it." Is it to be supposed that, borne so
high by such a sudden jerk of fortune, they wish to put on the drag and
again descend? and is it not clear that they will aid with all
their might the revolt which hoists them towards the loftiest
summits?--Moreover, the brain reels at a height like this; suddenly
launched in the air and feeling as if everything was tottering around
them, they utter exclamations of indignation and terror, they see plots
on all sides, imagine invisible cords pulling in an opposite direction,
and they call upon the people to cut them. With the full weight of their
inexperience, incapacity, and improvidence, of their fears, credulity,
and dogmatic obstinacy, they urge on popular attacks, and their
newspaper articles or discourses are all summed up in the following
phrases:
"Fellow-citizens, you, the people of the lower class, you who listen
to me, you have enemies in the Court and the aristocracy. The
Hôtel-de-Ville and the National Assembly are your servants. Seize your
enemies with a strong hand, and hang them, and let your servants know
that they must quicken their steps!"
Desmoulins styles himself "District-attorney of the gallows,"[1420] and
if he at all regrets the murders of Foulon and Berthier, it is because
this too expeditious judgment has allowed the proofs of conspiracy to
perish, thereby saving a number of traitors: he himself mentions twenty
of them haphazard, and little does he care whether he makes mistakes.
"We are in the dark, and it is well that faithful dogs should bark, even
at all who pass by, so that there may be no fear of robbers."
From this time forth Marat[1421] denounces the King, the ministers,
the administration, the bench, the bar, the financial system and the
academies, all as "suspicious;" at all events the people only suffer on
their account.
"The Government is monopolizing grain, to make us to pay through the
nose for a poisonous bread."
The Government, again, through a new conspiracy is about to blockade
Paris, so as to starve it with greater ease. Utterances of this kind,
at such a time, are firebrands thrown upon fear and hunger to kindle
the flames of rage and cruelty. To this frightened and fasting crowd the
agitators and newspaper writers continue to repeat that it must act,
and act alongside of the authorities, and, if need be, against them.
In other words, We will do as we please; we are the sole legitimate
masters;
"in a well-constituted government, the people as a body are the real
sovereign: our delegates are appointed only to execute our orders; what
right has the clay to rebel against the potter?"
On the strength of such principles, the tumultuous club which occupies
the Palais-Royal substitutes itself for the Assembly at Versailles.
Has it not all the titles for this office? The Palais-Royal "saved the
nation" on the 12th and 13th of July. The Palais-Royal, "through its
spokesmen and pamphlets," has made everybody and even the soldiers
"philosophers." It is the house of patriotism, "the rendezvous of the
select among the patriotic," whether provincials or Parisians, of all
who possess the right of suffrage, and who cannot or will not exercise
it in their own district. "It saves time to come to the Palais-Royal.
There is no need there of appealing to the President for the right to
speak, or to wait one's time for a couple of hours. The orator proposes
his motion, and, if it finds supporters, mounts a chair. If he is
applauded, it is put into proper shape. If he is hissed, he goes away.
This was the way of the Romans." Behold the veritable National Assembly!
It is superior to the other semi-feudal affair, encumbered with "six
hundred deputies of the clergy and nobility," who are so many intruders
and who "should be sent out into the galleries."--Hence the pure
Assembly rules the impure Assembly, and "the Café Foy lays claim to the
government of France."
IV.--Intervention by the popular leaders with the Government.
Their pressure on the Assembly.
On the 30th of July, the harlequin who led the insurrection at Rouen
having been arrested, "it is openly proposed at the Palais Royal[1422]
to go in a body and demand his release."--On the 1st of August, Thouret,
whom the moderate party of the Assembly have just made President, is
obliged to resign; the Palais-Royal threatens to send a band and murder
him along with those who voted for him, and lists of proscriptions,
in which several of the deputies are inscribed, begin to be
circulated.--From this time forth, on all great questions-the abolition
of the feudal system, the suppression of tithes, a declaration of the
rights of man, the dispute about the Chambers, the King's power of
veto,[1423] the pressure from without inclines the balance: in this
way the Declaration of Rights, which is rejected in secret session by
twenty-eight bureaus out of thirty, is forced through by the tribunes in
a public sitting and passed by a majority.--Just as before the 14th of
July, and to a still greater extent, two kinds of compulsion influence
the votes, and it is always the ruling faction which employs both its
hands to throttle its opponents. On the one hand this faction takes post
on the galleries in knots composed nearly always of the same persons,
"five or six hundred permanent actors," who yell according to understood
signals and at the word of command.[1424] Many of these are French
Guards, in civilian clothes, and who relieve each other: previously
they have asked of their favorite deputy "at what hour they must come,
whether all goes on well, and whether he is satisfied with those fools
of parsons (calotins) and the aristocrats." Others consist of low women
under the command of Théroigne de Méricourt, a virago courtesan, who
assigns them their positions and gives them the signal for hooting
or for applause. Publicly and in full session, on the occasion of the
debate on the veto, "the deputies are applauded or insulted by the
galleries according as they utter the word 'suspensive,' or the word
'indefinite.' "Threats," (says one of them) "circulated; I heard
them on all sides around me." These threats are repeated on going out:
"Valets dismissed by their masters, deserters, and women in rags,"
threaten the refractory with the lamp post, "and thrust their fists in
their faces. In the hall itself, and much more accurately than before
the 14th of July, their names are taken down, and the lists, handed
over to the populace," travel to the Palais-Royal, from where they
are dispatched in correspondence and in newspapers to the
provinces.[1425]--Thus we see the second means of compulsion; each
deputy is answerable for his vote, at Paris, with his own life, and,
in the province, with those of his family. Members of the former
Third-Estate avow that they abandon the idea of two Chambers, because
"they are not disposed to get their wives' and children's throats cut."
On the 30th of August, Saint-Hurugue, the most noisy of the Palais-Royal
barkers, marches off to Versailles, at the head of 1,500 men, to
complete the conversion of the Assembly. This garden club indeed, from
the heights of its great learning, integrity, and immaculate reputation,
decides that the ignorant, corrupt, and doubtful deputies must be got
rid of." That they are such cannot be questioned, because they defend
the royal sanction; there are over 600 and more, 120 are deputies of the
communes, who must be expelled to begin with, and then must be brought
to judgment.[1426] In the meantime they are informed, as well as the
Bishop of Langres, President of the National Assembly, that "15,000 men
are ready to light up their chateaux and in particular yours, sir."
To avoid all mistake, the secretaries of the Assembly are informed
in writing that '2,000 letters" will be sent into the provinces to
denounce to the people the conduct of the malignant deputies: "Your
houses are held as a surety for your opinions: keep this in mind, and
save yourselves!" At last, on the morning of the 1st of August, five
deputations from the Palais-Royal, one of them led by Loustalot, march
in turn to the Hôtel-de-Ville, insisting that the drums should be beaten
and the citizens be called together for the purpose of changing the
deputies, or their instructions, and of ordering the National Assembly
to suspend its discussion on the veto until the districts and provinces
could give expression to their will: the people, in effect, alone being
sovereign, and alone competent, always has the right to dismiss or
instruct anew its servants, the deputies. On the following day, August
2nd, to make matters plainer, new delegates from the same Palais-Royal
suit gestures to words; they place two fingers on their throats, on
being introduced before the representatives of the commune, as a hint
that, if the latter do not obey, they will be hung.
After this it is vain for the National Assembly to make any show of
indignation, to declare that it despises threats, and to protest its
independence; the impression is already produced. "More than 300 members
of the communes," says Mounier, "had decided to support the absolute
veto." At the end of ten days most of these had gone over, several of
them through attachment to the King, because they were afraid of "a
general uprising," and "were not willing to jeopardize the lives of the
royal family." But concessions like these only provoke fresh extortions.
The politicians of the street now know by experience the effect of
brutal violence on legal authority. Emboldened by success and by
impunity, they reckon up their strength and the weakness of the latter.
One blow more, and they are undisputed masters. Besides, the issue is
already apparent to clear-sighted men. When the agitators of the public
thoroughfares, and the porters at the street-corners, convinced of their
superior wisdom, impose decrees by the strength of their lungs, of their
fists, and of their pikes, at that moment experience, knowledge, good
sense, cool-blood, genius, and judgment, disappear from human affairs,
and things revert back to chaos. Mirabeau, in favor of the veto for
life, saw the crowd imploring him with tears in their eyes to change his
opinion:
"Monsieur le Comte, if the King obtains this veto, what will be the use
of a National Assembly? We shall all be slaves "[1427]
Outbursts of this description are not to be resisted, and all is lost.
Already, near the end of September, the remark applies which Mirabeau
makes to the Comte de la Marck:
"Yes, all is lost; the King and Queen will be swept away, and you will
see the populace trampling on their lifeless bodies."
Eight days after this, on the 5th and 6th of October, it breaks out
against both King and Queen, against the National Assembly and the
Government, against all government present and to come; the violent
party which rules in Paris obtains possession of the chiefs of France
to hold them under strict surveillance, and to justify its intermittent
outrages by one permanent outrage.
V.--The 5th and 6th of October.
Once more, two different currents combine into one torrent to hurry the
crowd onward to a common end.--On the one hand are the cravings of the
stomach, and women excited by the famine:
"Now that bread cannot be had in Paris, let us go to Versailles and
demand it there; once we have the King, Queen, and Dauphin in the midst
of us, they will be obliged to feed us;" we will bring back "the Baker,
the Bakeress, and the Baker's boy." --On the other hand, there is
fanaticism, and men who are pushed on by the need to dominate.
"Now that our chiefs yonder disobey us,--let us go and make them obey us
forthwith; the King is quibbling over the Constitution and the Rights of
Man--make him approve them; his guards refuse to wear our cockade--make
them accept it; they want to carry him off to Metz--make him come to
Paris, here, under our eyes and in our hands, he, and the lame Assembly
too, will march straight on, and quickly, whether they like it or not,
and always on the right road."--Under this confluence of ideas the
expedition is arranged.[1428] Ten days before this, it is publicly
alluded to at Versailles. On the 4th of October, at Paris, a woman
proposes it at the Palais-Royal; Danton roars at the Cordeliers;
Marat, "alone, makes as much noise as the four trumpets on the Day of
Judgment." Loustalot writes that a second revolutionary paroxysm is
necessary." "The day passes," says Desmoulins, "in holding councils at
the Palais-Royal, and in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, on the ends of
the bridges, and on the quays... in pulling off the cockades of but one
color.... These are torn off and trampled under foot with threats of the
lamp post, in case of fresh offense; a soldier who is trying to
refasten his, changes his mind on seeing a hundred sticks raised against
him."[1429] These are the premonitory symptoms of a crisis; a huge ulcer
has formed in this feverish, suffering body, and it is about to break.
But, as is usually the case, it is a purulent concentration of the most
poisonous passions and the foulest motives. The vilest of men and
women were engaged in it. Money was freely distributed. Was it done by
intriguing subalterns who, playing upon the aspirations of the Duke of
Orleans, extracted millions from him under the pretext of making him
lieutenant-general of the kingdom? Or is it due to the fanatics who,
from the end of April, clubbed together to debauch the soldiery, and
stir up a body of ruffians for the purpose of leveling and destroying
everything around them?[1430] There are always Machiavellis of the
highways and of houses of ill-fame ready to excite the foul and the
vile of both sexes. On the first day that the Flemish regiment goes into
garrison at Versailles an attempt is made to corrupt it with money and
women. Sixty abandoned women are sent from Paris for this purpose, while
the French Guards come and treat their new comrades. The latter have
been treated at the Palais-Royal, while three of them, at Versailles,
exclaim, showing some crown pieces of six livres, "What a pleasure it
is to go to Paris! one always comes back with money!" In this way,
resistance is overcome beforehand. As to the attack, women are to be the
advanced guard, because the soldiers will scruple to fire at them;
their ranks, however, will be reinforced by a number of men disguised
as women. On looking closely at them they are easily recognized,
notwithstanding their rouge, by their badly-shaven beards, and by their
voices and gait.[1431] No difficulty has been found in obtaining men
and women among the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal and the military
deserters who serve them as bullies. It is probable that the former lent
their lovers the cast-off dresses they had to spare. At night all will
meet again at the common rendezvous, on the benches of the National
Assembly, where they are quite as much at home as in their own
houses.[1432]--In any event, the first band which marches out is of this
stamp, displaying the finery and the gaiety of the profession; "most of
them young, dressed in white, with powdered hair and a sprightly air;"
many of them "laughing, singing, and drinking," as they would do at
setting out for a picnic in the country. Three or four of them are known
by name--one brandishing a sword, and another, the notorious Théroigne.
Madeleine Chabry Louison, who is selected to address the King, is a
pretty grisette who sells flowers, and, no doubt, something else, at the
Palais-Royal. Some appear to belong to the first rank in their calling,
and to have tact and the manners of society--suppose, for instance,
that Champfort and Laclos sent their mistresses. To these must be added
washerwomen, beggars, bare-footed women, and fishwomen, enlisted for
several days before and paid accordingly. This is the first nucleus,
and it keeps on growing; for, by compulsion or consent, the
troop incorporates into it, as it passes along, all the women it
encounters--seamstresses, portresses, housekeepers, and even respectable
females, whose dwellings are entered with threats of cutting off
their hair if they do not fall in. To these must be added vagrants,
street-rovers, ruffians and robbers--the lees of Paris, which accumulate
and come to the surface every time agitation occurs: they are to be
found already at the first hour, behind the troop of women at the
Hôtel-de-Ville. Others are to follow during the evening and in the
night. Others are waiting at Versailles. Many, both at Paris and
Versailles, are under pay: one, in a dirty whitish vest, chinks gold and
silver coin in his hand.--Such is the foul scum which, both in front and
in the rear, rolls along with the popular tide; whatever is done to stem
the torrent, it widens out and will leave its mark at every stage of its
overflow.
The first troop, consisting of four or five hundred women, begin
operations by forcing the guard of the Hôtel-de-Ville, which is
unwilling to make use of its bayonets. They spread through the rooms
and try to burn all the written documents they can find, declaring that
there has been nothing but scribbling since the Revolution began.[1433]
A crowd of men follow after them, bursting open doors, and pillaging
the magazine of arms. Two hundred thousand francs in Treasury notes are
stolen or disappear; several of the ruffians set fire to the building,
while others hang an abbé. The abbé is cut down, and the fire
extinguished only just in time: such are the interludes of the popular
drama. In the meantime, the crowd of women increases on the Place de
Grève, always with the same unceasing cry, "Bread!" and "To Versailles!"
One of the conquerors of the Bastille; the usher Maillard, offers
himself as a leader. He is accepted, and taps his drum; on leaving
Paris, he has seven or eight thousand women with him, and, in addition,
some hundreds of men; by dint of remonstrances, he succeeds in
maintaining some kind of order amongst this rabble as far as
Versailles.--But it is a rabble notwithstanding, and consequently so
much brute force, at once anarchical and imperious. On the one hand,
each, and the worst among them, does what he pleases--which will be
quite evident this very evening. On the other hand, its ponderous mass
crushes all authority and overrides all rules and regulations--which is
at once apparent on reaching Versailles.--Admitted into the Assembly, at
first in small numbers, the women crowd against the door, push in with a
rush, fill the galleries, then the hall, the men along with them, armed
with clubs, halberds, and pikes, all pell-mell, side by side with the
deputies, taking possession of their benches, voting along with them,
and gathering about the President, who, surrounded, threatened, and
insulted, finally abandons the position, while his chair is taken by
a woman.[1434] A fishwoman commands in a gallery, and about a hundred
women around her shout or keep silence at her bidding, while she
interrupts and abuses the deputies:
"Who is that speaker there? Silence that blabbermouth; he does not know
what he is talking about. The question is how to get bread. Let papa
Mirabeau speak--we want to hear him."
A decree on subsistence having been passed, the leaders demand something
in addition; they must be allowed to enter all places where they suspect
any monopolizing to be going on, and the price of "bread must be fixed
at six sous the four pounds, and meat at six sous per pound."
"You must not think that we are children to be played with. We are ready
to strike. Do as you are bidden."
All their political injunctions emanate from this central idea. And
further:
"Send back the Flemish regiment--it is a thousand men more to feed, and
they take bread out of our mouths."--"Punish the aristocrats, who hinder
the bakers from baking." "Down with the skull-cap; the priests are the
cause of our trouble!"--"Monsieur Mounier, why did you advocate that
villainous veto? Beware of the lamp post!"
Under this pressure, a deputation of the Assembly, with the President at
its head, sets out on foot, in the mud, through the rain, and watched by
a howling escort of women and men armed with pikes: after five hours
of waiting and entreaty, it wrings from the King, besides the decree on
subsistence, about which there was no difficulty, the acceptance,
pure and simple, of the Declaration of Rights, and his sanction to the
constitutional articles.--Such is the independence of the King and the
Assembly.[1435] Thus are the new principles of justice established, the
grand outlines of the Constitution, the abstract axioms of political
truth under the dictatorship of a crowd which extorts not only blindly,
but which is half-conscious of its blindness.
"Monsieur le President," some among the women say to Mounier, who
returns with the Royal sanction, "will it be of any real use to us? will
it give poor folks bread in Paris?"
Meanwhile, the scum has been bubbling up around the chateau; and the
abandoned women subsidized in Paris are pursuing their calling.[1436]
They slip through into the lines of the regiment drawn on the square, in
spite of the sentinels. Théroigne, in an Amazonian red vest, distributes
money among them.
"Side with us," some say to the men; "we shall soon beat the King's
Guards, strip off their fine coats and sell them."
Others lie sprawling on the ground, alluring the soldiers, and make such
offers as to lead one of them to exclaim, "We are going to have a jolly
time of it!" Before the day is over, the regiment is seduced; the women
have, according to their own idea, acted for a good motive. When a
political idea finds its way into such heads, instead of ennobling them,
it becomes degraded there; its only effect is to let loose vices which a
remnant of modesty still keeps in subjection, and full play is given to
luxurious or ferocious instincts under cover of the public good.--The
passions, moreover, become intensified through their mutual interaction;
crowds, clamor, disorder, longings, and fasting, end in a state of
frenzy, from which nothing can issue but dizzy madness and rage.--This
frenzy began to show itself on the way. Already, on setting out, a woman
had exclaimed,
"We shall bring back the Queen's head on the end of a pike!"[1437]
On reaching the Sèvres bridge others added,
"Let us cut her throat, and make cockades of her entrails!"
Rain is falling; they are cold, tired, and hungry, and get nothing to
eat but a bit of bread, distributed at a late hour, and with difficulty,
on the Place d'Armes. One of the bands cuts up a slaughtered horse,
roasts it, and consumes it half raw, after the manner of savages. It is
not surprising that, under the names of patriotism and "justice," savage
ideas spring up in their minds against "members of the National Assembly
who are not with the principles of the people," against "the Bishop
of Langres, Mounier, and the rest." One man in a ragged old red coat
declares that "he must have the head of the Abbé Maury to play nine-pins
with." But it is especially against the Queen, who is a woman, and in
sight, that the feminine imagination is the most aroused.
"She alone is the cause of the evils we endure.... she must be killed,
and quartered." --Night advances; there are acts of violence, and
violence engenders violence.
"How glad I should be," says one man, "if I could only lay my hand on
that she-devil, and strike off her head on the first curbstone!"
Towards morning, some cry out,
"Where is that cursed cat? We must eat her heart out... We'll take
off her head, cut her heart out, and fry her liver!" --With the first
murders the appetite for blood has been awakened; the women from Paris
say that "they have brought tubs to carry away the stumps of the
Royal Guards," and at these words others clap their hands. Some of the
riffraff of the crowd examine the rope of the lamp post in the court of
the National Assembly, and judging it not to be sufficiently strong, are
desirous of supplying its place with another "to hang the Archbishop
of Paris, Maury, and d'Espréménil."--This murderous, carnivorous rage
penetrates even among those whose duty it is to maintain order, one
of the National Guard being heard to say that "the body-guards must be
killed to the last man, and their hearts torn out for a breakfast."
Finally, towards midnight, the National Guard of Paris arrives; but
it only adds one insurrection to another, for it has likewise mutinied
against its chiefs.[1438]
"If M. de Lafayette is not disposed to accompany us," says one of the
grenadiers, "we will take an old grenadier for our commander."
Having come to this decision, they sought the general at the
Hôtel-de-Ville, and the delegates of six of the companies made their
instructions known to him.
"General, we do not believe that you are a traitor, but we think that
the Government is betraying us.... The committee on subsistence is
deceiving us, and must be removed. We want to go to Versailles to
exterminate the body-guard and the Flemish regiment who have trampled
on the national cockade. If the King of France is too feeble to wear
his crown, let him take it off; we will crown his son and things will go
better."
In vain Lafayette refuses, and harangues them on the Place de Grève; in
vain he resists for hours, now addressing them and now imposing silence.
Armed bands, coming from the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau,
swell the crowd; they take aim at him; others prepare the lamp-post. He
then dismounts and endeavors to return to the Hôtel-de-Ville, but his
grenadiers bar the way:
"Morbleu, General, you will stay with us; you will not abandon us!"
Being their chief it is pretty plain that he must follow them; which
is also the sentiment of the representatives of the commune at the
Hôtel-de-Ville, who send him their authorization, and even the order to
march, "seeing that it is impossible for him to refuse."
Fifteen thousand men thus reach Versailles, and in front of and along
with them thousands of ruffians, protected by the darkness. On this side
the National Guard of Versailles, posted around the chateau, together
with the people of Versailles, who bar the way against vehicles, have
closed up every outlet.[1439] The King is prisoner in his own palace,
he and his, with his ministers and his court, and with no defense. For,
with his usual optimism, he has confided the outer posts of the chateau
to Lafayette's soldiers, and, through a humanitarian obstinacy which he
is to maintain up to the last,[1440] he has forbidden his own guards
to fire on the crowd, so that they are only there for show. With common
right in his favor, the law, and the oath which Lafayette had just
obliged his troops to renew, what could he have to fear? What could be
more effective with the people than trust in them and prudence? And by
playing the sheep one is sure of taming brutes!
From five o'clock in the morning they prowl around the palace-railings.
Lafayette, exhausted with fatigue, has taken an hour's repose,[1441]
which hour suffices for them.[1442] A populace armed with pikes and
clubs, men and women, surrounds a squad of eighty-eight National Guards,
forces them to fire on the King's Guards, bursts open a door, seizes
two of the guards and chops their heads off. The executioner, who is a
studio model, with a heavy beard, stretches out his blood-stained hands
and glories in the act; and so great is the effect on the National Guard
that they move off; through sensibility, in order not to witness such
sights: such is the resistance! In the meantime the crowd invade the
staircases, beat down and trample on the guards they encounter, and
burst open the doors with imprecations against the Queen. The Queen runs
off; just in time, in her underclothes; she takes refuge with the King
and the rest of the royal family, who have in vain barricaded themselves
in the oeil-de-Boeuf, a door of which is broken in: here they stand,
awaiting death, when Lafayette arrives with his grenadiers and saves
all that can be saved--their lives, and nothing more. For, from the crowd
huddled in the marble court the shout rises, "To Paris with the King!" a
command to which the King submits.
Now that the great hostage is in their hands, will they deign to accept
the second one? This is doubtful. On the Queen approaching the balcony
with her son and daughter, a howl arises of "No children!" They want to
have her alone in the sights of their guns, and she understands that. At
this moment M. de Lafayette, throwing the shield of his popularity over
her, appears on the balcony at her side and respectfully kisses her
hand. The reaction is instantaneous in this over-excited crowd. Both
the men and especially the women, in such a state of nervous tension,
readily jump from one extreme to another, rage bordering on tears. A
portress, who is a companion of Maillard's,[1443] imagines that she
hears Lafayette promise in the Queen's name "to love her people and be
as much attached to them as Jesus Christ to his Church." People sob and
embrace each other; the grenadiers shift their caps to the heads of the
body-guard. Everything will be fine: "the people have won their King
back."--Nothing is to be done now but to rejoice; and the cortege moves
on. The royal family and a hundred deputies, in carriages, form the
center, and then comes the artillery, with a number of women bestriding
the cannons; next, a convoy of flour. Round about are the King's Guards,
each with a National Guard mounted behind him; then comes the National
Guard of Paris, and after them men with pikes and women on foot, on
horseback, in cabs, and on carts; in front is a band bearing two severed
heads on the ends of two poles, which halts at a hairdresser's, in
Sèvres, to have these heads powdered and curled;[1444] they are made to
bow by way of salutation, and are daubed all over with cream; there are
jokes and shouts of laughter; the people stop to eat and drink on the
road, and oblige the guards to clink glasses with them; they shout and
fire salvos of musketry; men and women hold each other's hands and
sing and dance about in the mud.--Such is the new fraternity: a funeral
procession of legal and legitimate authorities, a triumph of brutality
over intelligence, a murderous and political Mardi-gras, a formidable
masquerade which, preceded by the insignia of death, drags along with it
the heads of France, the King, the ministers, and the deputies, that it
may constrain them to rule to until according to its frenzy, that it may
hold them under its them pikes until it is pleased to slaughter them.
VI.--The Government and the nation in the hands of the revolutionary
party.
This time there can be no mistake: the Reign of Terror is fully and
firmly established. On this very day the mob stops a vehicle, in which
it hopes to find M. de Virieu, and declares, on searching it, that "they
are looking for the deputy to massacre him, as well as others of whom
they have a list."[1445] Two days afterwards the Abbé Grégoire tells
the National Assembly that not a day passes without ecclesiastics being
insulted in Paris, and pursued with "horrible threats." Malouet is
advised that "as soon as guns are distributed among the militia, the
first use made of them will be to get rid of those deputies who are bad
citizens," and among others of the Abbé Maury. "The moment I stepped out
into the streets," writes Mounier, "I was publicly followed. It was a
crime to be seen in my company. Wherever I happened to go, along
with two or three of my companions, it was stated that an assembly of
aristocrats was forming. I had become such an object of terror that they
threatened to set fire to a country-house where I had passed twenty-four
hours; and, to relieve their minds, a promise had to be given that
neither myself nor my friends should be again received into it." In one
week five or six hundred deputies have their passports[1446] made out,
and hold themselves ready to depart. During the following month one
hundred and twenty give in their resignations, or no longer appear
in the Assembly. Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, the Bishop of Langres, and
others besides, quit Paris, and afterwards France. Mallet du Pan writes,
"Opinion now dictates its judgment with steel in hand. Believe or die is
the anathema which vehement spirits pronounce, and this in the name
of Liberty. Moderation has become a crime." After the 7th of October,
Mirabeau says to the Comte de la Marck:
"If you have any influence with the King or the Queen, persuade them
that they and France are lost if the royal family does not leave Paris.
I am busy with a plan for getting them away."
He prefers everything to the present situation, "even civil war;"
for "war, at least, invigorates the soul," while here, "under the
dictatorship of demagogues, we are being drowned in slime." Given up
to itself, Paris, in three months, "will certainly be a hospital, and,
perhaps, a theater of horrors." Against the rabble and its leaders, it
is essential that the King should at once coalesce "with his people,"
that he should go to Rouen, appeal to the provinces, provide a Centre
for public opinion, and, if necessary, resort to armed resistance.
Malouet, on his side, declares that "the Revolution, since the 5th of
October, "horrifies all sensible men, and every party, but that it
is complete and irresistible." Thus the three best minds that are
associated with the Revolution--those whose verified prophecies attest
genius or good sense; the only ones who, for two or three years, and
from week to week, have always predicted wisely, and who have employed
reason in their demonstrations--these three, Mallet du Pan, Mirabeau,
Mabuet, agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its
consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one
possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it:
"undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those
oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And
as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory
it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand
decrees only renders its fall the more precipitate.
*****
[Footnote 1401: Bailly, "Mémoires," II. 195, 242.]
[Footnote 1402: Elysée Loustalot, journalist, editor of the paper
"Révolutions de Paris," was a young lawyer who had shown a natural
genius for innovative journalism. He was to die already in 1790. (SR.)]
[Footnote 1403: Montjoie, ch. LXX, p. 65.]
[Footnote 1404: Bailly, II. 74, 174, 242, 261, 282, 345, 392.]
[Footnote 1405: Such as domiciliary visits and arrests apparently made
by lunatics. ("Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris.")--And
Montjoie, ch. LXX. p.67. Expedition of the National Guard against
imaginary brigands who are cutting down the crops at Montmorency and the
volley fired in the air.--Conquest of Ile-Adam and Chantilly.]
[Footnote 1406: Bailly, II. 46, 95, 232, 287, 296.]
[Footnote 1407: "Archives de la Préfecture de Police," minutes of the
meeting of the section of Butte des Moulins, October 5, 1789.]
[Footnote 1408: Bailly, II. 224.--Dusaulx, 418, 202, 257, 174, 158. The
powder transported was called poudre de traite (transport); the people
understood it as poudre de traître (traitor). M. de la Salle was near
being killed through the addition of an r. It is he who had taken
command of the National Guard on the 13th of July.]
[Footnote 1409: Floquet, VII. 54. There is the same scene at Granville,
in Normandy, on the 16th of October. A woman had assassinated her
husband, while a soldier who was her lover is her accomplice; the woman
was about to be hung and the man broken on the wheel, when the populace
shout, "The nation has the right of pardon," upset the scaffold, and
save the two assassins.]
[Footnote 1410: Bailly, II. 274 (August 17th).]
[Footnote 1411: Bailly, II, 83, 202, 230, 235, 283, 299.]
[Footnote 1412: Mercure de France, the number for September 26th.--De
Goncourt, p. 111.]
[Footnote 1413: Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," I, 58; X. 151.]
[Footnote 1414: De Ferrières, I. 178.--Buchez and Roux, II. 311,
316.--Bai11y, II. 104, 174, 207, 246, 257, 282.]
[Footnote 1415: Mercure de France, September 5th, 1789. Horace Walpole's
Letters, September 5, 1789.--M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," I. 272. During
the week following the 14th of July, 6,000 soldiers deserted and went
over to the people, besides 400 and 800 Swiss Guards and six battalions
of the French Guards, who remain without officers, and do as they
please. Vagabonds from the neighboring villages flock in, and there are
more than "30,000 strangers and vagrants" in Paris.]
[Footnote 1416: Bailly, II. 282. The crowd of deserters was so great
that Lafayette was obliged to place a guard at the barriers to keep them
from entering the city. "Without this precaution the whole army would
have come in."]
[Footnote 1417: De Ferrières, I. 103.--De Lavalette, I. 39.--Bailly, I.
53 (on the lawyers). "It may be said that the success of the Revolution
is due to this class."--Marmontel, II. 243 "Since the first elections
of Paris, in 1789, I remarked," he says, "this species of restless
intriguing men, contending with each other to be heard, impatient to
make themselves prominent....It is well known what interest this body
(the lawyers) had to change Reform into Revolution, the Monarchy into
a Republic; the object was to organize for itself a perpetual
aristocracy."--Buchez and Roux, II. 358 (article by C. Desmoulins). "In
the districts everybody exhausts his lungs and his time in trying to be
president, vice-president, secretary or vice-secretary"]
[Footnote 1418: Eugène Hatin, "Histoire de la Presse," vol. V. p. 113.
"Le Patriote français" by Brissot, July 28, 1789.--"L'Ami du Peuple,"
by Marat, September 12, 1789.--"Annales patriotiques et littéraires," by
Carra and Mercier, October 5, 1789,--"Les Révolutions de Paris," chief
editor Loustalot, July 17th, 1789.--"Le Tribun du peuple," letters
by (middle of 1789).--"Révolutions de France et de Brabant," by C.
Desmoulins, November 28, 1789; his "France libre" (I believe of the
month of August, and his "Discours de la Lanterne" of the month of
September).--"The Moniteur" does not make its appearance until November
24, 1789. In the seventy numbers which follow, up to February 3, 1790,
the debates of the Assembly were afterwards written out, amplified, and
put in a dramatic form. All numbers anterior to February 3, 1790, are
the result of a compilation executed in the year IV. The narrative part
during the first six months of the Revolution is of no value. The report
of the sittings of the Assembly is more exact, but should be revised
sitting by sitting and discourse by discourse for a detailed history
of the National Assembly. The principal authorities which are really
contemporary are, "Le Mercure de France," "Le Journal de Paris," "Le
point de Jour" by Barrère, the "Courrier de Versailles," by Gorsas, the
"Courrier de Provence" by Mirabeau, the "Journal des Débats et Décrets,"
the official reports of the National assembly, the "Bulletin de
l'Asemblée Nationale," by Marat, besides the newspapers above cited
for the period following the 14th of July, and the speeches, which are
printed separately.]
[Footnote 1419: C. Desmoulins, letters of September 20th and of
subsequent dates. (He quote, a passage from Lucan in the sense
indicated).--Brissot, "Mémoires," passim.--Biography of Danton by
Robinet. (See the testimony of Madame Roland and of Rousselin de
Saint-Albin.)]
[Footnote 1420: "Discours de la Lanterne." See the epigraph of the
engraving.]
[Footnote 1421: Buchez and Roux; III. 55; article of Marat, October lst.
"Sweep all the suspected men out of the Hôtel-de-Ville. . . . . Reduce
the deputies of the communes to fifty; do not let them remain in office
more than a month or six weeks, and compel them to transact business
only in public."--And II. 412, another article by Marat.--Ibid. III.
21. An article by Loustalot.--C. Desmoulins, "Discours de la Lanterne,"
passim.--Bailly, II. 326.]
[Footnote 1422: Mounier, "Des causes qui ont empêche les Français d'être
libre," I. 59.--Lally-Tollendal, second letter, 104.--Bailly, II. 203.]
[Footnote 1423: De Bouillé, 207.--Lally-Tollendal, ibid, 141,
146.--Mounier, ibid., 41, 60.]
[Footnote 1424: Mercure de France, October 2, 1790 (article of Mallet du
Pan: "I saw it"). Criminal proceedings at the Châtelet on the events of
October 5th and 6th. Deposition of M. Feydel, a deputy, No. 178.----De
Montlosier, i. 259.--Desmoulins (La Lanterne). "Some members of the
communes are gradually won over by pensions, by plans for making a
fortune and by flattery. Happily, the incorruptible galleries are always
on the side of the patriots. They represent the tribunes of the people
seated on a bench in attendance on the deliberations of the Senate and
who had the veto. They represent the metropolis and, fortunately, it
is under the batteries of the metropolis that the constitution is being
framed." (C. Desmoulins, simple-minded politician, always let the cat
out of the bag.)]
[Footnote 1425: "Procédure du Châtelet," Ibid. Deposition of M. Malouet
(No. 111). "I received every day, as well as MM. Lally and Mounier,
anonymous letters and lists of proscriptions on which we were inscribed.
These letters announced a prompt and violent death to every deputy that
advocated the authority of the King."]
[Footnote 1426: Buchez and Roux, I. 368, 376.---Bailly, II. 326,
341.--Mounier, ibid., 62, 75.]
[Footnote 1427: Etienne Dumont, 145.--Correspondence between Comte de
Mirabeau and Comte de la Marck.]
[Footnote 1428: "Procédure criminelle du Châtelet," Deposition
148.--Buchez and Roux, III. 67, 65. (Narrative of Desmoulins, article
of Loustalot.) Mercure de France, number for September 5, 1789. "Sunday
evening, August 30, at the Palais-Royal, the expulsion of several
deputies of every class was demanded, and especially some of those from
Dauphiny... They spoke of bringing the King to Paris as well as the
Dauphin. All virtuous citizens, every incorruptible patriot, was
exhorted to set out immediately for Versailles."]
[Footnote 1429: These acts of violence were not reprisals; nothing of
the kind took place at the banquet of the body-guards (October 1st).
"Amidst the general joy," says an eye-witness, "I heard no insults
against the National Assembly, nor against the popular party, nor
against anybody. The only cries were 'Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!
We will defend them to the death!'" (Madame de Larochejacquelein,
p.40.--Ibid. Madame Campan, another eye-witness.)--It appears to be
certain, however, that the younger members of the National Guard at
Versailles turned their cockades so as to be like other people, and it
is also probable that some of the ladies distributed white cockades.
The rest is a story made up before and after the event to justify the
insurrection.--Cf. Lerol, "Histoire de Versailles," II. 20-107. Ibid.
p. 141. "As to that proscription of the national cockade, all witnesses
deny it." The originator of the calumny is Gorsas, editor of the
Courrier de Versailles.]
[Footnote 1430: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 88, 110,
120, 126, 127, 140, 146, 148.--Marmontel, "Mémoires," a conversation
with Champfort, in May, 1789.--Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 398. (According
to the evidence of Garat, Champfort gave all his savings, 3,000 livres,
to defray the expenses of maneuvers of this description.)--Malouet
(II. 2). knew four of the deputies "who took direct part in this
conspiracy."]
[Footnote 1431: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." 1st. On the Flemish
soldiers. Depositions 17, 20, 24, 35, 87, 89, 98.--2nd. On the men
disguised as women. Depositions 5, 10, 14, 44, 49, 59, 60, 110,
120, 139, 145, 146, 148. The prosecutor designates six of them to
be seized.--3rd. On the condition of the women of the expedition.
Depositions 35, 83, 91, 98, 146, and 24.--4th. On the money distributed.
Depositions 49, 56, 71, 82, 110, 126.]
[Footnote 1432: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Deposition 61.
"During the night scenes, not very decent, occurred among these people,
which the witness thought it useless to relate."]
[Footnote 1433: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 35, 44,
81.--Buchez and Roux, III. 120. (Minutes of the meeting of the Commune,
October 5th.) Journal de Paris, October 12th. A few days after, M. Pic,
clerk of the prosecutor, brought "a package of 100,000 francs which he
had saved from the enemies' hands," and another package of notes was
found thrown, in the hubbub, into a receipt-box.]
[Footnote 1434: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 61,
77, 81, 148, 154.--Dumont, 181.--Mounier, "Exposé justificatif," and
specially "Fait relatif à la dernière insurrection."]
[Footnote 1435: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Deposition 168. The
witness sees on leaving the King's apartment "several women dressed as
fish-wives, one of whom, with a pretty face, has a paper in her hand,
and who exclaims as she holds it up, 'He! F..., we have forced the guy
to sign.' "]
[Footnote 1436: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 89, 91,
98. "Promising all, even raising their petticoats before them."]
[Footnote 1437: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet," Depositions 9, 20,
24, 30, 49, 61, 82, 115, 149, 155.]
[Footnote 1438: Procédure criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 7, 30,
35, 40.--Cf. Lafayette, "Mémoires," and Madame Campan, "Mémoires."]
[Footnote 1439: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Deposition 24.
A number of butcher-boys run after the carriages issuing from the
Petite-Ecurie shouting out, "Don't let the curs escape!"]
[Footnote 1440: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 101, 91,
89, and 17. M. de Miomandre, a body-guard, mildly says to the ruffians
mounting the staircase: "My friends, you love your King, and yet you
come to annoy him even in his palace!"]
[Footnote 1441: Malouet, II. 2. "I felt no distrust," says Lafayette in
1798; "the people promised to remain quiet."]
[Footnote 1442: "Procédure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 9, 16,
60, 128, 129, 130, 139, 158, 168, 170.--M. du Repaire, body-guard, being
sentry at the railing from two o'clock in the morning, a man passes his
pike through the bars saying, "You embroidered b. . . , your turn
will come before long." M. de Repaire, "retires within the sentry-box
without saying a word to this man, considering the orders that have been
issued not to act."]
[Footnote 1443: "Procédure Criminelle du Châtelet." Depositions 82,
170--Madame Campan. II. 87.--De Lavalette, I.33.--Cf. Bertrand de
Molleville, Mémoires.]
[Footnote 1444: Duval, "Souvenirs de la Terreur," I. 78. (Doubtful in
almost everything, but here he is an eye-witness. He dined opposite the
hair-dresser's, near the railing of the Park of Saint-Cloud.)--M. de
Lally-Tollendal's second letter to a friend. "At the moment the King
entered his capital with two bishops of his council with him in the
carriage, the cry was heard, 'Off to the lamp post with the bishops!'"]
[Footnote 1445: De Montlosier, I. 303.--Moniteur, sessions of the 8th,
9th, and 10th of October.--Malouet, II. 9, 10, 20.--Mounier, Recherches
sur les Causes, etc., and "Addresse aux Dauphinois."]
[Footnote 1446: De Ferrières, I. 346. (On the 9th of October, 300
members have already taken their passports.) Mercure de France, No. of
the 17th October. Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, I. 116,
126, 364.]
[Footnote 1447: Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, I.175.
(The words of Monsieur to M. de la Marck.)]
BOOK SECOND. THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, AND THE RESULT OF ITS LABORS.
CHAPTER I.--CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR THE FRAMING OF GOOD LAWS.
Among the most difficult undertakings in this world is the formulation
of a national constitution, especially if this is to be a complete and
comprehensive work. To replace the old structures inside which a great
people has lived by a new, different, appropriate and durable set of
laws, to apply a mold of one hundred thousand compartments on to the
life of twenty-six million people, to construct it so harmoniously,
adapt it so well, so closely, with such an exact appreciation of their
needs and their faculties, that they enter it of themselves and move
about it without collisions, and that their spontaneous activity
should at once find the ease of familiar routine,--is an extraordinary
undertaking and probably beyond the powers of the human mind. In any
event, the mind requires all its powers to carry the undertaking out,
and it cannot protect itself carefully enough against all sources of
disturbance and error. An Assembly, especially a Constituent Assembly,
requires, outwardly, security and independence, inwardly, silence
and order, and generally, calmness, good sense, practical ability and
discipline under competent and recognized leaders. Do we find anything
of all this in the Constituent Assembly?
I.--These conditions absent in the Assembly
Causes of disorder and irrationality--The place of meeting
--The large number of deputies--Interference of the galleries
--Rules of procedure wanting, defective, or disregarded.--The
parliamentary leaders--Susceptibility and over-excitement of
the Assembly--Its paroxysms of enthusiasm.--Its tendency to
emotion.--It encourages theatrical display--Changes which
these displays introduce in its good intentions.
We have only to look at it outwardly to have some doubts about it. At
Versailles, and then at Paris, the sessions are held in an immense hall
capable of seating 2,000 persons, in which the most powerful voice must
be strained in order to be heard. It is not calculated for the moderate
tone suitable for the discussion of business; the speaker is obliged to
shout, and the strain on the voice communicates itself to the mind; the
place itself suggests declamation; and this all the more readily because
the assemblage consists of 1,200, that is to say, a crowd, and almost
a mob. 'At the present day (1877), in our assemblies of five or six
hundred deputies, there are constant interruptions and an incessant
buzz; there is nothing so rare as self-control, and the firm resolve to
give an hour's attention to a discourse opposed to the opinions of the
hearers.--What can be done here to compel silence and patience? Arthur
Young on different occasions sees "a hundred members on the floor at
once," shouting and gesticulating. "Gentlemen, you are killing me!" says
Bailly, one day, sinking with exhaustion. Another president exclaims in
despair, "Two hundred speaking at the same time cannot be heard; will
you make it impossible then to restore order in the Assembly?" The
rumbling, discordant din is further increased by the uproar of the
galleries.[2101]
"In the British Parliament," writes Mallet du Pan, "I saw the
galleries cleared in a trice because the Duchess of Gordon happened
unintentionally to laugh too loud."
Here, the thronging crowd of spectators, stringers, delegates from the
Palais-Royal, soldiers disguised as citizens, and prostitutes collected
and marshaled, applaud, clap their hands, stamp and hoot, at their
pleasure. This is carried to so great an extent that M. de
Montlosier ironically proposes "to give the galleries a voice in
the deliberations."[2102] Another member wishes to know whether the
representatives are so many actors, whom the nation sends there to
endure the hisses of the Paris public. Interruptions, in fact, take
place as in a theater, and, frequently, if the members do not give
satisfaction, they are forced to desist. On the other hand, the deputies
who are popular with this energetic audience, on which they keep and
eye, are actors before the footlights: they involuntarily yield to its
influence, and exaggerate their ideas as well as their words to be in
unison with it. Tumult and violence, under such circumstances, become
a matter of course, and the chances of an Assembly acting wisely are
diminished by one-half; on becoming a club of agitators, it ceases to be
a conclave of legislators.
Let us enter and see how this one proceeds. Thus encumbered, thus
surrounded and agitated, does it take at least those precautions without
which no assembly of men can govern itself. When several hundred persons
assemble together for deliberation, it is evident that some sort of an
internal police is necessary; first of all, some code of accepted usage,
some written precedents, by which its acts may be prepared and defined,
considered in detail, and properly passed. The best of these codes it
ready to hand: at the request of Mirabeau, Romilly has sent over the
standing orders of the English House of Commons.[2103] But with the
presumption of novices, they pay no attention to this code; they imagine
it is needless for them; they will borrow nothing from foreigners; they
accord no authority to experience, and, not content with rejecting the
forms it prescribes, "it is with difficulty they can be made to follow
any rule whatever." They leave the field open to the impulsiveness of
individuals; any kind of influence, even that of a deputy, even of one
elected by themselves, is suspected by them; hence their choice of a
new president every fortnight.--They submit to no constraint or control,
neither to the legal authority of a parliamentary code, nor to the moral
authority of parliamentary chiefs. They are without any such; they are
not organized in parties; neither on one side nor on the other is a
recognized leader found who fixes the time, arranges the debate, draws
up the motion, assigns parts, and gives the rein to or restrains
his supporters. Mirabeau is the only one capable of obtaining this
ascendancy; but, on the opening of the Assembly, he is discredited by
the notoriety of his vices, and, towards the last, is compromised by his
connections with the Court. No other is of sufficient eminence to have
any influence; there is too much of average and too little of superior
talent.--Their self-esteem is, moreover, as yet too strong to allow any
concessions. Each of these improvised legislators has come satisfied
with his own system, and to submit to a leader to whom he would entrust
his political conscience, to make of him what three out of four of these
deputies should be, a voting machine, would require an apprehension of
danger, some painful experience, an enforced surrender which he is far
from realizing.[2104] For this reason, save in the violent party, each
acts as his own chief, according to the impulse of the moment, and the
confusion may be imagined. Strangers who witness it, lift their hands in
pity and astonishment. "They discuss nothing in their Assembly,"
writes Gouverneur Morris,[2105] "One large half of the time is spent
in hallowing and bawling.... Each Man permitted to speak delivers the
Result of his Lubrications," amidst this noise, taking his turn as
inscribed, without replying to his predecessor, or being replied to by
his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while
the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air."
Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day
are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense,"
and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that
is the whole substance of most of these famous sittings.
"You would hear," says a journalist, "more yells than speeches; the
sittings seemed more likely to end in fights than in decrees... . Twenty
times I said to myself, on leaving, that if anything could arrest and
turn the tide of the Revolution, it would be a picture of these meetings
traced without caution or adaptation... All my efforts were therefore
directed to represent the truth, without rendering it repulsive. Out
of what had been merely a row, I concocted a scene... I gave all the
sentiments, but not always in the same words. I translated their yells
into words, their furious gestures into attitudes, and when I could not
inspire esteem, I endeavored to rouse the emotions."
There is no remedy for this evil; for, besides the absence of
discipline, there is an inward and fundamental cause for the disorder.
These people are too susceptible. They are Frenchmen, and Frenchmen
of the eighteenth century; brought up in the amenities of the utmost
refinement, accustomed to deferential manners, to constant kind
attentions and mutual obligations, so thoroughly imbued with the
instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid
to strangers.[2106]--And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny
soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions,
venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged
in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary
life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able
to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly
strung nerves, on men of the world accustomed to the accommodations
and amiabilities of universal urbanity. They are at once beside
themselves.--And all the more so because they never anticipated a
battle; but, on the contrary, a festival, a grand and charming idyll, in
which everybody, hand in hand, would assemble in tears around the throne
and save the country amid mutual embraces. Necker himself arranges, like
a theater, the chamber in which the sessions of the Assembly are to
be held.[2107] "He was not disposed to regard the Assemblies of the
States-General as anything but a peaceful, imposing, solemn, august
spectacle, which the people would enjoy;" and when the idyll suddenly
changes into a drama, he is so frightened that it seems to him as if a
landslide had occurred that threatened, during the night, to break
down the framework of the building.--At the time of the meeting of the
States-General, everybody is delighted; all imagine that they are about
to enter the promised land. During the procession of the 4th of May,
"tears of joy," says the Marquis de Ferrières, "filled my eyes... . In a
state of sweet rapture I beheld France supported by Religion" exhorting
us all to concord. "The sacred ceremonies, the music, the incense, the
priests in their sacrificial robes, that dais, that orb radiant with
precious stones. .. I called to my mind the words of the prophet... . My
God, my country, and my countrymen, all were one with myself!"
Such emotions repeatedly explode in the course of the session, and
resulted in the passage of laws which no one could have imagined.
"Sometimes,"[2108] writes the American ambassador, "a speaker gets up
in the midst of a deliberation, makes a fine discourse on a different
subject, and closes with a nice little resolution which is carried with
a hurrah. Thus, in considering the plan of a national bank proposed by
M. Necker, one of them took it into his head to move that every member
should give his silver buckles, which was agreed to at once, and the
honorable mover laid his upon the table, after which the business went
on again."
Thus, over-excited, they do not know in the morning what they will do
in the afternoon, and they are at the mercy of every surprise. When they
are seized with these fits of enthusiasm, infatuation spreads over all
the benches; prudence gives way, all foresight disappears and every
objection is stifled. During the night of the 4th of August,[2109]
"nobody is master of himself. The Assembly presents the spectacle of an
inebriated crowd in a shop of valuable furniture, breaking and smashing
at will whatever they can lay their hands on."
"That which would have required a year of care and reflection," says
a competent foreigner, "was proposed, deliberated over, and passed by
general acclamation. The abolition of feudal rights, of titles, of the
privileges of the provinces, three articles which alone embraced a whole
system of jurisprudence and statesmanship, were decided with ten or
twelve other measures in less time than is required in the English
Parliament for the first reading of an important bill."
"Such are our Frenchmen," says Mirabeau again, "they spend a month in
disputes about syllables, and overthrow, in a single night, the whole
established system of the Monarchy!"[2110]
The truth is, they display the nervousness of women, and, from one end
of the Revolution to the other, this excitability keeps on increasing.
Not only are they excited, but the pitch of excitement must be
maintained, and, like the drunkard who, once stimulated, has recourse
again to strong waters, one would say that they carefully try to expel
the last remnants of calmness and common sense from their brains. They
delight in pompous phrases, in high-sounding rhetoric, in declamatory
sentimental strokes of eloquence: this is the style of nearly all their
speeches, and so strong is their taste, they are not satisfied with
the orations made amongst themselves. Lally and Necker, having made
"affecting and sublime" speeches at the Hôtel-de-Ville, the Assembly
wish them to be repeated before them:[2111] this being the heart of
France, it is proper for it to answer to the noble emotions of all
Frenchmen. Let this heart throb on, and as strongly as possible, for
that is its office, and day by day it receives fresh impulses. Almost
all sittings begin with the reading of flattering addresses or of
threatening denunciations. The petitioners frequently appear in person,
and read their enthusiastic effusions, their imperious advice, their
doctrines of dissolution. To-day it is Danton, in the name of Paris,
with his bull visage and his voice that seems a tocsin of insurrection;
to-morrow, the vanquishers of the Bastille, or some other troop, with a
band of music which continues playing even into the hall. The meeting is
not a conference for business, but a patriotic opera, where the eclogue,
the melodrama, and sometimes the masquerade, mingle with the cheers and
the clapping of hands.[2112]--A serf of the Jura is brought to the
bar of the Assembly aged one hundred and twenty years, and one of the
members of the cortège, "M. Bourbon de la Crosnière, director of a
patriotic school, asks permission to take charge of an honorable old
man, that he may be waited on by the young people of all ranks, and
especially by the children of those whose fathers were killed in the
attack on the Bastille." [2113] Great is the hubbub and excitement. The
scene seems to be in imitation of Berquin,[2114] with the additional
complication of a mercenary consideration.
But small matters are not closely looked into, and the Assembly, under
the pressure of the galleries, stoops to shows, such as are held
at fairs. Sixty vagabonds who are paid twelve francs a head, in the
costumes of Spaniards, Dutchmen, Turks, Arabs, Tripolitans, Persians,
Hindus, Mongols, and Chinese, conducted by the Prussian Anacharsis
Clootz, enter, under the title of Ambassadors of the Human Race, to
declaim against tyrants, and they are admitted to the honors of the
sitting. On this occasion the masquerade is a stroke devised to hasten
and extort the abolition of nobility.[2115] At other times, there is
little or no object in it; its ridiculousness is inexpressible, for the
farce is played out as seriously and earnestly as in a village award
of prizes. For three days, the children who have taken their first
communion before the constitutional bishop have been promenaded through
the streets of Paris; at the Jacobin club they recite the nonsense they
have committed to memory; and, on the fourth day, admitted to the bar
of the Assembly, their spokesman, a poor little thing of twelve years,
repeats the parrot-like tirade. He winds up with the accustomed oath,
upon which all the others cry out in their piping, shrill voices, "We
swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies
to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing
metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the
stock-in-trade of a pedant on his platform:
"You merit a share in the glory of the founders of liberty, prepared as
you are to shed your blood in her behalf."
Immense applause from the "left" and the galleries, and a decree
ordering the speeches of both president and children to be printed. The
children, probably, would rather have gone out to play; but, willingly
or unwillingly, they receive or endure the honors of the sitting.[2116]
Such are the tricks of the stage and of the platform by which the
managers here move their political puppets. Emotional susceptibility,
once recognized as a legitimate force, thus becomes an instrument
of intrigue and constraint. The Assembly, having accepted theatrical
exhibitions when these were sincere and earnest, is obliged to tolerate
them when they become mere sham and buffoonery. At this vast national
banquet, over which it meant to preside, and to which, throwing the
doors wide open, it invited all France, its first intoxication was
due to wine of a noble quality; but it has touched glasses with the
populace, and by degrees, under the pressure of its associates, it has
descended to adulterated and burning drinks, to a grotesque unwholesome
inebriety which is all the more grotesque and unwholesome, because it
persists in believing itself to be reason.
II.--Inadequacy of its information.
Its composition--The social standing and culture of the
larger number--Their incapacity. Their presumption
--Fruitless advice of competent men.--Deductive politics
--Parties--The minority; its faults--The majority; its
dogmatism.
If reason could only resume its empire during the lucid intervals!
But reason must exist before it can govern, and in no French Assembly,
except the two following this, have there ever been fewer political
intellects.--Strictly speaking, with careful search, there could
undoubtedly be found in France, in 1789, five or six hundred experienced
men, such as the intendants and military commanders of every province;
next to these the prelates, administrators of large dioceses the members
of the local "parlements," whose courts gave them influence, and who,
besides judicial functions, possessed a portion of administrative power;
and finally, the principal members of the Provincial Assemblies, all of
them influential and sensible people who had exercised control over
men and affairs, at once humane, liberal, moderate, and capable of
understanding the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of a great
reform; indeed, their correspondence, full of facts, stated with
precision and judgment, when compared with the doctrinaire rubbish of
the Assembly, presents the strongest possible contrast.--But most of
these lights remain under a bushel; only a few of them get into the
Assembly; these burn without illuminating, and are soon extinguished in
the tempest.' I. The venerable Machault is not there, nor Malesherbes;
there are none of the old ministers or the marshals of France. Not one
of the intendants is there, except Malouet, and by the superiority of
this man, the most judicious of the Assembly, one can judge the services
which his colleagues would have rendered. Out of two hundred and
ninety-one members of the clergy,[2117] there are indeed forty-eight
bishops or archbishops and thirty-five abbots or canons, but, being
prelates and with large endowments, they excite the envy of their order,
and are generals without any soldiers. We have the same spectacle among
the nobles. Most of them, the gentry of the provinces, have been elected
in opposition to the grandees of the Court. Moreover, neither the
grandees of the Court, devoted to worldly pursuits, nor the gentry of
the provinces, confined to private life, are practically familiar with
public affairs. A small group among them, twenty-eight magistrates
and about thirty superior officials who have held command or have been
connected with the administration, probably have some idea of the peril
of society; but it is precisely for this reason that they seem to be
behind the age and remain without influence.--In the Third-Estate, out
of five hundred and seventy-seven members, only ten have exercised
any important functions, those of intendant, councillor of state,
receiver-general, lieutenant of police, director of the mint, and others
of the same category. The great majority is composed of unknown lawyers
and people occupying inferior positions in the profession, notaries,
royal attorneys, register commissaries, judges and assessors of;
the présidial, bailiffs and lieutenants of the bailiwick, simple
practitioners confined from their youth to the narrow circle of an
inferior jurisdiction or to a routine of scribbling, with no escape
but philosophical excursions in imaginary space under the guidance of
Rousseau and Raynal. There are three hundred and seventy-three of this
class, to whom may be added thirty-eight farmers and husbandmen, fifteen
physicians, and, among the manufacturers, merchants, and capitalists,
some fifty or sixty who are their equals in education and in political
capacity. Scarcely one hundred and fifty proprietors are here from the
middle class.[2118] To these four hundred and fifty deputies, whose
condition, education, instruction, and mental range qualified them for
being good clerks, prominent men in a commune, honorable fathers of a
family, or, at best, provincial academicians, add two hundred and eight
curés, their equals; this makes six hundred and fifty out of eleven
hundred and eighteen deputies, forming a positive majority, which,
again, is augmented by about fifty philosophical nobles, leaving out the
weak who follow the current, and the ambitious who range themselves on
the strong side.--We may divine what a chamber thus made up can do, and
those who are familiar with such matters prophesy what it will do.[2119]
"There are some able men in the National Assembly," writes the American
minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by
experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much
imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."
It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an
inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate. They
would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would
construct in its place would founder before it left port.
If they would only consult the pilots and professional
shipbuilders!--There are several of such to be found around them, whom
they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free
countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous. The
Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation
of the States-General:[2120]
"I, a republican, and just, as it were, emerged from that Assembly which
has formed one of the most republican of republican constitutions,--I
preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of
the nobility, and moderation, not only in the object, but also in the
pursuit of it."
Jefferson, a democrat and radical, expresses himself no differently. At
the time of the oath of the Tennis Court, he redoubles his efforts to
induce Lafayette and other patriots to make some arrangement with the
King to secure freedom of the press, religious, liberty, trial by jury,
the habeas corpus, and a national legislature,--things which he could
certainly be made to adopt,--and then to retire into private life, and
let these institutions act upon the condition of the people until they
had rendered it capable of further progress, with the assurance that
there would be no lack of opportunity for them to obtain still more.
"This was all," he continues, "that I thought your countrymen able to
bear soberly and usefully."
Arthur Young, who studies the moral life of France so conscientiously,
and who is so severe in depicting old abuses, cannot comprehend the
conduct of the Commons.
"To set aside practice for theory... in establishing the interests of a
great kingdom, in securing freedom to 25,000,000 of people, seems to me
the very acme of imprudence, the very quintessence of insanity."
Undoubtedly, now that the Assembly is all-powerful, it is to be hoped
that it will be reasonable:
"I will not allow myself to believe for a moment that the
representatives of the people can ever so far forget their duty to
the French nation, to humanity, and their own fame, as to suffer
any inordinate and impracticable views--any visionary or theoretic
systems--... to turn aside their exertions from that security which is
in their hands, to place on the chance and hazard of public commotion
and civil war the invaluable blessings which are certainly in their
power. I will not conceive it possible that men who have eternal fame
within their grasp will place the rich inheritance on the cast of a die,
and, losing the venture, be damned among the worst and most profligate
adventurers that ever disgraced humanity."
As their plan becomes more definite the remonstrances become more
decided, and all the expert judges point out to them the importance of
the wheels which they are willfully breaking.
"As they have[2121] hitherto felt severely the authority exercised over
them in the name of their princes, every limitation of that authority
seems to them desirable. Never having felt the evils of too weak an
executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no
impression"--"They want an American Constitution,[2122] but with a
King instead of a President, without reflecting they have no American
citizens to support that Constitution... If they have the good sense
to give the nobles, as nobles, some portion of the national power, this
free constitution will probably last, But otherwise it will degenerate
either into a pure monarchy, or a vast republic, or a democracy. Will
the latter last? I doubt it. I am sure that it will not, unless the
whole nation is changed."
A little later, when they renounce a parliamentary monarchy to put in
its place "a royal democracy," it is at once explained to them that such
an institution applied to France can produce nothing but anarchy, and
finally end in despotism.
"Nowhere[2123] has liberty proved to be stable without a sacrifice of
its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence... . Under
this miserable government... the people, soon weary of storms, and
abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their
oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious
hand that stands ready to seize it."
Events occur from month to month in fulfillment of these predictions,
and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild
birds:[2124]
"It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when
it flies so wild... . This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit
of metaphysical whims, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. The
Assembly, at once master and slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in
practice, engrossing all functions without being able to exercise any,
has freed that fierce, ferocious people from every restraint of religion
and respect... . Such a state of things cannot last... The glorious
opportunity is lost and for this time, at least, the Revolution has
failed."
We see, from the replies of Washington, that he is of the same opinion.
On the other side of the Channel, Pitt, the ablest practician, and
Burke, the ablest theorist, of political liberty, express the same
judgment. Pitt, after 1789, declares that the French have overleaped
freedom. After 1790, Burke, in a work which is a prophecy as well as a
masterpiece, points to military dictatorship as the termination of the
Revolution, "the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared
on earth." Nothing is of any effect. With the exception of the small
powerless group around Malouet and Mounier, the warnings of Morris,
Jefferson, Romilly, Dumont, Mallet du Pan, Arthur Young, Pitt and Burke,
all of them men who have experience of free institutions, are received
with indifference or repelled with disdain. Not only are our new
politicians incapable, but they think themselves the contrary, and their
incompetence is aggravated by their infatuation.
"I often used to say, "writes Dumont,[2125] "that if a hundred persons
were stopped at haphazard in the streets of London, and a hundred in the
streets of Paris, and a proposal were made to them to take charge of the
Government, ninety-nine would accept it in Paris and ninety-nine would
refuse it in London... The Frenchman thinks that all difficulties can
be overcome by a little quickness of wit. Mirabeau accepted the post of
reporter to the Committee on Mines without having the slightest tincture
of knowledge on the subject."
In short, most of them enter politics "like the gentleman who, on being
asked if he knew how to play on the harpsichord, replied, 'I cannot
tell, I never tried, but I will see.'"
"The Assembly had so high an opinion of itself, especially the left side
of it, that it would willingly have undertaken the framing of the Code
of Laws for all nations... Never has so many men been seen together,
fancying that they were all legislators, and that they were there to
correct all the errors of the past, to remedy all mistakes of the human
mind, and ensure the happiness of all ages to come. Doubt had no
place in their minds, and infallibility always presided over their
contradictory decrees."--
This is because they have a theory and because, according to their
notion, this theory renders special knowledge unnecessary. Herein they
are thoroughly sincere, and it is of set purpose that they reverse all
ordinary modes of procedure. Up to this time a constitution used to be
organized or repaired like a ship. Experiments were made from time to
time, or a model was taken from vessels in the neighborhood; the first
aim was to make the ship sail; its construction was subordinated to its
work; it was fashioned in this or that way according to the materials on
hand; a beginning was made by examining these materials, and trying to
estimate their rigidity, weight, and strength.--All this is reactionary;
the age of Reason has come and the Assembly is too enlightened to drag
on in a rut. In conformity with the fashion of the time it works by
deduction, after the method of Rousseau, according to an abstract notion
of right, of the State and of the social compact.[2126] According to
this process, by virtue of political geometry alone, they shall have the
perfect vessel and since it perfect it follows that it will sail, and
that much better than any empirical craft.--They legislate according
to this principle, and one may imagine the nature of their discussions.
There are no convincing facts, no pointed arguments; nobody would
ever imagine that the speakers were gathered together to conduct real
business. Through speech after speech, strings of hollow abstractions
are endlessly renewed as in a meeting of students in rhetoric for the
purpose of practice, or in a society of old bookworms for their own
amusement. On the question of the veto "each orator in turn, armed with
his portfolio, reads a dissertation which has no bearing whatever" on
the preceding one, which makes a "sort of academical session,"[2127]
a succession of pamphlets fresh every morning for several days. On the
question of the Rights of Man fifty-four speakers are placed on the
list.
"I remember," says Dumont, "that long discussion, which lasted for
weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,--vain disputes over words, a
metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned
into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning,
while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold
assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society
was in course of dissolution. In the same manner the theologians of the
Easter Roman Empire kept up their wrangles about the uncreated light of
Mount Tabor while Mahomet II was battering the walls of Constantinople
with his cannon.--Ours, of course, are another sort of men, juvenile
in feeling, sincere, enthusiastic, even generous, and further, more
devoted, laborious, and in some cases endowed with rare talent. But
neither zeal, nor labor, nor talent are of any use when not employed in
the service of a sound idea; and if in the service of a false one, the
greater they are the more mischief they do.
Towards the end of the year 1789, there can be not doubt of this;
and the parties now formed reveal their presumption, improvidence,
incapacity, and obstinacy. "This Assembly," writes the American
ambassador,[2128] "may be divided into three parties;--
one called the aristocrats, consists of the high clergy, the
parliamentary judges, and such of the nobility as think they ought to
form a separate order." This is the party which offers resistance to
follies and errors, but with follies and errors almost equally great.
In the beginning "the prelates,[2129] instead of conciliating the curés,
kept them at a humiliating distance, affecting distinctions, exacting
respect," and, in their own chamber, "ranging themselves apart on
separate benches." The nobles, on the other hand, the more to alienate
the commons, began by charging these with, "revolt, treachery, and
treason," and by demanding the use of military force against them. Now
that the victorious Third-Estate has again overcome them and overwhelms
them with numbers, they become still more maladroit, and conduct the
defense much less efficiently than the attack. "In the Assembly," says
one of them, "they do not listen, but laugh and talk aloud;" they
take pains to embitter their adversaries and the galleries by their
impertinence. "They leave the chamber when the President puts the
question and invite the deputies of their party to follow them, or
cry out to them not to take part in the deliberation: through this
desertion, the clubbists become the majority, and decree whatever they
please." It is in this way that the appointment of judges and bishops
is withdrawn from the King and assigned to the people. Again, after the
return from Varennes, when the Assembly finds out that the result of its
labors is impracticable and wants to make it less democratic, the whole
of the right side refuses to share in the debates, and, what is worse,
votes with the revolutionaries to exclude the members of the Constituent
from the Legislative Assembly. Thus, not only does it abandon its
own cause, but it commits self-destruction, and its desertion ends in
suicide.--
A second party remains, "the middle party,"[2130] which consists of
well-intentioned people from every class, sincere partisans of a good
government; but, unfortunately, they have acquired their ideas of
government from books, and are admirable on paper. But as it happens
that the men who live in the world are very different from imaginary men
who dwell in the heads of philosophers, it is not to be wondered at if
the systems taken out of books are fit for nothing but to be upset by
another book. Intellects of this stamp are the natural prey of utopians.
Lacking the ballast of experience they are carried away by pure logic
and serve to enlarge the flock of theorists.--The latter form the third
party, which is called the "enragés (the wild men), and who, at the
expiration of six months, find themselves "the most numerous of all."
"It is composed," says Morris, "of that class which in America is known
by the name of pettifogging lawyers, together with a host of curates and
many of those persons who in all revolutions throng to the standard
of change because they are not well.[2131] This last party is in close
alliance with the populace and derives from this circumstance very great
authority."
All powerful passions are on its side, not merely the irritation of the
people tormented by misery and suspicion, not merely the ambition and
self-esteem of the bourgeois, in revolt against the ancient régime,
but also the inveterate bitterness and fixed ideas of so many suffering
minds and so many factious intellects, Protestants, Jansenists,
economists, philosophers, men who, like Fréteau, Rabout-Saint-Etienne,
Volney, Sieyès, are hatching out a long arrears of resentments or hopes,
and who only await the opportunity to impose their system with all the
intolerance of dogmatism and of faith. To minds of this stamp the past
is a dead letter; example is no authority; realities are of no account;
they live in their own Utopia. Sieyès, the most important of them all,
judges that "the whole English constitution is charlatanism, designed
for imposing on the people;"[2132] he regards the English "as children
in the matter of a constitution," and thinks that he is capable of
giving France a much better one. Dumont, who sees the first committees
at the houses of Brissot and Clavières, goes away with as much anxiety
as "disgust."
"It is impossible," he says, "to depict the confusion of ideas, the
license of the imagination, the burlesque of popular notions. One
would think that they saw before them the world on the day after the
Creation."
They seem to think, indeed, that human society does not exist, and that
they are appointed to create it. Just as well might ambassadors "of
hostile tribes, and of diverse interests, set themselves to arrange
their common lot as if nothing had previously existed." There is no
hesitation. They are satisfied that the thing can be easily done, and
that, with two or three axioms of political philosophy, the first man
that comes may make himself master of it. Immoderate conceit of this
kind among men of experience would seem ridiculous; in this assembly of
novices it is a strength. A flock which has lost its way follows those
who appears to forge ahead; they are the most irrational but they
are the most confident, and in the Chamber as in the nation it is the
daredevils who become leaders.
III.--The Power Of Simple, General Ideas.
Ascendancy of the revolutionary party--Theory in its favor--
The constraint thus imposed on men's minds--Appeal to the
passions--Brute force on the side of the party--It profits
by this--Oppression of the minority.
Two advantages give this party the ascendancy, and these advantages are
of such importance that henceforth whoever possesses them is sure of
being master.--In the first place the prevailing theory is on the
side of the revolutionaries, and they alone are, in the second place,
determined thoroughly to apply it. This party, therefore, is the only
one which is consistent and popular in the face of adversaries who are
unpopular and inconsequent. Nearly all of the latter, indeed, defenders
of the ancient régime, or partisans of a limited monarchy, are likewise
imbued with abstract principles and philosophical speculation. The most
refractory nobles have advocated the rights of man in their memorials.
Mounier, the principal opponent of the demagogues, was the
leader of the commons when they proclaimed themselves to be the
National--Assembly.[2133] This is enough: they have entered the narrow
defile which leads to the abyss. They had no idea of it at the first
start, but one step leads to another, and, willing or unwilling, they
march on, or are pushed on. When the abyss comes in sight it is too
late; they have been driven there by the logical results of their own
concessions; they can do nothing but wax eloquent and indignant;
having abandoned their vantage ground, they find no halting-place
remaining.--There is an enormous power in general ideas, especially
if they are simple, and appeal to the passions. None are simpler than
these, since they are reducible to the axiom which assumes the rights
of man, and subordinate to them every institution, old or new. None are
better calculated to inflame the sentiments, since the doctrine enlists
human arrogance and pride in its service, and, in the name of justice,
consecrates all the demands of independence and domination. Consider
three-fourths of the deputies, immature and prejudiced, possessing no
information but a few formulas of the current philosophy, with no thread
to guide them but pure logic, abandoned to the declamation of lawyers,
to the wild utterances of the newspapers, to the promptings of
self-esteem, to the hundred thousand tongues which, on all sides, at the
bar of the Assembly, at the tribune, in the clubs, in the streets, in
their own breasts, repeat unanimously to them, and every day, the same
flattery:
"You are sovereign and omnipotent. Right is vested in you alone. The
King exists only to execute your will. Every order, every corporation,
every power, every civil or ecclesiastical association is illegitimate
and null the moment you declare it to be so. You may even transform
religion. You are the fathers of the country. You have saved France, you
will regenerate humanity. The whole world looks on you in admiration;
finish your glorious work--forward, always forward."
Superior good sense and rooted convictions could alone stand firm
against this flood of seductions and solicitations; but vacillating and
ordinary men are carried away by it. In the harmony of applause which
rises, they do not hear the crash of the ruins they produce. In any
case, they stop their ears, and shun the cries of the oppressed; they
refuse to admit that their work could possibly bring about evil results;
they accept the sophisms and untruths which justify it; they allow the
assassinated to be calumniated in order to excuse the assassins; they
listen to Merlin de Douay, who, after three or four jacqueries, when
pillaging, arson, and murder are going on in all the provinces, has just
declared in the name of the Committee on Feudalism[2134] that "a law
must be presented to the people, the justice of which may enforce
silence on the feudatory egoists who, for the past six months, so
indecently protest against plunder; the wisdom of which may restore to
a sense of duty the peasant who has been led astray for a moment by
his resentment of a long oppression." And when Raynal, the surviving
patriarch of the philosophic party, one day, for a wonder, takes
the plain truth with him into their tribune, they resent his
straightforwardness as an outrage, and excuse it solely on the ground of
his imbecility. An omnipotent legislator cannot depreciate himself; like
a king he is condemned to self-admiration in his public capacity. "There
were not thirty deputies amongst us," says a witness, "who thought
differently from Raynal," but "in each other's presence the credit of
the Revolution, the perspective of its blessings, was an article of
faith which had to be believed in;" and, against their own reason,
against their conscience, the moderates, caught in the net of their own
acts, join the revolutionaries to complete the Revolution.
Had they refused, they would have been compelled; for, to obtain the
power, the Assembly has, from the very first, either tolerated
or solicited the violence of the streets. But, in accepting
insurrectionists for its allies, it makes them masters, and henceforth,
in Paris as in the provinces, illegal and brutal force becomes the
principal power of the State. "The triumph was accomplished through the
people; it was impossible to be severe with them;"[2135] hence, when
insurrections were to be put down, the Assembly had neither the courage
nor the force necessary. "They blame for the sake of decency; they frame
their deeds by expediency." and in turn justly undergo the pressure
which they themselves have sanctioned against others. Only three or four
times do the majority, when the insurrection becomes too daring--after
the murder of the baker François, the insurrection of the Swiss Guard at
Nancy, and the outbreak of the Champ de Mars--feel that they themselves
are menaced, vote for and apply martial law, and repel force with force.
But, in general, when the despotism of the people is exercised only
against the royalist minority, they allow their adversaries to be
oppressed, and do not consider themselves affected by the violence which
assails the party of the "right:" they are enemies, and may be given
up to the wild beasts. In accordance with this, the "left" has made its
arrangements; its fanaticism has no scruples; it is principle, it is
absolute truth that is at stake; this must triumph at any cost. Besides,
can there be any hesitation in having recourse to the people in the
people's own cause? A little compulsion will help along the good cause,
and hence the siege of the Assembly is continually renewed. This was the
practice already at Versailles before the 6th of October, while now, at
Paris, it is kept up more actively and with less disguise.
At the beginning of the year 1790,[2136] the band under pay comprises
seven hundred and fifty effective men, most of them deserters or
soldiers drummed out of their regiments, who are at first paid five
francs and then forty sous a day. It is their business to make or
support motions in the coffee-houses and in the streets, to mix with
the spectators at the sittings of the sections, with the groups at the
Palais-Royal, and especially in the galleries of the National-Assembly,
where they are to hoot or applaud at a given signal. Their leader is a
Chevalier de Saint-Louis, to whom they swear obedience, and who receives
his orders from the Committee of Jacobins. His first lieutenant at the
Assembly is a M. Saule, "a stout, small, stunted old fellow, formerly an
upholsterer, then a charlatan hawker of four penny boxes of grease (made
from the fat of those that had been hung--for the cure of diseases of
the kidneys) and all his life a sot.... who, by means of a tolerably
shrill voice, which was always well moistened, has acquired some
reputation in the galleries of the Assembly." In fact, he has forged
admission tickets he has been turned out; he has been obliged to resume
"the box of ointment, and travel for one or two months in the provinces
with a man of letters for his companion." But on his return, "through
the protection of a groom of the Court, he obtained a piece of ground
for a coffee-house against the wall of the Tuileries garden, almost
alongside of the National Assembly," and now it is at home in his
coffee-shop behind his counter that the hirelings of the galleries "come
to him to know what they must say, and to be told the order of the day
in regard to applause." Besides this, he is there himself; "it is he
who for three years is to regulate public sentiment in the galleries
confided to his care, and, for his useful and satisfactory services,
the Constituent Assembly will award him a recompense," to which the
Legislative Assembly will add "a pension of six hundred livres, besides
a lodging in an apartment of the Feuillants."
We can divine how men of this stamp, thus compensated, do their work.
From the top of the galleries[2137] they drown the demands of the
"right" by the force of their lungs; this or that decree, as, for
instance, the abolition of titles of nobility, is carried, "not by
shouts, but by terrific howls."[2138] On the arrival of the news of the
sacking of the Hôtel de Castries by the populace, they applaud. On the
question coming up as to the decision whether the Catholic faith shall
be dominant, "they shout out that the aristocrats must all be hung, and
then things will go on well." Their outrages not only remain unpunished,
but are encouraged: this or that noble who complains of their hooting
is called to order, while their interference and vociferations, their
insults and their menaces, are from this time introduced as one of the
regular wheels of legislative operations. Their pressure is still worse
outside the Chamber.[2139] The Assembly is obliged several times to
double its guard. On the 27th of September, 1790, there are 40,000
men around the building to extort the dismissal of the Ministers, and
"motions for assassination" are made under the windows, On the 4th of
January, 1791, whilst on a call of the house the ecclesiastical deputies
pass in turn to the tribune, to take or refuse the oath to the civil
constitution of the clergy, a furious clamor ascends in the Tuileries,
and even penetrates into the Chamber. "To the lamp post with all those
who refuse!" On the 27th of September, 1790, M. Dupont, economist,
having spoken against the assignats, is surrounded on leaving the
Chamber and hooted at, hustled, pushed against the basin of the
Tuileries, into which he was being thrown when the guard rescued him. On
the 21st of June, 1790, M. de Cazalès just misses "being torn to pieces
by the people."[2140] Deputies of the "right" are threatened over and
over again by gestures in the streets and in the coffee-houses; effigies
of them with ropes about the neck are publicly displayed. The Abbé Maury
is several times on the point of being hung: he saves himself once by
presenting a pistol. Another time the Vicomte de Mirabeau is obliged
to draw his sword. M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, having voted against the
annexation of the Comtat to France, is assailed with chairs and clubs
in the Palais-Royal, pursued into a porter's room and from thence to his
dwelling; the howling crowd break in the doors, and are only repelled
with great difficulty. It is impossible for the members of the "right"
to assemble together; they are "stoned" in the church of the Capuchins,
then in the Salon Français in the Rue Royale, and then, to crown the
whole, an ordinance of the new judges shuts up their hall, and punishes
them for the violence which they have to suffer.[2141] In short they are
at the mercy of the mob. The most moderate, the most liberal, and the
most manly both in heart and head, Malouet, declares that "in going to
the Assembly he rarely forgot to carry his pistols with him."[2142]
"For two years," he says, "after the King's flight, we never enjoyed one
moment of freedom and security."
" On going into a slaughter-house," writes another deputy, "you see some
animals at the entrance which still have a short time to live, until
the hour comes to dispatch them. Such was the impression which the
assemblage of nobles, bishops, and parliamentarians[2143] on the right
side made on my mind every time I entered the Assembly, the executioners
of the left side permitting them to breathe a little longer."
They are insulted and outraged even upon their benches; "placed
between peril within and peril without, between the hostility of the
galleries,"[2144] and that of the howlers at the entrance, "between
personal insults and the abbey of Saint-Germain, between shouts of
laughter celebrating the burning of their chateaux and the clamors
which, thirty times in a quarter of an hour, cry down their opinions,"
they are given over and denounced "to the ten thousand Cerberuses" of
the journals and of the streets, who pursue them with their yells and
"cover them with their slaver." Any expedient is good enough for putting
down their opposition, and, at the end of the session, in full Assembly,
they are threatened with "a recommendation to the departments," which
means the excitement of riots and of the permanent jacquerie of the
provinces against them in their own houses.--Parliamentary strategy
of this sort, employed uninterruptedly for twenty-nine months, finally
produces its effect. Many of the weak are gained over;[2145] even on
characters of firm temper fear has a hold; he who would march under fire
with head erect shuddered at the idea of being dragged in the gutter by
the rabble; the brutality of the populace always exercises a material
ascendancy over finely strung nerves. On the 12th of July, 1791,[2146]
the call of the house decreed against the absentees proves that one
hundred and thirty-two deputies no longer appear in their places. Eleven
days before, among those who take no further part in the proceedings.
Thus, before the completion of the Constitution, the whole of the
opposition, more than four hundred members, over one-third of the
Assembly, is reduced to flight or to silence. By dint of oppression, the
revolutionary party has got rid of all resistance, while the violence
which gave to it ascendancy in the streets, now gives to it equal
ascendance within the walls of Parliament.
IV.--Refusal to supply the ministry
Effects of this mistake--Misconception of the situation--The
committee of investigation--Constant alarms--Effects of
ignorance and fear on the work of the Constituent Assembly.
Generally in an omnipotent assembly, when a party takes the lead and
forms a majority, it furnishes the Ministry; and this fact suffices
to give, or to bring back to it, some glimpse of common sense. For its
leaders, with the Government in their own hands, become responsible for
it, and when they propose or pass a law, they are obliged to anticipate
its effect. Rarely will a Secretary of War or of the Navy adopt a
military code which goes to establish permanent disobedience in the
army or in the navy. Rarely will a Secretary of the Treasury propose an
expenditure for which there is not a sufficient revenue, or a system of
taxation that provides no returns. Placed where full information can
be procured, daily advised of every details, surrounded by skillful
counselors and expert clerks, the chiefs of the majority, who thus
become heads of the administration, immediately drop theory for
practice; and the fumes of political speculation must be pretty dense
in their minds if they exclude the multiplied rays of light which
experience constantly sheds upon them. Let the most stubborn of
theorists take his stand at the helm of a ship, and, whatever be the
obstinacy of his principles or his prejudices, he will never, unless he
is blind or led by the blind, persist in steering always to the right
or always to the left. Just so after the flight to Varennes, when the
Assembly, in full possession of the executive power, directly controls
the Ministry, it comes to recognize for itself that its constitutional
machine will not work, except in the way of destruction; and it is the
principal revolutionaries, Barnave, Duport, the Lameths, Chapelier, and
Thouret,[2147] who undertake to make alterations in the mechanisms so
as to lessen its friction. But this source of knowledge and reason,
however, to which they are momentarily induced to draw, in spite of
themselves and too late, has been turned off by themselves from the very
beginning. On the 6th of November, 1789, in deference to principle
and in dread of corruption, the Assembly had declared that none of
its members should hold ministerial office. We see it in consequence
deprived of all the instruction which comes from direct contact with
affairs, surrendered without any counterpoise to the seductions
of theory, reduced by its own decision to become a mere academy of
legislation only.
Nay, still worse, through another effect of the same error, it condemns
itself by its own act to constant fits of panic. For, having allowed
the power which it was not willing to assume to slip into indifferent or
suspect hands, it is always uneasy, and all its decrees bear an uniform
stamp, not only of the willful ignorance within which it confines
itself, but also of the exaggerated or chimerical fears in which its
life is passed.--Imagine a ship conveying a company of lawyers, literary
men, and other passengers, who, supported by a mutinous and poorly fed
crew, take full command, but refuse to select one of their own number
for a pilot or for the officer of the watch. The former captain
continues to nominate them; through very shame, and because he is a
good sort of man, his title is left to him, and he is retained for the
transmission of orders. If these orders are absurd, so much the worse
for him; if he resists them, a fresh mutiny forces him to yield; and
even when they cannot be executed, he has to answer for their being
carried out. In the meantime, in a room between decks, far away from the
helm and the compass, our club of amateurs discuss the equilibrium of
floating bodies, decree a new system of navigation, have the ballast
thrown overboard, crowd on all sail, and are astonished to find that
the ship heels over on its side. The officer of the watch and the pilot
must, evidently, have managed the maneuver badly. They are accordingly
dismissed and others put in their place, while the ship heels over
farther yet and begins to leak in every joint. Enough: it is the
fault of the captain and the old staff of officers, They are not
well-disposed; for a beautiful system of navigation like this ought to
work well; and if it fails to do so, it is because some one interferes
with it. It is positively certain that some of those people belonging
to the former régime must be traitors, who would rather have the ship
go down than submit; they are public enemies and monsters. They must
be seized, disarmed, put under surveillance, and punished.--Such is the
reasoning of the Assembly. Evidently, to reassure it, a message from the
Minister of the Interior chosen by the Assembly, to the lieutenant of
police whom he had appointed, to come to his office every morning, would
be all that was necessary. But it is deprived of this simple resource by
its own act, and has no other expedient than to appoint a committee of
investigation to discover crimes of "treason against the nation."[2148]
What could be more vague than such a term? What could be more
mischievous than such an institution?--Renewed every month, deprived of
special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this
committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouché, makes up for
its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of
the Jacobine inquisition.[2149] Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages
accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them.
Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects
become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has
listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap
of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter,
on vague indications which it completes and patches together by
the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'état, makes
examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;[2150]
it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the
whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the
Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;[2151] then the plot for
hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of 14th of July to
burn Paris; then the plot of Favras to murder Lafayette, Necker, and
Bailly; then the plot of Augeard to carry off the King, and many others,
week after week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the
journalists, and which Desmoulins, Fréron, and Marat reveal with a
flourish of trumpets in each of their publications.
"All these alarms are cried daily in the streets like cabbages
and turnips, the good people of Paris inhaling them along with the
pestilential vapors of our mud."[2152]
..............Now, in this aspect, as well as in a good many others, the
Assembly is the people; satisfied that it is in danger,[2153] it makes
laws as the former make their insurrections, and protects itself by
strokes of legislation as the former protects itself by blows with
pikes. Failing to take hold of the motor spring by which it might direct
the government machine, it distrusts all the old and all the new wheels.
The old ones seem to it an obstacle, and, instead of utilizing them,
it breaks them one by one--parliaments, provincial states, religious
orders, the church, the nobles, and royalty. The new ones are
suspicious, and instead of harmonizing them, it puts them out of gear
in advance--the executive power, administrative powers, judicial
powers, the police, the gendarmerie, and the army.[2154] Thanks to
these precautions it is impossible for any of them to be turned against
itself; but, also, thanks to these precautions, none of them can perform
their functions.[2155]
In building, as well as in destroying, the Assembly had two bad
counselors, on the one hand fear, on the other hand theory; and on the
ruins of the old machine which it had demolished without discernment,
the new machine, which it has constructed without forecast, will work
only to its own ruin.
*****
[Footnote 2101: Arthur Young, June 15, 1789.--Bailly, passim,--Moniteur,
IV. 522 (June 2, 1790).--Mercure de France (Feb. 11 1792).]
[Footnote 2102: Moniteur, v. 631 (Sep. 12, 1790), and September 8th
(what is said by the Abbé Maury).--Marmontel, book XIII. 237.--Malouet,
I. 261.--Bailly, I. 227.]
[Footnote 2103: Sir Samuel Romilly, "Mémoires," I. 102, 354.--Dumont,
158. (The official rules bear are dated July 29, 1789.)]
[Footnote 2104: Cf. Ferrières, I. 3. His repentance is affecting.]
[Footnote 2105: Letter from Morris to Washington, January 24, 1790 See
page 382, "A diary of the French revolution", Greenwood Press, Westport,
Conn. 1972.--Dumont 125--Garat, letter to Condorcet.]
[Footnote 2106: Arthur Young, I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting
and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither
to offend nor instruct..... All vigor of thought seems excluded from
expression..... Where there is much polish of character there is little
argument."--Cabinet des Estampes. See engravings of the day by Moreau,
Prieur, Monet, representing the opening of the States-General. All the
figures have a graceful, elegant, and genteel air.]
[Footnote 2107: Marmontel, book XIII. 237.--Malouet, I. 261.--Ferrières,
I. 19.]
[Footnote 2108: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.--Likewise (De
Ferrières, I.71) the decree on the abolition of nobility was not the
order of the day, and was carried by surprise.]
[Footnote 2109: Ferrières, I. 189.--Dumont, 146.]
[Footnote 2110: Letter of Mirabeau to Sieyès, June 11, 1790. "Our nation
of monkeys with the throats of parrots."--Dumont, 146. "Sieyès and
Mirabeau always entertained a contemptible opinion of the Constituent
Assembly."]
[Footnote 2111: Moniteur, I, 256, 431 (July 16 and 31, 1789).--Journal
des Débats et Décrets, 105, July 16th "A member demands that M. de Lally
should put his speech in writing. The whole Assembly has repeated this
request."]
[Footnote 2112: Moniteur. (March 11, 1790). "A nun of St. Mandé, brought
to the bar of the house, thanks the Assembly for the decree by which
the cloisters are opened, and denounces the tricks, intrigues, and
even violence exercised in the convents to prevent the execution of
the decree."--Ibid. March 29, 1790. See the various addresses which are
read. "At Lagnon, the mother of a family assembled her ten children,
and swore with them and for them to be loyal to the nation and to
the King."--Ibid. June 5, 1790. "M. Chambroud reads the letter of the
collector of customs of Lannion, in Brittany, to a priest, a member
of the National Assembly. He implores his influence to secure the
acceptance of his civic oath and that of all his family, ready to wield
either the censer, the cart, the scales, the sword, or the pen." On
reading a number of these addresses the Assembly appears to be a
supplement of the Petites Affiches (a small advertising journal in
Paris).]
[Footnote 2113: Moniteur, October 23, 1789.]
[Footnote 2114: A well-known writer of children's stories.--
21Tr.]
[Footnote 2115: Ferrières, II. 65 (June 10,1790).--De Montlosier, I.
402. "One of these puppets came the following day to get his money
of the Comte de Billancourt, mistaking him for the Duc de Liancourt.
'Monsieur,' says he, 'I am the man who played the Chaldean yesterday.'"]
[Footnote 2116: Buchez and Roux, X. 118 (June 16, 1791).]
[Footnote 2117: See the printed list of deputies, with the indication of
their baillage or sénéchaussée, quality, condition, and profession.]
[Footnote 2118: De Bouillé, 75.--When the King first saw the list of the
deputies, he exclaimed," What would the nation have said if I had made
up my council or the Notables in this way?" (Buchez and Roux, IV. 39.)]
[Footnote 2119: Gouverneur Morris, July 31, 1789.]
[Footnote 2120: Gouverneur Morris, February 25, 1789.--Lafayette,
"Mémoires," V. 492. Letter of Jefferson, February 14, 1815.--Arthur
Young, June 27 and 29, 1789.]
[Footnote 2121: Morris, July 1, 1789.]
[Footnote 2122: Morris, July 4, 1789.]
[Footnote 2123: Mallet du Pan, Mercure, September 26, 1789.]
[Footnote 2124: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790; November 22, 1790.]
[Footnote 2125: Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]
[Footnote 2126: Sir Samuel. Romilly, "Mémoirs," I. 102. "It was their
constant course first, decree the principle and leave the drawing up
of what they had so resolved (or, as they called it, la rédaction) for
later. It is astonishing how great an influence it had on their debates
and measures".--Ibid. I. 354. Letter by Dumont, June 2, 1789. "They
prefer their own folly to all the results of British experience. They
revolt at the idea of borrowing anything from our government, which is
scoffed at here as one of the iniquities of human reason; although they
admit that you have two or three good laws; but that you should presume
to have a constitution is not to be sustained."]
[Footnote 2127: Dumont, 138, 151.]
[Footnote 2128: Morris, January 24, 1790.]
[Footnote 2129: Marmontel, XII. 265.--Ferrières,. I. 48¸ II. 50, 58,
126.--Dumont, 74.]
[Footnote 2130: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.--According to
Ferrières this party comprised about three hundred members.]
[Footnote 2131: Here Ambassador Morris describes the kind of man who
should form the backbone of all later revolutions whether communist or
fascist ones. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2132: Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]
[Footnote 2133: De Lavergne, "Les Assemblées Provinciales," 384.
Deliberations of the States of Dauphiny, drawn up by Mournier and signed
by two hundred gentlemen (July, 1788). "The rights of man are derived
from nature alone, and are independent of human conventions."]
[Footnote 2134: Report by Merlin de Douai, February 8, 1790,
p.2.--Malouet, II, 51.]
[Footnote 2135: Dumont, 133.--De Montlosier, I, 355, 361.]
[Footnote 2136: Bertrand de Molleville, II. 221 (according to a police
report).--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution," I. 215. (Report of the
agent Dutard, May 13, 1793)--Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," p.35. "It
was about midnight when we went out in the rain, sleet, and snow, in the
piercing cold, to the church of the Feuillants, to secure places for the
galleries of the Assembly, which we were not to occupy till noon on the
following day. We were obliged, moreover, to contend for them with a
crowd animated by passions, and even by interests, very different from
our own. We were not long in perceiving that a considerable part of the
galleries was under pay, and that the scenes of cruelty which gave pain
to us were joy to them. I cannot express the horror I felt on hearing
those women, since called tricoteuses, take a delight in the already
homicidal doctrines of Robespierre, enjoying his sharp voice and
feasting their eyes on his ugly face, the living type of envy." (The
first months of 1790.)]
[Footnote 2137: Moniteur, V. 237 (July 26, 1790); V. 594. (September 8,
1790); V. 631 (September 12, 1790); VI. 310 (October 6, 1790). (Letter
of the Abbé Peretti.)]
[Footnote 2138: De Ferrières, II. 75.--Moniteur, VI. 373 (September 6,
1790).--M. de Virieu. "Those who insult certain members and hinder the
freedom of debate by hooting or applause must be silenced. Is it the
three hundred spectators who are to be our judges, or the nation?" M.
Chasset, President: "Monsieur opinionist, I call you to order. You speak
of hindrances to a free vote; there has never been anything of the kind
in this Assembly."]
[Footnote 2139: Sauzay, I 140. Letter of M. Lompré, liberal deputy, to
M. Séguin, chanoine (towards the end of November, 1789). "The service
becomes more difficult every day; we have become objects of popular
fury, and, when no other resource was left to us to avoid the tempest
but to get rid of the endowments of the clergy, we yielded to force. It
had become a pressing necessity, and I should have been sorry to have
had you still here, exposed to the outrages and violence with which I
have been repeatedly threatened."]
[Footnote 2140: Mercure de France, Nos. of January 15, 1791; October 2,
1790; May 14,1791.--Buchez and Roux, V. 343 (April 13, 1790); VII.
76 (September 2, 1790); X. 225 ( June 21, 1791).--De Montlosier, I.
357.--Moniteur, IV, 427.]
[Footnote 2141: Archives of the Police, exposed by the Committee of the
district of Saint-Roch. Judgment of the Police Tribunal, May 15, 1790.]
[Footnote 2142: Malouet, II. 68.--De Montlosier, II. 217, 257 (Speech of
M. Lavie, September 18, 1791).]
[Footnote 2143: I.e. members of the old local parlements.]
[Footnote 2144: Mercure, October 1, 1791. (Article by Mallet du Pan.)]
[Footnote 2145: Malouet II. 66. "Those only who were not intimidated
by insults or threats, nor by actual blows, could come forward as
opponents."]
[Footnote 2146: Buchez and Roux, X. 432, 465.]
[Footnote 2147: Malouet, II, 153.]
[Footnote 2148: Decrees of July 23rd and 28th, 1789.--"Archives
Nationales." Papers of Committee of Investigation, passim. Among other
affairs see that of Madame de Persan (Moniteur, V. 611, sitting of
September 9, 1790), and that of Malouet ("Mémoires" II. 12).]
[Footnote 2149: Buchez and Roux, IV. 56 (Report of Garan de Coulon); V.
49 (Decision of the Committee of Investigation, December 28, 1789).]
[Footnote 2150: The arrests of M. de Riolles, M. de Bussy, etc., of
Madame de Jumilhac, of two other ladies, one at Bar-le-Duc and the other
of Nancy, etc.]
[Footnote 2151: Sitting of July 28, 1789, the speeches of Duport and
Rewbell, etc.--Mercure, No. of January 1, 1791 (article by Mallet
du Pan).--Buchez and Roux, V. 146l "Behold five or six successive
conspiracies--that of the sacks of flour, that of the sacks of money,
etc." (Article by Camille Desmoulins.)]
[Footnote 2152: "Archives de la Préfecture de Police." Extract from the
registers of the deliberations of the Conseil-Général of the district
of Saint-Roch, October 10 1789: Arrête: to request all the men in the
commune to devote themselves, with all the prudence, activity, and force
of which they are capable, to the discovery, exposure, and publication
of the horrible plots and infernal treachery which are constantly
meditated against the inhabitants of the capital; to denounce to the
public the authors, abettors, and adherents of the said plots, whatever
their rank may be; to secure their persons and insure their punishment
with all the rigor which outrages of this kind call for. The commandant
of the battalion and the district captains come daily to consult with
the committee. "While the alarm lasts, the first story of each house is
to be lighted with lamps during the night: all citizens of the district
are requested to be at home by ten o'clock in the evening at the
latest, unless they should be on duty... . All citizens are invited
to communicate whatever they may learn or discover in relation to the
abominable plots which are secretly going on in the capital."]
[Footnote 2153: Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31, 1790 ("Actes des
Apôtres," V. 56). "During these two nights (July 13th and 14th, 1789)
that we remained in session I heard one deputy try to get it believed
that an artillery corps had been ordered to point its guns against our
hall; another, that it was undermined, and that it was to be blown up;
another went so far as to declare that he smelt powder, upon which M. le
Comte de Virieu replied that power had no odor until it was burnt."]
[Footnote 2154: Dumont, 351. "Each constitutional law was a party
triumph."]
[Footnote 2155: Here Taine indicates how subversive parties may proceed
to weaken a nation prior to their take-over.(SR.)]
CHAPTER II. DESTRUCTION.
I.--Two principal vices of the ancient régime.
Two principal reforms proposed by the King and the
privileged classes.--They suffice for actual needs.--
Impracticable if carried further.
In the structure of the old society there were two fundamental vices
which called for two reforms of corresponding importance.[2201]
In the first place, those who were privileged having ceased to render
the services for which the advantages they enjoyed constituted their
compensation and their privileges were no longer anything but a
gratuitous charge imposed on one portion of the nation for the benefit
of the other. Hence the necessity for suppressing them.
In the second place, the Government, being absolute, made use of public
resources as if they were its own private property, arbitrarily and
wastefully;[2202] it was therefore necessary to impose upon it some
effective and regular restraints.
To render all citizens equal before taxation, to put the purse of the
tax-payers into the hands of their representatives, such was the twofold
operation to be carried out in 1789; and the privileged class as well
as the King willingly lent themselves to it. Not only, in this respect,
were the memorials of nobles and clergy in perfect harmony, but the
monarch himself; in his declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789, decreed
the two articles. Henceforth, every tax or loan was to obtain the
consent of the States-General; this consent was to be renewed at each
new meeting of the States; the public estimates were to be annually
published, discussed, specified, apportioned, voted on and verified by
the States; there were to be no arbitrary assessments or use of public
funds; allowances were to be specially assigned for all separate
services, the household of the King included. In each province or
district-general, there was to be an elected Provincial Assembly,
one-half composed of ecclesiastics and nobles, and the other half of
members of the Third-Estate, to apportion general taxes, to manage local
affairs, to decree and direct public works, to administer hospitals,
prisons, workhouses, and to continue its function, in the interval of
the sessions, through an intermediary commission chosen by itself; so
that, besides the principal control of the center, there were to be
thirty subordinate controlling powers at the extremities. There was
to be no more exemption or distinction in the matter of taxation; the
roadtax (covée) was to be abolished, also the right of franc-fief[2203]
imposed on plebeians; the rights of mortmain,[2204] subject to
indemnity, and internal customs duties. There was to be a reduction of
the captaincies, a modification of the salt-tax and of the excise,
the transformation of civil justice, too costly for the poor, and of
criminal justice, too severe for the humbler classes. Here we have,
besides the principal reform, equalization of taxes; the beginning and
inducement of the more complete operation which is to strike off the
last of the feudal manacles. Moreover; six weeks later, on the 4th of
August; the privileged, in an outburst of generosity, come forward
of their own accord to cut off or undo the whole of them. This double
reform thus encountered no obstacles, and, as Arthur Young reported to
his friends, it merely required one vote to have it adopted.[2205]
This was enough; for all real necessities were now satisfied. On the one
hand, through the abolition of privileges in the matter of taxation,
the burden of the peasant and, in general, on the small tax-payer
was diminished one-half, and perhaps two thirds; instead of paying
fifty-three francs on one hundred francs of net income, he paid no more
than twenty-five or even sixteen;[2206] an enormous relief, and one
which, with the proposed revision of the excise and salt duties, made a
complete change in his condition. Add to this the gradual redemption
of ecclesiastical and feudal dues: and after twenty years the peasant,
already proprietor of a fifth of the soil, would, without the violent
events of the Revolution, in any case have attained the same degree of
independence and well-being which he was to achieve by passing through
it. On the other hand, through the annual vote on the taxes, not only
were waste and arbitrariness in the employment of the public funds put
a stop to, but also the foundations of the parliamentary system of
government were laid: whoever holds the purse-strings is, or becomes,
master of the rest; henceforth in the maintenance or establishment of
any service, the assent of the States was to be necessary. Now, in the
three Chambers which the three orders were thenceforward to form, there
were two in which the plebeians predominated. Public opinion, moreover,
was on their side, while the King, the true constitutional monarch, far
from possessing the imperious inflexibility of a despot, did not now
possess the initiative of an ordinary person. Thus the preponderance
fell to the communes, and they could legally, without any collision,
execute multiply, and complete, with the aid of the prince and through
him, all useful reforms.[2207]--This was enough; for human society,
like a living body, is seized with convulsions when it is subjected to
operations on too great a scale, and these, although restricted, were
probably all that France in 1789 could endure. To equitably reorganize
afresh the whole system of direct and indirect taxation; to revise,
recast, and transfer to the frontiers the customs-tariffs; to suppress,
through negotiations and with indemnity, feudal and ecclesiastical
claims, was an operation of the greatest magnitude, and as complex as
it was delicate. Things could be satisfactorily arranged only through
minute inquiries, verified calculations, prolonged essays, and mutual
concessions. In England, in our day, a quarter of a century has been
required to bring about a lesser reform, the transformation of tithes
and manorial-rights; and time likewise was necessary for our Assemblies
to perfect their political education,[2208] to get of their theories, to
learn, by contact with practical business, and in the study of details,
the distance which separates speculation from practice; to discover that
a new system of institutions works well only through a new system of
habits, and that to decree a new system of habits is tantamount to
attempting to build an old house.--Such, however, is the work they
undertake. They reject the King's proposals, the limited reforms, the
gradual transformations. According to them, it is their right and their
duty to re-make society from top to bottom. Such is the command of pure
reason, which has discovered the Rights of Man and the conditions of the
Social Contract.
II--Nature of societies, and the principle of enduring constitutions.
Apply the Social Contract, if you like, but apply it only to those for
whom it was drawn up. These were abstract beings, belonging neither to
a period nor to a country, perfect creatures hatched out under the
magic wand of a metaphysician. They had as a matter of fact come into
existence by removing all the characteristics which distinguish one man
from another,[2209] a Frenchman from a Papuan, a modern Englishman from
a Briton in the time of Caesar, and by retaining only the part which is
common to all.[2210] The essence thus obtained is a prodigiously meager
one, an infinitely curtailed extract of human nature, that is, in the
phraseology of the day,
"A BEING WITH A DESIRE TO BE HAPPY AND THE FACULTY OF REASONING,"
nothing more and nothing else. After this pattern several million
individuals, all precisely alike, have been prepared while, through a
second simplification, as extraordinary as the first one, they are all
supposed to be free and all equal, without a past, without kindred,
without responsibility, without traditions, without customs, like so
many mathematical units, all separable and all equivalent, and then it
is imagined that, assembled together for the first time, these proceed
to make their primitive bargain. From the nature they are supposed to
possess and the situation in which they are placed, no difficulty is
found in deducing their interests, their wills, and the contract between
them. But if this contract suits them, it does not follow that it suits
others. On the contrary, if follows that is does not suit others; the
inconvenience becomes extreme on its being imposed on a living society;
the measure of that inconvenience will be the immensity of the distance
which divides a hollow abstraction, a philosophical phantom, an empty
insubstantial image from the real and complete man.
In any event we are not here considering a specimen, so reduced and
mutilated as to be only an outline of a human being; no, we are to the
contrary considering Frenchmen of the year 1789. It is for them alone
that the constitution is being made: it is therefore they alone who
should be considered; they are manifestly men of a particular species,
having their peculiar temperament, their special aptitudes, their own
inclinations, their religion, their history, all adding up into a mental
and moral structure, hereditary and deeply rooted, bequeathed to them by
the indigenous stock, and to which every great event, each political
or literary phase for twenty centuries, has added a growth, a
transformation or a custom. It is like some tree of a unique species
whose trunk, thickened by age, preserves in its annual rings and in its
knots, branches, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made
and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed.
Using the philosophic definition, so vague and trite, to such an
organism, is only a puerile label teaching us nothing.--And all the more
because extreme diversities and inequalities show themselves on this
exceedingly elaborate and complicated background,--those of age,
education, faith, class and fortune; and these must be taken into
account, for these contribute to the formation of interests, passions,
and dispositions. To take only the most important of these, it is clear
that, according to the average of human life,[2211] one-half of the
population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the
adults are women. In every twenty inhabitants eighteen are Catholic,
of whom sixteen are believers, at least through habit and tradition.
Twenty-five out of twenty-six millions of Frenchmen cannot read, one
million at the most being able to do so; and in political matters only
five or six hundred are competent. As to the condition of each class,
its ideas, its sentiments, its kind and degree of culture, we should
have to devote a large volume to a mere sketch of them.
There is still another feature and the most important of all. These men
who are so different from each other are far from being independent, or
from contracting together for the first time. They and their ancestors
for eight hundred years form a national body, and it is because they
belong to this body that they live, multiply, labor, make acquisitions,
become enlightened and civilized, and accumulate the vast heritage of
comforts and intelligence which they now enjoy. Each in this community
is like the cell of an organized body; undoubtedly the body is only
an accumulation of cells, but the cell is born, subsists, develops and
attains its individual ends only be the healthy condition of the whole
body. Its chief interest, accordingly, is the prosperity of the whole
organism, and the fundamental requirement of all the little fragmentary
lives, whether they know it or not, is the conservation of the
great total life in which they are comprised as musical notes in a
concert.--Not only is this a necessity for them, but it is also a duty.
We are all born with a debt to our country, and this debt increases
while we grow up; it is with the assistance of our country, under the
protection of the law, upheld by the authorities, that our ancestors
and parents have given us life, property, and education. Each person's
faculties, ideas, attitudes, his or her entire moral and physical being
are the products to which the community has contributed, directly or
indirectly, at least as tutor and guardian. By virtue of this the state
is his creditor, just as a destitute father is of his able-bodied son;
it can lay claim to nourishment, services, and, in all the force or
resources of which he disposes, it deservedly demands a share.--This he
knows and feels, the notion of country is deeply implanted within him,
and when occasion calls for it, it will show itself in ardent emotions,
fueling steady sacrifice and heroic effort.--Such are veritable
Frenchmen, and we at once see how different they are from the simple,
indistinguishable, detached monads which the philosophers insist on
substituting for them. Their association need not be created, for it
already exists; for eight centuries they have a "common weal" (la chose
publique). The safety and prosperity of this common weal is at once
their interest, their need, their duty, and even their most secret wish.
If it is possible to speak here of a contract, their quasi-contract is
made and settled for them beforehand. The first article, at all events,
is stipulated for, and this overrides all the others. The nation must
not be dissolved. Public authorities must, accordingly, exist, and
these must be respected. If there are a number of these, they must be
so defined and so balanced as to be of mutual assistance, instead of
neutralizing each other by their opposition. Whatever government is
adopted, it must place matters in the hands best qualified to conduct
them. The law must not exist for the advantage of the minority, nor for
that of the majority, but for the entire community.--In regard to this
first article no one must derogate from it, neither the minority nor
the majority, neither the Assembly elected by the nation, nor the nation
itself, even if unanimous. It has no right arbitrarily to dispose of the
common weal, to put it in peril according to its caprice, to subordinate
it to the application of a theory or to the interest of a single class,
even if this class is the most numerous. For, that which is the common
weal does not belong to it, but to the whole community, past, present,
and to come. Each generation is simply the temporary manager and
responsible trustee of a precious and glorious patrimony which it has
received from the former generation, and which it has to transmit to
the one that comes after it. In this perpetual endowment, to which all
Frenchmen from the first days of France have brought their offerings,
there is no doubt about the intentions of countless benefactors; they
have made their gifts conditionally, that is, on the condition that the
endowment should remain intact, and that each successive beneficiary
should merely serve as the administrator of it. Should any of the
beneficiaries, through presumption or levity, through rashness or
one-sidedness, compromise the charge entrusted to them, they wrong
all their predecessors whose sacrifices they invalidate, and all their
successors whose hopes they frustrate. Accordingly, before undertaking
to frame a constitution, let the whole community be considered in its
entirety, not merely in the present but in the future, as far as the
eye can reach. The interest of the public, viewed in this far-sighted
manner, is the end to which all the rest must be subordinate, and for
which a constitution provides. A constitution, whether oligarchic,
monarchist, or aristocratic, is simply an instrument, good if it attains
this end, and bad if it does not attain it, and which, to attain it,
must, like every species of mechanism, vary according to the ground,
materials, and circumstances. The most ingenious is illegitimate if it
dissolves the State, while the clumsiest is legitimate if it keeps the
State intact. There is none that springs out of an anterior, universal,
and absolute right. According to the people, the epoch, and the degree
of civilization, according to the outer or inner condition of things,
all civil or political equality or inequality may, in turn, be or cease
to be beneficial or hurtful, and therefore justify the legislator in
removing or preserving it. It is according to this superior and salutary
law, and not according to an imaginary and impossible contract, that he
is to organize, limit, delegate and distribute from the center to
the extremities, through inheritance or through election, through
equalization or through privilege, the rights of the citizen and the
power of the community.
III.--The estates of a society.
Political aptitude of the aristocracy.--Its disposition in
1789.--Special services which it might have rendered.--The
principle of the Assembly as to original equality.
--Rejection of an Upper Chamber.--The feudal rights of the
aristocracy.--How far and why they were worthy of respect.
--How they should have been transformed.--Principle of the
Assembly as to original liberty.--Distinction established by
it in feudal dues; application of its principle.--The
lacunae of its law.--Difficulties of redemption.--Actual
abolition of all feudal liens.--Abolition of titles and
territorial names.--Growing prejudice against the
aristocracy.--Its persecutions.--The emigration.
Was it necessary to begin by making a clean sweep, and was it advisable
to abolish or only to reform the various orders and corporations?--Two
prominent orders, the clergy and the nobles, enlarged by the ennobled
plebeians who had grown wealthy and acquired titled estates, formed a
privileged aristocracy side by side with the Government, whose favors it
might receive on the condition of seeking them assiduously and with
due acknowledgment, privileged on its own domains, and taking advantage
there of all rights belonging to the feudal chieftain without performing
his duties. This abuse was evidently an enormous one and had to
be ended. But, it did not follow that, because the position of the
privileged class on their domains and in connection with the Government
was open to abuse, they should be deprived of protection for person and
property on their domains, and of influence and occupation under the
Government.--A favored aristocracy, when it is unoccupied and renders
none of the services which its rank admits of, when it monopolizes all
honors, offices, promotions, preferences, and pensions,[2212] to the
detriment of others not less needy and deserving, is undoubtedly a
serious evil. But when an aristocracy is subject to the common law, when
it is occupied, especially when its occupation is in conformity with its
aptitudes, and more particularly when it is available for the formation
of an upper elective chamber or an hereditary peerage, it is a vast
service.--In any case it cannot be irreversibly suppressed; for,
although it may be abolished by law, it is reconstituted by facts. The
legislator must necessarily choose between two systems, that which lets
it lie fallow, or that which enables it to be productive, that which
drives it away from, or that which rallies it round, the public service.
In every society which has lived for any length of time, a nucleus of
families always exists whose fortunes and importance are of ancient
date. Even when, as in France in 1789, this class seems to be exclusive,
each half century introduces into it new families; judges, governors,
rich businessmen or bankers who have risen to the tope of the social
ladder through the wealth they have acquired or through the important
offices they have filled; and here, in the medium thus constituted, the
statesman and wise counselor of the people, the independent and able
politician is most naturally developed.--Because, on the one hand,
thanks to his fortune and his rank, a man of this class is above all
vulgar ambitions and temptations. He is able to serve gratis; he is not
obliged to concern himself about money or about providing for his family
and making his way in the world. A political mission is no interruption
to his career; he is not obliged, like the engineer, merchant, or
physician, to sacrifice either his business, his advancement, or his
clients. He can resign his post without injury to himself or to
those dependent on him, follow his own convictions, resist the noisy
deleterious opinions of the day, and be the loyal servant, not the
low flatterer of the public. Whilst, consequently, in the inferior or
average conditions of life, the incentive is self-interest, with him the
grand motive is pride. Now, amongst the deeper feelings of man there is
none which is more adapted for transformation into probity, patriotism,
and conscientiousness; for the first requisite of the high-spirited
man is self-respect, and, to obtain that, he is induced to deserve it.
Compare, from this point of view, the gentry and nobility of England
with the "politicians" of the United States.--On the other hand,
with equal talents, a man who belongs to this sphere of life enjoys
opportunities for acquiring a better comprehension of public affairs
than a poor man of the lower classes. The information he requires is
not the erudition obtained in libraries and in private study. He must
be familiar with living men, and, besides these, with agglomerations
of men, and even more with human organizations, with States, with
Governments, with parties, with administrative systems, at home and
abroad, in full operation and on the spot. There is but one way to reach
this end, and that is to see for himself, with his own eyes, at once
in general outline and in details, by intercourse with the heads of
departments, with eminent men and specialists, in whom are gathered up
the information and the ideas of a whole class. Now the young do not
frequent society of this description, either at home or abroad, except
on the condition of possessing a name, family, fortune, education and a
knowledge of social observances. All this is necessary to enable a
young man of twenty to find doors everywhere open to him to be received
everywhere on an equal footing, to be able to speak and to write three
or four living languages, to make long, expensive, and instructive
sojourns in foreign lands, to select and vary his position in the
different branches of the public service, without pay or nearly so, and
with no object in view but that of his political culture Thus brought up
a man, even of common capacity, is worthy of being consulted. If he is
of superior ability, and there is employment for him, he may become a
statesman before thirty; he may acquire ripe capacities, become prime
Minister, the sole pilot, alone able, like Pitt, Canning, or Peel, to
steer the ship of State between the reefs, or give in the nick of time
the touch to the helm which will save the ship.--Such is the service to
which an upper class is adapted. Only this kind of specialized stud farm
can furnish a regular supply of racers, and, now and then, the favorite
winner that distances all his competitors in the European field.
But in order that they may prepare and educate themselves for this
career, the way must be clear, and they must not be compelled to travel
too repulsive a road. If rank, inherited fortune, personal dignity, and
refined manners are sources of disfavor with the people; if, to obtain
their votes, he is forced to treat as equals electoral brokers of low
character; if impudent charlatanism, vulgar declamation, and servile
flattery are the sole means by which votes can be secured, then, as
nowadays in the United States, and formerly in Athens, the aristocratic
body will retire into private life and soon settle down into a state
of idleness. A man of culture and refinement, born with an income of a
hundred thousand a year, is not tempted to become either manufacturer,
lawyer, or physician. For want of other occupation he loiters about,
entertains his friends, chats, indulges in the tastes and hobbies of an
amateur, is bored or enjoys himself. As a result one of society's great
forces is thus lost to the nation. In this way the best and largest
acquisition of the past, the heaviest accumulation of material and
of moral capital, remain unproductive. In a pure democracy the upper
branches of the social tree, not only the old ones but the young ones,
remain sterile. When a vigorous branch passes above the rest and
reaches the top it ceases to bear fruit. The élite of the nation is thus
condemned to constant and irremediable failures because it cannot find
a suitable outlet for its activity. It wants no other outlet, for in all
directions its rival, who are born below it, can serve as usefully and
as well as itself. But this one it must have, for on this its aptitudes
are superior, natural, unique, and the State which refuses to employ
it resembles the gardener who in his fondness for a plane surface would
repress his best shoots.[2213]--Hence, in the constructions which aim to
utilize the permanent forces of society and yet maintain civil equality,
the aristocracy is brought to take a part in public affairs by the
duration and gratuitous character of its mission, by the institution of
an hereditary character, by the application of various machinery, all
of which is combined so as to develop the ambition, the culture, and
the political capacity of the upper class, and to place power, or the
control of power, in its hands, on the condition that it shows itself
worthy of exercising it.--Now, in 1789, the upper class was not unworthy
of it. Members of the parliaments, the noblemen, bishops, capitalists,
were the men amongst whom, and through whom, the philosophy of the
eighteenth century was propagated. Never was an aristocracy more
liberal, more humane, and more thoroughly converted to useful
reforms;[2214] many of them remain so under the knife of the guillotine.
The magistrates of the superior tribunals, in particular, traditionally
and by virtue of their institution, were the enemies of excessive
expenditure and the critics of arbitrary acts. As to the gentry of the
provinces, "they were so weary," says one of them,[2215] "of the Court
and the Ministers that most of them were democrats." For many years,
in the Provincial Assemblies, the whole of the upper class, the clergy,
nobles, and Third-Estate, furnishes abundant evidence of its good
disposition, of its application to business, its capacity and even
generosity. Its mode of studying, discussing, and assigning the local
taxation indicates what it would have done with the general budget had
this been entrusted to it. It is evident that it would have protected
the general taxpayer as zealously as the taxpayer of the province,
and kept as close an eye upon the public purse at Paris as on that of
Bourges or of Montauban.--Thus were the materials of a good chamber
ready at hand, and the only thing that had to be done was to convene
them. On having the facts presented to them, its members would have
passed without difficulty from a hazardous theory to common-sense
practice, and the aristocracy which had enthusiastically given an
impetus to reform in its saloons would, in all probability, have carried
it out effectively and with moderation in the Parliament.
Unhappily, the Assembly is not providing a Constitution for contemporary
Frenchmen, but for abstract beings. Instead of seeing classes in society
one placed above the other, it simply sees individuals in juxtaposition;
its attention is not fixed on the advantage of the nation, but on the
imaginary rights of man. As all men are equal, all must have an equal
share in the government. There must be no orders in a State, no avowed
or concealed political privileges, no constitutional complications or
electoral combinations by which an aristocracy, however liberal and
capable, may put its hands upon any portion of the public power.--On
the contrary, because it was once privileged to enjoy important and
rewarding public employment, the candidacy of the upper classes is now
suspect. All projects which, directly or indirectly, reserve or provide
a place for it, are refused: At first the Royal Declaration, which, in
conformity with historical precedents, maintained the three orders in
three distinct chambers, and only summoned them to deliberate together
"on matters of general utility." Then the plan of the Constitutional
Committee, which proposed a second Chamber, appointed for life by the
King on the nomination of the Provincial Assemblies. And finally the
project of Mounier who proposed to confide to these same Assemblies the
election of a Senate for six years, renewed by thirds every two years.
This Senate was to be composed of men of at least thirty-five years of
age, and with an income in real property of 30,000 livres per annum. The
instinct of equality is too powerful and a second Chamber is not wanted,
even if accessible to plebeians. Through it,[2216]
"The smaller number would control the greater;"... "we should fall
back on the humiliating distinctions" of the ancient regime; "we should
revivify the germ of an aristocracy which must be exterminated."....
"Moreover, whatever recalls or revives feudal Institutions is bad, and
an Upper Chamber is one of its remnants." ...."If the English have
one, it is because they have been forced to make a compromise with
prejudice."
The National Assembly, sovereign and philosophic, soars above their
errors, their trammel; and their example. The depository of truth, it
has not to receive lessons from others, but to give them, and to offer
to the world's admiration the first type of a Constitution which is
perfect and in conformity with principle, the most effective of any in
preventing the formation of a governing class; in closing the way to
public business, not only to the old noblesse, but to the aristocracy
of the future; in continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute
monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators;
in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing
or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise
themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in
which the State recruits its statesmen.[2217]
Excluded from the Government, the aristocracy is about to retire
into private life. Let us follow them to their estates: Feudal rights
instituted for a barbarous State are certainly a great draw-back in a
modern State. If appropriate in an epoch when property and sovereignty
were fused together, when the Government was local, when life was
militant, they form an incongruity at a time when sovereignty and
property are separated, when the Government is centralized, when the
regime is a pacific one. The bondage which, in the tenth century,
was necessary to re-established security and agriculture, is, in the
eighteenth century, purposeless thralldom which impoverishes the soil
and fetters the peasant. But, because these ancient claims are liable
to abuse and injurious at the present day, it does not follow that they
never were useful and legitimate, nor that it is allowable to abolish
them without indemnity On the contrary, for many centuries, and, on
the whole, so long as the lord of the manor resided on his estates this
primitive contract was advantageous to both parties, and to such an
extent that it has led to the modern contract. Thanks to the pressure of
this tight bandage, the broken fragments of the community can be
again united, and society once more recover its solidity, force,
and activity.--In any event, that the institution, like all human
institutions, took its rise in violence and was corrupted by abuses is
of little consequence; the State, for eight hundred years, recognized
these feudal claims, and, with its own consent and the concurrence of
its Courts, they were transmitted, bequeathed, sold, mortgaged, and
exchanged, like any other species of property. Only two or three
hundred, at most, now remained in the families of the original
proprietors. "The largest portion of the titled estates," says a
contemporary,[2218] "have become the property of capitalists, merchants,
and their descendants; the fiefs, for the most part, being in the
hands of the bourgeois of the towns." All the fiefs which, during two
centuries past, have been bought by new men, now represent the economy
and labor of their purchasers.--Moreover; whoever the actual holders
may be, whether old or whether new men, the State is under obligation to
them, not only by general right--and because, from the beginning, it
is in its nature the guardian of all property,--but also by a special
right, because it has itself sanctioned this particular species of
property. The buyers of yesterday paid their money only under its
guarantee; its signature is affixed to the contract, and it has bound
itself to secure to them the enjoyment of it. If it prevents them
from doing so, let it make them compensation; in default of the thing
promised to them, it owes them the value of it. Such is the law in cases
of expropriation for public utility; in 1834, for instance, the English,
for the legal abolition of slavery, paid to their planters the sum of
£20,000,000. --But that is not sufficient: when, in the suppression
of feudal rights, the legislator's thoughts are taken up with the
creditors, he has only half performed his task; there are two sides to
the question, and he must likewise think of the debtors. If he is
not merely a lover of abstractions and of fine phrases, if that which
interests him is men and not words, if he is bent upon the effective
enfranchisement of the cultivator of the soil, he will not rest content
with proclaiming a principle, with permitting the redemption of rents,
with fixing the rate of redemption, and, in case of dispute, with
sending parties before the tribunals. He will reflect that the
peasantry, jointly responsible for the same debt will find difficulty
in agreeing among themselves; that they are afraid of litigation; that,
being ignorant, they will not know how to set about it; that, being
poor, they will be unable to pay; and that, under the weight of discord,
distrust, indigence, and inertia, the new law will remain a dead letter,
and only exasperate their cupidity or kindle their resentment. In
anticipation of this disorder the legislator will come to their
assistance; he will interpose commissions of arbitration between them
and the lord of the manor; he will substitute a scale of annuities for a
full and immediate redemption; he will lend them the capital which they
cannot borrow elsewhere; he will establish a bank, rights, and a mode of
procedure,--in short, as in Savoy in 1771, in England in 1845,[2219] and
in Russia in 1861, he will relieve the poor without despoiling the rich;
he will establish liberty without violating the rights of property; he
will conciliate interests and classes; he will not let loose a brutal
peasant revolt (Jacquerie) to enforce unjust confiscation; and he will
terminate the social conflict not with strife but with peace.
It is just the reverse in 1789 In conformity with the doctrine of the
social contract, the principle is set up that every man is born free,
and that his freedom has always been inalienable. If he formerly
submitted to slavery or to serfdom, it was owing to his having had a
knife at his throat; a contract of this sort is essentially null and
void. So much the worse for those who have the benefit of it at the
present day; they are holders of stolen property, and must restore it to
the legitimate owners. Let no one object that this property was acquired
for cash down, and in good faith; they ought to have known beforehand
that man and his liberty are not commercial matters, and that unjust
acquisitions rightly perish in their hands.[2220] Nobody dreams that
the State which was a party to this transaction is the responsible
guarantor. Only one scruple affects the Assembly; its jurists and
Merlin, its reporter, are obliged to yield to proof; they know that
in current practice, and by innumerable ancient and modern titles, the
noble in many cases is nothing but an ordinary lessor, and that if, in
those cases, he collects his dues, it is simply in his capacity as a
private person, by virtue of a mutual contract, because he has given a
perpetual lease of a certain portion of his land; and he has given
it only in consideration of an annual payment in money or produce, or
services, together with another contingent claim which the farmer pays
in case of the transmission of the lease. These two obligations could
not be canceled without indemnity; if it were done, more than one-half
of the proprietors in France would be dispossessed in favor of the
farmers. Hence the distinction which the Assembly makes in the feudal
dues.--On the one hand it abolishes without indemnity all those dues
which the noble receives by virtue of being the local sovereign, the
ancient proprietor of persons and the usurper of public powers; all
those which the lessee paid as serf, subject to rights of inheritance,
and as former vassal or dependent. On the other hand, it maintains
and decrees as redeemable at a certain rate all those which the noble
receives through his title of landed proprietor and of simple lessor;
all those which the lessee pays by virtue of being a free contracting
party, former purchaser, tenant, farmer or grantee of landed estate.--By
this division it fancies that it has respected lawful ownership by
overthrowing illegitimate property, and that in the feudal scheme of
obligations, it has separated the wheat from the chaff.[2221]
But, through the principle, the drawing up and the omissions of its
law, it condemns both to a common destruction; the fire on which it has
thrown the chaff necessarily burns up the wheat.--Both are in fact bound
up together in the same sheaf. If the noble formerly brought men under
subjection by the sword, it is also by the sword that he formerly
acquired possession of the soil. If the subjection of persons is invalid
on account of the original stain of violence, the usurpation of the soil
is invalid for the same reason. And if the sanction and guarantee of
the State could not justify the first act of brigandage, they could not
justify the second; and, since the rights which are derived from unjust
sovereignty are abolished without indemnity, the rights which are
derived from unjust proprietorship should be likewise abolished without
compensation.----The Assembly, with remarkable imprudence, had declared
in the preamble to its law that "it abolished the feudal system
entirely," and, whatever its ulterior reservations might be, the fiat
has gone forth. The forty thousand sovereign municipalities to which the
text of the decree is read pay attention only to the first article, and
the village attorney, imbued with the rights of man, easily proves to
these assemblies of debtors that they owe nothing to their creditors.
There must be no exceptions nor distinctions: no more annual rents,
field-rents, dues on produce, nor contingent rents, nor lord's dues and
fines, or fifths.[2222] If these have been maintained by the Assembly,
it is owing to misunderstanding, timidity, inconsistency, and on all
sides, in the rural districts, the grumbling of disappointed greed or of
unsatisfied necessities is heard:[2223]
"You thought that you were destroying feudalism, while your redemption
laws have done just the contrary. . . . Are you not aware that what was
called a Seigneur was simply an unpunished usurper? . . . That detestable
decree of 1790 is the ruin of lease-holders. It has thrown the villages
into a state of consternation. The nobles reap all the advantage of
it. . . Never will redemption be possible. Redemption of unreal claims!
Redemption of dues that are detestable!"
In vain the Assembly insists, specifies and explains by examples and
by detailed instructions the mode of procedure and the conditions of
redemption. Neither the procedure nor its conditions are practicable. It
has made no provisions for facilitating the agreement of parties and
the satisfaction of feudal liens, no special arbitrators, nor bank for
loans, nor system of annuities. And worse still, instead of clearing the
road it has barred it by legal arrangements. The lease-holder is not
to redeem his annual rent without at the same time compounding for the
contingent rent: he is not allowed on his own to redeem his quota since
he is tied up in solidarity with the other partners. Should his hoard
be a small one, so much the worse for him. Not being able to redeem the
whole, he is not allowed to redeem a part. Not having the money with
which to relieve himself from both ground-rents and lord's dues he
cannot relieve himself from ground-rents. Not having the money to
liquidate the debt in full of those who are bound along with him-self,
he remains a captive in his ancient chains by virtue of the new law
which announces to him his freedom.
In the face of these unexpected trammels the peasant becomes furious:
His fixed idea, from the outbreak of the Revolution, is that he no
longer owes anything to anybody, and, among the speeches, decrees,
proclamations, and instructions which rumor brings to his ears, he
comprehends but one phrase, and is determined to comprehend no other,
and that is, that henceforth his obligations are removed. He does not
swerve from this, and since the law hinders, instead of aiding him, he
will break the law. In fact, after the 4th of August, 1789, feudal dues
cease to be collected. The claims which are maintained are not enforced
any more than those which are suppressed. Whole communities come and
give notice to the lord of the manor that they will not pay any more
rent. Others, with sword in hand, compel him to give them acquittances.
Others again, to be more secure, break open his safe, and throw his
title-deeds into the fire.[2224] Public force is nowhere strong enough
to protect him in his legal rights. Officers dare not serve writs, the
courts dare not give judgment, administrative bodies dare not decree in
his favor. He is despoiled through the connivance, the neglect, or
the impotence of all the authorities which ought to defend him. He is
abandoned to the peasants who fell his forests, under the pretext that
they formerly belonged to the commune; who take possession of his
mill, his wine-press, and his oven, under the pretext that territorial
privileges are suppressed.[2225] Most of the gentry of the provinces are
ruined, without any resource, and have not even their daily bread; for
their income consisted in seignorial rights, and in rents derived from
their real property, which they had let on perpetual leases, and now,
in accordance with the law, one-half of this income ceases to be paid,
while the other half ceases to be paid in spite of the law. One hundred
and twenty-three millions of revenue, representing two thousand millions
and a half of capital in the money of that time, double, at least, that
of the present day, thus passes as a gift, or through the toleration of
the National Assembly, from the hands of creditors into those of their
debtors. To this must be added an equal sum for revenue and capital
arising from the tithes which are suppressed without compensation, and
by the same stroke.--This is the commencement of the great revolutionary
operation, that is to say, of the universal bankruptcy which, directly
or indirectly, is to destroy all contracts, and abolish all debts in
France. Violations of property, especially of private property, cannot
be made with impunity. The Assembly desired to lop off only the
feudal branch; but, in admitting that the State can annul, without
compensation, the obligations which it has guaranteed, it put the ax to
the root of the tree, and other rougher hands are already driving it in
up to the haft.
Nothing now remains to the noble but his title, his territorial name,
and his armorial bearings, which are innocent distinctions, since they
no longer confer any jurisdiction or pre-eminence upon him, and which,
as the law ceases to protect him, the first comer may borrow with
impunity. Not only, moreover, do they do no harm, but they are even
worthy of respect. With many of the nobles the title of the estate
covers the family name, the former alone being made use of. If one
were substituted for the other, the public would have difficulty in
discovering M. de Mirabeau, Lafayette, and M. de Moutmorency, under the
new names Riquetti, M. Mottié, and M. Bouchard. Besides, it would be
wrong to the bearer of it, to whom the abolished title is a legitimate
possession, often precious, it being a certificate of quality and
descent, an authentic personal distinction of which he cannot be
deprived without losing his position, rank, and worth, in the human
world around him.--The Assembly, however, with a popular principle
at stake, gives no heed to public utility, nor to the rights of
individuals. The feudal system being abolished, all that remains of
it must be got rid of. A decree is passed that "hereditary nobility is
offensive to reason and to true liberty;" that, where it exists, "there
is no political equality."[2226] Every French citizen is forbidden to
assume or retain the titles of prince, duke, count, marquis, chevalier,
and the like, and to bear any other than the "true name of his family;"
he is prohibited from making his servants wear liveries, and from having
coats-of-arms on his house or on his carriage. In case of any infraction
of this law a penalty is inflicted upon him equal to six times the sum
of his personal taxes; he is to be struck off the register of citizens,
and declared incapable of holding any civil or military office. There
is the same punishment if to any contract or acquittance he affixes his
accustomed signature; if; through habit or inadvertence, he adds the
title of his estate to his family name--if; with a view to recognition,
and to render his identity certain, he merely mentions that he once bore
the former name. Any notary or public officer who shall write, or allow
to be written, in any document the word ci-devant (formerly) is to be
suspended from his functions. Not only are old names thus abolished, but
an effort is made to efface all remembrance of them. In a little while,
the childish law will become a murderous one. It will be but a little
while and, according to the terms of this same decree, a military
veteran of seventy-seven years, a loyal servant of the Republic, and a
brigadier-general under the Convention, will be arrested on returning to
his native village, because he has mechanically signed the register of
the revolutionary committee as Montperreux instead of Vannod, and, for
this infraction, he will be guillotined along with his brother and his
sister-in-law.[2227]
Once on this road, it is impossible to stop; for the principles which
are proclaimed go beyond the decrees which are passed, and a bad law
introduces a worse. The Constituent Assembly[2228] had supposed that
annual dues, like ground-rents, and contingent dues, like feudal duties
(lods et rentes), were the price of an ancient concession of land, and,
consequently, the proof to the contrary is to be thrown upon the tenant.
The Legislative Assembly is about to assume that these same rentals
are the result of an old feudal usurpation, and that, consequently, the
proof to the contrary must rest with the proprietor. His rights cannot
be established by possession from time immemorial, nor by innumerable
and regular acquittances; he must produce the act of enfeoffment which
is many centuries old, the lease which has never, perhaps, been written
out, the primitive title already rare in 1720,[2229] and since stolen
or burnt in the recent jacqueries: otherwise he is despoiled without
indemnity. All feudal claims are swept away by this act without
exception and without compensation.
In a similar manner, the Constituent Assembly, setting common law aside
in relation to inheritances ab intestato, had deprived all eldest sons
and males of any advantages.[2230] The Convention, suppressing the
freedom of testamentary bequest, prohibits the father from disposing
of more than one-tenth of his possessions; and again, going back to the
past, it makes its decrees retrospective: every will opened after the
14th of July, 1789, is declared invalid if not in conformity with
this decree; every succession from the 14th of June, 1789, which is
administered after the same date, is re-divided if the division has not
been equal; every donation which has been made among the heirs after the
same date is void. Not only is the feudal family destroyed in this way,
but it must never be reformed. The aristocracy, being once declared a
venomous plant, it is not sufficient to prime it away, but it must be
extirpated, not only dug up by the root, but its seed must be crushed
out.--A malignant prejudice is aroused against it, and this grows from
day to day. The stings of self-conceit, the disappointments of ambition,
and envious sentiments have prepared the way. Its hard, dry kernel
consists of the abstract idea of equality. All around revolutionary
fervor has caused blood to flow, has embittered tempers, intensified
sensibilities, and created a painful abscess which daily irritation
renders still more painful. Through steadily brooding over a purely
speculative preference this has become a fixed idea, and is becoming
a murderous one. It is a strange passion, one wholly of the brains,
nourished by magniloquent phrases, but the more destructive, because
phantoms are created out of words, and against phantoms no reasoning nor
actual facts can prevail. This or that shopkeeper who, up to this time,
had always formed his idea of nobles from his impressions of the members
of the Parliament of his town or of the gentry of his canton, now
pictures them according to the declamations of the club and the
invectives of the newspapers. The imaginary figure, in his mind, has
gradually absorbed the living figure: he no longer sees the calm and
engaging countenance, but a grinning and distorted mask. Kindliness or
indifference is replaced by animosity and distrust; they are overthrown
tyrants, ancient evil-doers, And enemies of the public; he is satisfied
beforehand and without further investigation that they are hatching
plots. If they avoid being caught, it is owing to their address and
perfidy, and they are only the more dangerous the more inoffensive
they appear. Their sub-mission is merely a feint, their resignation
hypocrisy, their favorable disposition, treachery. Against these
conspirators who cannot be touched the law is inadequate; let us stretch
it in practice, and as they wince at equality let us try to make them
bow beneath the yoke.
In fact, illegal persecution precedes legal prosecution; the privileged
person who, by the late decrees, seems merely to be brought within the
pale of the common law, is, in fact; driven outside of it. The King,
disarmed, is no longer able to protect him; the partial Assembly repels
his complaints; the committee of inquiry regards him as a culprit
when he is simply oppressed. His income, his property, his repose, his
freedom, his home, his life, that of his wife and of his children, are
in the hands of an administration elected by the crowd, directed by
clubs, and threatened or violated by the mob. He is debarred from the
elections. The newspapers denounce him. He undergoes domiciliary
visits. In hundreds of places his chateau is sacked; the assassins and
incendiaries who depart from it with their hands full and steeped in
blood are not prosecuted, or are shielded by an amnesty:[2231] it is
established by innumerable precedents that he may be run down with
impunity. To prevent him from defending himself, companies of the
National Guard come and seize his arms: he must become a prey, and
an easy prey, like game kept back in its enclosure for an approaching
hunt.--In vain he abstains from provocation and reduces himself to
the standing of a private individual. In vain does he patiently endure
numerous provocations and resist only extreme violence. I have read
many hundreds of investigations in the original manuscripts, and almost
always I have admired the humanity of the nobles, their forbearance,
their horror of bloodshed. Not only are a great many of them men of
courage and all men of honor, but also, educated in the philosophy of
the eighteenth century, they are mild, sensitive, and deeds of violence
are repugnant to them. Military officers especially are exemplary, their
great defect being their weakness: rather than fire on the crowd they
surrender the forts under their command, and allow themselves to be
insulted and stoned by the people. For two years,[2232] "exposed to a
thousand outrages, to defamation, to daily peril, persecuted by clubs
and misguided soldiers," disobeyed, menaced, put under arrest by their
own men, they remain at their post to prevent the ranks from being
broken up; "with stoic perseverance they put up with contempt of their
authority that they may preserve its semblance, their courage is of that
rarest kind which consists in remaining at the post of duty, impassive
beneath both affronts and blows.--Through a wrong of the greatest
magnitude, an entire class which have no share in the favors of
the Court, and which suffered as many injuries as any of the common
plebeians, is confounded with the titled parasites who besiege the
antechambers of Versailles. Twenty-five thousand families, "the nursery
of the army and the fleet," the elite of the agricultural proprietors,
also many gentlemen who look after and turn to account the little
estates on which they live, and "who have not left their homes a year in
their lives," become the pariahs of their canton.[2233] After 1789, they
begin to feel that their position is no longer tenable.[2234]
" It is absolutely in opposition to the rights of man," says another
letter from Franche-Comté, "to find one's self in perpetual fear of
having one's throat cut by scoundrels who are daily confounding liberty
with license."
"I never knew anything so wearying," says another letter from Champagne,
"as this anxiety about property and security. Never was there a better
reason for it. A moment suffices to let loose an intractable population
which thinks that it may do what it pleases, and which is carefully
sustained in that error."
"After the sacrifices that we have made," says a letter from Burgundy,
"we could not expect such treatment. I thought that our property would
be the last violated because the people owed us some return for staying
at home in the country to expend among them the few resources that
remain to us. . . (Now), I beg the Assembly to repeal the decree on
emigration; otherwise it may be said that people are purposely kept here
to be assassinated. . . In case it should refuse to do us this justice,
I should be quite as willing to have it decree an act of proscription
against us, for we should not then be lulled to sleep by the protection
of laws which are doubtless very wise, but which are not respected
anywhere."
" It is not our privileges," say several others, "it is not our nobility
that we regret; but how is the persecution to which we are abandoned to
be supported? There is no safety for us, for our property, or for our
families. Wretches who are our debtors, the small farmers who rob us of
our incomes, daily threaten us with the torch and the lamp post. We do
not enjoy one hour of repose; not a night that we are certain to
pass through without trouble. Our persons are given up to the vilest
outrages, our dwellings to an inquisition of armed tyrants; we are
robbed of our rentals with impunity, and our property is openly
attacked. We, being now the only people to pay imposts, are unfairly
taxed; in various places our entire incomes would not suffice to pay
the quota which crushes us. We can make no complaint without incurring
the risk of being massacred. The tribunals and the administrative
bodies, the tools of the multitude, daily sacrifice us to its attacks.
Even the Government seems afraid of compromising itself by claiming the
protection of the laws on our behalf. It is sufficient to be pointed
out as an aristocrat to be without any security. If our peasants, in
general, have shown more honesty, consideration, and attachment toward
us, every bourgeois of importance, the wild members of clubs, the vilest
of men who sully a uniform, consider themselves privileged to insult us,
and these wretches go unpunished and are protected! Even our religion
is not free. One of our number has had his house sacked for having shown
hospitality to an old curé of eighty belonging to his parish who refused
to take the oath. Such is our fate. We are not so base as to endure it.
Our right to resist oppression is not due to a decree of the National
Assembly, but to natural law. We are going to leave, and to die if
necessary. But to live under such a revolting anarchy! Should it not be
broken up we shall never set foot in France again!"
The operation is successful. The Assembly, through its decrees and
institutions, through the laws it enacts and the violence which it
tolerates, has uprooted the aristocracy and cast it out of the country.
The nobles, now the reverse of privileged, cannot remain in a country
where, while respecting the law, they are really beyond its pale. Those
who first emigrated on the 15th of July, 1789, along with the Prince de
Condé, received at their houses the evening before they left a list of
the proscribed on which their names appeared, and a reward was
promised to whoever would bring their heads to the cellar of the
Palais-Royal--Others, in larger numbers, left after the occurrences
of the 6th of October.--During the last months of the Constituent
Assembly,[2235]
"the emigration goes on in companies composed of men of every condition.
. . . Twelve hundred gentlemen have left Poitou alone; Auvergne,
Limousin, and ten other provinces have been equally depopulated of their
landowners. There are towns in which nobody remains but common workmen,
a club, and the crowd of devouring office-holders created by the
Constitution. All the nobles in Brittany have left, and the emigration
has begun in Normandy, and is going on in the frontier provinces.
"More than two-thirds of the army will be without officers." On being
called upon to take the new oath in which the King's name is purposely
omitted, "six thousand officers send in their resignation."
The example gradually becomes contagious; they are men of the sword, and
their honor is at stake. Many of them join the princes at Coblentz,
and subsequently do battle against France in the belief that they are
contending only against their executioners.
The treatment of the nobles by the Assembly is the same as the treatment
of the Protestants by Louis XIV.[2236] In both cases the oppressed are a
superior class of men. In both cases France has been made uninhabitable
for them. In both cases they are reduced to exile, and they are
punished because they exiled them selves. In both cases it ended in a
confiscation of their property, and in the penalty of death to all who
should harbor them. In both cases, by dint of persecution, they are
driven to revolt. The insurrection of La Vendée corresponds with the
insurrection of the Cévennes; and the emigrants, like the refugees of
former times, will be found under the flags of Prussia and of England.
One hundred thousand Frenchmen driven out at the end of the seventeenth
century, and one hundred thousand driven out at the end of the
eighteenth century! Mark how an intolerant democracy completes the work
of an intolerant monarchy. The moral aristocracy was mowed down in the
name of uniformity; the social aristocracy is mowed down in the name of
equality. For the second time, an absolute principle, and with the same
effect, buries its blade in the heart of a living society.
The success is complete. One of the deputies of the Legislative
Assembly, early in its session, on being informed of the great increase
in emigration, joyfully exclaims,
"SO MUCH THE BETTER; FRANCE IS BEING PURGED!"
She is, in truth, being depleted of one-half of her best blood.
IV.--Abuse and lukewarmness in 1789 in the ecclesiastical bodies.
How the State used its right of overseeing and reforming
them.--Social usefulness of corporations.--The sound part in
the monastic institution.--Zeal and services of nuns.--How
ecclesiastical possessions should be employed.--Principle of
the Assembly as to private communities, feudal rights and
trust-funds.--Abolition and expropriation all corporations.
--Uncompensated suppression of tithes.--Confiscation of
ecclesiastical possessions.--Effect on the Treasury and on
expropriated services.--The civil constitution of the
clergy.--Rights of the Church in relation to the State.
--Certainty and effects of a conflict.--Priests considered as
State-functionaries.--Principal stipulations of the law.
--Obligations of the oath.--The majority of priests refuse to
take it.--The majority of believes on their side.
--Persecution of believers and of priests.
There remained the corporate, ecclesiastic, and lay bodies, and,
notably, the oldest, most opulent, and most considerable of all the
regular and secular clergy.--Grave abuses existed here also, for, the
institution being founded on ancient requirements, had not accommodated
itself to new necessities.[2237] There were too many episcopal sees,
and these were arranged according to the Christian distribution of
the population in the fourth century; a revenue still more badly
apportioned--bishops and abbés with one hundred thousand livres a year,
leading the lives of amiable idlers, while curés, overburdened with
work, have but seven hundred; in one monastery nineteen monks instead
of eighty, and in another four instead of fifty;[2238] a number of
monasteries reduced to three or to two inhabitants, and even to one;
almost all the congregations of men going to decay, and many of them
dying out for lack of novices;[2239] a general lukewarmness among the
members, great laxity in many establishments, and with scandals in some
of them; scarcely one-third taking an interest in their calling, while
the remaining two-thirds wish to go back to the world,[2240]--it is
evident from all this that the primitive inspiration has been diverted
or has cooled; that the endowment only partially fulfills its ends;
that one-half of its resources are employed in the wrong way or
remain sterile; in short, that there is a need of reformation in the
body.--That this ought to be effected with the co-operation of the State
and even under its direction is not less certain. For a corporation
is not an individual like other individuals, and, in order that it may
acquire or possess the privileges of an ordinary citizen, something
supplementary must be added, some fiction, some expedient of the law.
If the law is disposed to overlook the fact that a corporation is not a
natural personage, if it gives to it a civil personality, if it declares
it to be capable of inheriting, of acquiring and of selling, if it
becomes a protected and respected proprietor, this is due to the favors
of the State which places its tribunal and gendarmes at its service, and
which, in exchange for this service, justly imposes conditions on it,
and, among others, that of being useful and remaining useful, or at
least that of never becoming harmful. Such was the rule under the
Ancient Régime, and especially since the Government has for the last
quarter of a century gradually and efficaciously worked out a reform.
Not only, in 1749, had it prohibited the Church from accepting land,
either by donation, by testament, or in exchange, without royal
letters-patent registered in Parliament; not only in 1764 had it
abolished the order of Jesuits, closed their colleges and sold their
possessions, but also, since 1766, a permanent commission, formed by
the King's order and instructed by him, had lopped off all the dying and
dead branches of the ecclesiastical tree.[2241] There was a revision of
the primitive Constitutions; a prohibition to every institution to have
more than two monasteries at Paris and more than one in other towns; a
postponement of the age for taking vows--that of sixteen being no longer
permitted--to twenty-one for men and eighteen for women; an obligatory
minimum of monks and nuns for each establishment, which varies from
fifteen to nine according to circumstances; if this is not kept up there
follows a suppression or prohibition to receive novices: owing to
these measures, rigorously executed, at the end of twelve years
"the Grammontins, the Servites, the Celestins, the ancient order of
Saint-Bénédict, that of the Holy Ghost of Montpellier, and those
of Sainte-Brigitte, Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, Saint-Ruff, and
Saint-Antoine,"--in short, nine complete congregations had disappeared.
At the end of twenty years three hundred and eighty-six establishments
had been suppressed, the number of monks and nuns had diminished
one-third, the larger portion of possessions which had escheated were
usefully applied, and the congregations of men lacked novices and
complained that they could not fill up their ranks. If the monks were
still found to be too numerous, too wealthy, and too indolent, it was
merely necessary to keep on in this way; before the end of the century,
merely by the application of the edict, the institution would be
brought back, without brutality or injustice, within the scope of the
development, the limitations of fortune, and the class of functions
acceptable to a modern State.
But, because these ecclesiastical bodies stood in need of reform it does
not follow that it was necessary to destroy them, nor, in general,
that independent institutions are detrimental to a nation. Organized
purposely for a public service, and possessing, nearly or remotely under
the supervision of the State, the faculty of self-administration, these
bodies are valuable organs and not malign tumors.
In the first place, through their institution, a great public benefit
is secured without any cost to the government--worship, scientific
research, primary or higher education, help for the poor, care of the
sick--all set apart and sheltered from the cuts which public financial
difficulties might make necessary, and supported by the private
generosity which, finding a ready receptacle at hand, gathers together,
century after century, its thousands of scattered springs: as an
example, note the wealth, stability, and usefulness of the English and
German universities.
In the second place, their institution furnishes an obstacle to the
omnipotence of the State; their walls provide a protection against the
leveling standardization of absolute monarchy or of pure democracy. A
man can here freely develop himself without donning the livery of
either courtier or demagogue, he can acquire wealth, consideration and
authority, without being indebted to the caprices of either royal or
popular favor; he can stand firm against established or prevailing
opinions sheltered by associates bound by their esprit de corps. Such,
at the present day (1885), is the situation of a professor at Oxford,
Göttingen, and Harvard Such, under the Ancient Régime, were a bishop, a
member of the French Parliaments, and even a plain attorney. What can
be worse than universal bureaucracy, producing a mechanical and servile
uniformity! Those who serve the public need not all be Government
clerks; in countries where an aristocracy has perished, bodies of this
kind are their last place of refuge.
In the third place, through such institutions, distinct original
societies may come to be inside the great commonplace world. Here
special personalities may find the only existence that suits them. If
devout or laborious, not only do these afford an outlet for the deeper
needs of conscience, of the imagination, of activity, and of discipline,
but also they serve as dikes which restrain and direct them in a channel
which will lead to the creation of a masterpiece of infinite value. In
this way thousands of men and women fulfill at small cost, voluntarily
and gratis, and with great effect, the least attractive and more
repulsive social needs, thus performing in human society the role which,
inside the ant-hill, we see assigned to the sexless worker-ant.[2242]
Thus, at bottom, the institution was really good, and if it had to be
cauterized it was merely essential to remove the inert or corrupted
parts and preserve the healthy and sound parts.--Now, if we take only
the monastic bodies, there were more than one-half of these entitled
to respect. I omit those monks, one-third of whom remained zealous and
exemplary-the Benedictines, who continue the "Gallia Christiana," with
others who, at sixty years of age, labor in rooms without a fire;
the Trappists, who cultivate the ground with their own hands, and the
innumerable monasteries which serve as educational seminaries, bureaus
of charity, hospices for shelter, and of which all the villages in their
neighborhood demand the conservation by the National Assembly.[2243]
I have to mention the nuns, thirty-seven thousand in fifteen hundred
convents. Here, except in the twenty-five chapters of canonesses, which
are a semi-worldly rendezvous for poor young girls of noble birth,
fervor, frugality, and usefulness are almost everywhere incontestable.
One of the members of the Ecclesiastical Committee admits in the
Assembly tribunal that, in all their letters and addresses, the nuns ask
to be allowed to remain in their cloisters; their entreaties, in fact,
are as earnest as they are affecting.[2244] One Community writes,
"We should prefer the sacrifice of our lives to that of our calling
. . . . This is not the voice of some among our sisters, but of all. The
National Assembly has established the claims of liberty-would it prevent
the exercise of these by the only disinterested beings who ardently
desire to be useful, and have renounced society solely to be of greater
service to it?"
"The little contact we have with the world," writes another "is the
reason why our contentment is so little known. But it is not the less
real and substantial. We know of no distinctions, no privileges amongst
ourselves; our misfortunes and our property are in common. One in heart
and one in soul. . . we protest before the nation, in the face of heaven
and of earth, that it is not in the power of any being to shake our
fidelity to our vows, which vows we renew with still more ardor than
when we first pronounced them."[2245]
Many of the communities have no means of subsistence other than the work
of their own hands and the small dowries the nuns have brought with
them on entering the convent. So great, however is their frugality and
economy, that the total expenditure of each nun does not surpass 250
livres a year. The Annonciades of Saint-Amour say,
"We, thirty-three nuns, both choristers and those of the white veil,
live on 4,400 livres net income, without being a charge to our families
or to the public. . . If we were living in society, our expenses would
be three times as much;" and, not content with providing for themselves,
they give in charity.
Among these communities several hundreds are educational establishments;
a very great number give gratuitous primary instruction.--Now, in 1789,
there are no other schools for girls, and were these to be suppressed,
every avenue of instruction and culture would be closed to one of the
two sexes, forming one-half of the French population. Fourteen thousand
sisters of charity, distributed among four hundred and twenty convents,
look after the hospitals, attend upon the sick, serve the infirm,
bring up foundlings, provide for orphans, lying-in women, and repentant
prostitutes. The "Visitation" is an asylum for "those who are not
favored by nature,"--and, in those days, there were many more of the
disfigured than at present, since out of every eight deaths one was
caused by the smallpox. Widows are received here, as well as girls
without means and without protection, persons "worn out with the
agitation of the world," those who are too feeble to support the battle
of life, those who withdraw from it wounded or invalid, and "the rules
of the order, not very strict, are not beyond the health or strength
of the most frail and delicate." Some ingenious device of charity thus
applies to each moral or social sore, with skill and care, the proper
and proportionate dressing. And finally, far from falling off, nearly
all these communities are in a flourishing state, and whilst among the
establishments for men there are only nine, on the average, to each,
in those for women there is an average of twenty-four. Here, at
Saint-Flour, is one which is bringing up fifty boarders; another, at
Beaulieu, instructs one hundred; another, in Franche-Comté, has charge
of eight hundred abandoned children.[2246]--Evidently, in the presence
of such institutions one must pause, however little one may care for
justice and the public interest; and, moreover, because it is useless
to act rigorously against them the legislator crushes them in vain, for
they spring up again of their own accord; they are in the blood of every
Catholic nation. In France, instead of thirty-seven thousand nuns, at
the present day (1866) there are eighty-six thousand-that is to say,
forty-five in every ten thousand women instead of twenty-eight.[2247]
In any case, if the State deprives them of their property, along with
that of other ecclesiastical bodies, it is not the State that ought
to claim the spoil.--The State is not their heir, and their land,
furniture, and rentals are in their very nature devoted to a special
purpose, although they have no designated proprietor. This treasure,
which consists of the accumulations of fourteen centuries, has been
formed, increased, and preserved, in view of a certain object. The
millions of generous, repentant, or devout souls who have made a gift
of it, or have managed it, did so with a certain intention. It was their
desire to ensure education, beneficence, and religion, and nothing else.
Their legitimate intentions should not be frustrated: the dead have
rights in society as well as the living, for it is the dead who have
made the society which the living enjoy, and we receive their heritage
only on the condition of executing their testamentary act.--Should
this be of ancient date, it is undoubtedly necessary to make a liberal
interpretation of it; to supplement its scanty provisions, and to take
new circumstances into consideration. The requirements for which it
provided have often disappeared; for instance, after the destruction of
the Barbary pirates, there were no more Christians to be ransomed; and
only by transferring an endowment can it be perpetuated.--But if, in the
original institution, several accessory and special clauses have become
antiquated, there remains the one important, general intention, which
manifestly continues imperative and permanent, that of providing for a
distinct service, either of charity, of worship, or of instruction. Let
the administrators be changed, if necessary, also the apportionment of
the legacy bequeathed, but do not divert any of it to services of an
alien character; it is inapplicable to any but that purpose or to others
strictly analogous. The four milliards of investment in real property,
the two hundred millions of ecclesiastical income, form for it an
express and special endowment. This is not a pile of gold abandoned on
the highway, which the exchequer can appropriate or assign to those who
live by the roadside. Authentic titles to it exist, which, declaring its
origin, fix its destination, and your business is simply to see that
it reaches its destination. Such was the principle under the ancient
régime, in spite of grave abuses, and under forced exactions. When the
ecclesiastical commission suppressed an ecclesiastical order, it was not
for the purpose of making its possessions over to the public treasury,
but to apply these to seminaries, schools, and hospitals. In 1789, the
revenues of Saint-Denis supported Saint-Cyr; those of Saint Germain went
to the Economats, and the Government, although absolute and needy, was
sufficiently honest to adjust that confiscation was robbery. The greater
our power, the greater the obligation to be just, and honesty always
proves in the end to be the best policy.--It is, therefore, both just
and useful that the Church, as in England and in America, that superior
education, as in England and in Germany, that special instruction, as in
America, and that diverse endowments for public assistance and utility,
should be unreservedly secured in the maintenance of their heritage. The
State, as testamentary executor of this inheritance, strangely abuses
its mandate when it pockets the bequest in order to choke the deficit of
its own treasury, risking it in bad speculations, and swallowing it
up in its own bankruptcy, until of this vast treasure, which has been
heaped up for generations for the benefit of children, the infirm,
the sick and the poor, not enough is left to pay the salary of a
school-mistress, the wages of a parish nurse, or for a bowl of broth in
a hospital.[2248]
The Assembly remains deaf to all these arguments, and that which makes
its refuse to listen is not financial distress.--The Archbishop of Aix,
M. de Boisjelin, offered, in the name of the clergy, to liquidate
at once the debt of three hundred millions, which was urgent, by a
mortgage-loan of four hundred millions on the ecclesiastical property,
which was a very good expedient; for at this time the credit of the
clergy is the only substantial one. It generally borrows at less than
five per cent., and more money has always been offered to it than it
wanted, whilst the State borrows at ten per cent., and, at this moment,
there are no lenders.--But, to our new revolutionary statesmen,
the cost-benefit of a service is of much less consequence than the
application of a principle. In conformity with the Social Contract they
establish the maxim that in the State there is no need of corporate
bodies: they acknowledge nothing but, on the one hand, the State, the
depositary of all public powers, and, on the other hand, a myriad of
solitary individuals. Special associations, specific groups, collateral
corporations are not wanted, even to fulfill functions which the State
is incapable of fulfilling. "As soon as one enters a corporation," says
and orator, "one must love it as one loves a family;"[2249] whereas
the affections and obedience are all to be monopolized by the State.
Moreover, on entering into an order a man receives special aid and
comfort from it, and whatever distinguishes one man from another, is
opposed to civil equality. Hence, if men are to remain equal and become
citizens they must be deprived of every rallying point that might
compete with that of the State, and give to some an advantage over
others. All natural or acquired ties, consequently, which bound men
together through geographical position, through climate, history,
pursuits, and trade, are sundered. The old provinces, the old provincial
governments, the old municipal administrations, parliaments, guilds
and masterships, all are suppressed. The groups which spring up most
naturally, those which arise through a community of interests, are
all dispersed, and the broadest, most express, and most positive
interdictions are promulgated against their revival under any pretext
whatever.[2250] France is cut up into geometrical sections like a
chess-board, and, within these improvised limits, which are destined
for a long time to remain artificial, nothing is allowed to subsist
but isolated individuals in juxtaposition. There is no desire to spare
organized bodies where the cohesion is great, and least of all that
of the clergy. "Special associations," says Mirabeau,[2251] "in the
community at large, break up the unity of its principles and destroy
the equilibrium of its forces. Large political bodies in a State are
dangerous through the strength which results from their coalition and
the resistance which is born out of their interests." ii--That of the
clergy, besides, is inherently bad,[2252] because "its system is in
constant antagonism to the rights of man." An institution in which a
vow of obedience is necessary is "incompatible" with the constitution.
Congregations "subject to independent chiefs are out of the social pale
and incompatible with public spirit." As to the right of society over
these, and also over the Church, this is not doubtful. "Corporate bodies
exist only through society, and, in destroying them, society merely
takes back the life she has imparted to them." "They are simply
instruments fabricated by the law.[2253] What does the workman do
when the tool he works with no longer suits him? He breaks or alters
it."--This primary sophism being admitted the conclusion is plain. Since
corporate bodies are abolished they no longer exist, and since they no
longer exist, they cannot again become proprietors.
"Your aim was to destroy ecclesiastical orders,[2254] because their
destruction was essential to the safety of the State. If the clergy
preserve their property, the clerical order is not destroyed: you
necessarily leave it the right of assembling; you sanction its
independence." In no case must ecclesiastics hold possessions. "If they
are proprietors they are independent, and if they are independent they
will associate this independence with the exercise of their functions."
The clergy, cost what it will, must be in the hands of the State, as
simple functionaries and supported by its subsidies. It would be too
dangerous for a nation, "to admit in its bosom as proprietors a large
body of men to whom so many sources of credit already give so great
power. As religion is the property of all, its ministers, through this
fact alone, should be in the pay of the nation;" they are essentially
"officers of morality and instruction," and "salaried" like judges and
professors. Let us fetch them back to this condition of things, which
is the only one compatible with the rights of man, and ordain that
"the clergy, as well as all corporations and bodies with power of
inheritance, are now, and shall be for ever incapable of holding any
personal or landed estate."[2255]
Who, now, is the legitimate heir of all these vacated possessions?
Through another sophism, the State, at once judge and party in the
cause, assigns them to the State:
"The founders presented them to the Church, that is to say, to the
nation."[2256] "Since the nation has permitted their possession by
the clergy, she may re-demand that which is possessed only through her
authorization." "The principle must be maintained that every nation is
solely and veritably proprietor of the possessions of its clergy."
This principle, it must be noted, as it is laid down, involves the
destruction of ecclesiastical and lay corporations, along with the
confiscation of all their possessions, and soon we shall see appearing
on the horizon the final and complete decree[2257] by which the
Legislative Assembly,
"considering that a State truly free should not suffer any corporation
within its bosom, not even those which, devoted to public instruction,
deserve well of the country," not even those "which are solely devoted
to the service of the hospitals-and the relief of the sick," suppresses
all congregations, all associations of men or of women, lay or
ecclesiastical, all endowments for pious, charitable, and missionary
purposes, all houses of education, all seminaries and colleges, and
those of the Sorbonne and Navarre. Add to these the last sweep of the
broom: under the Legislative Assembly the division of all communal
property, except woods: under the Convention, the abolition of all
literary societies, academies of science and of literature, the
confiscation of all their property, their libraries, museums, and
botanical gardens; the confiscation of all communal possessions
not previously divided; and the confiscation of all the property of
hospitals and other philanthropic establishments.[2258]--The abstract
principle, proclaimed by the Constituent Assembly, reveals, by degrees,
its exterminating virtues. France now, owing to it, contains nothing but
dispersed, powerless, ephemeral individuals, and confronting them,
the State, the sole, the only permanent body that has devoured all
the others, a veritable Colossus, alone erect in the midst of these
insignificant dwarfs.
Substituted for the others, it is henceforth to perform their duties,
and spend the money well which they have expended badly.--In the first
place, it abolishes tithes, not gradually and by means of a process of
redemption, as in England, but at one stroke, and with no indemnity,
on the ground that the tax, being an abusive, illegitimate impost, a
private tax levied by individuals in cowl and cassock on others in
smock frocks, is a vexatious usurpation, and resembles the feudal
dues. It is a radical operation, and in conformity with principle.
Unfortunately, the puerility of the thing is so gross as to defeat its
own object. In effect, since the days of Charlemagne, all the estates
in the country which have been sold and resold over and over again
have always paid tithes, and have never been purchased except with this
charge upon them, which amounts to about one-seventh of the net revenue
of the country. Take off this tax and one-seventh is added to the
income of the proprietor, and, consequently, a seventh to his capital. A
present is made to him of one hundred francs if his land is worth seven
hundred-francs, and of one thousand if it is worth seven thousand,
of ten thousand if it is worth seventy thousand, and of one hundred
thousand if it is worth seven hundred thousand. Some people gain six
hundred thousand francs by this act, and thirty thousand francs in
Income.[2259] Through this gratuitous and unexpected gift, one hundred
and twenty-three millions of revenue, and two milliards and a half of
capital, is divided among the holders of real estate in France, and in
a manner so ingenious that the rich receive the most. Such is the effect
of abstract principles. To afford a relief of thirty millions a year
to the peasants in wooden shoes, an assembly of democrats adds thirty
millions a year to the revenue of wealthy bourgeois and thirty millions
a year to opulent nobles. The first part of this operation moreover, is
but another burden to the State; for, in taking off the load from
the holders of real property, it has encumbered itself, the State
henceforth, without pocketing a penny, being obliged to defray the
expenses of worship in their place.--As to the second part of the
operation, which consists in the confiscation of four milliards of real
estate, it proves, after all, to be ruinous, although promising to
be lucrative. It makes the same impression on our statesmen that the
inheritance of a great estate makes on a needy and fanciful upstart.
Regarding it as a bottomless well of gold, he draws upon it without
stint and strives to realize all his fancies; as he can afford to pay
for it all, he is free to smash it all. It is thus that the Assembly
suppresses and compensates magisterial offices to the amount of four
hundred and fifty millions; financial securities and obligations to the
amount of three hundred and twenty-one millions; the household charges
of the King, Queen, and princes, fifty-two millions; military services
and encumbrances, thirty-five millions; enfeoffed tithes, one hundred
millions, and so on.[2260] "In the month of May, 1789," says Necker,
"the re-establishment of order in the finances were mere child's-play."
At the end of a year, by dint of involving itself in debt, by increasing
its expenses, and by abolishing or abandoning its income, the State
lives now on the paper-currency it issues, eats up its capital, and
rapidly marches onward to bankruptcy. Never was such a vast inheritance
so quickly reduced to nothing, and to less than nothing.
Meanwhile, we can demonstrate, from the first few months, what use the
administrators will be able to make of it, and the manner in which
they will endow the service to which it binds them.--No portion of this
confiscated property is reserved for the maintenance of public worship,
or to keep up the hospitals, asylums, and schools. Not only do all
obligations and all productive real property find their way into the
great national crucible to be converted into assignats[2261], but a
number of special buildings, all monastic real estate and a portion
of the ecclesiastical real estate, diverted from its natural course,
becomes swallowed up in the same gulf. At Besançon,[2262] three churches
out of eight, with their land and treasure, the funds of the chapter,
all the money of the monastic churches, the sacred vessels, shrines,
crosses, reliquaries, votive offerings, ivories, statues, pictures,
tapestry, sacerdotal dresses and ornaments, plate, jewels and precious
furniture, libraries, railings, bells, masterpieces of art and of piety,
all are broken up and melted in the Mint, or sold by auction for almost
nothing. This is the way in which the intentions of the founders and
donors are carried out.--How are so many communities, which are deprived
of their rentals, to support their schools, hospices, and asylums? Even
after the decree[2263] which, exceptionally and provisionally, orders
the whole of their revenue to be accounted for to them, will it be paid
over now that it is collected by a local administration whose coffers
are always empty, and whose intentions are almost always hostile? Every
establishment for benevolent and educational purposes is evidently
sinking, now that the special streams which nourished them run into and
are lost in the dry bed of the public treasury.[2264] Already, in 1790,
there are no funds with which to pay the monks and nuns their small
pensions for their maintenance. In Franche-Comté the Capuchins of Baume
have no bread, and, to live, they are obliged to re-sell, with the
consent of the district, a portion of the stores of their monastery
which had been confiscated. The Ursuline nuns of Ornans live on the
means furnished them by private individuals in order to keep up the only
school which the town possesses. The Bernardine nuns of Pontarlier are
reduced to the lowest stage of want: "We are satisfied," the district
reports, "that they have nothing to put into their mouths. We have
to contribute something every day amongst ourselves to keep them
from starving."[2265] Only too thankful are they when the local
administration gives them something to eat, or allows others to give
them something. In many places it strives to famish them, or takes
delight in annoying them. In March, 1791, the department of Doubs, in
spite of the entreaties of the district, reduces the pension of the
Visitant nuns to one hundred and one livres for the choristers, and
fifty for the lay-sisters. Two months before this, the municipality of
Besançon, putting its own interpretation on the decree which allowed
nuns to dress as they pleased, enjoins them all, including even the
sisters of charity, to abandon their old costume, which few among them
had the means of replacing.--Helplessness, indifference, or malevolence,
such are the various dispositions which are encountered among the new
authorities whose duty it is to support and protect them. To let loose
persecution there is now only needed a decree which puts the civil power
in conflict with religious convictions. That decree is promulgated,
and, on the 12th of July, 1790, the Assembly establishes the civil
constitution of the clergy.
Notwithstanding the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, and
the dispersion of the monastic communities, the main body of the
ecclesiastical corps remains intact: seventy thousand priests
ranged under the bishops, with the Pope in the center as the
commander-in-chief. There is no corporation more solid, more
incompatible, or more attacked. For, against it are opposed implacable
hatreds and fixed opinions: the Gallicanism of the jurists who, from
St. Louis downwards, are the adversaries of ecclesiastical power; the
doctrine of the Jansenists who, since Louis XIII., desire to bring back
the Church to its primitive form; and the theory of the philosophers
who, for sixty years, have considered Christianity as a mistake and
Catholicism as a scourge. At the very least the institution of a clergy
in Catholicism is condemned, and they think that they are moderate if
they respect the rest.
"WE MIGHT CHANGE THE RELIGION,"
say the deputies in the tribune.[2266] Now, the decree affects
neither dogma nor worship; it is confined to a revision of matters of
discipline, and on this particular domain which is claimed for the
civil power, it is pretended that demolition and re-construction may
be effected at discretion without the concurrence of the ecclesiastical
power.
Here there is an abuse of power, for an ecclesiastical as well as civil
society has the right to choose its own form, its own hierarchy, its own
government.--On this point, every argument that can be advanced in favor
of the former can be repeated in favor of the latter, and the moment one
becomes legitimate the other becomes legitimate also. The justification
for a civil or of a religious community or society may be the
performance of a long series of services which, for centuries, it has
rendered to its members, the zeal and success with which it discharges
its functions, the feelings of gratitude they entertain for it, the
importance they attribute to its offices, the need they have of it, and
their attachment to it, the conviction imprinted in their minds that
without it they would be deprived of a benefit upon which they set more
store than upon any other. This benefit, in a civil society, is the
security of persons and property. In the religious society it is
the eternal salvation of the soul. iii In all other particulars the
resemblance is complete, and the titles of the Church are as good as
those of the State. Hence, if it be just for one to be sovereign and
free on its own domain, it is just for the other to be equally sovereign
and free, If the Church encroaches when it assumes to regulate the
constitution of the State, then the State also encroaches when it
pretends to regulate the constitution of the Church. If the former
claims the respect of the latter on its domain, the latter must show
equal respect for the former on its ground. The boundary-line between
the two territories is, undoubtedly, not clearly defined and frequent
contests arise between the two. Sometimes these may be forestalled or
terminated by each shutting itself up within a wall of separation, and
by their remaining as much as possible indifferent to each other, as
is the case in America. At another, they may, by a carefully considered
contract,[2267] each accord to the other specific rights on the
intermediate zone, and both exercise their divided authority on that
zone, which is the case in France. In both cases, however, the two
powers, like the two societies, must remain distinct. It is necessary
for each of them that the other should be an equal, and not a
subordinate to which it prescribes conditions. Whatever the civil system
may be, whether monarchical or republican, oligarchic or democratic, the
Church abuses its credit when it condemns or attacks it. Whatever may be
the ecclesiastical system, whether papal, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or
congregational, the State abuses its strength when, without the assent
of the faithful, it abolishes their systems or imposes a new one upon
them. Not only does it violate right, but its violence, most frequently,
is fruitless. It may strike as it will, the root of the tree is beyond
its reach, and, in the unjust war which it wages against an institution
as vital as itself, it often ends in getting the worst of it.
Unfortunately, the Assembly, in this as in other matters, being
preoccupied with principles, fails to look at practical facts; and,
aiming to remove only the dead bark, it injures the living trunk.--For
many centuries, and especially since the Council of Trent, the vigorous
element of Catholicism is much less religion itself than the Church.
Theology has retired into the background, while discipline has come
to the front. Believers who, according to Church law, are required to
regard spiritual authority as dogma, in fact attach their faith to the
spiritual authority much more than to the dogma.--
Catholic Faith insists, in relation to discipline as well as to dogma,
that if one rejects the decision of the Roman Church one ceases to be a
Catholic; that the constitution of the Church is monarchical, that the
ordaining of priests and bishops is made from above so that without
communion with the Pope, its supreme head, one is schismatic and that no
schismatic priest legitimately can perform a holy service, and that no
true faithful may attend his service or receive his blessings without
committing a sin.--It is a fact that the faithful, apart from a few
Jansenists, are neither theologians nor canonists; that they read
neither prayers nor scriptures, and if they accept the creed, it is in
a lump, without investigation, confiding in the hand which presents it;
that their obedient conscience is in the keeping of this pastoral guide;
that the Church of the third century is of little consequence to them;
and that, as far as the true form of the actual Church goes, the doctor
whose advice they follow is not St. Cyprian, of whom they know nothing,
but their visible bishop and their living curé. Put these two premises
together and the conclusion is self-evident: it is clear that they will
not believe that they are baptized, absolved, or married except by this
curé authorized by this bishop. Let others be put in their places
whom they condemn, and you suppress worship, sacraments, and the most
precious functions of spiritual life to twenty-four millions of French
people, to all the peasantry, all the children, and to almost all the
women; you stir up in rebellion against you the two greatest forces
which move the mind, conscience and habit.--And observe the result of
this. You not only convert the State into a policeman in the service
of heresy, but also, through this fruitless and tyrannous attempt of
Gallican Jansenism, you bring into permanent discredit Gallican maxims
and Jansenist doctrines. You cut away the last two roots by which a
liberal sentiment still vegetated in orthodox Catholicism. You throw the
clergy back on Rome; you attach them to the Pope from whom you wish to
separate them, and deprive them of the national character which you
wish to impose on them. They were French, and you render them
Ultramontane.[2268] They excited ill-will and envy, and you render them
sympathetic and popular. They were a divided body, and you give them
unanimity. They were a straggling militia, scattered about under several
independent authorities, and rooted to the soil through the possession
of the ground; thanks to you, they are to become a regular, manageable
army, emancipated from every local attachment, organized under one head,
and always prepared to take the field at the word of command. Compare
the authority of a bishop in his diocese in 1789 with that of a bishop
sixty years later. In 1789, the Archbishop of Besançon, out of fifteen
hundred offices and benefices, had the patronage of one hundred, In
ninety-three incumbencies the selections were made by the metropolitan
chapter; in eighteen it was made by the chapter of the Madeleine;
in seventy parishes by the noble founder or benefactor. One abbé had
thirteen incumbencies at his disposal, another thirty-four, another
thirty-five, a prior nine, an abbess twenty; five communes directly
nominated their own pastor, while abbeys, priories and canonries were in
the hands of the King.[2269] At the present day (1880) in a diocese the
bishop appoints all the curés or officiating priests, and may deprive
nine out of ten of them; in the diocese above named, from 1850 to
1860, scarcely one lay functionary was nominated without the consent or
intervention of the cardinal-archbishop.[2270] To comprehend the spirit,
discipline, and influence of our contemporary clergy, go back to the
source of it, and you will find it in the decree of the Constituent
Assembly. A natural organization cannot be broken up with impunity; it
forms anew, adapting itself to circumstances, and closes up its ranks in
proportion to its danger.
But even if, according to the maxims of the Assembly, faith and worship
are free, as far as the sovereign State is concerned, the churches are
subjects.--For these are societies, administrations, and hierarchies,
and no society, administration, or hierarchy may exist in the State
without entering into its--departments under the title of subordinate,
delegate, or employee. A priest is now essentially a salaried officer
like the rest, a functionary[2271] presiding over matters pertaining to
worship and morality. If the State is disposed to change the number, the
mode of nomination, the duties and the posts of its engineers, it is not
bound to assemble its engineers and ask their permission, least of all
that of a foreign engineer established at Rome. If it wishes to change
the condition of "its ecclesiastical officers," its right to do so
is the same, and therefore unquestioned. There is no need of asking
anybody's consent in the exercise of this right, and it allows no
interference between it and its clerks. The Assembly refuses to call a
Gallican council; it refuses to negotiate with the Pope, and, on its
own authority alone, it recasts the whole Constitution of the Church.
Henceforth this branch of the public administration is to be organized
on the model of the others.--In the first place[2272] the diocese is to
be in extent and limits the same as the French department; consequently,
all ecclesiastical districts are marked out anew, and forty-eight
episcopal sees disappear.--In the second place, the appointed bishop is
forbidden "to refer to the Pope to obtain any confirmation whatever."
All he can do is to write to him "in testimony of the unity of faith and
of the communion which he is to maintain with him." The bishop is thus
no longer installed by his canonical chief, and the Church of France
becomes schismatic.--In the third place, the metropolitan or bishop is
forbidden to exact from the new bishops or curés "any oath other than
that they profess the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion." Assisted
by his council he may examine them on their doctrine and morals, and
refuse them canonical installation, but in this case his reasons must
be given in writing, and he signed by himself and his council. His
authority, in other respects, does not extend beyond this for it is the
civil tribunal which decides between contending parties. Thus is the
catholic hierarchy broken up; the ecclesiastical superior has his hands
tied; if he still delegates sacerdotal functions it is only as a matter
of form. Between the curé and the bishop subordination ceases to exist
just as it has ceased to exist between the bishop and the Pope, and
the Church of France becomes Presbyterian.--The people now, in effect,
choose their own ministers, as they do in the Presbyterian church; the
bishop is appointed by the electors of the department, the cure by the
district electors, and, what is an extraordinary aggravation, these need
not be of his communion. It is of no consequence whether the electoral
Assembly contains, as at Nîmes, Montauban, Strasbourg, and Metz, a
notable proportion of Calvinists, Lutherans, and Jews, or whether its
majority, furnished by the club, is notoriously hostile to Catholicism,
and even to Christianity itself. The bishop and the curé must be chosen
by the electoral body; the Holy Ghost dwells with it, and with the
civil tribunals, and these may install its elect in spite of any
resistance.--To complete the dependence of the clergy, every bishop is
forbidden to absent himself more than fifteen days without permission
from the department; every curé the same length of time without the
permission of the district, even to attend upon a dying father or to
undergo the operation of lithotomy. In default of this permission his
salary is suspended: as a functionary under salary, he owes all his time
to his bureau, and if he desires a leave of absence he must ask for
it from his chiefs in the Hôtel-de-Ville.[2273]--He must assent to all
these innovations, not only with passive obedience, but by a solemn
oath. All old or new ecclesiastics, archbishops, bishops, curés, vicars,
preachers, hospital and prison chaplains, superiors and directors of
seminaries, professors of seminaries and colleges, are to state in
writing that they are ready to take this oath: moreover, they must take
it publicly, in church, "in the presence of the general council, the
commune, and the faithful," and promise "to maintain with all their
power" a schismatic and Presbyterian Church.--For there can be no doubt
about the sense and bearing of the prescribed oath. It was all very
well to incorporate it with a broader one, that of maintaining the
Constitution. But the Constitution of the clergy is too clearly
comprised in the general Constitution, like a chapter in a book, and to
sign the book is to sign the chapter. Besides, in the formula to which
the ecclesiastics in the Assembly are obliged to swear in the tribune,
the chapter is precisely indicated, and no exception or reservation is
allowed.[2274] The Bishop of Clermont, with all those who have accepted
the Constitution in full, save the decrees affecting spiritual matters,
are silenced. Where the spiritual begins and where it ends the Assembly
knows better than they, for it has defined this, and it imposes its
definition on canonist and theologian; it is, in its turn, the Pope, and
all consciences must bow to its decision. Let them take the "oath, pure
and simple," or if they do not they are 'refractory." The fiat goes
forth, and the effect of it is immense, for, along with the clergy, the
law reaches to laymen. On the one hand, all the ecclesiastics who refuse
the oath are dismissed. If they continue "to interfere with public
functions which they have personally or corporately exercised" they
"shall be prosecuted as disturbers of the peace, and condemned as
rebels against the law," deprived of all rights as active citizens,
and declared incompetent to hold any public office. This is the penalty
already inflicted on the nonjuring bishop who persists in considering
himself a bishop, who ordains priests and who issues a pastoral letter.
Such is soon to be the penalty inflicted on the nonjuring curé who
presumes to hear confession or officiate at a mass.[2275] On the other
hand, all citizens who refuse to take the prescribed oath, all electors,
municipal officers, judges and administrative agents, shall lose
their right of suffrage, have their functions revoked, and be declared
incompetent for all public duties.[2276] The result is that scrupulous
Catholics are excluded from every administrative post, from all
elections, and especially from ecclesiastical elections; from which
it follows that, the stronger one's faith the less one's share in the
choice of a priest.[2277]--What an admirable law, that which, under the
pretext of doing away with ecclesiastical abuses, places the faithful,
lay or clerical, outside the pale of the law!
This soon becomes apparent. One hundred and thirty four archbishops,
bishops, and coadjutors refuse to take the oath; there are only four
of them who do so, three of whom, MM. de Talleyrand, de Jarente, and
de Brienne, are unbelievers and notorious for their licentiousness; the
others are influenced by their consciences, above all, by their esprit
de corps and a point of honor. Most of the curés rally around this staff
of officers. In the diocese of Besançon,[2278] out of fourteen hundred
priests, three hundred take the oath, a thousand refuse it, and eighty
retract. In the department of Doubs, only four consent to swear. In the
department of Lozère, there are only "ten out of two hundred and fifty."
It is stated positively," writes the best informed of all observers that
everywhere in France two-thirds of the ecclesiastics have refused the
oath, or have only taken it with the same reservations as the Bishop of
Clermont."
Thus, out of seventy thousand priests, forty-six thousand are turned
out of office, and the majority of their parishioners are on their side.
This is apparent in the absence of electors convoked to replace them:
at Bordeaux only four hundred and fifty came to the poll out of nine
hundred, while elsewhere the summons brings together only "a third or
a quarter" In many places there are no candidates, or those elected
decline to accept. They are obliged, in order to supply their places,
to hunt up unfrocked monks of a questionable character. There are two
parties, after this, in each parish; two faiths, two systems of
worship, and permanent discord. Even when the new and the old curés are
accommodating, their situations bring them into conflict. To the former
the latter are "intruders." To the latter the former are "refractories."
By virtue of his being a guardian of souls, the former cannot dispense
with telling his parishioners that the intruder is excommunicated, that
his sacraments are null or sacrilegious, and that it is a sin to attend
his mass. By virtue of his being a public functionary, the latter does
not fail to write to the authorities that the "refractory" entraps the
faithful, excites their consciences, saps the Constitution, and that
he ought to be put down by force. In other words, the former draws
everybody away from the latter, while the latter sends the gendarmes
against the former, and persecution begins.--In a strange reversal,
it is the majority which undergoes persecution, and the minority which
carries it out. The mass of the constitutional curé is, everywhere,
deserted.[2279] In La Vendée there are ten or twelve present in the
church out of five or six hundred parishioners; on Sundays and holidays
whole villages and market-towns travel from one to two leagues off to
attend the orthodox mass, the villagers declaring that "if the old curé
can only be restored to them, they will gladly pay a double tax." In
Alsace, "nine tenths, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize
the legally sworn priests." The same spectacle presents itself in
Franche-Comté, Artois, and in ten of the other provinces.--Finally, as
in a chemical composition, the analysis is complete. Those who believe,
or who recover their belief, are ranged around the old curé; all who,
through conviction or tradition, hold to the sacraments, all who,
through faith or habit, wish or feel a need to attend the mass. The
auditors of the new curé consist of unbelievers, deists, the indifferent
members of the clubs and of the administration, who resort to the church
as to the Hôtel-de-ville or to a popular meeting, not through religious
but through political zeal, and who support the "intruder" in order to
sustain the Constitution. All this does not secure to him very fervent
followers, but it provides him with very zealous defenders; and, in
default of the faith which they do not possess, they give the force
which is at their disposal. All means are proper against an intractable
bishop or curé; not only the law which they aggravate through their
forced interpretation of it and through their arbitrary verdicts, but
also the riots which they stir up by their instigation and which they
sanction by their toleration.[2280] He is driven out of his parish,
consigned to the county town, and kept in a safe place. The Directory of
Aisne denounces him as a disturber of the public peace, and forbids
him, under severe penalties, from administering the sacraments. The
municipality of Cahors shuts up particular churches and orders the
nonjuring ecclesiastics to leave the town in twenty-four hours. The
electoral corps of Lot denounces them publicly as "ferocious brutes,"
incendiaries, and provokers of civil war. The Directory of the Bas-Rhin
banishes them to Strasbourg or to fifteen leagues from the frontier.
At Saint-Leon the bishop is forced to fly. At Auch the archbishop is
imprisoned; at Lyons M. de Boisboissel, grand vicar, is confined in
Pierre-Encize, for having preserved an archiepiscopal mandate in his
house; brutality is everywhere the minister of intolerance. A certain
cure of Aisne who, in 1789, had fed two thousand poor, having presumed
to read from his pulpit a pastoral charge concerning the observance of
Lent, the mayor seizes him by the collar and prevents him from going to
the altar; "two of the National Yeomanry" draw their sabers on him, and
forthwith lead him away bareheaded, not allowing him to return to his
house, and drive him to a distance of two leagues by beat of drum and
under escort. At Paris, in the church of Saint-Eustache, the curé is
greeted with outcries, a pistol is pointed at his head, he is seized by
the hair, struck with fists, and only reaches the sacristy through
the intervention of the National Guard. In the church of the Théatins,
rented by the orthodox with all legal formality, a furious band
disperses the priests and their assistants, upsets the altar and
profanes the sacred vessels. A placard, posted up by the department,
calls upon the people to respect the law, "I saw it," says an
eye-witness, "torn down amidst imprecations against the department, the
priests, and the devout. One of the chief haranguers, standing on the
steps terminated his speech by stating that schism ought to be stopped
at any cost, that no worship but his should be allowed, that women
should be whipped and priests knocked on the head." And, in fact, "a
young lady accompanied by her mother is whipped on the steps of
the church." Elsewhere nuns are the sufferers, even the sisters of
Saint-Vincent de Paul; and, from April, 1793, onward; the same outrages
on modesty and against life are propagated from town to town. At Dijon,
rods are nailed fast to the gates of all the convents; at Montpellier,
two or three hundred ruffians, armed with large iron--bound sticks,
murder the men and outrage the women.--Nothing remains but to put
the gangsters under the shelter of an amnesty, which is done by the
Constituent Assembly, and to legally sanction the animosity of local
administrations, which is done by the Legislative Assembly.[2281]
Henceforth the nonjuring ecclesiastics are deprived of their sustenance;
they are declared "suspected of revolt against the law and of evil
intentions against the country."--Thus, says a contemporary Protestant,
"on the strength of these suspicions and these intentions, a Directory,
to which the law interdicts judicial functions, may arbitrarily drive
out of his house the minister of a God of peace and charity, grown gray
in the shadow of the altar" Thus, "everywhere, where disturbances occur
on account of religious opinions, and whether these troubles are due
to the frantic scourgers of the virtuous sisters of charity or to the
ruffians armed with cow-hides who, at Nîmes and Montpellier, outrage all
the laws of decorum and of liberty for six whole months, the non-juring
priests are to be punished with banishment. Torn from their families
whose means of living they share, they are sent away to wander on the
highways, abandoned to public pity or ferocity the moment any scoundrel
chooses to excite a disturbance that he can impute to them."--Thus we
see approaching the revolt of the peasantry, the insurrections of Nîmes,
Franche-Comté, la Vendée and Brittany, emigration, transportation;
imprisonment, the guillotine or drowning for two thirds of the clergy of
France, and likewise for myriads of the loyal, for husbandmen, artisans,
day-laborers, seamstresses, and servants, and the humblest among the
lower class of the people. This is what the laws of the Constituent
Assembly are leading to.--In the institution of the clergy, as in that
of the nobles and the King, it demolished a solid wall in order to
dig through it an open door, and it is nothing strange if the whole
structure tumbles down on the heads of its inmates. The true course was
to respect, to reform, to utilize rank and corporations: all that the
Assembly thought of was the abolition of these in the name of abstract
equality and of national sovereignty. In order to abolish these it
executed, tolerated, or initiated all the attacks on persons and on
property. Those it is about to commit are the inevitable result of those
which it has already committed; for, through its Constitution, bad is
changed to worse, and the social edifice, already half in ruins through
the clumsy havoc that is effected in it, will fall in completely under
the weight of the incongruous or extravagant constructions which it
proceeds to extemporize.
*****
[Footnote 2201: Cf. "The Ancient Régime," books I. and V.]
[Footnote 2202: Perhaps we are here at the core of why all regimes end
up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their
privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work
which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible
adversaries kept under control. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2203: A special tax paid the king by a plebeian owning a fief.
(TR)]
[Footnote 2204: The right to an income from trust funds. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2205: Arthur Young, I. 209, 223. "If the communes steadily
refuse what is now offered to them, they put immense and certain
benefits to the chance of fortune, to that hazard which may make
posterity curse instead of bless their memories as real patriots who had
nothing in view but the happiness of their country."]
[Footnote 2206: According to valuations by the Constituent Assembly,
the tax on real estate ought to bring 240,000,000 francs, and provide
one-fifth of the net revenue of France, estimated at 1,200,000,000.
Additionally, the personal tax on movable property, which replaced
the capitation, ought to bring 60,000,000. Total for direct taxation,
300,000,000, or one-fourth--that is to say, twenty-five per cent, of the
net revenue.--If the direct taxation had been maintained up to the rate
of the ancient régime (190,000,000, according to Necker's report in
May, 1689), this impost would only have provided one-sixth of the net
revenue, or sixteen percent.]
[Footnote 2207: Dumont, 267. (The words of Mirabeau three months before
his death:) "Ah, my friend, how right we were at the start when we
wanted to prevent the commons from declaring themselves the National
Assembly! That was the source of the evil. They wanted to rule the King,
instead of ruling through him."]
[Footnote 2208: Gouverneur Morris, April 29, 1789 (on the principles of
the future constitution), "One generation at least will be required to
render the public familiar with them."]
[Footnote 2209: Cf. "The Ancient Régime," book II, ch. III.]
[Footnote 2210: French women did not obtain the right to vote until
1946. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2211: According to Voltaire ("L'Homme aux Quarante Écus"), the
average duration of human life was only twenty-three years.]
[Footnote 2212: Mercure, July 6, 1790. According to the report of
Camus (sitting of July 2nd), the official total of pensions amounted to
thirty-two millions; but if we add the gratuities and allowances out of
the various treasuries, the actual total was fifty-six millions.]
[Footnote 2213: I note that today in 1998, 100 years after Taine's
death, Denmark, my country, has had total democracy, that is universal
suffrage for women and men of 18 years of age for a considerable time,
and a witty author has noted that the first rule of our unwritten
constitution is that "thou shalt not think that thou art important". I
have noted, however, that when a Dane praises Denmark and the Danes even
in the most excessive manner, then he is not considered as a chauvinist
but admired as being a man of truth. In spite of the process of
'democratization' even socialist chieftains seem to favor and protect
their own children, send them to good private schools and later abroad
to study and help them to find favorable employment in the party or with
the public services. A new élite is thus continuously created by the
ruling political and administrative upper class. (SR.).]
[Footnote 2214: "The Ancient Régime," p.388, and the following pages.--
"Le Duc de Broglie," by M. Goizot, p. 11. (Last words of Prince Victor de
Broglie, and the opinions of M. d'Argenson.)]
[Footnote 2215: De Ferrières, I. p.2.]
[Footnote 2216: Moniteur, sitting of September 7, 1790, I. 431-437.
Speeches, of MM. de Sillery, de Lanjuinais, Thouret, de Lameth, and
Rabaut-Saint-Etienne. Barnave wrote in 1791: "It was necessary to be
content with one single chamber; the instinct of equality required it. A
second Chamber would have been the refuge of the aristocrats."]
[Footnote 2217: Lenin should later create an elite, an aristocracy
which, under his leadership was to become the Communist party. Lenin
could not have imagined or at least would not have been concerned that
the leadership of this party would fall into the hands of tyrants later,
under the pressure of age and corruption, to be replaced by the KGB and
later the FSB. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2218: "De Bouillé," p. 50: "All the old noble families, save
two or three hundred, were ruined."]
[Footnote 2219: Cf. Doniol, "La Révolution et la Féodalité."]
[Footnote 2220: Moniteur, sitting of August 6, 1789. Speech of Duport:
"Whatever is unjust cannot last. Similarly, no compensation for these
unjust rights can be maintained." Sitting of February 27, 1790. M.
Populus: "As slavery could not spring from a legitimate contract,
because liberty cannot be alienated, you have abolished without
indemnity hereditary property in persons." Instructions and decree of
June 15-19, 1791: "The National Assembly has recognized in the most
emphatic manner that a man never could become the proprietor of another
man, and consequently, that the rights which one had assumed to have
over the person of the other, could not become the property of the
former." Cf. the diverse reports of Merlin to the Committee of Feudality
and the National Assembly.]
[Footnote 2221: Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et Décrets." Laws of the
4-11 August, 1789; March 15-28, 1790; May 3-9, 1790; June 15-19, 1791.]
[Footnote 2222: Agrier percières--terms denoting taxes paid in the shape
of shares of produce. Those which follow: lods, rentes, quint, requint
belong to the taxes levied on real property. 22Tr.]
[Footnote 2223: Doniol ("Noveaux cahiers de 1790"). Complaints of the
copy-holders of Rouergues and of Quercy, pp. 97-105.]
[Footnote 2224: See further on, book III. ch. II. § 4 and also ch. III.]
[Footnote 2225: Moniteur, sitting of March 2, 1790. Speech by Merlin:
"The peasants have been made to believe that the annulation of the
banalities (the obligation to use the public mill, wine-press, and oven,
which belonged to the noble) carried along with it the loss to the
noble of all these; the peasants regarding themselves as proprietors of
them."]
[Footnote 2226: Moniteur; sitting of June 9, 1790. Speech of M. Charles
de Lameth--Duvergier (laws of June 19-23 1790; September 27 and October
16, 1791).]
[Footnote 2227: Sauzay, V. 400--410.]
[Footnote 2228: Duvergier, laws of June 15-19, 1791; of June 18--July 6,
1792; of August 25-28, 1792.]
[Footnote 2229: "Institution du Droit Français," par Argou, I.103.
(He wrote under the Regency.) "The origin of most of the feoffs is so
ancient that, if the seigneurs were obliged to produce the titles of the
original concession to obtain their rents, there would scarcely be one
able to produce them. This deficiency is made up by common law."]
[Footnote 2230: Duvergier (laws of April 8-15, 1791; March 7-11; October
26, 1791; January 6-10, 1794).--Mirabeau had already proposed to reduce
the disposable portion to one-tenth.]
[Footnote 2231: See farther on, book III, ch. III.]
[Footnote 2232: Mercure, September 10, 1791. Article by Mallet du
Pan.--Ibid. October 15, 1791.]
[Footnote 2233: Should Hitler or Lenin have read and understood the
consequences of these events they would have deduced that given the
command from official sources or recognized leaders ordinary people all
over the world could easily be tempted to attack any group, being it
Jews, Protestants, Hindus or foreigners. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2234: "Archives Nationales," II. 784. Letters of M. de
Langeron, October 16 and 18, 1789.--Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes,"
letters addressed to the Chevalier de Poterats, July, 1790.--"Archives
Nationales," papers of the Committee on Reports, bundle 4, letter of M.
le Belin-Chatellenot to the to the President of the National Assembly,
July 1, 1791.--Mercure, October 15, 1791. Article by Mallet du Pan:
"Such is literally the language of these emigrants; I do not add a
word."--Ibid. May 15, 1790. Letter of the Baron de Bois d'Aizy, April
29,1790, demanding a decree of protection fur the nobles. "We shall know
(then) whether we are outlawed or are of any account in the rights of
man written out with so much blood, or whether, finally, no other option
is left to us but that of carrying to distant skies the remains of our
property and our wretched existence."]
[Footnote 2235: Mercure, October 15, 1791, and September 10, 1791. Read
the admirable letter of the Chevalier de Mesgrigny, appointed colonel
during the suspension of the King, and refusing his new rank.]
[Footnote 2236: Cf. the "Mémoires" of M. de Boustaquet, a Norman
gentleman.]
[Footnote 2237: Cf. "The Ancient Régime," books I. and II.]
[Footnote 2238: Boivin--Champeaux, "Notice Historique sur la Révolution
dans le Département de L'Eure," the register of grievances. In 1788, at
Rouen, there was not a single profession made by men. In the monastery
of the Deux-Amants the chapter convoked in 1789 consisted of two
monks.--"Archives Nationales," papers of the ecclesiastic committee,
passim.]
[Footnote 2239: "Apologie de l'État Religieux" (1775), with statistics.
Since 1768 the decline is "frightful." "It is easy to foresee that
in ten or twelve years most of the regular bodies will be absolutely
extinct, or reduced to a state of feebleness akin to death."]
[Footnote 2240: Sanzay, I. 224 (November, 1790). At Besançon, out of 266
monks, "79 only showed any loyalty to their engagements or any affection
for their calling." Others preferred to abandon it, especially all the
Dominicans but five, all but one of the bare footed Carmelites, and all
the Grand Carmelites. The same disposition is apparent throughout the
department, as, for instance, with the Benedictines of Cluny except one,
all the Minimes but three, all the Capuchins but five, the Bernandins,
Dominicans, and Augustins, all preferring to leave.--Montalembert, "Les
Moines d'Occident," introduction, pp. 105-164. Letter of a Benedictine
of Saint-Germain-des-Prés to a Benedictine of Vannes. "Of all the
members of your congregation which come here to lodge, I have scarcely
found one capable of edifying us. You may probably say the same of those
who came to you from our place."--Cf. in the "Mémoires" of Merlin de
Thionville the description of the Chartreuse of Val St. Pierre.]
[Footnote 2241: Ch. Guerin, "Revue des Questions Historiques" (July 1,
1875; April 1, 1876).--Abbé Guettée, "Histoire de l'Eglise de France,"
XII, 128. ("Minutes of the meeting of l'Assemblée du Clergé," in
1780.)--"Archives nationales," official reports and memorandums of the
States-General in 1789. The most obnoxious proceeding to the chiefs of
the order is the postponement of the age at which vows may be taken,
it being, in their view, the ruin of their institutions.--"The Ancient
Régime," p. 403.]
[Footnote 2242: In order for a modern uninstructed non-believing reader
to understand the motivation which moved thousands of self-less sisters
and brothers to do their useful and kind work read St. Matthew chapter
25, verses 31 to 46 where Jesus predicts how he will sit in judgment on
mankind and separate the sheep from the goats. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2243: "The Ancient Régime," P.33--Cf. Guerin "The monastery
of the Trois-Rois, in the north of Franche-Comté, founded four villages
collected from foreign colonists. It is the only center of charity and
civilization in a radius of three leagues. It took care of two hundred
of the sick in a recent epidemic; it lodges the troops which pass from
Alsace into Franche-Comté, and in the late hailstorm it supplied the
whole neighborhood with food."]
[Footnote 2244: Moniteur, sitting of February 13,1790. (Speech of
the Abbé de Montesquiou).--Archives Nationales," papers of the
Ecclesiastical Committee, DXIX. 6, Visitation de Limoges, DXIX. 25,
Annonciades de Saint-Denis; ibid. Annonciades de Saint Amour, Ursulines
d'Auch, de Beaulieu, d'Eymoutier, de la Ciotat, de Pont Saint-Esprit,
Hospitalières d'Ernée, de Laval; Sainte Claire de Laval, de Marseilles,
etc. "]
[Footnote 2245: Sauzay, I. 247. Out of three hundred and seventy-seven
nuns at Doubs, three hundred and fifty-eight preferred to remain as they
were, especially at Pontarlier, all the Bernardines, Annonciades,
and Ursulines; at Besançon, all the Carmelites, the Visitandines, the
Annonciades, the Clarisses, the Sisters of Refuge, the Nuns of the
Saint-Esprit and, save one, all the Benedictine Nuns.]
[Footnote 2246: "Archives Nationales." Papers of the Ecclesiastical
Committee, passim.--Suzay, I. 51.--Statistics of France for 1866.]
[Footnote 2247: In 1993 this number has once more fallen, and continues
to fall, to 55 900. "Quid", 1996 page 623. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2248: Felix Rocquain, "La France aprés le 18 Brumaire."
(Reports of the Councillors of State dispatched on this service,
passim).]
[Footnote 2249: Moniteur, October 24, 1789. (Speech of Dupont de
Nemours.) All these speeches, often more fully reported and with various
renderings, may be found in "Les Archives Parlementaires," 1st series,
vols. VIII. and IX.]
[Footnote 2250: Duvergier, decree of June 14-17, 1791. "The annihilation
of every corporation of citizens of any one condition or profession
being on of the foundation-stones of the French constitution, it is
forbidden to re-establish these de-facto under any pretext or
form whatever. Citizens of a like condition or profession, such as
contractors, shopkeepers, workmen of all classes, and associates in
any art whatever shall not, on assembling together, appoint either
president, or secretaries, or syndics, discuss or pass resolutions, or
frame any regulations in relation to their assumed common interests."]
[Footnote 2251: Moniteur, sitting of November 2nd, 1789.]
[Footnote 2252: Moniteur, sitting of February 12, 1790. Speeches of
Dally d'Agier and Barnave.]
[Footnote 2253: Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by Garat;
February 12, 1790, speech by Pétion; October 30, 1789, speech by
Thouret.]
[Footnote 2254: Moniteur, sitting of November 2, 1789. Speech by
Chapelier; October 24, 1789, speech by Garat; October 30, 1789, speech
by Mirabeau, and the sitting of August 10, 1789.]
[Footnote 2255: Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by
Thouret.]
[Footnote 2256: Moniteur, sitting of October 23, 1789. Speech by
Treilhard; October 24th, speech by Garat; October 30, speech by
Mirabeau.--On the 8th of August, 1789, Al. de Lameth says in the
tribune: "When an foundation was set up, it is to the nation, which the
grant was given."]
[Footnote 2257: Duvergier, laws of August 18, 1792; August 8-14, 1793;
July 11, 1794; July 14, 1792; August 24, 1793.]
[Footnote 2258: Moniteur, sitting of July 31, 1792. Speech of M.
Boistard; the property of the hospitals, at this time was estimated at
eight hundred millions.--Already in 1791 (sitting of January 30th) M.
de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt said to the Assembly: "Nothing will more
readily restore confidence to the poor than to see the nation assuming
the right of rendering them assistance." He proposes to decree;
accordingly, that all hospitals and places of beneficence be placed
under the control of the nation. (Mercure, February 12, 1791.)]
[Footnote 2259: Moniteur, sitting of August 10, 1789. Speech by
Sieyès.--The figures given here are deduced from the statistics already
given in the "Ancient Régime."]
[Footnote 2260: Moniteur, v. 571. sitting of September 4, 1790. Report of
the Committee on Finances--V. 675, sitting of September 17, 1790. Report
by Necker.]
[Footnote 2261: A Revolutionary Government promissory bank note. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2262: Sauzay, I. 228 (from October 10, 1790, to February 20,
1791). "The total weight of the spoil of the monastic establishments in
gold, silver, and plated ware, sent to the Mint amounted to more than
525 kilograms (for the department)."]
[Footnote 2263: Duvergier, law of October 8-14.]
[Footnote 2264: Moniteur, sitting of June 3,1792. Speech of M. Bernard,
in the name of the committee of Public Assistance: "Not a day passes
in which we do not receive the saddest news from the departments on
the penury of their hospitals."--Mercure de France, December 17, 1791,
sitting of December 5. A number of deputies of the Department of the
North demand aid for their hospitals and municipalities. Out of 480,000
livres revenue there remains 10,000 to them. "The property of the
Communes is mortgaged, and no longer affords them any resources. 280,000
persons are without bread."]
[Footnote 2265: Sauzay, I. 252 (December 3, 1790. April 13, 1791).]
[Footnote 2266: Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speeches by Camus,
Treilhard, etc.]
[Footnote 2267: But on the assumption that all religion has been
invented by human beings for their own comfort or use, then what would
be more natural than clever rulers using their power to influence the
religious authorities to their own advantage. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2268: Ultramontane: Extreme in favoring the Pope's supremacy.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 2269: Sauzay, I. 168.]
[Footnote 2270: Personal knowledge, as I visited Besançon four times
between 1863 and 1867.]
[Footnote 2271: Moniteur, sitting of May 30, 1790, and others following.
(Report of Treilhard, speech by Robespierre.)]
[Footnote 2272: Duvergier, laws of July 12th-August 14th; November
14-25, 1790; January 21-26, 1791.]
[Footnote 2273: Moniteur, sitting of May 31, 1790. Robespierre, in
covert terms, demands the marriage of priests.--Mirabeau prepared a
speech in the same sense, concluding that every priest and monk should
be able to contract marriage; on the priest or monk presenting himself
with his bride before the curé, the latter should be obliged to
give them the nuptial benediction etc. Mirabeau wrote, June 2, 1790:
"Robespierre... has juggled me out of my motion on the marriage of
priests."--In general the germ of all the laws of the Convention is
found in the Constituent Assembly. (Ph. Plan, "Un Collaborateur de
Mirabeau," p.56, 144.)]
[Footnote 2274: Duvergier, laws of November 27th--December 26, 1790;
February 5th, March 22nd, and April 5, 1791.--Moniteur, sitting of
November 6, 1790, and those that follow, especially that of December
27th. "I swear to maintain with all my power the French Constitution
and especially the decrees relating to the Civil Constitution of the
clergy."--Cf. sitting of January 2, 1791, speech by the Bishop of
Clermont.]
[Footnote 2275: Duvergier, law of May 7, 1791, to maintain the right
of nonjuring priests to perform mass in national or private edifices.
(Demanded by Talleyrand and Sieyès.)]
[Footnote 2276: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3235. Letter of M. de
Château-Randon, deputy of la Lozère, May 28, 1791. After the decree
of May 23rd, all the functionaries of the department handed in their
resignations.]
[Footnote 2277: Duvergier, law of May 21-29, 1791.]
[Footnote 2278: Sauzay, I. 366, 538 to 593, 750.--"Archives Nationales,"
F7, 3235, Letter of M. de Chânteau-Randon, May 10, 1791.--Mercure,
April 23rd, and April 16, 1701. Articles of Mallet du Pan, letter from
Bordeaux, March 20, 1791.]
[Footnote 2279: Buchez and Roux, XII, 77. Report of Gallois and Gensonné
sent to La Vendée and the Deux Sévres (July 25, 1791).--" Archives
Nationales," F7, 3253, letter of the Directory of the Bas-Rhin (letter
of January 7, 1792).--" Le District de Machecoul de 1788 à 1793," by
Lallier.--" Histoire de Joseph Lebon," by Paris.--Sauzay, vol. I. and
II. in full.]
[Footnote 2280: Mercure, January 15th, April 23rd, May 16th and 30th,
June 1st, November 23rd, 1791.--"Le District de Machecoul," by Lallier,
173.--Sauzay, I. 295.--Lavirotte, "Annales d'Arnay-le-Duc" (February 5,
1792).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Petition of a number of the
inhabitants of Montpellier, November 17, 1791.]
[Footnote 2281: Duvergier, decree of November 29, 1791.--Mercure,
November 30, 1791 (article by Mallet du Pan).]
CHAPTER III. THE CONSTRUCTIONS--THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791.
That which is called a Government is a concert of powers, each with a
distinct function, and all working towards a final and complete end. The
merit of a Government consists in the attainment of this end; the worth
of a machine depends upon the work it accomplishes. The important thing
is not to produce a good mechanical design on paper, but to see that the
machine works well when set up on the ground. In vain might its founders
allege the beauty of their plan and the logical connection of their
theorems; they are not required to furnish either plan or theorems, but
an instrument.
Two conditions are requisite to render this instrument serviceable and
effective. In the first place, the public powers must harmonize with
each other, if not, one will neutralize the other; in the second place
they must be obeyed, or they are null.
The Constituent Assembly made no provision for securing this harmony
or this obedience. In the machine which it constructed the motions all
counteract each other; the impulse is not transmitted; the gearing is
not complete between the center and the extremities; the large central
and upper wheels turn to no purpose; the innumerable small wheels near
the ground break or get out of order: the machine, by virtue of its own
mechanism, remains useless, over-heated, under clouds of waste steam,
creaking and thumping in such a matter as to show clearly that it must
explode.
I.--Powers of the Central Government.
The Assembly on the partition of power.--Rupture of every
tie between the Legislature and the King.--The Assembly on
the subordination of the executive power.--How this is
nullified.--Certainty of a conflict.--The deposition of the
King is inevitable.
Let us first consider the two central powers, the Assembly and
the King.--Ordinarily when distinct powers of different origin are
established by a Constitution, it makes, in the case of conflict between
them, a provision for an arbiter in the institution of an Upper Chamber.
Each of these powers, at least, has a hold on the other. The Assembly
must have one on the King: which is the right to refuse taxation. The
King must have one on the Assembly: which is the right of dissolving it.
Otherwise, one of the two being disarmed, the other becomes omnipotent,
and, consequently, insane. The peril here is as great for an omnipotent
Assembly as it is for an absolute King. If the former is desirous of
remaining in its right mind, it needs repression and control as much
as the latter. If it is proper for the Assembly to restrain the King
by refusing him subsidies, it is proper for him to be able to defend
himself by appealing to the electors.--But, besides these extreme
measures, which are dangerous and rarely resorted to, there is another
which is ordinarily employed and is safe, that is, the right for the
King to take his ministers from the Chamber. Generally, the leaders
of the majority form the ministry, their nomination being the means of
restoring harmony between the King and Assembly; they are at once men
belonging to the Assembly and men belonging to the King. Through this
expedient not only is the confidence of the Assembly assured, since the
Government remains in the hands of its leaders, but also it is under
restraint because these become simultaneously both powerful and
responsible. Placed at the head of all branches of the service, they
are, before proposing it or accepting it, in a position to judge whether
a law is useful and practicable. Nothing is so healthy for a majority
as a ministry composed of its own chiefs; nothing is so effective in
repressing rashness or intemperance. A railway conductor is not willing
that his locomotive should be deprived of coal, nor to have the rails he
is about to run on broken up.--This arrangement, with all its drawbacks
and inconveniences, is the best one yet arrived at by human experience
for the security of societies against despotism and anarchy. For the
absolute power which establishes or saves them may also oppress or
exhaust them, there is a gradual substitution of differentiated powers,
held together through the mediation of a third umpire, caused by
reciprocal dependence and an which is common to both.
Experience, however, is unimportant to the members of the Constituent
Assembly; under the banner of principles they sunder one after another
all the ties which keep the two powers together harmoniously.--There
must not be an Upper Chamber, because this would be an asylum or a
nursery for aristocrats. Moreover, "the nation being of one mind," it
is averse to "the creation of different organs." So, applying ready-made
formulas and metaphors, they continue to produce ideological definitions
and distinctions.
The King must not have a hold on the legislative body: the executive
is an arm, whose business it is to obey; it is absurd for the arm to
constrain or direct the head. Scarcely is the monarch allowed a delaying
veto. Sieyès here enters with his protest declaring that this is a
"lettre de cachet[2301] launched against the universal will," and
there is excluded from the action of the veto the articles of the
Constitution, all money-bills, and some other laws.--Neither the monarch
nor the electors of the Assembly are to convoke the Assembly; he has no
voice in or oversight of the details of its formation; the electors are
to meet together and vote without his summons or supervision. Once the
Assembly is elected he can neither adjourn nor dissolve it. He cannot
even propose a law;[2302] per-mission is only granted to him "to invite
it to take a subject into consideration." He is limited to his executive
duties; and still more, a sort of wall is built up between him and the
Assembly, and the opening in it, by which each could take the other's
hand, is carefully closed up. The deputies are forbidden to become
ministers throughout the term of their service and for two years
afterwards. This is because fears are entertained that they might
be corrupted through contact with the Court, and, again, whoever
the ministers might be, there is no disposition to accept their
ascendancy.[2303] If one of them is admitted into the Assembly it is not
for the purpose of giving advice, but to furnish information, reply to
interrogatories, and make protestations of his zeal in humble terms
and in a dubious position.[2304] By virtue of being a royal agent he
is under suspicion like the King himself, and he is sequestered in his
bureau as the King is sequestered in his palace.--Such is the spirit
of the Constitution: by force of the theory, and the better to secure a
separation of the powers,[2305] a common understanding between them
is for ever rendered impossible, and to make up for this impossibility
there remains nothing but to make one the master and the other the
clerk.
This they did not fail to do, and for greater security, the latter
is made an honorary clerk, The executive power is conferred on him
nominally and in appearance; he does not possess it in fact, care having
been taken to place it in other hands.--In effect, all executive agents
and all secondary and local powers are elective. The King has no voice,
directly or indirectly, in the choice of judges, public prosecutors,
bishops, curés, collectors and assessors of the taxes, commissaries of
police, district and departmental administrators, mayors, and municipal
officers. At most, should an administrator violate a law, he may annul
his acts and suspend him; but the Assembly, the superior power, has the
right to cancel this suspension.--As to the armed force, of which he is
supposed to be the commander-in-chief, this escapes from him entirely:
the National Guard is not to receive orders from him; the gendarmerie
and the troops are bound to respond to the requisitions of the municipal
authorities, whom the King can neither select nor displace: in short,
local action of any kind--that is to say, all effective action--is
denied to him.--The executive instrument is purposely destroyed. The
connection which existed between the wheels of the extremities and the
central shaft is broken, and henceforth, incapable of distributing its
energy, this shaft, in the hands of the monarch, stands still or
else turns to no purpose. The King, "supreme head of the general
administration, of the army, and of the navy, guardian of public peace
and order, hereditary representative of the nation," is without the
means, in spite of his lofty titles, of directly applying his pretended
powers, of causing a schedule of assessments to be drawn up in a
refractory commune, of compelling payment by a delinquent tax-payer, of
enforcing the free circulation of a convoy of grain, of executing
the judgment of a court, of suppressing an outbreak, or of securing
protection to persons and property. For he can bring no constraint to
bear on the agents who are declared to be subordinate to him; he has
no resources but those of warning and persuasion. He sends to each
Departmental Assembly the decrees which he has sanctioned, requesting
it to transmit them and cause them to be carried out; he receives its
correspondence and bestows his censure or approval--and that is all.
He is merely a powerless medium of communication, a herald or public
advertiser, a sort of central echo, sonorous and empty, to which news
is brought, and from which laws depart, to spread abroad like a common
rumor. Such as he is, and thus diminished, he is still considered to
be too strong. He is deprived of the right of pardon, "which severs the
last artery of monarchical government."[2306] All sorts of precautions
are taken against him. He cannot declare war without a decree of the
Assembly; he is obliged to bring war to an end on the decree of the
Assembly; he cannot make a treaty of peace, an alliance, or a commercial
treaty, without the ratification of these by the Assembly. It is
expressly declared that he is to nominate but two-thirds of the
rear-admirals, one-half of the lieutenant-generals, field-marshals,
captains of Vessels and colonels of the gendarmerie, one-third of the
colonels and lieutenant-colonels of the line, and a sixth of the naval
lieutenants. He must not allow troops to stay or pass within 30,000
yards of the Assembly. His guard must not consist of more than 1,800
men, duly verified, and protected against his seductions by the civil
oath. The heir-presumptive must not leave the country without the
Assembly's assent. It is the Assembly which is to regulate by law
the education of his son during minority.--All these precautions are
accompanied with threats. There are against him five possible causes
of dethronement; against his responsible Ministers, eight causes for
condemnation to from twelve to twenty years of constraint, and eight
grounds for condemnations to death.[2307] Everywhere between the lines
of the Constitution, we read the constant disposition to assume an
attitude of defense, the secret dread of treachery, the conviction that
executive power, of whatever kind, is in its nature inimical to the
public welfare.--For withholding the nomination of judges, the reason
alleged is that "the Court and the Ministers are the most contemptible
portion of the nation."[2308] If the nomination of Ministers is
conceded, it is on the ground that" Ministers appointed by the people
would necessarily be too highly esteemed." The principle is that "the
legislative body alone must possess the confidence of the people," that
royal authority corrupts its depository, and that executive power is
always tempted to commit abuses and to engage in conspiracies. If it
is provided for in the Constitution it is with regret, through the
necessity of the case, and on the condition of its being trammeled by
impediments; it will prove so much the less baneful in proportion as it
is restrained, guarded, threatened, and denounced.--A position of this
kind is manifestly intolerable; and only a man as passive as Louis XVI.
could have put up with it. Do what he will, however, he cannot make it
a tenable one. In vain does he scrupulously adhere to the Constitution,
and fulfill it to the letter. Because he is powerless the Assembly
regards him as lukewarm, and imputes to him the friction of the machine
which is not under his control. If he presumes once to exercise his veto
it is rebellion, and the rebellion of an official against his superior,
which is the Assembly; the rebellion of a subject against his Sovereign,
which is the people. In this case dethronement is proper, and the
Assembly has only to pass the decree; the people have simply to
execute the act, and the Constitution ends in a Revolution.--A piece
of machinery of this stamp breaks down through its own movement. In
conformity with the philosophic theory the two wheels of government must
be separated, and to do this they have to be disconnected and
isolated one from the other. In conformity with the popular creed, the
driving-wheel must be subordinated and its influence neutralized: to
do this it is necessary to reduce its energy to a minimum, break up its
connections, and raise it up in the air to turn round like a top, or to
remain there as an obstacle to something else. It is certain that,
after much ill-usage as a plaything, it will finally be removed as a
hindrance.
II.--The Creation Of Popular Democracy.
Administrative powers.--The Assembly on the hierarchy.
--Grades abolished.--Collective powers.--Election introduced,
and the influence of subordinates in all branches of the
service.--Certainty of disorganization.--Power in the hands
of municipal bodies.
Let us leave the center of government and go to the extremities, and
observe the various administrations in working operation.[2309]
For any service to work well and with precision, there must be a
single and unique chief who can appoint, pay, punish and dismiss his
subordinates.--For, on the one hand, he stands alone and feels his
responsibility; he brings to bear on the management of affairs a degree
of attention and consistency, a tact and a power of initiation of which
a committee is incapable; corporate follies or defects do not involve
any one in particular, and authority is effective only when it is in one
hand.--On the other hand, being master, he can rely on the subalterns
whom he has himself selected, whom he controls through their hopes
or fears, and whom he discharges if they do not perform their duties;
otherwise he has no hold on them and they are not instruments to be
depended on. Only on these conditions can a railway manager be sure that
his pointsmen are on the job. Only on these conditions can the foreman
of a foundry engage to execute work by a given day. In every public or
private enterprise, direct, immediate authority is the only known, the
only human and possible way to ensure the obedience and punctuality of
agents.--Administration is thus carried on in all countries, by one or
several series of functionaries, each under some central manager who
holds the reins in his single grasp.[2310]
This is all reversed in the new Constitution. In the eyes of our
legislators obedience must be spontaneous and never compulsory, and, in
the suppression of despotism, they suppress government. The general rule
in the hierarchy which they establish is that the subordinates should be
independent of their superior, for he must neither appoint nor displace
them: the only right he has is to give them advice and remonstrate
with them.[2311] At best, in certain cases, he can annul their acts and
inflict on them a provisional suspension of their functions, which can
be contested and is revocable.[2312] We see, thus, that none of the
local powers are delegated by the central power; the latter is simply
like a man without either hands or arms, seated in a gilt chair. The
Minister of the Finances cannot appoint or dismiss either an assessor or
a collector; the Minister of the Interior, not one of the departmental,
district, or communal administrators; the Minister of Justice, not one
judge or public prosecutor. The King, in these three branches of the
service, has but one officer of his own, the commissioner whose duty
it is to advocate the observance of the laws in the courts, and, on
sentence being given, to enforce its execution.--All the muscles of
the central power are paralyzed by this stroke, and henceforth each
department is a State apart, living by itself.
An similar amputation, however, in the department itself, has cut
away all the ties by which the superior could control and direct his
subordinate.--If the administrators of the department are suffered to
influence those of the district, and those of the district those of the
municipality, it is only, again, in the way of council and solicitation.
Nowhere is the superior a commander who orders and constrains, but
everywhere a censor who gives warnings and scolds. To render this
already feeble authority still more feeble at each step of the
hierarchy, it is divided among several bodies. These consist of
superposed councils, which administer the department, the district,
and the commune. There is no directing head in any of these councils.
Permanency and executive functions throughout are vested in the
directories of four or eight members, or in bureaus of two, three,
four, six, and even seven members whose elected chief, a president
or mayor,[2313] has simply an honorary primacy. Decision and action,
everywhere blunted, delayed, or curtailed by talk and the processes
of discussion, are brought forth only after the difficult, tumultuous
assent of several discordant wills.[2314] Elective and collective as
these powers are, measures are still taken to guard against them. Not
only are they subject to the control of an elected council, one-half
renewable every two years, but, again, the mayor and public prosecutor
of the commune after serving four years, and the procureur-syndic of
the department or district after eight years service, and the district
collector after six years' service, are not re-elected. Should these
officials have deserved and won the confidence of the electors,
should familiarity with affairs have made them specially competent and
valuable, so much the worse for affairs and the public; they are not
to be anchored to their post.[2315] Should their continuance in office
introduce into the service a spirit of order and economy, that is of no
consequence; there is danger of their acquiring to much influence, and
the law sends them off as soon as they become expert and entitled to
rule.--Never has jealousy and suspicion been more on the alert against
power, even legal and legitimate. Sapping and mining goes on even
in services which are recognized as essential, as the army and the
gendarmerie.[2316] In the army, on the appointment of a non-commissioned
officer, the other non-commissioned officers make up a list of
candidates, and the captain selects three, one of whom is chosen by
the colonel. In the choice of a sub-lieutenant, all the officers of
the regiment vote, and he who receives a majority is appointed. In the
gendarmerie, for the appointment of a gendarme, the directory of the
department forms a list; the colonel designates five names on it,
and the directory selects one of them. For the choice of a corporal,
quartermaster or lieutenant, there is, besides the directory and the
colonel, another intervention, that of the officers, both commissioned
and non-commissioned. It is a system of elective complications and
lot-drawings; one which, giving a voice in the choice of officers to the
civil authorities and to military subordinates, leaves the colonel with
only a third or one-quarter of his former ascendancy. In relation to the
National Guard, the new principle is applied without any reservation.
All the officers and non-commissioned officers up to the grade of
captain are elected by their own men. All the superior officers are
elected by the inferior officers. All under-officers and all inferior
and superior officers are elected for one year only, and are not
eligible for re-election until after an interval of a year, during which
they must serve in the ranks.[2317]--The result is manifest: command, in
every civil and in every military order, becomes upset; subalterns are
no longer precise and trustworthy instruments; the chief no longer has
any practical hold on them; his orders, consequently, encounter only
tame obedience, doubtful deference, sometimes even open resistance;
their execution remains dilatory, uncertain, incomplete, and at
length is utterly neglected; a latent and soon flagrant system of
disorganization is instituted by the law. Step by step, in the hierarchy
of Government, power has slipped downwards, and henceforth belongs by
virtue of the Constitution to the authorities who sit at the bottom of
the ladder. It is not the King, or the minister, or the directory of the
department or of the district who rules, but its municipal officers;
and their sway is as omnipotent as it can be in a small independent
republic. They alone have the "strong hand" with which to search the
pockets of refractory tax-payers, and ensure the collection of the
revenue; to seize the rioter by the throat, and protect life and
property; in short, to convert the promises and menaces of the law
into acts. Every armed force, the National Guard, the regulars, and the
gendarmerie, must march on their requisition. They alone, among the body
of administrators, are endowed with this sovereign right; all that the
department or the district can do is to invite them to exercise it. It
is they who proclaim martial law. Accordingly, the sword is in their
hands.[2318] Assisted by commissioners who are appointed by the
council-general of the commune, they prepare the schedule of taxation
of real and personal property, fix the quota of each tax-payer, adjust
assessments, verify the registers and the collector's receipts, audit
his accounts, discharge the insolvent, answer for returns and authorize
prosecutions.[2319] Private purses are, in this way, at their mercy,
and they take from them whatever they determine to belong to the
public.--With the purse and the sword in their hands they lack nothing
that is necessary to make them masters, and all the more because the
application of every law belongs to them; because no orders of the
Assembly to the King, of the King to the ministers, of ministers to the
departments, of departments to the districts, of the districts to
the communes, brings about any real local result except through them;
because each measure of general application undergoes their special
interpretation, and can always be optionally disfigured, softened,
or exaggerated according to their timidity, inertia, violence or
partiality. Moreover, they are not long in discovering their strength.
We see them on all sides arguing with their superiors against district,
departmental, and ministerial orders, and even against the Assembly
itself; alleging circumstances; lack of means, their own danger and the
public safety, failing to obey, acting for themselves, openly disobeying
and glorying in the act,[2320] and claiming, as a right, the omnipotence
which they exercise in point of fact. Those of Troyes, at the festival
of the Federation, refuse to submit to the precedence of the department
and claim it for themselves, as "immediate representatives of the
people." Those of Brest, notwithstanding the reiterated prohibitions of
their district, dispatch four hundred men and two cannon to force the
submission of a neighboring commune to a cure' who has taken the oath.
Those of Arnay-le-Duc arrest Mesdames (the King's aunts), in spite
of their passport signed by the ministers, hold them in spite of
departmental and district orders, persist in barring the way to them
in spite of a special decree of the National Assembly, and send two
deputies to Paris to obtain the sanction of their decision. What with
arsenals pillaged, citadels invaded, convoys arrested, couriers
stopped, letters intercepted, constant and increasing insubordination,
usurpations without truce or measure, the municipalities arrogate
to themselves every species of license on their own territory and
frequently outside of it. Henceforth, forty thousand sovereign bodies
exist in the kingdom. Force is placed in their hands, and they make good
use of it. They make such good use of it that one of them, the commune
of Paris, taking advantage of its proximity, lays siege to, mutilates,
and rules the National Convention, and through it France.
III.--Municipal Kingdoms.
The Municipal bodies.--Their great task.--Their incapacity.
--Their feeble authority.--Insufficiency of their means of
action.--The role of the National Guard.--
Let us follow these municipal kings into their own domain: the burden
on their shoulders is immense, and much beyond what human strength can
support. All the details of executive duty are confided to them; they
have not to busy themselves with a petty routine, but with a complete
social system which is being taken to pieces, while another is
reconstructed in its place.--They are in possession of four milliards of
ecclesiastical property, real and personal, and soon there will be two
and a half milliards of property belonging to the emigrants, which must
be sequestered, valued, managed, inventoried, divided, sold, and the
proceeds received. They have seven or eight thousand monks and thirty
thousand nuns to displace, install, sanction, and provide for. They have
forty-six thousand ecclesiastics, bishops, canons, curés, and vicars,
to dispossess, replace, often by force, and later on to expel, intern,
imprison, and support. They are obliged to discuss, trace out, teach
and make public new territorial boundaries, those of the commune, of the
district and of the department. They have to convoke, lodge, and protect
the numerous primary and secondary Assemblies, to supervise their
operations, which sometimes last for weeks. They must install those
elected by them, justices of the peace, officers of the National Guard,
judges, public prosecutors, curés, bishops, district and departmental
administrators. They are to form new lists of tax-payers, apportion
amongst themselves, according to a new system of impost, entirely
new real and personal taxes, decide on claims, appoint an assessor,
regularly audit his accounts and verify his books, aid him with force,
use force in the collection of the excise and salt duties, which being
reduced, equalized, and transformed in vain by the National Assembly,
afford no returns in spite of its decrees. They are obliged to find the
funds for dressing, equipping, and arming the National Guard, to step in
between it and the military commanders, and to maintain concord between
its diverse battalions. They have to protect forests from pillage,
communal land from being invaded, to maintain the octroi, to protect
former functionaries, ecclesiastics, and nobles, suspected and
threatened, and, above all, to provide, no matter how, provisions for
the commune which lacks food, and consequently, to raise subscriptions,
negotiate purchases at a distance and even abroad, organize escorts,
indemnify bakers, supply the market every week notwithstanding
the dearth, the insecurity of roads, and the resistance of
cultivators.--Even an absolute chief; sent from a distance and from
high place, the most energetic and expert possible, supported by the
best-disciplined and most obedient troops, would scarcely succeed in
such an undertaking; and there is instead only a municipality which has
neither the authority, the means, the experience, the capacity, nor the
will.
In the country, says an orator in the tribune,[2321] "the municipal
officers, in twenty thousand out of forty thousand municipalities, do
not know how to read or write." The curé, in effect, is excluded from
such offices by law, and, save in La Vendée and the noble is excluded by
public opinion. Besides, in many of the provinces, nothing but patois
is spoken.[2322] French, especially the philosophic and abstract
phraseology of the new laws and proclamations, remains gibberish
to their inhabitants. They cannot possibly understand and apply the
complicated decrees and fine-spun instructions which reach them from
Paris. They hurry off to the towns, get the duties of the office imposed
on them explained and commented on in detail, try to comprehend, imagine
they do, and then, the following week, come back again without having
understood anything, either the mode of keeping state registers,
the distinction between feudal rights which are abolished and those
retained, the regulations they should enforce in cases of election,
the limits which the law imposes as to their powers and subordination.
Nothing of all this finds its way into their rude, untrained brains;
instead of a peasant who has just left his oxen, there is needed here a
legal adept aided by a trained clerk.--Prudential considerations must
be added to their ignorance. They do not wish to make enemies for
themselves in their commune, and they abstain from any positive action,
especially in all tax matters. Nine months after the decree on the
patriotic contribution, "twenty-eight thousand municipalities are
overdue, not having (yet) returned either rolls or estimates."[2323] At
the end of January, 1792, "out of forty thousand nine hundred and eleven
municipalities, only five thousand four hundred and forty-eight have
deposited their registers; two thousand five hundred and eighty rolls
only are definitive and in process of collection. A large number have
not even begun their sectional statements."[2324]--It is much worse
when, thinking that they do understand it, they undertake to do their
work. In their minds, incapable of abstraction, the law is transformed
and deformed by extraordinary interpretations. We shall see what it
becomes when it is brought to bear on feudal dues, on the forests, on
communal rights, on the circulation of corn, on the taxes on provisions,
on the supervision of the aristocrats, and on the protection of persons
and property. According to them, it authorizes and invites them to do
by force, and at once, whatever they need or desire for the time
being.--The municipal officers of the large boroughs and towns, more
acute and often able to comprehend the decrees, are scarcely in a
better condition to carry them out effectively. They are undoubtedly
intelligent, inspired by the best disposition, and zealous for the
public welfare. During the first two years of the Revolution it is, on
the whole, the best informed and most liberal portion of the bourgeoisie
which, in the department as in the district, undertakes the management
of affairs. Almost all are men of the law, advocates, notaries, and
attorneys, with a small number of the old privileged class imbued
with the same spirit, a canon at Besançon, a gentleman at Nîmes. Their
intentions are of the very best; they love order and liberty, they give
their time and their money, they hold permanent sessions and accomplish
an incredible amount of work, and they often voluntarily expose
themselves to great danger.--But they are bourgeois philosophers, and,
in this latter particular, similar to their deputies in the National
Assembly, and, with this twofold character, as incapable as their
deputies of governing a disintegrated nation. In this twofold character
they are ill-disposed towards the ancient régime, hostile to Catholicism
and feudal rights, unfavorable to the clergy and the nobility, inclined
to extend the bearing and exaggerate the rigor of recent decrees,
partisans of the Rights of Man, and, therefore, humanitarians and
optimists, disposed to excuse the misdeeds of the people, hesitating,
tardy and often timid in the face of an outbreak--in short, admirable
writers, exhorters, and reformers, but good for nothing when it comes to
breaking heads and risking their own bones. They have not been brought
up in such a way as to become men of action in a single day. Up to
this time they have always lived as passive administrators, as quiet
individuals, as studious men and clerks, domesticated, conversational,
and polished, to whom words concealed facts, and who, on their evening
promenade, warmly discussed important principles of government, without
any consciousness of the practical machinery which, with a police-system
for its ultimate wheel, rendered themselves, their promenade, and their
conversation perfectly secure. They are not imbued with that sentiment
of social danger which produces the veritable chief; the man who
subordinates the emotions of pity to the exigencies of the public
service. They are not aware that it is better to mow down a hundred
conscientious citizens rather than let them hang a culprit without
a trial. Repression, in their hands, is neither prompt, rigid, nor
constant. They continue to be in the Hôtel-de-Ville what they were
when they went into it, so many jurists and scribes, fruitful in
proclamations, reports, and correspondence. Such is wholly their role,
and, if any amongst them, with more energy, desires to depart from it,
he has no hold on the commune which, according to the Constitution, he
has to direct, and on that armed force which is entrusted to him with a
view to insure the observance of the laws.
To insure respect for authority, indeed, it must not spring up on the
spot and under the hands of its subordinates. It loses its prestige and
independence when those who create it are precisely those who have to
submit to it. For, in submitting to it, they remember that they have
created it. This or that candidate among them who has but lately
solicited their suffrages is now a magistrate who issues orders, and
this sudden transformation is their work. It is with difficulty that
they pass from the role of sovereign electors to that of docile subjects
of the administration, and recognize a commander in one of their own
creatures.[2325] On the contrary, they will submit to his control only
in their own fashion, reserving to themselves in practice the powers the
right to which they have conferred on him.
"We gave him his place, and he must do as we want him to do."
Such popular reasoning is the most natural in the world. It is as
applicable to the municipal officer wearing his scarf as to the officer
in the National Guard wearing his epaulettes; the former as well as
the latter being conferred by the arbitrary voice of the electors, and
always seeming to them a gift which is revocable at their pleasure. The
superior always, and more particularly in times of danger or of great
public excitement, seems, if directly appointed by those whom he
commands, to be their clerk.--Such is municipal authority at this epoch,
intermittent, uncertain, and weak; and all the weaker because the sword,
whose hilt the men of the Hôtel-de-Ville seem to hold, does not always
leave its scabbard at their bidding. They alone are empowered to summon
the National Guard, but it does not depend on them, and it is not at
their disposal. To obtain its support it is needful that its independent
chiefs should be willing to respond to their requisition; that the men
should willingly obey their elected officers; that these improvised
soldiers should consent to quit their plow, their stores, their
workshops and offices, to lose their day, to patrol the streets at
night, to be pelted with stones, to fire on a riotous crowd whose
enmities and prejudices they often share. Undoubtedly, they will fire on
some occasions, but generally they will remain quiet, with their arms
at rest; and, at last, they will grow weary of a trying, dangerous, and
constant service, which is disagreeable to them, and for which they are
not fitted. They will not answer the summons, or, if they do, they will
come too late, and in too small a number. In this event, the regulars
who are sent for, will do as they do and remain quiet, following their
example, while the municipal magistrate, into whose hands the sword has
glided, will be able to do no more than make grievous reports, to his
superiors of the department or district, concerning the popular violence
of which he is a powerless witness.--In other cases, and especially in
the country, his condition is worse. The National Guard, preceded by its
drums, will come and take him off to the town hall to authorize by his
presence, and to legalize by his orders, the outrages that it is about
to commit. He marches along seized by the collar, and affixes his
signature at the point of the bayonet. In this case not only is his
instrument taken away from him, but it is turned against of holding it
by the hilt, he feels the point: the armed force which he ought to make
use of makes use of him.
IV.--On Universal Suffrage.
The National Guard as electors.--Its great power.--Its
important task.--The work imposed on active citizens.--They
avoid it.
Behold, then, the true sovereign, the elector, both National Guard and
voter. They are the kings designed by the Constitution; there he is,
in every hierarchical stage, with his suffrage, with which to delegate
authority, and his gun to assure its exercise.--Through his free
choice he creates all local powers, intermediary, central, legislative,
administrative, ecclesiastical, and judiciary. He appoints directly, and
in the primary assemblies, the mayor, the municipal board, the public
prosecutor and council of the commune, the justice of the peace and
his assessors, and the electors of the second degree. Indirectly, and
through these elected electors, he appoints the administrators and
procureurs-syndics of both district and department, the civil and
criminal judges, the public prosecutor, bishops, and priests, the
members of the National Assembly and jurors of the higher National
Court[2326]. All these commissions which he issues are of short date,
the principal ones, those of municipal officer, elector, and deputy,
having but two years to run; at the end of this brief term their
recipients are again subject to his vote, in order that, if he is
displeased with them, he may replace them by others. He must not be
fettered in his choice; in every well-conducted establishment the
legitimate proprietor must be free easily and frequently to renew his
staff of clerks. He is the only one in whom confidence can be placed,
and, for greater security, all arms are given up to him. When his
clerks wish to employ force he is the one to place it at their disposal.
Whatever he desired as elector he executes as National Guard. On two
occasions he interferes, both times in a decisive manner; and his
control over the legal powers is irresistible because these are born out
of his vote and are obeyed only through his support.--But these rights
are, at the same time, burdens. The Constitution describes him as an
"active citizen," and this he eminently is or should be, since public
action begins and ends with him, since everything depends on his
zeal and capacity, since the machine is good and only works well
in proportion to his discernment, punctuality, calmness, firmness,
discipline at the polls, and in the ranks. The law requires his
services incessantly day and night, in body and mind, as gendarme and as
elector.--How burdensome this service of gendarme must be, can be judged
by the number of riots. How burdensome that of elector must be, the list
of elections will show.
In February, March, April, and May, 1789, there are prolonged parish
meetings, for the purpose of choosing electors and writing out
grievances, also bailiwick meetings of still longer duration to choose
deputies and draw up the memorial. During the months of July and August,
1789, there are spontaneous gatherings to elect or confirm the municipal
bodies; other spontaneous meetings by which the militia is formed and
officered; and then, following these, constant meetings of this same
militia to fuse themselves into a National Guard, to renew officers and
appoint deputies to the federative assemblies. In December, 1789, and
January, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect municipal officers
and their councils. In May, 1790, there are primary and secondary
meetings, to appoint district and departmental administrators. In
October, 1790, there are primary meetings, to elect the justice of the
peace and his assessors, also secondary meetings, to elect the district
courts. In November, 1790, there are primary meetings, to renew
one-half of the municipal bodies. In February and March, 1791, there
are secondary meetings, to nominate the bishop and curés. In June, July,
August, September, 1791, there are primary and secondary meetings,
to renew one-half of the district and departmental administrators, to
nominate the president, the public prosecutor, and the clerk of the
criminal court, and to choose deputies. In November, 1791, there are
primary meetings to renew one-half of the municipal council. Observe
that many of these elections drag along because the voters lack
experience, because the formalities are complicated, and because
opinions are divided. In August and September, 1791, at Tours, they are
prolonged for thirteen days;[2327] at Troyes, in January, 1790, instead
of three days they last for three weeks; at Paris, in September and
October, 1791, only for the purpose of choosing deputies, they last
for thirty-seven days; in many places their proceedings are contested,
annulled, and begun over again. To these universal gatherings, which
put all France in motion, we must add the local gatherings by which a
commune approves or gainsays its municipal officers, makes claims on the
department, on the King, or on the Assembly, demands the maintenance
of its parish priest, the provisioning of its market, the arrival
or dispatch of a military detachment,--and think of all that these
meetings, petitions, and nominations presuppose in the way of
preparatory committees and preliminary meetings and debates! Every
public representation begins with rehearsals in secret session. In the
choice of a candidate, and, above all, of a list of candidates; in
the appointment in each commune of from three to twenty-one municipal
officers, and from six to forty-two notables; in the selection of twelve
district administrators and thirty-six departmental administrators,
especially as the list must be of a double length and contain twice
as many officers as there are places to fill, immediate agreement is
impossible. In every important election the electors are sure to be in
a state of agitation a month beforehand, while four weeks of discussion
and caucus is not too much to give to inquiries about candidates, and to
canvassing voters. Let us add, accordingly, this long preface to each
of the elections, so long and so often repeated, and now sum up the
troubles and disturbances, all this loss of time, all the labor which
the process demands. Each convocation of the primary assemblies, summons
to the town-hall or principal town of the canton, for one or for several
days, about three million five hundred thousand electors of the first
degree. Each convocation of the assemblies of the second class compels
the attendance and sojourn at the principal town of the department, and
again in the principal town of the district, of about three hundred and
fifty thousand elected electors. Each revision or re-election in the
National Guard gathers together on the public square, or subjects to
roll-call at the town-hall, three or four millions of National
Guards. Each federation, after exacting the same gathering or the same
roll-call, sends delegates by hundreds of thousands to the principal
towns of the districts and departments, and tens of thousands to
Paris.--The powers thus instituted at the cost of so great an effort,
require an equal effort to make them work; one branch alone of the
administration[2328] keeps 2,988 officials busy in the departments,
6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes--in all, nearly one
million two hundred thousand administrators, whose places, as we have
seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a political machine require so
prodigious an expenditure of force to set it up and keep it in motion.
In the United States, where it is now (around 1875) deranged by its own
action, it has been estimated that, to meet the intentions of the law
and keep each wheel in its proper place, it would be necessary for each
citizen to give one whole day in each week, or on-sixth of his time,
to public business. In France, under the newly adopted system, where
disorder is universal, where the duty of National Guard is added to and
complicates that of elector and administrator, I estimate that two days
would be necessary. This is what the Constitution comes to, this is its
essential and supreme requirement: each active citizen has to give up
one-third of his time to public affairs.
Now, these twelve hundred thousand administrators and three or four
million electors and National Guards, are just the men in France who
have the least leisure. The class of active citizens, indeed, comprises
about all the men who labor with their hands or with their heads.
The law exempts only domestics devoted to personal service or common
laborers who, possessing no property or income, earn less than
twenty-one sous a day. Every journeyman-miller, the smallest farmer,
every village proprietor of a cottage or of a vegetable-garden, any
ordinary workman, votes at the primary meetings, and may become a
municipal officer. Again, if he pays ten francs a year direct tax, if he
is a farmer or yeomen on any property which brings him in four hundred
francs, if his rent is one hundred and fifty francs, he may become an
elected elector and an administrator of the district or department.
According to this standard the eligible are innumerable; in Doubs, in
1790,[2329] they form two-thirds of the active citizens. Thus, the
way to office is open to all, or almost all, and the law has taken no
precaution whatever to reserve or provide places for the elite, who
could best fill them. On the contrary, the nobles, the ecclesiastical
dignitaries, the members of the parliaments, the grand functionaries of
the ancient regime, the upper class of the bourgeoisie, almost all the
rich who possess leisure, are practically excluded from the elections
by violence, and from the various offices by public opinion: they
soon retire into private life, and, through discouragement or disgust,
through monarchical or religious scruples, abandon entirely a public
career.--The burden of the new system falls, accordingly, on the most
occupied portion of the community: on merchants, manufacturers, agents
of the law, employees, shopkeepers, artisans, and cultivators. They
are the people who must give up one-third of their time already
appropriated, neglect private for public business, leave their harvests,
their bench, their shop, or their briefs to escort convoys and patrol
the highways, to run off to the principal town of the canton, district,
or department, and stay and sit there in the town-hall,[2330] subject
to a deluge of phrases and papers, conscious that they are forced to
gratuitous drudgery, and that this drudgery is of little advantage to
the public.--For the first six months they do it with good grace; their
zeal in penning memorials, in providing themselves with arms against
"brigands," and in suppressing taxes, rents, and tithes, is active
enough. But now that this much is obtained or extorted, decreed as a
right, or accomplished in fact, they must not be further disturbed. They
need the whole of their time: they have their crops to get in, their
customers to serve, their orders to give, their books to make up, their
credits to adjust, all which are urgent matters, and neither ought to be
neglected or interrupted. Under the lash of necessity and of the crisis
they have put their backs to it, and, if we take their word for it, they
hauled the public cart out of the mud; but they had no idea of putting
themselves permanently in harness to drag it along themselves. Confined
as this class has been for centuries to private life, each has his own
wheelbarrow to trundle along, and it is for this, before all and above
all, that he holds himself responsible. From the beginning of the year
1790 the returns of the votes taken show that as many are absent as
present; at Besançon there are only nine hundred and fifty-nine voters
out of thirty-two hundred inscribed; four months after this more than
one-half of the electors fail to come to the polls;[2331] and throughout
France, even at Paris, the indifference to voting keeps on increasing.
Puppets of such an administration as that of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. do
not become Florentine or Athenian citizens in a single night. The hearts
and heads of three or four millions of men are not suddenly endowed with
faculties and habits which render them capable of diverting one-third of
their energies to work which is new, disproportionate, gratuitous, and
supererogatory.--A fallacy of monstrous duplicity lies at the basis
of the political theories of the day and of those which were
invented during the following ten years. Arbitrarily, and without any
examination, a certain weight and resistance are attributed to the human
metal employed. It is found on trial to have ten times less resistance
and twenty times more weight than was supposed.
V.--The Ruling Minority.
The restless minority.--Its elements.--The clubs.--Their
ascendancy.--How they interpret the Rights of Man.--Their
usurpations and violence.
In default of the majority, who shirk their responsibilities, it is the
minority which does the work and assumes the power. The majority having
resigned, the minority becomes sovereign, and public business, abandoned
by the hesitating, weak, and absent multitude, falls into the hands of
the resolute, energetic, ever-present few who find the leisure and
the disposition to assume the responsibility. In a system in which all
offices are elective, and in which elections are frequent, politics
becomes a profession for those who subordinate their private interests
to it, and who find it of personal advantage; every village contains
five or six men of this class, every borough twenty or thirty, every
town its hundreds and Paris its many thousands.[2332] These are
veritable active citizens They alone give all their time and attention
to public matters, correspond with the newspapers and with the deputies
at Paris, receive and spread abroad the party watchword on every
important question, hold caucuses, get up meetings, make motions, draw
up addresses, overlook, rebuke, or denounce the local magistrates, form
themselves into committees, publish and push candidates, and go into
the suburbs and the country to canvass for votes. They hold the power
in recompense for their labor, for they manage the elections, and are
elected to office or provided with places by the successful candidates.
There is a prodigious number of these offices and places, not only those
of officers of the National Guard and the administrators of the commune,
the district, and the department, whose duties are gratuitous,
or little short of it, but a quantity of others which are
paid,[2333]--eighty-three bishops, seven hundred and fifty deputies,
four hundred criminal judges, three thousand and seven civil judges,
five thousand justices of the peace, twenty thousand assessors forty
thousand communal collectors, forty-six thousand curés, without counting
the accessory or insignificant places which exist by tens and hundreds
of thousands, from secretaries, clerks, bailiffs and notaries, to
gendarmes, constables, office-clerks, beadles, grave-diggers, and
keepers of sequestered goods. The pasture is vast for the ambitious; it
is not small for the needy, and they seize upon it. Such is the rule in
pure democracies: hence the swarm of politicians in the United States.
When the law incessantly calls all citizens to political action, there
are only a few who devote themselves to it; these become expert in this
particular work, and, consequently, preponderant. But they must be paid
for their trouble, and the election secures to them their places because
they manage the elections.
Two sorts of men furnish the recruits for this dominant minority: on
the one hand the enthusiasts, and on the other those who have no social
position. Towards the end of 1789, moderate people, who are minding
their own business, retire into privacy, and are daily less disposed to
show themselves. The public square is occupied by others who, through
zeal and political passion, abandon their pursuits, and by those who,
finding themselves hampered in their social sphere, or repelled from
ordinary circles, were merely awaiting a new opening to take a fresh
start. In these utopian and revolutionary times, there is no lack of
either class. Flung out by handfuls, the dogma of popular sovereignty
falls like a seed scattered around, to end up vegetating in heated
brains, in the narrow and rash minds which, once possessed by an
idea, adhere to it and are mastered by it. It falls amongst a class of
reasoners who, starting from a principle, dash forward like a horse
who has had blinders put on. This is especially the case with the legal
class, whose profession accustoms them to deductions; nor less with the
village attorney, the unfrocked monk, the "intruding" and excommunicated
curé, and above all, the journalist and the local orator, who, for
the first time in his life, finds that he has an audience, applause,
influence and a future before him. These are the only people who can do
the complicated and constant work which the new Constitution calls for;
for they are the only men whose desires are unlimited, whose dreams are
coherent, whose doctrine is explicit, whose enthusiasm is contagious,
who cherish no scruples, and whose presumption is unbounded. Thus has
the rigid will been wrought and tempered within them, the inward spring
of energy which, being daily more tightly wound up, urges them on to
propaganda and to action.--During the second half of the year 1790 we
see them everywhere following the example of the Paris Jacobins, styling
themselves friends of the Constitution, and grouping themselves together
in popular associations. Each town and village gives birth to a club of
patriots who regularly every evening, or several times a week, meet "for
the purpose of co-operating for the safety of the commonwealth."[2334]
This is a new and spontaneous organ,[2335] an cancer and a parasite,
which develops itself in the social body alongside of its legal
organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the
substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting
itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous
outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because
circumstances and the working of the Constitution nourish it, but also
because its germ, deposited at a great depth, is a living portion of the
Constitution itself.
For, placed at the head of the Constitution, as well as of the decrees
which are attached to it, stands the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
According to this, and by the avowal of the legislators themselves,
there are two parts to be distinguished in the law, the one superior,
eternal, inviolable, which is the self-evident principle, and the other
inferior, temporary, and open to discussion, which comprehends more or
less exact or erroneous applications of this principle. No application
of the law is valid if it derogates from the principle. No institution
or authority is entitled to obedience if it is opposed to the rights
which it aims to guarantee. These sacred rights, anterior to all
society, take precedence of every social convention, and whenever we
would know if a legal order is legitimate, we have merely to ascertain
if it is in conformity with natural right. Let us, accordingly, in every
doubtful or difficult case, refer to this philosophic gospel, to
this incontestable catechism, this primordial creed proclaimed by the
National Assembly.--The National Assembly itself invites us to do so.
For it announces that
"ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole
causes of public misfortune, and of the corruption of governments."
It declares that
"the object of every political association is the preservation of
natural and imprescriptible rights."
It enumerates them, "in order that the acts of legislative power and
the acts of executive power may at once be compared with the purpose
of every political institution." It desires "that every member of the
social body should have its declaration constantly in mind."--Thus we
are told to control all acts of application by the principle, and
also we are provided with the rule by which we may and should accord,
measure, or even refuse our submission to, deference for, and toleration
of established institutions and legal authority.
What are these superior rights, and, in case of dispute, who will decide
as arbitrator?--There is nothing here like the precise declarations
of the American Constitution,[2336] those positive prescriptions which
serve to sustain a judicial appeal, those express prohibitions which
prevent beforehand certain species of laws from being passed, which
prescribe limits to public powers, which mark out the province not to be
invaded by the State because it is reserved to the individual.
On the contrary, in the declaration of the national Assembly, most of
the articles are abstract dogmas,[2337] metaphysical definitions, more
or less literary axioms, that is to say, more or less false, now vague
and now contradictory, open to various interpretations and to opposite
constructions, These are good for platform display but bad in practice,
mere stage effect, a sort of pompous standard, useless and heavy, which,
hoisted in front of the Constitutional house and shaken every day
by violent hands, cannot fail soon to tumble on the heads of passers
by.[2338]--Nothing is done to ward off this visible danger. There is
nothing here like that Supreme Court which, in the United States, guards
the Constitution even against its Congress, and which, in the name of
the Constitution, actually invalidates a law, even when it has passed
through all formalities and been voted on by all the powers;
which listens to the complaints of the individual affected by an
unconstitutional law; which stays the sheriff's or collector's hand
raised against him, and which above their heads gives judgment on his
interests and wrongs. Ill-defined and discordant laws are proclaimed
without any provision being made for their interpretation, application
or sanction. No means are taken to have them specially expounded. No
district tribunal is assigned to consider the claims which grow out of
them, to put an end to litigation legally, peacefully, on a last appeal,
and through a final decision which becomes a precedent and fixes the
loose sense of the text. All this is made the duty of everybody, that is
to say of those who are disposed to charge themselves with it,--in other
words, the active minority in council assembled.--Thus, in each town
or village it is the local club which, by the authorization of the
legislator himself, becomes the champion, judge, interpreter and
administrator of the rights of man, and which, in the name of these
superior rights, may protest or rebel, as it seems best, not only
against the legitimate acts of legal powers, but also against the
authentic text of the Constitution and the Laws.[2339]
Consider, indeed, these rights as they are proclaimed, along with
the commentary of the speaker who expounds them at the club before an
audience of heated and daring spirits, or in the street to the rude
and fanatical multitude. Every article in the Declaration is a dagger
pointed at human society, and the handle has only to be pressed to
make the blade enter the flesh.[2340] Among "these natural and
imprescriptible rights" the legislator has placed "resistance to
oppression." We are oppressed: let us resist and take up arms. According
to this legislator, "society has the right to bring every public agent
of the Administration to account." Let us away to the Hôtel-de-Ville,
and interrogate our lukewarm or suspected magistrates, and watch their
sessions to see if they prosecute priests and disarm the aristocrats;
let us stop their intrigues against the people; let us force these
slow clerks to hasten their steps.--According to this legislator
"all citizens have the right to take part in person, or through their
representatives, in the formation of the law." There must thus be no
more electors privileged by their payment of a three-franc tax. Down
with the new aristocracy of active citizens! Let us restore to the
two millions of proletarians the right of suffrage, of which the
Constitution has unjustly defrauded them!--According to this legislator,
"men are born and remain free, and equal in their rights." Consequently,
let no one be excluded from the National Guard; let everybody, even
the pauper, have some kind of weapon, a pike or gun, to defend his
freedom!--In the very terms of the Declaration, "the law is the
expression of the universal will." Listen to these clamors in the open
streets, to these petitions flowing in from the towns on all sides;
behold the universal will, the living law which abolishes the written
law! On the strength of this the leader of a few clubs in Paris are to
depose the King, to violate the Legislative Assembly and decimate the
National Convention.--In other terms, the turbulent, factious minority
is to supplant the sovereign nation, and henceforth there is nothing to
hinder it from doing what it pleases just when it pleases. The operation
of the Constitution has given to it the reality of power, while the
preamble of the Constitution clothes it with the semblance of right.
VI.--Summary of the work of the Constituent Assembly.
Such is the work of the Constituent Assembly. In several of its laws,
especially those which relate to private interests, in the institution
of civil regulations, in the penal and rural codes,[2341] in the
first attempts at, and the promise of, a uniform civil code, in the
enunciation of a few simple regulations regarding taxation, procedure,
and administration, it planted good seed. But in all that relates to
political institutions and social organization its proceedings are those
of an academy of Utopians, and not those of practical legislators.--On
the sick body entrusted to it, it performed amputations which were as
useless as they were excessive, and applied bandages as inadequate as
they were injurious. With the exception of two or three restrictions
admitted inadvertently, and the maintenance of the show of royalty, also
the obligation of a small electoral qualification, it carried out its
principle to the end, the principle of Rousseau. It deliberately refused
to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted
in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books.
Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a
speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its
scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the
inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even
the vital governing centers around which cells arrange themselves to
recompose an injured organ. That is, the Assembly destroyed on the one
hand the time-honored, spontaneous, and lasting societies formed by
geographical position, history, common occupations and interests, and
on the other, those natural chiefs whose name, repute, education,
independence, and earnestness designated them as the best qualified to
occupy high positions. In one direction it despoils and permits the
ruin and proscription of the superior class, the nobles, the members of
Parliament, and the upper middle class. In another it dispossesses and
breaks up all historic or natural corporations, religious congregations,
clerical bodies, provinces, parliaments, societies of art and of all
other professions and pursuits. This done, every tie or bond which
holds men together is found to be severed; all subordination and every
graduated scale of rank have disappeared. There is no longer rank and
file, or commander-in-chief. Nothing remains but individual particles,
26 millions of equal and disconnected atoms. Never was so much
disintegrated matter, less capable of resistance, offered to hands
undertaking to mold it. Harshness and violence will be sufficient to
ensure success. These brutal hands are ready for the work, and the
Assembly which has reduced the material to powder has likewise
provided the mortar and pestle. As awkward in destruction as it is in
construction, it invents for the restoration of order in a society which
is turned upside down a machine which would, of itself, create
disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute and most concentrated
government would not be strong enough to effect without disturbance a
similar equalization of ranks, the same dismemberment of associations,
and the same displacement of property. No social transformation can
be peacefully accomplished without a well-commanded army, obedient and
everywhere present, as was the case in the emancipation of the Russian
serfs by Emperor Alexander. The new Constitution,[2342] on the contrary,
reduces the King to the position of an honorary president, suspected
and called in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the
legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and
suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever on the
administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual independence
of the powers, from the center to the extremities of the State,
everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and disobedience between
the injunctions issued and their execution. France is a federation of
forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in which the authority of legal
magistrates varies according to the caprice of active citizens. These
active citizens, too heavily loaded, shy away from the performance
of public duty; in which a minority of fanatics and ambitious men
monopolize the right to speak, to vote, all influence, the power and
all action. They justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled
despotism, and their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of
the Rights of Man. The masterpiece[2343] of ideal abstractions and
of practical absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the
Constitution spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter
is perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth
century.
*****
[Footnote 2301: The name for the dreaded secret Royal warrant of arrest.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 2302: The initiative rests with the King on one point: war
cannot be decreed by the Assembly except on his formal and preliminary
proposition. This exception was secured only after a violent struggle
and a supreme effort by Mirabeau.]
[Footnote 2303: Speech by Lanjuinais, November 7, 1789. "We determined
on the separation of the powers. Why, then, should the proposal he made
to us to unite the legislative power with the executive power in the
persons of the ministers?"]
[Footnote 2304: See the attendance of the Ministers before the
Legislative Assembly.]
[Footnote 2305: "Any society in which the separation of the powers
is not clearly defined has no constitution." (Declaration of Rights,
article XVI.)--This principle is borrowed from a text by Montesquieu,
also from the American Constitution. In the rest the theory of Rousseau
is followed.]
[Footnote 2306: Mercure de France, an expression by Mallet du Pan.]
[Footnote 2307: Constitution of 1791, ch. II. articles 5, 6, 7.--Decree
of September 25--October 6, 1791, section III. articles, 8 to 25.]
[Footnote 2308: Speeches by Barnave and Roederer in the constituent
Assembly.--Speeches by Barnave and Duport in the Jacobin Club.]
[Footnote 2309: Principal texts. (Duvergier, "Collection des Lois et
Decrets.")--Laws on municipal and administrative organization, December
14 and 22, 1789; August 12-20, 1790; March 12, 1791. On the municipal
organization of Paris, May 21st, June 27, 1790.--Laws on the
organization of the Judiciary, August 16-24, 1790; September 16-29,
1791; September 29, October 21, 1791.--Laws on military organization,
September 23, October 29, 1790; January 16, 1791; July 27, 28,
1791--Laws on the financial organization, November 14-24,.1790; November
23, 1790; March 17, 1791; September 26, October 2, 1791.]
[Footnote 2310: The removal of such managerial authority has since the
second World war taken place inside the United Nations and other Western
public administrations and seems to be the aim of much communist trade
union effort. The result has everywhere been added cost and decreased
efficiency. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2311: This principle has been introduced in Western
educational systems when clever self-appointed psychologists told
parents and teacher alike that they could and should not punish their
children but only talk and explain to them. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2312: This description fits the staff regulations of the
United Nations secretariat in which I served for 32 years. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2313: Decrees of December 14 and December 22, 1789: "In
municipalities reduced to three members (communes below five hundred
inhabitants), all executive functions shall belong to the mayor alone."]
[Footnote 2314: Could it be that Lenin took note of this and had it
this translated in Russian and made use of it in his and later in
Stalin's schools for international revolutionaries. It would in any
case have weakened the Bourgeois Capitalist countries. In any case such
measures have been introduced both in the international organizations
and in most Western Democratic Governments after World War II. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2315: This was in the United Nations called 'Rotation' and
made the administration of missions and forces difficult, expensive and
inefficient. This rotation was also used in the Indian and other armies
in order to prevent the officers to reach an understanding or achieve
any power over the troops under their command. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2316: Laws of September 23--October 29, 1790; January 16,
1791. (Titles II. And VII.)--Cf. the legal prescriptions in relation
to the military tribunals. In every prosecuting or judicial jury
one-seventh of the sworn members are taken from the non-commissioned
officers, and one-seventh from the soldiers, and again, according to the
rank of the accused, the number of those of the same rank is doubled.]
[Footnote 2317: Law of July 28th, August 12, 1791.]
[Footnote 2318: Laws of November 24, 1789 (article 52), August 10-14,
1789.--Instruction of August 10-20, 1790; § 8--Law of October 21,
November 21, 1789.]
[Footnote 2319: Laws of November 14 and 23, 1790; January 13th,
September 26th, October 9, 1792.]
[Footnote 2320: Albert Babeau, I. 327 (Féte of the Federation, July 14,
1790).--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3215 (May 17,1791, Deliberation of
the council-general of the commune of Brest. May 17 and 19, Letters of
the directory of the district).--Mercure, March 5, 1791. "Mesdames
are stopped until the return of the two deputies, whom the Republic
of Arnay-le-Duc has sent to the representatives of the nation to
demonstrate to them the necessity of keeping the king's aunts in the
kingdom."]
[Footnote 2321: Moniteur, X. 132. Speech by M. Labergerie, November 8,
1791.]
[Footnote 2322: At Montauban, in the intendant's salon, the ladies of
the place spoke patois only, the grandmother of the gentleman who has
informed me of this fact did not understand any other language.]
[Footnote 2323: Moniteur, V.163, sitting of July 18, 1791. Speech by M.
Lecoulteux, reporter.]
[Footnote 2324: Moniteur, XI. 283, sitting of February 2, 1792. Speech
by Cambon: "They go away thinking that they understand what is explained
to them, but return the following day to obtain fresh explanations. The
attorneys refuse to give the municipalities any assistance, stating that
they know nothing about these matters."]
[Footnote 2325: The same may happen when a subordinate is promoted to be
placed in charge of his or her former equals and colleagues. This is why
it is often preferably to transfer someone who is recognized as being of
superior talent whenever a promotions is to take place. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2326: Law of May 11-15, 1791.]
[Footnote 2327: Minutes of the meeting of the Electoral Assembly of the
Department of Indre-et-Loire (1791, printed).]
[Footnote 2328: De Ferrières, I. 367.]
[Footnote 2329: Suzay, I, 191 (21,711 are eligible out of 32,288
inscribed citizens).]
[Footnote 2330: Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the
Department of Indre-et-Loire, Aug. 27, 1791. "A member of the Assembly
made a motion that all the members composing it should be indemnified
for the expenses which would be incurred by their absence from home and
the long sojourn they had to make in the town where the Assembly was
held. He remarked that the inhabitants of the country were those who
suffered the most, their labor being their sole riches; that if no
attention was paid to this demand, they would be obliged, in spite of
their patriotism, to withdraw and abandon their important mission; that
the electoral assemblies would then be deserted, or would be composed of
those whose resources permitted them to make this sacrifice."]
[Footnote 2331: Sauzay, I. 147, 192.]
[Footnote 2332: For the detail of these figures, see vol. II. Book IV.]
[Footnote 2333: De Ferrières, I. 367. Cf. The various laws above
mentioned.]
[Footnote 2334: Constant, "Histoire d'un Club Jacobin en Province"
(Fontainebleau) p.15. (Procés-verbaux of the founding of the clubs of
Moret, Thomery, Nemours, and Montereau.)]
[Footnote 2335: Later to change and become socialist and communist
parties everywhere. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2336: Cf. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
(except the first phrase, which is a catchword thrown out for the
European philosophers).--Jefferson proposed a Declaration of Rights for
the Constitution of March 4, 1789, but it was refused. They were content
to add to it the eleven amendments which set forth the fundamental
rights of the citizen.]
[Footnote 2337: Article I. "Men are born and remain free and equal in
rights common to all. Social distinctions are founded solely on public
utility." The first phrase condemns the hereditary royalty which is
sanctioned by the Constitution. The second phrase can be used to
legitimate hereditary monarchy and an aristocracy.--Articles 10 and 11
bear upon the manifestations of religious convictions and on freedom of
speech and of the press. By virtue of these two articles worship,
speech, and the press may be made subject to the most repressive
restrictions, etc.]
[Footnote 2338: The International Bill of Human Rights of 1948 is quite
different from the one approved in 1789. In 1948 there is no more any
mention of any "right to resistance to oppression", there is a softening
of the position on the right of property and new rights, to free
education, to a country, to rest and leisure, to a high standard of
health and to an adequate standard of living have been introduced.
(SR.)]
[Footnote 2339: Stalin and his successors organized such a system of
"clubs" world-wide which even today remain active as "protectors" of the
environment, refugees, prisoners, animals and the environment. (SR.)]
[Footnote 2340: Buchez and Roux, XI. 237. (Speech by Malouet in relation
to the revision, August 5, 1791.) "You constantly tempt the people with
sovereignty without giving them the immediate use of it."]
[Footnote 2341: Decrees of September 25--October 6, 1791; September
28--October 6, 1791.]
[Footnote 2342: Impartial contemporaries, those well qualified to judge,
agree as to the absurdity of the Constitution. "The Constitution was a
veritable monster. There was too much of monarchy in it for a republic,
and too much of a republic for a monarchy. The King was a side-dish, un
hors d'oeuvre, everywhere present in appearance but without any actual
power." (Dumont, 339.) "It is a general and almost universal conviction
that this Constitution is inexecutable. The makers of it to a man
condemn it." (G. Morris, September 30, 1791.) "Every day proves more
clearly that their new Constitution is good for nothing." (ibid.
December 27, 1791.) Cf. The sensible and prophetic speech made by
Malouet (August 5, 1791, Buchez and Roux, XI. 237).]
[Footnote 2343: Taine's vivid description is likely to have encouraged
any radical revolutionary having the luck to read his explicit
description of how to proceed with the destruction of a naïve corrupt
capitalist, bourgeois society. (SR.)]
BOOK THIRD. THE APPLICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. [3101]
CHAPTER I.
I.--The Federations.
Popular application of philosophic theory.--Idyllic
celebration of the Contrat-Social.--The two strata of the
human mind.--Permanent disorder.
If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or,
what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a
fact, fully established, it is that of Rousseau, in 1789 and during the
three following years. For, not only are his principles embodied in the
laws, and the Constitution throughout animated with his spirit, but it
seems as if the nation looked upon his ideological gambols, his abstract
fiction, as serious. This fiction it carried out in every particular. A
social contract, at one spontaneous and practical, an immense
gathering of men associating together freely for the first time for the
recognition of their respective rights, forming a specific compact,
and binding themselves by a solemn oath: such is the social recipe
prescribed by the philosophers, and which is carried out to the letter.
Moreover, as this recipe is esteemed infallible, the imagination is
worked upon and the sensibilities of the day are brought into play.
It is admitted that men, on again becoming equals, have again become
brothers.[3102] A sudden and amazing harmony of all volitions and
all intelligences will restore the golden age on earth. It is proper,
accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting,
sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand
in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with
dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning
of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is
performed as if according to a written program.
On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations
began.[3103] Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the
Rhône, promise "to remain for ever united, to insure the circulation of
grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly." On the
13th of December, at Montélimart, six thousand men, the representatives
of 27 000 other men, take a similar oath and confederate themselves with
the foregoing.--Upon this the excitement spreads from month to month
and from province to province. Fourteen towns of the bailiwicks of
Franche-Comté form a patriotic league. At Pontivy, Brittany enters into
federal relations with Anjou. One thousand National Guards of Vivarais
and Languedoc send their delegates to Voute. 48 000 in the Vosges send
their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790,
in Alsace, Champagne, Dauphiny, Orléanais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and
Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand
National Guards take the oath in the presence of 20 000 spectators. At
Lyons 50 000 men, delegates of more than 500 000 others take the civic
oath.--But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization
of France; a general union of all Frenchmen must take place. Many of the
various National Guards have already written to Paris for the purpose of
affiliating themselves with the National Guard there; and, one the 5th
of June, the Parisian municipal body having proposed it, the Assembly
decrees the universal federation. It is to take place on the 14th
of July, everywhere on the same day, both at the center and at the
extremities of the kingdom. There is to be one in the principal town
of each district and of each department, and one in the capital. To
the latter each body of the National Guards is to send deputies in
the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one
officer, one non-commissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen
thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear
on the Champ de Mars, the theater of the festival; also eleven to twelve
thousand representatives of the land and marine forces, besides
the National Guard of Paris, and sixty thousand spectators on the
surrounding slopes, with a still greater crowd on the heights of
Chaillot and of Passy. All rise to their feet and swear fidelity to the
nation, to the law, to the King and to the new Constitution. When the
report of the cannon is heard which announces the taking of the oath,
those of the Parisians who have remained at home, men, women, and
children, raise their hands in the direction of the Champ de Mars
and likewise make their affirmation. In every principal town of every
district, department, and commune in France there is the same oath on
the same day. Never was there a more perfect social compact heard of.
Here, for the first time in the world, everybody beholds a veritable
legitimate society, for it is founded on free pledges, on solemn
stipulations, and on actual consent. They possess the authentic act and
the dated official report of it.[3104]
There is still something more--the time and the occasion betoken a union
of all hearts. The barriers which have hitherto separated men from each
other are all removed and without effort. Provincial antagonisms are
now to cease: the confederates of Brittany and Anjou write that they
no longer desire to be Angevins and Bretons, but simply Frenchmen. All
religious discords are to come to an end: at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near
Alais, the Catholic curé and the Protestant pastor embrace each other at
the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the
Protestant meeting-house the curé has the place of honor, and listens to
the sermon of the pastor.[3105] Distinctions of rank and condition will
no longer exist; at Saint-Andéol "the honor of taking the oath in the
name of the people is conferred on two old men, one ninety-three and
the other ninety-four years of age, one a noble and a colonel of the
National Guard, and the other a simple peasant." At Paris, two hundred
thousand persons of all conditions, ages, and sexes, officers and
soldiers, monks and actors, school-boys and masters, dandies and
ragamuffins, elegant ladies and fishwives, workmen of every class and
the peasants from the vicinity, all flocked to the Champ de Mars to dig
the earth which was not ready, and in a week, trundling wheelbarrows and
handling the pick-ax as equals and comrades, all voluntarily yoked in
the same service, converted a flat surface into a valley between two
hills.--At Strasbourg, General Luckner, commander-in-chief, worked a
whole afternoon in his shirt-sleeves just like the commonest laborer.
The confederates are fed, housed, and have their expenses paid
everywhere on all the roads. At Paris the publicans and keepers of
furnished houses lower their prices of their own accord, and do not
think of robbing their new guests. "The districts," moreover, "feast the
provincials to their heart's content.[3106] There are meals every day
for from twelve to fifteen hundred people." Provincials and Parisians,
soldiers and bourgeois, seated and mingled together, drink each other's
health and embrace. The soldiers, especially, and the inferior officers
are surrounded, welcomed, and entertained to such an extent that they
lose their heads, their health, and more besides. One "old trooper, who
had been over fifty years in the service, died on the way home, used up
with cordials and excess of pleasure." In short, the joy is excessive,
as it should be on the great day when the wish of an entire century
is accomplished.--Behold ideal felicity, as displayed in the books
and illustrations of the time! The natural man buried underneath an
artificial civilization is disinterred, and again appears as in early
days, as in Tahiti, as in philosophic and literary pastorals, as in
bucolic and mythological operas, confiding, affectionate, and happy.
"The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of
primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the
soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more
childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his
social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination
of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical,
rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for
the embellishment of his festival. Already wildly enthusiastic, he
is anxious to increase his enthusiasm.--At Lyons, the fifty thousand
confederates from the south range themselves in line of battle around an
artificial rock, fifty feet high, covered with shrubs, and surmounted by
a Temple of Concord in which stands a huge statue of Liberty; the
steps of the rock are decked with flags, and a solemn mass precedes the
administration of the oath.--At Paris, an alter dedicated to the nation
is erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, which is transformed
into a colossal circus. The regular troops and the federations of the
departments stand in position around it, the King being in front
with the Queen and the dauphin, while near them are the princes and
princesses in a gallery, and the members of the National Assembly in
an amphitheater; two hundred priests, draped in their albs and with
tricolored belts, officiate around Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun; three
hundred drums and twelve hundred musicians all play at once; forty piece
of cannon are discharged at one volley, and four hundred thousand cheers
go up as if from one threat. Never was such an effort made to intoxicate
the senses and strain the nerves beyond their powers of endurance!--The
moral machine is made to vibrate to the same and even to a greater
extent. For more than a year past, harangues, proclamations, addresses,
newspapers and events have daily added one degree more to the pressure.
On this occasion, thousands of speeches, multiplied by myriads of
newspapers, carry the enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Declamation foams
and rolls along in a steady stream of rhetoric everywhere throughout
France.[3107] In this state of excitement the difference between
magniloquence and sincerity, between the false and the true, between
show and substance, is no longer distinguishable. The Federation becomes
an opera which is seriously played in the open street--children have
parts assigned them in it; it occurs to no one that they are puppets,
and that the words taken for an expression of the heart are simply
memorized speeches that have been put into their mouths. At Besançon,
on the return of the confederates, hundreds of "youthful citizens" from
twelve to fourteen years of age,[3108] in the national uniform, "with
sword in hand," march up to the standard of Liberty. Three little girls
from eleven to thirteen years old and two little boy of nine years
each pronounce "a discourse full of fire and breathing nothing but
patriotism;" after which, a young lady of fourteen, raising her voice
and pointing to the flag, harangues in turn the crowd, the deputies, the
National Guard, the mayor, and the commander of the troops, the scene
ending with a ball. This is the universal finale--men and women,
children and adults, common people and men of the world, chiefs and
subordinates, all, everywhere, frisk about as in the last act of a
pastoral drama. At Paris,--writes an eye-witness, "I saw chevaliers of
Saint-Louis and chaplains dancing in the street with people belonging
to their department."[3109] At the Champ de Mars, on the day of the
Federation, notwithstanding that rain was falling in torrents, "the
first arrivals began to dance, and those who came after them, joining
in, formed a circle which soon spread over a portion of the Champ
de Mars. . . .Three hundred thousand spectators kept time with their
hands." On the following days dancing is kept up on the Champ de Mars
and in the streets, and there is drinking and carousing; "there was
a ball with refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the
Bastille."--At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighboring
provinces are collected, about four o'clock in the afternoon,[3110]
through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, "the officers,
inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets,
some with saber in hand and others dancing and shouting 'Vive le Roi!'
'Vive la Nation!' flinging up their hats and compelling every one
they met to join in the dance. One of the canons of the cathedral, who
happens to be passing quietly along, has a grenadier's cap put on his
head," and is dragged into the circle, and after him two monks; "they
are often embraced," and then allowed to depart. The carriages of the
mayor and the Marquise de Montausier arrive; people mount up behind,
get inside, and seat themselves in front, as many as can find room,
and force the coachmen to parade through the principal streets in this
fashion. There is no malice in it, nothing but sport and the overflow of
spirits. "Nobody was maltreated or insulted, although almost every one
was drunk."--Nevertheless, there is one bad symptom: the soldiers of
the Anjou regiment leave their barracks the following day and "pass
the whole night abroad, no one being able to hinder them." And there is
another of still graver aspect; at Orleans, after the companies of
the National Militia had danced on the square in the evening, "a large
number of volunteers marched in procession through the town with
drums, shouting out with all their might that the aristocracy must be
destroyed, and that priests and aristocrats should be strung up to the
lamp post. They enter a suspected coffee-house, drive out the inmates
with insults, lay hands on a gentleman who is supposed not to have cried
out as correctly and as lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging
him.[3111]--Such is the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the
eighteenth century. Men believed that, for the organization of a
perfect society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and
happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the will
would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled; they have
been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their minds. Now comes
the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort
has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a
deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real
contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade,
an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry--in
short, an agreeable carnival of a day's duration.
The reason is that in the human mind there are two strata. One
superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which
they are unconscious.[3112] The former unstable and vacillating like
shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which
their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines
the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity
necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.--Certainly embraces
have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before
the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative
thralldom and one century of political literature have made them. Their
ignorance and presumption, their prejudices, hatreds, and distrusts,
their inveterate intellectual and emotional habits are still preserved.
They are human, and their stomachs need to be filled daily. They have
imagination, and, if bread be scarce, they fear that they may not get
enough of it. They prefer to keep their money rather than to give
it away. For this reason they spurn the claims which the State and
individuals have upon them as much as possible. They avoid paying their
debts. They willingly lay their hands on public property which is badly
protected; finally they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors
as detrimental, and all the more so because this has been repeated to
them over and over again, day after day, for a whole year.--On the other
hand there is no change in the situation of things. They are ever living
in a disorganized community, under an impracticable constitution, the
passions which sap public order being only the more stimulated by the
semblance of fraternity under which they seemed to be allayed. Men
cannot be persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for
they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception
practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by
boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all
their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with
or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and
enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea.
Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become
impassioned, imperious, and intractable. Having assumed that all
obstacles are taken out of the way, they grow indignant at each obstacle
they actually encounter. Whatever it may be, they shatter it on the
instant, and their over-excited imagination covers with the fine name of
patriotism their natural appetite for despotism and domination.
France, accordingly, in the three years which follow the taking of the
Bastille, presents a strange spectacle. In the words we find charity
and in the laws symmetry; while the actual events present a spectacle of
disorder and violence. Afar, is the reign of philosophy; close up is the
chaos of the Carlovingian era.
"Foreigners," remarks an observer,[3113] "are not aware that, with a
great extension of political rights, the liberty of the individual is in
law reduced to nothing, while in practice it is subject to the caprice
of sixty thousand constitutional assemblies; that no citizen enjoys any
protection against the annoyances of these popular assemblies; that,
according to the opinions which they entertain of persons and things,
they act in one place in one way and in another place in another way.
Here, a department, acting for itself and without referring elsewhere,
puts an embargo on vessels, while another orders the expulsion of a
military detachment essential for the security of places devastated
by ruffians; and the minister, who responds to the demands of those
interested, replies: 'Such are the orders of the department.' Elsewhere
are administrative bodies which, the moment the Assembly decrees relief
of consciences and the freedom of nonjuring priests, order the latter
out of their homes within 24 hours. Always in advance of or lagging
behind the laws; alternately bold and cowardly; daring all things when
seconded by public license, and daring nothing to repress it; eager to
abuse their momentary authority against the weak in order to acquire
titles to popularity in the future; incapable of maintaining order
except at the expense of public safety and tranquility; entangled in
the reins of their new and complex administration, adding the fury of
passion to incapacity and inexperience; such are, for the most part,
the men sprung from nothing, void of ideas and drunk with pretension,
on whom now rests responsibility for public powers and resources, the
interest of security, and the foundations of the power of government.
In all sections of the nation, in every branch of the administration, in
every report, we detect the confusion of authorities, the uncertainty
of obedience, the dissolution of all restraints, the absence of all
resources, the deplorable complication of enervated springs, without any
of the means of real power, and, for their sole support, laws which,
in supposing France to be peopled with men without vices or passions,
abandon humanity to its primitive state of independence."
A few months after this, in the beginning of 1792, Malouet sums up all
in one phrase:
"It is the Government of Algiers without the Dey."
II.--Independence of the municipalities.
The causes of their initiative.--Sentiment of danger.
--Issy-l'Evêque in 1789.--Exalted pride.--Brittany in 1790.
--Usurpations of the municipalities.--Capture of the
citadels.--Violence increased against their commanders.
--Stoppage of convoys.--Powerlessness of the Directories and
the ministers.--Marseilles in 1790.
Things could not work otherwise. For, before the 6th of October, and the
King's captivity in Paris, the Government had already been destroyed.
Now, through the successive decrees of the Assembly, it is legally done
away with, and each local group is left to itself.--The intendants have
fled, military commanders are not obeyed, the bailiwicks dare hold no
courts, the parliaments are suspended, and seven months elapse before
the district and department administrations are elected, a year before
the new judgeships are instituted, while afterwards, as well as before,
the real power is in the hands of the communes.--The commune must arm
itself, appoint its own chiefs, provide its own supplies, protect itself
against brigands, and feed its own poor. It has to sell its national
property, install the constitutional priest, and, amidst so many eager
passions and injured interest, accomplish the transformation by which
a new society replaces the ancient one. It alone has to ward off the
perpetual and constantly reviving dangers which assail it or which it
imagines. These are great, and it exaggerates them. It is inexperienced
and alarmed. It is not surprising that, in the exercise of its
extemporized power, it should pass beyond its natural or legal limit,
and without being aware of it, overstep the metaphysical line which the
Constitution defines between its rights and the rights of the State.
Neither hunger, fear, rage, nor any of the popular passions can wait;
there is no time to refer to Paris. Action is necessary, immediate
action, and, with the means at hand, they must save themselves as well
as they can. This or that mayor of a village is soon to find himself a
general and a legislator. This or that petty town is to give itself
a charter like Laon or Vezelay in the twelfth century. "On the 6th
of October, 1789,[3114] near Autun, the market-town of Issy-l'Evêque
declares itself an independent State. The parish assembly is convoked
by the priest, M. Carion, who is appointed member of the administrative
committee and of the new military staff. In full session he secures the
adoption of a complete code, political, judiciary, penal and military,
consisting of sixty articles. Nothing is overlooked; we find ordinances
concerning
"the town police, the laying out of streets and public squares,
the repairs of prisons, the road taxes and price of grain, the
administration of justice, fines, confiscations, and the diet of the
National Guards."
He is a provincial Solon,[3115] zealous for the public welfare, and a
man of executive power, he expounds his ordinances from the pulpit, and
threatens the refractory. He passes decrees and renders judgments in the
town-hall: outside the town limits, at the head of the National Guard,
saber in hand, he will enforce his own decisions. He causes it to be
decided that, on the written order of the committee, every citizen may
be imprisoned. He imposes and collects taxes; he has boundary walls
torn down; he goes in person to the houses of cultivators and makes
requisitions for grain; he seizes the convoys which have not deposited
their quote in his own richly stored granaries. One day, preceded by
a drummer, he marches outside the walls, makes proclamation of "his
agrarian laws," and proceeds at once to the partition of the territory,
and, by virtue of the ancient communal or church property rights,
to assign to himself a portion of it. All this is done in public and
consciously, the notary and the scrivener being called in to draw up the
official record of his acts; he is satisfied that human society has come
to an end, and that each local group has the right to begin over again
and apply in its own way the Constitution which it has accorded to
itself without reference to anybody else.--This man, undoubtedly, talks
too loudly, an proceeds too quickly; and first the bailiwick, next the
Châtelet, and afterwards the National Assembly temporarily put a stop
to his proceedings; but his principle is a popular one, and the forty
thousand communes of France are about to act like so many distinct
republics, under the sentimental and constantly more powerless
reprimands of the central authority.
Excited and invigorated by a new sentiment, men now abandon themselves
to the proud consciousness of their own power and independence. Nowhere
is greater satisfaction found than among the new local chiefs, the
municipal officers and commanders of the National Guard, for never
before has such supreme authority and such great dignity fallen upon
men previously so submissive and so insignificant.--Formerly the
subordinates of an intendant or sub-delegate, appointed, maintained, and
ill-used by him, kept aloof from transactions of any importance,
unable to defend themselves except by humble protestations against the
aggravation of taxation, concerned with precedence and the conflicts
of etiquette,[3116] plain townspeople or peasants who never dreamt of
interfering in military matters, henceforth become sovereigns in all
military and civil affairs. This or that mayor or syndic of a little
town or parish, a petty bourgeois or villager in a blouse, whom the
intendant or military commander could imprison at will, now orders
a gentleman, a captain of dragoons, to march or stand still, and the
captain stands still or marches at his command. On the same bourgeois
or villager depends the safety of the neighboring chateau, of the large
land-owner and his family, of the prelate, and of all the prominent
personages of the district in order that they may be out of harm's way
he must protect them; they will be pillaged if, in case of insurrection,
he does not send troops and the National Guard to their assistance. It
is he who, lending or refusing public force to the collection of
their rents, gives them or deprives them of the means of living. He
accordingly rules, and on the sole condition of ruling according to the
wishes of his equals, the vociferous multitude, the restless, dominant
mob which has elected him.--In the towns, especially, and notably in the
large towns, the contrast between what he was and what he is immense,
since to the plenitude of his power is added the extent of his
jurisdiction. Judge of the effect on his brain in cities like those of
Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen and Lyons, where he holds in his
hand the lives and property of eighty or a hundred thousand men. And
the more as, amid the municipal officers of the towns, three-quarters
of them, prosecutors or lawyers, are imbued with the new dogmas, and are
persuaded that in themselves alone, the directly elected of the
people, is vested all legitimate authority. Bewildered by their recent
elevation, distrustful as upstarts, in revolt against all ancient or
rival powers, they are additionally alarmed by their imagination and
ignorance, their minds being vaguely disturbed by the contrast between
their role in the past and their present role: anxious on their own
account, they find no security but in abuse and use of power. The
municipalities, on the strength of the reports emanating from the
coffee-houses, decide that the ministry are traitors. With an obstinacy
of conviction and a boldness of presumption alike extraordinary, they
believe that they have the right to act without and against their
orders, and against the orders of the National Assembly itself, as
if, in the now disintegrated France, each municipality constituted the
nation.
Thus, if the armed force of the country is now obedient to any body, it
is to them and to them alone, and not only the National Guard, but also
the regular troops which, placed under the orders of municipalities by
a decree of the National Assembly,[3117] will comply with no other.
Military commanders in the provinces, after September, 1787, declare
themselves powerless; when they and the municipality give orders, it
is only those of the municipality which the troops recognize. "However
pressing may be the necessity for moving the troops where their
presence is required, they are stopped by the resistance of the village
committee."[3118] "Without any reasonable motive," writes the commander
of the forces in Brittany, "Vannes and Auray made opposition to the
detachment which I thought it prudent to send to Belle-Ile, to replace
another one. . . The Government cannot move without encountering
obstacles. . . . The Minister of War no longer has the direction of the
army. . . . No orders are executed. . . Every one wants to command, and
no one to obey. . . How could the King, the Government, or the Minister
of War send troops where they are wanted if the towns believe that they
have the right to countermand the orders given to the regiments and
change their destination?"-And it is still worse, for, "on the false
supposition of brigands and conspiracies which do not exist,[3119] the
towns and villages make demands on me for arms and even cannon. . . The
whole of Brittany will soon be in a frightful belligerent state on this
account, for, having no real enemies, they will turn their arms against
each other."--This is of no consequence. The panic is an "epidemic."
People are determined to believe in "brigands and enemies." At Nantes,
the assertion is constantly repeated that the Spaniards are going to
land, that the French regiments are going to make an attack, that an
army of brigands is approaching, that the castle is threatened, that
it is threatening, and that it contains too many engines of war. The
commandant of the province writes in vain to the mayor to reassure
him, and to explain to him that "the municipality, being master of
the chateau, is likewise master of its magazine. Why then should it
entertain fear about that which is in its own possession? Why should
any surprise be manifested at an arsenal containing arms and
gunpowder?"--Nothing is of any effect. The chateau is invaded; two
hundred workmen set to work to demolish the fortifications; they listen
only to their fears, and cannot exercise too great precaution. However
inoffensive the citadels may be, they are held to be dangerous; however
accommodating the commanders may be, they are regarded with suspicion.
The people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It
is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion
requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard,
wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way of any foreign
control; and this is what is called liberty. Its adversary, therefore,
is the central power. This must be disarmed for fear that it may
interpose. On all sides, with a sure and persistent instinct, through
the capture of fortresses, the pillage of arsenals, the seduction of the
soldiery, and the expulsion of generals, the municipality ensures its
omnipotence by guaranteeing itself beforehand against all repression.
At Brest the municipal authorities insist that a naval officer shall be
surrendered to the people, and on the refusal of the King's lieutenant
to give him up, the permanent committee orders the National Guard to
load its guns.[3120] At Nantes the municipal body refuses to recognize
M. d'Hervilly, sent to take command of a camp, and the towns of the
province write to declare that they will suffer no other than the
federated troops on their territory. At Lille the permanent committee
insists that the military authorities shall place the keys of the town
in its keeping every evening, and, a few months after this, the National
Guard, joined by mutinous soldiers, seize the citadel and the person of
Livarot, its commander. At Toulon the commander of the arsenal, M.
de Rioms, and several naval officers, are put in the dungeon. At
Montpellier the citadel is surprised, and the club writes to the
National Assembly to demand its demolition. At Valence, the commandant,
M. de Voisin, on taking measures of defense, is massacred, and
henceforth the municipality issues all orders to the garrison. At
Bastia, Colonel de Rully falls under a shower of bullets, and the
National Guard takes possession of the citadel and the powder magazine.
These are not passing outbursts: at the end of two years the same
insubordinate spirit is apparent everywhere.[3121] In vain do the
commissioners of the National Assembly seek to transfer the Nassau
regiment from Metz. Sedan refuses to receive it; while Thionville
declares that, if it comes, she will blow up the bridges, and Sarrebuis
threatens, if it approaches, that it will open fire on it. At Caen
neither the municipality nor the directory dares enforce the law which
assigns the castle to the troops of the line; the National Guard refuses
to leave it, and forbids the director of the artillery to inspect the
munitions.--In this state of things a Government subsists in name
but not in fact, for it no longer possesses the means of enforcing
obedience. Each commune arrogates to itself the right of suspending
or preventing the execution of the simplest and most urgent orders.
Arnay-le-Duc, in spite of passports and legal injunctions, persists in
retaining Mesdames; Arcis-sur-Aube retains Necker, and Montigny is about
to retain M. Caillard, Ambassador of France.[3122]--In the month of
June, 1791, a convoy of eighty thousand crowns of six livres sets out
from Paris for Switzerland; this is a repayment by the French Government
to that of Soleure; the date of payment is fixed, the itinerary marked
out; all the necessary documents are provided; it is important that it
should arrive on the day when the bill falls due. But they have
counted without the municipalities and the National Guards. Arrested at
Bar-sur-Aube, it is only at the end of a month, and on a decree of the
National Assembly, that the convoy can resume its march. At Belfort it
is seized again, and it still remains there in the month of November. In
vain has the directory of the Bas-Rhin ordered its release; the Belfort
municipality paid no attention to the order. In vain the same directory
dispatches a commissioner, who is near being cut to pieces. The personal
interference of General Luckner, with the strong arm, is necessary,
before the convoy can pass the frontier, after five months of
delay.[3123] In the month of July 1791, a French vessel on the way from
Rouen to Caudebec, said to be loaded with kegs of gold and silver, is
stopped. On the examination being made, it has a right to leave; its
papers are all correct, and the department enjoins the district to
respect the law. The district, however, replies that it is impossible,
since "all the municipalities on the banks of the Seine have armed
and are awaiting the passing of the vessel," and the National Assembly
itself is obliged to pass a decree that the vessel shall be discharged.
If the rebellion of the small communes is of this stamp, what must be
that of the larger ones?[3124] The departments and districts summon the
municipality in vain; it disobeys or pays no attention to the summons.
"Since the session began," writes the directory of Saône-et-Loire; "the
municipality of Maçon has taken no step in relation to us which has not
been an encroachment. It has not uttered a word, which has not been an
insult. It has not entered upon a deliberation which has not been an
outrage."
"If the regiment of Aunis is not ordered here immediately," writes the
directory of Calvados, "if prompt and efficient measures are not taken
to provide us with an armed force, we shall abandon a post which we can
not longer hold due to insubordination, license, contempt for all the
authorities. We shall in this case be unable to perform the duties which
were imposed upon us."
The directory of the Bouches-du-Rhone, on being attacked, flies before
the bayonets of Marseilles. The members of the directory of Gers, in
conflict with the municipality of Auch, are almost beaten to death. As
to the ministers, who are distrusted by virtue of their office, they are
still less respected than the directories, They are constantly denounced
to the Assembly, while the municipalities send back their dispatches
without deigning to open them,[3125] and, towards the end of 1791, their
increasing powerlessness ends in complete annihilation. We can judge
of this by one example. In the month of December 1791, Limoges is not
allowed to carry away the grain, which it had just purchased in Indre,
a force of sixty horsemen being necessary to protect its transportation.
The directory of Indre at once calls upon the ministers to furnish them
with this small troop.[3126] After trying for three weeks, the minister
replies that it is out of his power; he has knocked at all doors in
vain. "I have pointed out one way," he says, "to the deputies of your
department in the National Assembly, namely, to withdraw the 20th
regiment of cavalry from Orleans, and I have recommended them to broach
the matter to the deputies of Loiret." The answer is still delayed:
the deputies of the two departments have to come to an agreement, for,
otherwise, the minister dares not displace sixty men to protect a convoy
of grain. It is plain enough that there is no longer any executive
power. There is no longer a central authority. There is no longer a
France, but merely so many disintegrated and independent communes, like
Orleans and Limoges, which, through their representatives, carry on
negotiations with each other, one to secure itself from a deficiency of
troops, and the other to secure itself from a want of bread.
Let us consider this general dissolution on the spot, and take up a case
in detail. On the 18th of January 1790, the new municipal authorities
of Marseilles enter upon their duties. As is generally the case, the
majority of the electors have had nothing to do with the balloting.
The mayor, Martin, having been elected by only an eighth of the active
citizens.[3127] If, however, the dominant minority is a small one, it
is resolute and not inclined to stop at trifles. "Scarcely is it
organized,"[3128] when it sends deputies to the King to have him
withdraw his troops from Marseilles. The King, always weak and
accommodating, finally consents; and, the orders to march being
prepared, the municipality is duly advised of them. But the municipality
will tolerate no delay, and immediately "draws up, prints, and issues
a denunciation to the National Assembly" against the commandant and
the two ministers who, according to it, are guilty of having forged or
suppressed the King's orders. In the meantime it equips and fortifies
itself as for a combat. At its first establishment the municipality
broke up the bourgeois guard, which was too great a lover of order, and
organized a National Guard, in which those who have no property are
soon to be admitted. "Daily additions are made to its military
apparatus;[3129] entrenchments and barricades at the Hôtel-de-Ville,
are increasing, the artillery is increased; the town is filled with the
excitement of a military camp in the immediate presence of an enemy."
Thus, in possession of force, it makes use of it, and in the first place
against justice.--A popular insurrection had been suppressed in the
month of August 1789, and the three principal leaders, Rebecqui, Pascal,
and Granet, had been imprisoned in the Chateau d'If. They are the
friends of the municipal authorities, and they must be set free. At
the demand of this body the affair is taken out of the hands of the
grand-prévôt and put into those of the sénéchaussée, the former,
meanwhile, together with his councilors, undergoing punishment for
having performed their duty. The municipality, on its own authority,
forbids them from further exercise of their functions. They are publicly
denounced, "threatened with poniards, the scaffold, and every species of
assassination." [3130] No printer dares publish their defense, for fear
of "municipal annoyances." It is not long before the royal procureur and
a councillor are reduced to seeking refuge in Fort Saint-Jean, while the
grand-prévôt after having resisted a little longer, leaves Marseilles
in order to save his life. As to the three imprisoned men, the municipal
authorities visit them in a body and demand their provisional release.
One of them having made his escape, they refuse to give the commandant
the order for his re-arrest. The other two triumphantly leave the
chateau on the 11th of April, escorted by eight hundred National Guards.
They go, for form's sake, to the prisons of the sénéchaussée but the
next day are set at liberty, and further prosecution ceases. As an
offset to this, M. d'Ambert, colonel in the Royal Marine, guilty of
expressing himself too warmly against the National Guard, although
acquitted by the tribunal before which he was brought, can be set
at liberty only in secret and under the protection of two thousand
soldiers. The populace want to burn the house of the criminal lieutenant
that dared absolve him. The magistrate himself is in danger, and is
forced to take refuge in the house of the military commander.[3131]
Meanwhile, printed and written papers, insulting libels by the municipal
body and the club, the seditious or violent discussions of the district
assemblies, and a lot of pamphlets, are freely distributed among the
people and the soldiers: the latter are purposely stirred up in advance
against their chiefs.--In vain are the officers mild, conciliatory, and
cautious. In vain does the commander-in-chief depart with a portion of
the troops. The object now is to dislodge the regiment occupying
the three forts. The club sets the ball in motion, and, forcibly or
otherwise, the will of the people must be carried out. On the 29th of
April, two actors, supported by fifty volunteers, surprise a sentinel
and get possession of Notre-Dame de la Garde. On the same day,
six thousand National Guards invest the forts of Saint-Jean and
Saint-Nicolas. The municipal authorities, summoned to respect the
fortresses, reply by demanding the opening of the gates to the National
Guard, that it may do duty jointly with the soldiers. The commandants
hesitate, refer to the law, and demand time to consult their superiors.
A second requisition, more urgent, is made; the commandants are held
responsible for the disturbances they provoke by their refusal. If they
resist they are declared promoters of civil war.[3132] They accordingly
yield and sign a capitulation. One among them, the Chevalier de
Beausset, major in Fort Saint-Jean, is opposed to this, and refuses his
signature. On the following day he is seized as he is about to enter the
Hôtel-de-Ville, and massacred, his head being borne about on the end of
a pike, while the band of assassins, the soldiers, and the rabble dance
about and shout over his remains.--" It is a sad accident," writes the
municipality.[3133] How does it happen that, "after having thus far
merited and obtained all praise, a Beausset, whom we were unable to
protect against the decrees of Providence, should sully our laurels?
Having had nothing to do with this tragic affair, it is not for us
to prosecute the authors of it." Moreover, he was "culpable. . ..
rebellious, condemned by public opinion, and Providence itself seems to
have abandoned him to the irrevocable decrees of its vengeance."--As to
the taking of the forts, nothing is more legitimate. "These places were
in the hands of the enemies of the State, while now they are in the
hands of the defenders of the Constitution of the empire. Woe to
whoever would take them from us again, to convert them into a focus of
counter-revolution "--M. de Miran, commandant of the province, has, it
is true, made a demand for them. But, "is it not somewhat pitiable to
see the requisition of a Sieur de Miran, made in the name of the King he
betrays, to surrender to his Majesty's troops places which, henceforth
in our hands, guarantee public security to the nation, to the law, and
to the King?" In vain does the King, at the request of the National
Assembly,[3134] order the municipality to restore the forts to the
commandants, and to make the National Guards leave them. The municipal
authorities become indignant, and resist. According to them the wrong
is all on the side of the commandant and the ministers. It is the
commandants who, "with the threatening equipment of their citadels,
their stores of provisions and of artillery, are disturbers of the
public peace. What does the minister mean by driving the national troops
out of the forts, in order to entrust their guardianship to foreign
troops? His object is apparent in this plan. . . . he wants to kindle
civil war."--"All the misfortunes of Marseilles originate in the secret
under-standing existing between the ministers and the enemies of the
State." The municipal corps is at last obliged to evacuate the forts,
but it is determined not to give them up. The day following that on
which it receives the decree of the National Assembly, it conceives the
design of demolishing them. On the 17th of May, two hundred laborers,
paid in advance, begin the work of destruction. To save appearances the
municipal body betakes itself at eleven o'clock in the morning to the
different localities, and orders them to stop. But, on its departure,
the laborers keep on; and, at six o'clock in the evening, a resolution
is passed that, "to prevent the entire demolition of the citadel, it
is deemed advisable to authorize only that of the part overlooking the
town." On the 18th of May the Jacobin club, at once agent, accomplice,
and councilor of the municipal body, compels private individuals to
contribute something towards defraying the expenses of the demolition.
It "sends round to every house, and to the syndics of all corporations,
exacting their quotas, and making all citizens subscribe a document by
which they appear to sanction the action of the municipal body, and to
express their thanks to it. People had to sign it, pay, and keep silent.
Woe to any one that refused!" On the 20th of May the municipal body
presumes to write to the Assembly, that "this threatening citadel, this
odious monument of a stupendous despotism, is about to disappear." To
justify its disobedience, it takes occasion to remark, "that the love of
country is the most powerful and most enduring of an empire's ramparts."
On the 28th of May it secures the performance in two theaters of a piece
representing the capture of the forts of Marseilles, for the benefit
of the men engaged in their demolition. Meanwhile, it has summoned
the Paris Jacobins to its support; it has proposed to invite the Lyons
federation and all the municipalities of the kingdom to denounce the
minister. It has forced M. de Miran, threatened with death and watched
by a party in ambush on the road, to quit Aix, and then demands his
recall.[3135] Only on the 6th of June does it decide, at the express
command of the National Assembly, to suspend the almost completed
demolition.--Authorities to which obedience is due could not be treated
more insolently. The end, however, is attained; there is no longer a
citadel, and the troops have departed; the regiment commanded by Ernest
alone remains, to be tampered with, insulted, and then sent off. It is
ordered to Aix, and the National Guard of Marseilles will go there to
disarm and disband it. Henceforth the municipal body has full sway. It
"observes only those laws which suit it, makes others to its own liking,
and, in short, governs in the most despotic and arbitrary manner."[3136]
And not only at Marseilles, but throughout the department where, under
no authority but its own, it undertakes armed expeditions and makes
raids and sudden attacks.
III.--Independent Assemblies.
Why they took the initiative.--The people in council.
--Powerlessness of the municipalities.--the violence to which
they are subject.--Aix in 1790.--Government disobeyed and
perverted everywhere.
Were it but possible for the dissolution to stop here! But each commune
is far from being a tranquil little state under the rule of a body
of respected magistrates. The same causes which render municipalities
rebellious against the central authority render individuals rebellious
against local authority. They also feel that they are in danger and
want to provide for their own safety. They also, in virtue of the
Constitution and of circumstances, believe themselves appointed to
save the country. They also consider themselves qualified to judge for
themselves on all points and entitled to carry out their judgments with
their own hands. The shopkeeper, workman or peasant, at once elector and
National Guard, furnished with his vote and a musket, suddenly becomes
the equal and master of his superiors; instead of obeying, he commands,
while all who see him again after some years' absence, find that "in
his demeanor and manner all is changed." "There was great agitation
everywhere,"[3137] says M. de Ségur; "I noticed groups of men talking
earnestly in the streets and on the squares. The sound of the drum
struck my ear in the villages, while I was astonished at the great
number of armed men I encountered in the little towns. On interrogating
various persons among the lower classes they would reply with a proud
look and in a bold and confident tone. I observed everywhere the effect
of those sentiments of equality and liberty which had then become
such violent passions."--Thus exalted in their own eyes they believed
themselves qualified to take the lead in everything, not only in local
affairs, but also in general matters. France is to be governed by them;
by virtue of the Constitution they arrogate to themselves the right,
and, by dint of ignorance, attribute to themselves the capacity, to
govern it. A torrent of new, shapeless, and disproportionate ideas have
taken possession of their brains in the space of a few months. Vast
interests about which they have never thought, have to be considered.
Government, royalty, the church, creeds, foreign powers, internal
and external dangers, what is occurring at Paris and at Coblentz, the
insurrection in the Low Countries, the acts of the cabinets of London,
Vienna, Madrid, Berlin; and, of all this, they inform themselves as they
best can. An officer,[3138] who traverses France at this time, narrates
that at the post-stations they made him wait for horses until he had
"given them details. The peasants stopped my carriage in the middle of
the road and overwhelmed me with questions. At Autun, I was obliged, in
spite of the cold, to talk out of a window opening upon the square and
tell what I knew about the Assembly."--These on-dits are all changed
and amplified in passing from mouth to mouth. They finally become
circumstantial stories adapted to the caliber of the minds they pass
into and to the dominant passion that propagates them. Trace the effect
of these fables in the house of a peasant or fish-woman in an outlying
village or a populous suburb, on brutish or almost brutal minds,
especially when they are lively, heated, and over-excited--the effect
is tremendous. For, in minds of this stamp, belief is at once converted
into action, and into rude and destructive action. It is an acquired
self-control, reflection, and culture which interposes between belief
and action the solicitude for social interests, the observance of forms
and respect for the law. These restraints are all wanting in the new
sovereign. He does not know how to stop and will not suffer himself to
be stopped. Why so many delays when the peril is urgent? What is the use
of observing formalities when the safety of the people is at stake? What
is there sacred in the law when it protects public enemies? What is more
pernicious than passive deference and patient waiting under timid or
blind officials? What can be more just than to do one's self justice
at once and on the spot?--Precipitation and passion, in their eyes,
are both duties and merits. One day "the militia of Lorient decide upon
marching to Versailles and to Paris without considering how they are to
get over the ground or what they will do on their arrival."[3139] Were
the central government within reach they would lay their hands on it.
In default of this they substitute themselves for it on their own
territory, and exercise its functions with a full conviction of right,
principally those of gendarme, judge, and executioner.
During the month of October, 1789, at Paris, after the assassination of
the baker François, the leading murderer, who is a porter at the grain
depot, declares "that he wanted to avenge the nation." It is quite
probable that this declaration is sincere. In his mind, assassination is
one of the forms of patriotism, and it does not take long for his way
of thinking to become prevalent. In ordinary times, social and political
ideas slumber in uncultured minds in the shape of vague antipathies,
restrained aspirations, and fleeting desires. Behold them
aroused--energetic, imperious, stubborn, and unbridled. Objection or
opposition is not to be tolerated; dissent, with them, is a sure sign
of treachery.--Apropos of the nonjuring priests,[3140] five hundred and
twenty-seven of the National Guards of Arras write, "that no one could
doubt their iniquity without being suspected of being their accomplices.
. . . Should the whole town combine and express a contrary opinion, it
would simply show that it is filled with enemies of the Constitution;"
and forthwith, in spite of the law and the remonstrances of
the authorities, they insist on the closing of the churches. At
Boulogne-sur-Mer, an English vessel having shipped a quantity of
poultry, game, and eggs, "the National Guards, of their own authority,"
go on board and remove the cargo. On the strength of this, the
accommodating municipal body approves of the act, declares the cargo
confiscated, orders it to be sold, and awards one-half of the proceeds
to the National Guards and the other half to charitable purposes. The
concession is a vain one, for the National Guards consider that one-half
is too little, "insult and threaten the municipal officers," and
immediately proceed to divide the booty in kind, each one going home
with a share of stolen hams and chickens.[3141] The magistrates must
necessarily keep quiet with the guns of those they govern pointed at
them.--Sometimes, and it is generally the case, they are timid, and
do not try to resist. At Douai,[3142] the municipal officers, on being
summoned three times to proclaim martial law, refuse, and end by avowing
that they dare not unfold the red flag: "Were we to take this course
we should all be sacrificed on the spot." Neither the troops nor the
National Guards, in fact, are to be relied on. In this universal
state of apathy the field is open to savages, and a dealer in wheat is
hung.--Sometimes the administrative corps tries to resist, but in the
end it has to succumb to violence. "For more than six hours," writes one
of the members of the district of Etampes,[3143] "we were closed in by
bayonets leveled at us and with pistols at our breasts; and they were
obliged to sign a dismissal of the troops which had arrived to protect
the market. At present "we are all away from Etampes; there is no
longer a district or a municipality;" almost all have handed in their
resignations, or are to return for that purpose.--Sometimes, and this
is the rarest case,[3144] the officials do their duty to the end, and
perish. In this same town, six months later, Simoneau, the mayor,
having refused to cut down the price of wheat, is beaten with
iron-pointed sticks, and his corpse is riddled with balls by the
murderers.--Municipal bodies must take heed how they undertake to stem
the torrent; the slightest opposition will soon be at the expense of
their lives. In Touraine,[3145] "as the publication of the tax-rolls
takes place, riots break out against the municipal authorities; they are
forced to surrender the rolls they have drawn up, and their papers are
torn up." And still more, "they kill, they assassinate the municipal
authorities." In that large commune men and women "beat and kick them
with their fists and sabots. . . . The mayor is laid up after it, and
the procureur of the commune died between nine and ten o'clock in the
morning. Véteau, a municipal officer, received the last sacrament this
morning;" the rest have fled, being constantly threatened with death and
incendiarism. They do not, consequently, return, and "no one now will
take the office of either mayor or administrator."--The outrages which
the municipalities thus commit against their superiors are committed
against themselves. The National Guards, the mob, the controlling
faction, arrogating to themselves in the commune the same violent
sovereignty which the commune pretends to exercise against the State.
I should never finish if I undertook to enumerate the outbreaks in
which the magistrates are constrained to tolerate or to sanction popular
usurpations, to shut up churches, to drive off or imprison priests, to
suppress octrois, tax grain, and allow clerks; bakers, corn-dealers,
ecclesiastics, nobles, and officers to be hung, beaten to death, or
to have their throats cut. Ninety-four thick files of records in the
national archives are filled with these acts of violence, and do not
contain two-thirds of them. It is worth while to take in detail one
case more, a special one, and one that is authentic, which serves as a
specimen, and which presents a foreshortened image of France during
one tranquil year. At Aix, in the month of December, 1790,[3146] in
Opposition to the two Jacobin clubs, a club had been organized, had
complied with all the formalities, and, like the "Club des Monarchiens"
at Paris, claimed the same right of meeting as the others. But here, as
at Paris, the Jacobins recognize no rights but for themselves alone,
and refuse to admit their adversaries to the privileges of the law.
Moreover, alarming rumors are circulated. A person who has arrived
from Nice states that he had "heard that there were twenty thousand men
between Turin and Nice, under the pay of the emigrants, and that at
Nice a neuvaine[3147] was held in Saint François-de-Paule to pray God to
enlighten the French." A counter-revolution is certainly under way.
Some of the aristocrats have stated "with an air of triumph, that the
National Guard and municipalities are a mere toy, and that this sort of
thing will not last long." One of the leading members of the new club,
M. de Guiraitiand, an old officer of seventy-eight years, makes speeches
in public against the National Assembly, tries to enlist artisans in his
party, "affects to wear a white button on his hat fastened by pins with
their points jutting out," and, as it is stated, he has given to several
mercers a large order for white cockades. In reality, on examination,
not one is found in any shop, and all the dealers in ribbons, on
being interrogated, reply that they know of no transaction of that
description. But this simply proves that the culprit is a clever
dissimulator, and the more dangerous because he is eager to save the
country.--On the 12th of December, at four o'clock in the afternoon,
the two Jacobin clubs fraternise, and pass in long procession before
the place of meeting, "where some of the members, a few officers of the
Lyons regiment and other individuals, are quietly engaged at play
or seeing others play." The crowd hoot, but they remain quiet. The
procession passes by again, and they hoot and shout, "Down with the
aristocrats to the lamp post with them!" Two or three of the officers
standing on the threshold of the door become irritated, and one of them,
drawing his sword, threatens to strike a young man if he keeps on. Upon
this the crowd cries out, "Guard! Help! An assassin!" and rushes at
the officer, who withdraws into the house, exclaiming, "To arms!" His
comrades, sword in hand, descend in order to defend the door; M. de
Guiramand fires two pistol shots and receives a stab in the thigh. A
shower of stones smashes in the windows, and the door is on the point of
being burst open when several of the members of the club save themselves
by taking to the roof. About a dozen others, most of them officers,
form in line, penetrate the crowd with uplifted swords, strike and get
struck, and escape, five of them being wounded. The municipality orders
the doors and windows of the club-house to be walled up, sends the
Lyons regiment away, decrees the arrest of seven officers and of M. de
Guiramand, and all this in a few hours, with no other testimony than
that of the conquerors.
But these prompt, vigorous and partial measures are not sufficient for
the Jacobin club; other conspirators must be seized, and it is the club
which designates them and goes to take them.--Three months before
this, M. Pascalis, an advocate, on addressing along with some of his
professional brethren the dissolved parliament, deplored the blindness
of the people, "exalted by prerogatives of which they knew not the
danger." A man who dared talk in this way is evidently a traitor.--There
is another, M. Morellet de la Roquette, who refused to join the
proscribed club. His former vassals, however, had been obliged to bring
an action against him to make him accept the redemption of his feudal
dues; also, six years before this, his carriage, passing along the
public promenade, had run over a child; he likewise is an enemy of the
people. While the municipal officers are deliberating, "a few members of
the club" get together and decide that M. Pascalis and M. de la Roquette
must be arrested. At eleven o'clock at night eighty trustworthy National
Guards, led by the president of the club, travel a league off to seize
them in their beds and lodge them in the town prison.--Zeal of this kind
excites some uneasiness, and if the municipality tolerates the arrests,
it is because it is desirous of preventing murder. Consequently, on the
following day, December 13th, it sends to Marseilles for four hundred
men of the Swiss Guard commanded by Ernest, and four hundred National
Guards, adding to these the National Guard of Aix, and orders this
company to protect the prison against any violence. But, along with the
Marseilles National Guards, there came a lot of armed people who are
volunteers of disorder. On the afternoon of the 13th the first mob
strives to force the prison, and the next day, fresh squads congregate
around it demanding the head of M. Pascalis. The members of the club
head the riot with "a crowd of unknown men from outside the town, who
give orders and carry them out." During the night the populace of Aix
are tampered with, and the dikes all give way at the same moment. At the
first clamors the National Guard on duty on the public promenade disband
and disperse, while, as there is no signal for the assemblage of the
others, notwithstanding the regulations, the general alarm is not
sounded. "The largest portion of the National Guard draws off so as not
to appear to authorize by its presence outrages which it has not been
ordered to prevent. Peaceable Citizens are in great consternation;" each
one takes to flight or shuts himself up in his house, the streets being
deserted and silent. Meanwhile the prison gates are shattered with axes.
The procureur-syndic of the department, who requests the commandant of
the Swiss regiment to protect the prisoners, is seized, borne off, and
runs the risk of losing his life. Three municipal officers in their
scarves, who arrive on the ground, dare not give the order required by
the commandant. At this decisive moment, when it is necessary to
shed blood and kill a number of men, they obviously fear to take
the responsibility; their reply is, "We have no orders to give."--An
extraordinary spectacle now presents itself in this barrack courtyard
surrounding the prison. On the side of the law stand eight hundred armed
men, four hundred of the "Swiss" and four hundred of the National Guard
of Marseilles. They are drawn up in battle array, with guns to their
shoulders, with special orders repeated the evening before at three
different times by the municipal district and departmental authorities
and they have the sympathies of all honest people and of most of the
National Guard. But the legal indispensable phrase does not pass the
lips of those who by virtue of the Constitution should utter it, and a
small group of convicts are found to be sovereign.--The three municipal
officers are seized in their turn under the eyes of their own soldiers
who remain motionless, and "with bayonets at their breasts they sign,
under constraint, the order to give up M. Pascalis to the people." M. de
la Roquette is likewise surrendered. "The only portion of the National
Guard of Aix which was visible," that is to say, the Jacobin minority,
form a circle around the gate of the prison and organize themselves into
a council of war. And there they stand; at once "accusers, witnesses,
judges, and executioners." A captain conducts the two victims to the
public promenade where they are hung. Very soon after this old M.
de Guiramand, whom the National Guard of his village have brought a
prisoner to Aix, is hung in the same manner.
There is no prosecution of the assassins. The new tribunal, frightened
or forestalled, has for some time back ranged itself on the popular
side; its writs, consequently, are served on the oppressed, against
the members of the assaulted dub. Writs of arrest, summonses to attend
court, searches, seizures of correspondence, and other proceedings,
rain down upon them. Three hundred witnesses are examined. Some of the
arrested officers are "loaded with chains and thrust into dungeons."
Henceforth the club rules, and "makes everybody tremble."[3148] "From
the 23rd to the 27th of December, more than ten thousand passports
are delivered at Aix." "If the emigrations continue," write the
commissioners, "there will be no one left at Aix but workmen without
work and with no resources. Whole streets are uninhabited. . . . . As
long as such crimes can be permitted with impunity fear will drive out
of this town every one who has the means of living elsewhere."--Many
come back after the arrival of the commissioners, hoping to obtain
justice and security through them. But, "if a prosecution is not
ordered, we shall scarcely have departed from Aix when three or four
hundred families will abandon it. . . . And what man in his senses would
dare guarantee that each village will not soon have some one hung in
it?. . . Country valets arrest their masters. . . . The expectation
of impunity leads the inhabitants of villages to commit all sorts of
depredations in the forests, which is very harmful in a region where
woods are very scarce. They set up the most absurd and most unjust
pretensions against rich proprietors, and the fatal rope is ever the
interpreter and the signal of their will." There is no refuge against
these outrages. "The department, the districts, the municipalities,
administer only in conformity with the multiplied petitions of the
club." In the sight of all, and on one solemn day, a crushing defeat
has demonstrated the weakness of the government officials; and, bowed
beneath the yoke of their new masters, they preserve their legal
authority only on the condition that it remains at the service of the
victorious party.
*****
[Footnote 3101: Festivals approving the federation of all the National
Guards in France. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3102: See the address of the commune of Paris, June 5, 1790.
"Let the most touching of all utterances be heard on this day (the
anniversary of the taking of the Bastille), Frenchmen, we are brothers!
Yes, brothers, freemen and with a country!" Roux et Buchez, VI. 275.]
[Footnote 3103: Buchez and Roux, IV. 3, 309; V. 123; VI. 274,
399.--Duvergier, Collection of Laws and Decrees. Decree of June 8 and 9,
1790.]
[Footnote 3104: For one who, like myself, has lived for years among the
Moslems, the 5 daily ritual prayers all performed while turned towards
Mecca, this description of the French taking of the oath, has something
familiar in it. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3105: Michelet, "Histoire de la Révolution Française," II,
470, 474.]
[Footnote 3106: De Ferrières, II. 91.--Albert Babeau, I. 340. (Letter
addressed to the Chevalier de Poterat, July 18, 1790.)--De Dampmartin,
"Evénements qui se sont passés sous mes yeux," etc., 155.]
[Footnote 3107: One may imagine the impression Taine's description made
upon the thousands of political science students and others in the years
after this book was printed and widely sold all over Europe. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3108: Sauzay, I. 202.]
[Footnote 3109: Albert Babeau, ib. I, 339--De Ferrières, II, 92.]
[Footnote 3110: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453, Correspondence of M. de
Bercheney, May 23, 1790.]
[Footnote 3111: "Archives Nationales," ibid, May 13, 1790. "M. de la
Rifaudière was dragged from his carriage and brought to the guard-house,
which was immediately filled with people, shouting, 'To the lamp post,
the aristocrat!'--The fact is this: after his having repeatedly shouted
Vive le Roi et la Nation! They wanted him to shout Vive la Nation!
alone, upon which he gave Vive la Nation tant qu'elle pourra."--At
Blois, on the day of the Federation, a mob promenades the streets with
a wooden head covered with a wig, and a placard stating that the
aristocrats must be decapitated.]
[Footnote 3112: Might Freud ( 1856--1939) have been inspired, directly
or indirectly, by Taine's observation? 'La Révolution' vol. I, was
published in 1877 when Freud was 21 years old!! (SR.)]
[Footnote 3113: Mercure de France, the articles by Mallet du Pan (June
18th and August 16, 1791; April 14, 1792).]
[Footnote 3114: Moniteur, IV. 560. (sitting of June 5, 1790) report
of M. Freteau. "These facts are attested by fifty witnesses."--Cf. The
number of April 19, 1791.]
[Footnote 3115: Solon was a famous legislator who reformed Athens some
2500 years ago. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3116: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M. de
Thiard, military commandant in Brittany (September, 1789), "There are
in every petty village three conflicting powers, the présidial, the
bourgeois militia, and the permanent committee. Each is anxious to
outrank the other, and, on this occasion, a scene happened to come under
my eyes at Landivisiau which might have had a bloody termination, but
which turned out to be simply ridiculous. A lively dispute arose between
three speakers to determine which should make the first address. They
appealed to me to decide. Not to offend either of the parties, I
decided that all three should speak at the same time; which decision was
immediately carried out."]
[Footnote 3117: Decree of August 10-14, 1789.]
[Footnote 3118: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of M.
de Thiard, September 21, 1789. "The troops now obey the municipalities
only."--Also July 30th, August 11, 1790.]
[Footnote 3119: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of 31.
M. de Thiard, September 11 and 25, November 20, December 25 and 30,
1789.]
[Footnote 3120: Buchez and Roux, V.304 (April, 1790).--"Archives
Nationales," Papers of the committee of Investigation, DXXIX. I (note of
M. Latour-du-Pin, October 28, 1789)--? Buchez and Roux, IV. 3 (December
1, 1789); IV. 390 (February, 1790); VI. 179 (April and May, 1790).]
[Footnote 3121: Mercure de France, Report of M. Emery, sitting of July
21, 1790, Number for July 32.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter
of the directory of Calvados, September 26 and October 20, 1791.]
[Footnote 3122: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3207. Letter of the minister
Dumouriez, June 15, 1792. Report of M. Caillard, May 29, 1792.]
[Footnote 3123: Mercure de France, No. for July, 1791 (sitting of the
6th); Nos. for November 5 and 26, 1791.]
[Footnote 3124: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," vol. I.
passim.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3257. Address of the Directory of
Saône-et-Loire to the National Assembly, November 1, 1790.--F7, 3200.
Letter of the Directory of Calvados, November 9, 1791.--F 7, 3195.
Minutes of the meeting of the municipality of Aix, March 1, 1792 (on
the events of February 26th); letter of M. Villard, President of the
Directory, March 20, 1792.--F7, 3220. Extracts from the deliberations
of the Directory of Gers, and a letter to the King, January 28, 1792.
Letter of M. Lafitau, President of the Directory, January 30. (He was
dragged along by his hair and obliged to leave the town.)]
[Footnote 3125: Mercure de France, No. for October 30, 1790.]
[Footnote 3126: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3226. Letter of the directory
of Indre to M. Cahier, minister, December 6, 1791.--Letter of M.
Delessart, minister, to the directory of Indre, December 31, 1791.]
[Footnote 3127: Fabre, "Histoire de Marseille," II. 442. Martin had but
3,555 votes, when shortly after the National Guard numbered 24,000 men.]
[Footnote 3128: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of the minister,
M. de Saint-Priest, to the President of the National Assembly, May 11,
1790.]
[Footnote 3129: "Archives Nationales," F7 3196. Letters of the military
commandant, M. de Miran, March 6, 14, 30, 1790.]
[Footnote 3130: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letter of M. de
Bournissac, grand-privot, March 6,1790.]
[Footnote 3131: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letters of M. du Miran,
April 11th and 16th, and May 1, 1790.]
[Footnote 3132: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Procés-verbal of events
on the 30th of April.]
[Footnote 3133: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Letters of the
Municipality of Marseilles to the National Assembly, May 5 and 20,
1790.]
[Footnote 3134: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Order of the king,
May10. Letter of M. de Saint-Priest to the National Assembly, May 11.
Decree of the National Assembly, May 12. Letter of the Municipality
to the King. May 20. Letter of M. de Rubum, May 20. Note sent from
Marseilles, May 31. Address of the Municipality to the President of the
Friends of the Constitution, at Paris, May 5. In his narration of the
taking of the forts we read the following sentence: "We arrived without
hindrance in the presence of the commandant, whom we brought to an
agreement by means of the influence which force, fear and reason give to
persuasion."]
[Footnote 3135: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196, Letter of M. de Miran,
May 5.--The spirit of the ruling party at Marseilles is indicated by
several printed documents joined to the dossier, and, among others, by a
"Requéte à Desmoulins, procureur-général de la Lanterne." It relates
to a "patriotic inkstand," recently made out of the stones of the
demolished citadel, representing a hydra with four heads, symbolizing
the nobility, the clergy, the ministry and the judges. "It is from the
four patriotic skulls of the hydra that the ink of proscription will be
taken for the enemies of the Constitution. This inkstand, cut out of
the first stone that fell in the demolition of Fort Saint-Nicolas, is
dedicated to the patriotic Assembly of Marseilles. The magic art of the
hero of the liberty of Marseilles, that Renaud who, under the mask of
devotion, surprised the watchful sentinel of Notre-Dame de la Garde, and
whose manly courage and cunning ensured the conquest of that key of the
great focus of counter-revolution, has just given birth to a new trait
of genius a new Deucalion, he personifies this stone which Liberty has
flung from the summit of our menacing Bastilles, etc."]
[Footnote 3136: "Archives Nationales," F7. 3198. Letters of the royal
commissioners, April 13 and 5, 1791.]
[Footnote 3137: De Ségur, "Memoires," III, 482 (early in 1790).]
[Footnote 3138: De Dampmartin, I. 184 (January, 1791).]
[Footnote 3139: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. Correspondence of M. de
Thiard (October 12, 1789).]
[Footnote 3140: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Minutes from the
meeting of the directory of the department. March 28, 1792. "As the
ferment was at the highest point and fears were entertained that greater
evils would follow, M. le Président, with painful emotion declared that
he yielded and passed the unconstitutional act." Reply of the minister,
June 23: "If the constituted authorities are thus forced to yield to the
arbitrary will of a wild multitude, government no longer exists and we
are in the saddest stage of anarchy. If you think it best I will propose
to the King to reverse your last decision."]
[Footnote 3141: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Letter of M. Duport,
minister of justice, December 24, 1791.]
[Footnote 3142: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248, Report of the members
of the department, finished March 18, 1792.--Buchez and Roux, IX. 240
(Report of M. Alquier).]
[Footnote 3143: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Extract from the
deliberations of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, with the documents
relating to the insurrection at Etampes, September 16, 1791. Letter of
M. Venard, administrator of the district, September 20--" I shall not
set foot in Etampes until the re-establishment of order and tranquility,
and the first thing I shall do will be to record my resignation in the
register. I am tired of making sacrifices, for ungrateful wretches."]
[Footnote 3144: Moniteur, March 16, 1792.--Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire
de la Terreur" (Proceedings against the assassins of Simoneau), I. 381.]
[Footnote 3145: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3226. Letter and memorandum
of Chenantin, cultivator, November 7, 1792. Extract from the
deliberations of the directory of Langeais, November 5, 1792 (sedition
at Chapelle-Blanche, near Langeais, October 5, 1792).]
[Footnote 3146: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3105. Report of the
commissioners sent by the National Assembly and the King, February 23,
1791. (On the events of December 12 and 14, 1790)--Mercure de France,
February 29, 5791. (Letters from Aix, and notably a letter from seven
officers shut up in prison at Aix, January 30, 1791.) The oldest Jacobin
Club formed in February, 1790, was entitled "(Club des vrais amis de
la Constitution.)" The second Jacobin club, formed in October, 1790, was
"composed from the beginning of artisans and laborers from the faubourgs
and suburbs." Its title was" Société des frères anti-politiques," or
"frères vrais, justes et utiles à la patrie." The opposition club,
formed in December, 1790, bore the title, according to some, of "Les
Amis du Roi, de la paix et de la religion;" according to others,
"Les amis de la paix;" and finally, according to another report, "Les
Défenseurs de la religion, des personnes et des proprietés."]
[Footnote 3147: A special series of religious services. (TR)]
[Footnote 3148: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letters of the
commissioners, March 20, February 11, May 10, 1791.]
CHAPTER II. SOVEREIGNTY OF UNRESTRAINED PASSIONS.
Under these conditions when passions are freed; any determined and
competent man who can gather a couple of hundred men may form a band
and slip through the enlarged or weakened meshes of the net held by the
passive or ineffective government. An experiment on a grand scale
is about to be made on human society; owing to the slackening of the
regular restraints which have maintained it, it is now possible to
measure the force of the permanent instincts which attack it. They are
always there even in ordinary times; we do not notice them because they
are kept in check; but they are not the less energetic and effective,
and, moreover, indestructible. The moment their repression ceases,
their power of mischief becomes evident; just as that of the water which
floats a ship, but which, at the first leak enters into it and sinks it.
I.--Old Religious Grudges
Montauban and Nîmes in 1790.
Religious passions, to begin with, are not to be kept down by
federations, embraces, and effusions of fraternity. In the south, where
the Protestants have been persecuted for more than a century, hatreds
exist more than a century old.[3201] In vain have the odious edicts
which oppressed them fallen into desuetude for the past twenty years; in
vain have civil rights been restored to them since 1787: The past still
lives in transmitted recollections; and two groups are confronting each
other, one Protestant and the other Catholic, each defiant, hostile,
ready to act on the defensive, and interpreting the preparations of its
adversary as a plan of attack. Under such circumstances the guns go off
of their own accord.--On a sudden alarm at Uzès[3202] the Catholics,
two thousand in number, take possession of the bishop's palace and the
Hôtel-de-Ville; while the Protestants, numbering four hundred, assemble
outside the walls on the esplanade, and pass the night under arms,
each troop persuaded that the other is going to massacre it, one
party summoning the Catholics of Jalès to its aid, and the other the
Protestants of Gardonnenque.--There is but one way of avoiding civil war
between parties in such an attitude, and that is the ascendancy of an
energetic third party, impartial and on the spot. A plan to this
effect, which promises well, is proposed by the military commandant of
Languedoc.[3203] According to him the two firebrands are, on the
one hand, the bishops of Lower Languedoc, and on the other, MM.
Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, father and two sons, all three being pastors. Let
them be responsible "with their heads" for any mob, insurrection, or
attempt to debauch the army; let a tribunal of twelve judges be selected
from the municipal bodies of twelve towns, and all delinquents be
brought before it; let this be the court of final appeal, and its
sentence immediately executed. The system in vogue, however, is just the
reverse. Both parties being organized into a body of militia, each takes
care of itself, and is sure to fire on the other; and the more readily,
inasmuch as the new ecclesiastical regulations, which are issued from
month to month, strike like so many hammers on Catholic sensibility, and
scatter showers of sparks on the primings of the already loaded guns.
At Montauban, on the 10th of May, 1790, the day of the inventory and
expropriation of the religious communities,[3204] the commissioners
are not allowed to enter. Women in a state of frenzy lie across the
thresholds of the doors, and it would be necessary to pass over their
bodies; a large mob gathers around the "Cordeliers," and a petition is
signed to have the convents maintained.--The Protestants who witness
this commotion become alarmed, and eighty of their National Guards march
to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and take forcible possession of the guard-house
which protects it. The municipal authorities order them to withdraw,
which they refuse to do. Thereupon the Catholics assembled at the
"Cordeliers" begin a riot, throw stones, and drive in the doors with
pieces of timber, while a cry is heard that the Protestants, who have
taken refuge in the guard-house, are firing from the windows. The
enraged multitude immediately invade the arsenal, seize all the guns
they can lay their hands on, and fire volleys on the guard-house, the
effect of which is to kill five of the Protestants and wound twenty-four
others. The rest are saved by a municipal officer and the police; but
they are obliged to appear, two and two, before the cathedral in their
shirts, and do public penance, after which they are put in prison.
During the tumult political shouts have been heard: "Hurrah for the
nobles! Hurrah for the aristocracy! Down with the nation! Down with the
tricolor flag!" Bordeaux, regarding Montauban as in rebellion against
France, dispatches fifteen hundred of its National Guard to set the
prisoners free. Toulouse gives its aid to Bordeaux. The fermentation is
frightful. Four thousand of the Protestants of Montauban take flight;
armed cities are about to contend with each other, as formerly in Italy.
It is necessary that a commissioner of the National Assembly and of
the King, Mathieu Dumas, should be dispatched to harangue the people of
Montauban, obtain the release of the prisoners, and re-establish order.
One month after this a more bloody affray takes place at Nîmes[3205]
against the Catholics. The Protestants, in fact, are but twelve thousand
out of fifty-four thousand inhabitants, but the principal trade of the
place is in their hands; they hold the manufactories and support thirty
thousand workmen; in the elections of 1789 they furnished five out of
the eight deputies. The sympathies of that time were in their favor;
nobody then imagined that the dominant Church was exposed to any
risk. It is to be attacked in its turn, and the two parties are seen
confronting each other.--The Catholics sign a petition,[3206] hunt up
recruits among the market-gardeners of the suburbs, retain the white
cockade, and, when this is prohibited, replace it with a red rosette,
another sign of recognition. At their head is an energetic man named
Froment, who has vast projects in view; but as the soil on which he
treads is undermined, he cannot prevent the explosion. It takes place
naturally, by chance, through the simple collision of two equally
distrustful bodies; and before the final day it has commenced and
recommenced twenty times, through mutual provocations and denunciations,
through insults, libels, scuffles, stone-throwing, and gun-shots.--On
the 13th of June, 1790, the question is which party shall furnish
administrators for the district and department, and the conflict begins
in relation to the elections. The Electoral Assembly is held at the
guard-house of the bishop's palace, where the Protestant dragoons and
patriots have come "three times as many as usual, with loaded muskets
and pistols, and with full cartridge-boxes," and they patrol the
surrounding neighborhood. On their side, the red rosettes, royalists
and Catholics, complain of being threatened and "treated contemptuously"
(nargués). They give notice to the gate-keeper "not to let any dragoon
enter the town either on foot or mounted, at the peril of his life," and
declare that "the bishop's quarters were not made for a guard-house."--A
mob forms, and shouting takes place under the windows; stones are
thrown; the bugle of a dragoon, who sounds the roll-call, is broken and
two shots are fired.[3207] The dragoons immediately fire a volley, which
wounds a good many people and kills seven. From this moment, firing goes
on during the evening and all night, in every quarter of the town, each
party believing that the other wants to exterminate it, the Protestants
satisfied that it is another St. Bartholomew, and the Catholics that
it is "a Michelade."[3208] There is no one to act between them. The
municipality authorities, far from issuing orders, receive them: they
are roughly handled, hustled and jostled about, and made to march about
like servants. The patriots seize the Abbé de Belmont, a municipal
officer, at the Hôtel-de-Ville, order him, on pain of death, to proclaim
martial--law, and place the red flag in his hand. "March, rascal, you
bastard! Hold up your flag--higher up still--you are big enough to do
that!" Blows follow with the but-ends of their muskets. The poor man
spits blood, but this is of no consequence; he must be in full sight at
the head of the crowd, like a target, whilst his conductors prudently
remain behind. Thus does he advance, exposed to bullets, holding the
flag, and finally becomes the prisoner of the red rosettes, who release
him, but keep his flag. There is a second march with a red flag held
by a town valet, and fresh gunshots; the red rosettes capture this flag
also, as well as another municipal officer. The rest of the municipal
body, with a royal commissioner, take refuge in the barracks and order
out the troops. Meanwhile Froment, with his three companies, posted
in their towers and in the houses on the ramparts, resist to the last
extremity. Daylight comes, the tocsin is sounded, the drums beat to
arms, and the patriot militia of the neighborhood, the Protestants from
the mountains, the rude Cévenols, arrive in crowds. The red rosettes are
besieged; a Capuchin convent, from which it is pretended that they have
fired, is sacked, and five of the monks are killed. Froment's tower is
demolished with cannon and taken by assault. His brother is massacred
and thrown from the walls, while a Jacobin convent next to the ramparts
is sacked. Towards night, all the red rosettes who have fought are slain
or have fled, and there is no longer any resistance.--But the fury still
lasts; the fifteen thousand rustics who have flooded the town think
that they have not yet done enough. In vain are they told that the other
fifteen companies of red rosettes have not moved; that the pretended
aggressors "did not even put themselves in a state of defense;" that
during the battle they remained at home, and that afterwards, through
extra precaution, the municipal authorities had made them give up their
arms. In vain does the Electoral Assembly, preceded by a white flag,
march to the public square and exhort the people to keep the peace.
"Under the pretext of searching suspicious houses, they pillage or
destroy, and what-ever cannot be carried away is broken." One hundred
and twenty houses are sacked in Nîmes alone, while the same ravages
are committed in the environs, the damage, at the end of three days,
amounting to seven or eight hundred thousand livres. A number of poor
creatures, workmen, merchants, old and infirm men, are massacred in
their houses; some, "who have been bedridden for many years, are
dragged to the sills of their doors to be shot." Others are hung on the
esplanade and at the Cours Neuf, while others have their noses, ears,
feet, and hands cut off; and are hacked to pieces with sabers and
scythes. Horrible stories, as is commonly the case, provoke the most
atrocious acts.
A publican, who refuses to distribute anti-Catholic lists, is supposed
to have a mine in his cellar filled with kegs of gunpowder and with
sulfur matches all ready; he is hacked to pieces with a saber, and
twenty guns are discharged into his corpse: they expose the body before
his house with a long loaf of bread on his breast, and they again stab
him with bayonets, saying to him: "Eat, you bastard, eat"--More than
five hundred Catholics were assassinated, and many others, covered with
blood, "are crowded together in the prisons, while the search for the
proscribed is continued; whenever they are seen, they are fired upon
like so many wolves." Thousands of the inhabitants, accordingly, demand
their passports and leave the town. The rural Catholics, meanwhile,
on their side, massacre six Protestants in the environs--an old man
of eighty-two years, a youth of fifteen, and a husband and his wife
in their farm-house. In order to put a stop to the murderous acts, the
National Guard of Montpellier have to be summoned. But the restoration
of order is for the benefit of the victorious party. Three-fifths of
the electors have fled; one-third of the district and departmental
administrators have been appointed in their absence, and the majority of
the new directories is taken from the club of patriots. It is for this
reason that the prisoners are prejudged as guilty. "No bailiff of the
court dares give them the benefit of his services; they are not allowed
to bring forward justifying facts in evidence, while everybody knows
that the judges are not impartial."[3209]
Thus do the violent measures of political and religious discord come to
an end. The victor stops the mouth of the law when it is about to
speak in his adversary's behalf; and, under the legal iniquity of an
administration which he has himself established, he crushes those whom
the illegal force of his own strong hand has stricken down.
II.--Passion Supreme.
Dread of hunger its most acute form.--The non-circulation of
grain.--Intervention and usurpations of the electoral
assemblies.--The rural code in Nivernais.--The four central
provinces in 1790.--Why high prices are kept up.--Anxiety
and insecurity.--Stagnation of the grain market.--The
departments near Paris in 1791.--The supply and price of
grain regulated by force.--The mobs in 1792.--Village armies
of Eure and of the lower Seine and of Aisne.--Aggravation of
the disorder after August 10th.--The dictatorship of
unbridled instinct.--Its practical and political expedients.
Passions of this stamp are the product of human cultivation, and break
loose only within narrow bounds. Another passion exists which is neither
historic nor local, but natural and universal, the most indomitable,
most imperious, and most formidable of all, namely, the fear of hunger.
There is no such thing with this passion as delay, or reflection, or
looking beyond itself. Each commune or canton wants its bread, and a
sure and unlimited supply of it. Our neighbor may provide for himself as
best he can, but let us look out for ourselves first and then for other
people. Each group of people, accordingly, through its own decrees, or
by main force, keeps for itself whatever subsistence it possesses, or
takes from others the subsistence which it does not possess. ii
At the end of 1789,[3210] "Roussillon refuses aid to Languedoc; Upper
Languedoc to the rest of the province, and Burgundy to Lyonnais;
Dauphiny shuts herself up, and Normandy retains the wheat purchased for
the relief of Paris." At Paris, sentinels are posted at the doors of all
the bakers; on the 21st of October one of the latter is hung, and his
head is borne about on a pike. On the 27th of October, at Vernon, a
corn-merchant named Planter, who the preceding winter had supported the
poor for six leagues around, has to take his turn. At the present moment
the people do not forgive him for having sent flour to Paris, and he is
hung twice, but is saved through the breaking of the rope each time.--It
is only by force and under an escort that it is possible to insure the
arrival of grain in a town; the excited people or the National Guards
constantly seize it on its passage. In Normandy the militia of
Caen stops wheat on the highways which is destined for Harcourt and
elsewhere.[3211] In Brittany, Auray and Vannes retain the convoys
for Nantes, and Lannion those for Brest. Brest having attempted to
negotiate, its commissioners are seized, and, with knives at their
throats, are forced to sign a renunciation, pure and simple, of the
grain which they have paid for, and they are led out of Lannion and
stoned on the way. Eighteen hundred men, consequently, leave Brest with
four cannon, and go to recover their property with their guns loaded.
These are the customs prevalent during the great famines of feudal
times; and, from one end of France to the other, to say nothing of
the out-breaks of the famished in the large towns, similar outrages or
attempts at recovery are constantly occurring.--" The armed population
of Nantua, Saint-Claude, and Septmoncel," says a dispatch,[3212] "have
again cut off provisions from the Gex region; there is no wheat coming
there from any direction, all the roads being guarded. Without the aid
of the government of Geneva, which is willing to lend to this region
eight hundred Cuttings of wheat, we should either die of starvation or
be compelled to take grain by force from the municipalities which
keep it to themselves." Narbonne starves Toulon; the navigation of the
Languedoc canal is intercepted; the people on its banks repulse two
companies of soldiers, burn a large building, and want to destroy the
canal itself." Boats are stopped, wagons are pillaged, bread is forcibly
lowered in price, stones are thrown and guns discharged; the populace
contend with the National Guard, peasants with townsmen, purchasers
with dealers, artisans and laborers with farmers and land-owners, at
Castelnaudary, Niort, Saint-Etienne, in Aisne, in Pas-de-Calais, and
especially along the line stretching from Montbrison to Angers--that
is to say, for almost the whole of the extent of the vast basin of the
Loire,--such is the spectacle presented by the year 1790.--And yet the
crop has not been a bad one. But there is no circulation of grain. Each
petty center has formed a league for the monopoly of food; and hence the
fasting of others and the convulsions of the entire body are the
first effects of the unbridled freedom which the Constitution and
circumstances have conferred on each local group.
"We are told to assemble, vote, and elect men that will attend to our
business; let us attend to it ourselves. We have had enough of talk and
hypocrisy. Bread at two sous, and let us go after wheat where it can
be found!" Such is the reasoning of the peasantry, and, in Nivernais,
Bourbonnais, Berri, and Touraine, electoral gatherings are the
firebrands of the insurrections.[3213] At Saint-Sauge, "the first work
of the primary meeting is to oblige the municipal officers to fix the
price of wheat under the penalty of being decapitated." At Saint-Géran
the same course is taken with regard to bread, wheat, and meat; at
Châtillon-en-Bayait it is done with all supplies, and always a third or
a half under the market price, without mentioning other exactions.--They
come by degrees to the drafting of a tariff for all the valuables they
know, proclaiming the maximum price which an article may reach, and so
establishing a complete code of rural and social economy. We see in the
turbulent and spasmodic wording of this instrument their dispositions
and sentiments, as in a mirror.[3214] It is the program of villagers.
Its diverse articles, save local variations, must be executed, now one
and now the other, according to the occasion, the need, and the time,
and, above all, whatever concerns provisions.--The wish, as usual, is
the father of the thought; the peasantry thinks that it is acting by
authority: here, through a decree of the King and the National Assembly,
there, by a commission directly entrusted to the Comte d'Estrées. Even
before this, in the market-place of Saint-Amand, "a man jumped on a heap
of wheat and cried out, 'In the name of the King and the nation, wheat
at one-half the market-price!"' An old officer of the Royal Grenadiers,
a chevalier of the order of Saint-Louis, is reported to be marching at
the head of several parishes, and promulgating ordinances in his own
name and that of the King, imposing a fine of eight livres on whoever
may refuse to join him.--On all sides there is a swarm of working
people, and resistance is fruitless. There are too many of them, the
constabulary being drowned in the flood. For, these rustic legislators
are the National Guard itself, and when they vote reductions upon, or
requisitions for, supplies, they enforce their demands with their guns.
The municipal officials, willingly or unwillingly, must needs serve the
insurgents. At Donjon the Electoral Assembly has seized the mayor of the
place and threatened to kill him, or to burn his house, if he did not
put the cutting of wheat at forty sous; whereupon he signs, and all the
mayors with him, "under the penalty of death." As soon as this is done
the peasants, "to the sound of fifes and drums," spread through the
neighboring parishes and force the delivery of wheat at forty sous, and
show such a determined spirit that the four brigades of gendarmes sent
out against them think it best to retire.--Not content with taking what
they want, they provide for reserve supplies; wheat is a prisoner. In
Nivernais and Bourbonnais, the peasants trace a boundary line over which
no sack of grain of that region must pass; in case of any infraction
of this law the rope and the torch are close at hand for the
delinquent.--It remains to make sure that this rule is enforced. In
Berri bands of peasants visit the markets to see that their tariff is
everywhere maintained. In vain are they told that they are emptying the
markets; "they reply that they know how to make grain come, that they
will take it from private hands, and money besides, if necessary." In
fact, the granaries and cellars belonging to a large number of persons
are pillaged. Farmers are constrained to put their crops into a common
granary, and the rich are put to ransom; "the nobles are compelled to
contribute, and obliged to give entire domains as donations; cattle are
carried off; and they want to take the lives of the proprietors,"
while the towns, which defend their storehouses and markets, are
openly attacked.[3215] Bourbon-Lancy, Bourbon-l'Archambault,
Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, Montluçon, Saint-Amand, Chateau-Gontier,
Decises, each petty community is an islet assailed by the mounting
tide of rustic insurrection. The militia pass the night under arms;
detachments of the National Guards of the large towns with regular
troops come and garrison them. The red flag is continuously raised for
eight days at Bourbon-Lancy, and cannon stand loaded and pointed in
the public square. On the 24th of May an attack is made on
Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, and fusillades take place all night on
both sides. On the 2nd of June, Saint-Amand, menaced by twenty-seven
parishes, is saved only by the preparations it makes and by the
garrison. About the same time Bourbon-Lancy is attacked by twelve
parishes combined, and Chateau-Gontier by the sabotiers of the forests
in the vicinity. A band of from four to five hundred villagers arrests
the convoys of Saint-Amand, and forces their escorts to capitulate;
another band entrenches itself in the Chateau de la Fin, and fires
throughout the day on the regulars and the National Guard.--The large
towns themselves are not safe. Three or four hundred rustics, led
by their municipal officers, forcibly enter Tours, to compel the
municipality to lower the price of corn and diminish the rate of leases.
Two thousand slate-quarry-men, armed with guns, spits, and forks, force
their way into Angers to obtain a reduction on bread, fire upon the
guard, and are charged by the troops and the National Guard; a number
remain dead in the streets, two are hung that very evening, and the red
flag is displayed for eight days. "The town," say the dispatches, "would
have been pillaged and burnt had it not been for the Picardy regiment."
Fortunately, as the crop promises to be a good one, prices fall. As the
Electoral Assemblies are closed, the fermentation subsides; and towards
the end of the year, like a clear spell in a steady storm, the gleam of
a truce appears in the civil war excited by hunger.
But the truce does not last long, as it is broken in twenty places
by isolated explosions; and towards the month of July, 1791, the
disturbances arising from the uncertainty of basic food supplies
begin again, to cease no more. We will consider but one group in this
universal state of disorder--that of the eight or ten departments which
surround Paris and furnish it with supplies. These districts, Brie and
Beauce, are rich wheat regions, and not only was the crop of 1790 good,
but that of 1791 is ample. Information is sent to the minister from
Laon[3216] that, in the department of Aisne, "there is a supply of
wheat for two years. . . that the barns, generally empty by the month
of April, will not be so this season before July," and, consequently,
"subsistence is assured." But this does not suffice, for the source of
the evil is not in a scarcity of wheat. In order that everybody, in a
vast and populous country, where the soil, cultivation, and occupations
differ, may eat, it is essential that food should be attainable by the
non-producers; and for it to reach them freely, without delay, solely by
the natural operation of supply and demand, it is essential that
there should be a police able to protect property, transactions, and
transport. Just in proportion as the authority of a State becomes
weakened, and in proportion as security diminishes, the distribution of
subsistence becomes more and more difficult: a gendarmerie, therefore,
is an indispensable wheel in the machine by which we are able to secure
our daily bread. Hence it is that, in 1791, daily bread is wanting to a
large number of men. Simply through the working of the Constitution, all
restraints, already slackened both at the extremities and at the center,
are becoming looser and more loose each day. The municipalities, which
are really sovereign, repress the people more feebly, some because the
latter are the bolder and themselves more timid, and others because they
are more radical and always consider them in the right. The National
Guard is wearied, never comes forward, or refuses to use its arms. The
active citizens are disgusted, and remain at home. At Étampes,[3217]
where they are convoked by the commissioners of the department to take
steps to re-establish some kind of order, only twenty assemble; the
others excuse themselves by saying that, if the populace knew that they
opposed its will, "their houses would be burnt," and they accordingly
stay away. "Thus," write the commissioners, "the common-weal is given
up to artisans and laborers whose views are limited to their own
existence."--It is, accordingly, the lower class which rules, and the
information upon which it bases its decrees consists of rumors which it
accepts or manufactures, to hide by an appearance of right the outrages
which are due to its cupidity or to the brutalities of its hunger. At
Étampes, "they have been made to believe that the grain which had
been sold for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped at
Paimboeuf and taken out of the kingdom from there to be sold abroad." In
the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely "engulfed
in the swamps, ponds, and clay-pits." At Laon, imbecile and Jacobin
committees attribute the dearness of provisions to the avidity of the
rich and the malevolence of the aristocrats according to them, "jealous
millionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. They know the
popular strength," and, not daring to measure their forces with it, "in
an honorable fight," have recourse "to treachery." To conquer the
people easily they have determined to reduce them in advance by extreme
suffering and by the length of their fast, and hence they monopolize
"wheat, rye, and meal, soap, sugar, and brandy."[3218]--Similar reports
suffice to excite a suffering crowd to acts of violence, and it must
inevitably accept for its leaders and advisers those who urge it forward
on the side to which it is inclined. The people always require leaders,
and they are chosen wherever they can be found, at one time amongst the
elite, and at another amongst the dregs. Now that the nobles are
driven out, the bourgeoisie in retirement, the large cultivators
under suspicion, while animal necessities exercise their blind and
intermittent despotism, the appropriate popular ministers consist of
adventurers and of bandits. They need not be very numerous, for in a
place full of combustible matter a few firebrands suffice to start the
conflagration. "About twenty, at most, can be counted in the towns of
Étampes and Dourdan, men with nothing to lose and everything to gain by
disturbances; they are those who always produce excitement and disorder,
while other citizens afford them the means through their indifference."
Those whose names are known among the new guides of the crowd are almost
all escaped convicts whose previous habits have accustomed them to
blows, violence, frequently to murder, and always to contempt for the
law. At Brunoy,[3219] the leaders of the outbreak are "two deserters of
the 18th regiment, sentenced and unpunished, who, in company with the
vilest and most desperate of the parish, always go about armed and
threatening." At Étampes, "the two principal assassins of the mayor
are a poacher repeatedly condemned for poaching, and an old carabiniere
dismissed from his regiment with a bad record against him."[3220] Around
these are artisans "without a known residence," wandering workmen,
journeymen and apprentices, vagrants and highway rovers, who flock into
the towns on market-days and are always--ready for mischief when an
opportunity occurs. Vagabonds, indeed, now roam about the country
everywhere, all restrictions against them having ceased.
"For a year past," write several parishes in the neighborhood of
Versailles, "we have seen no gendarmes except those who come with
decrees," and hence the multiplication of "murders and brigandage"
between Étampes and Versailles, on the highways and in the country.
Bands of thirteen, fifteen, twenty and twenty-two beggars rob the
vineyards, enter farm-houses at night, and compel their inmates to lodge
and feed them, returning in the same way every fortnight, all farms or
isolated dwellings being their prey. An ecclesiastic is killed in his
own house in the suburbs of Versailles, on the 26th of September, 1791,
and, on the same day, a bourgeois and his wife are garroted and robbed.
On the 22nd of September, near Saint-Rémi-Honoré, eight bandits ransack
the dwelling of a farmer. On the 25th of September, at Villers-le-Sec,
thirteen others strip another farmer, and then add with much politeness,
"It is lucky for your masters that they are not here, for we would have
roasted them at yonder fire." Six similar outrages are committed by
armed ruffians in dwelling-places, within a radius of from three to four
leagues, accompanied with the threats of the chauffeurs.[3221] "After
enterprises of such force and boldness," write the people of this
region, "there is not a well-to-do man in the country who can rely upon
an hour's security in his house. Already many of our best cultivators
are giving up their business, while others threaten to do the same in
case these disorders continue."--What is worse still is the fact that in
these outrages most of the bandits were "in the national uniform." The
most ignorant, the poorest, and most fanatical of the National Guard
thus enlist for the sake of plunder. It is so natural for men to believe
in their right to that of which they feel the need, that the possessors
of wheat thus become its monopolists, and the superfluity of the rich
the property of the poor! This is what the peasants say who devastate
the forest of Bruyères-le-Chatel: "We have neither wood, bread, nor
work--necessity knows no law."
The necessaries of life are not to be had cheap under such a system.
There is too much anxiety, and property is too precarious; there are too
many obstacles to commerce; purchases, sales, shipments, arrivals and
payments are too uncertain. How are goods to be stored and transported
in a country where neither the central government, the local
authorities, the National Guard, nor the regular troops perform their
duties, and where every transaction in produce, even the most legal and
the most serviceable, is subject to the caprice of a dozen villains whom
the populace obey.--Wheat remains in the barn, or is secreted, or is
kept waiting, and only reaches by stealth the hands of those who are
rich enough to pay, not only its price, but the extra cost of the
risk. Thus forced into a narrow channel, it rises to a rate which the
depreciation of the assignats augments, its dearness being not only
maintained, but ever on the increase.--Thereupon popular instinct
invents for the cure of the evil a remedy which serves to aggravate
it: henceforth, wheat must not travel; it is impounded in the canton in
which it is gathered. At Laon, "the people have sworn to die rather than
let their food be carried off." At Étampes, to which the municipality
of Angers dispatches an administrator of its hospital to buy two
hundred and fifty sacks of flour, the commission cannot be executed,
the delegate not even daring to avow for several days the object of
his coming; all he can do is "to visit incognito, and at night, the
different flour-dealers in the valley, who would offer to furnish
the supply, but fear for their lives and dare not even leave their
houses."--The same violence is shown in the more distant circle of
departments which surround the first circle. At Aubigny, in Cher,[3222]
grain-wagons are stopped, the district administrators are menaced; two
have a price set on their heads; a portion of the National Guard sides
with the mutineers. At Chaumont, in Haute-Marne, the whole of the
National Guard is in a state of mutiny; a convoy of over three hundred
sacks is stopped, the Hôtel-de-Ville forced, and the insurrection lasts
four days; the directory of the department takes flight; and the people
seize on the powder and cannons. At Douai, in the "Nord," to save
a grain-dealer, he is put in prison; the mob forces the gates, the
soldiers refuse to fire, and the man is hung, while the directory of
the department takes refuge in Lille. At Montreuil-sur-Mer, in
Pas-de-Calais, the two leaders of the insurrection, a brazier and a
horse-shoer, "Bèquelin, called Petit-Gueux," the latter with his saber
in hand, reply to the summons of the municipal authorities, that "not a
grain shall go now that they are masters," and that if they dare to make
such proclamations "they will cut off their heads." There are no
means of resistance. The National Guard, when it is convoked, does not
respond; the volunteers when called upon turn their muskets down, and
the crowd, assembled beneath the windows, shouts out its huzzahs. So
much the worse for the law when it opposes popular passion: "We will not
obey it," they say; "people make laws to please themselves."--By way
of practical illustration, at Tortes, in Seine-Inférieure, six thousand
armed men belonging to the surrounding parishes form a deliberative
armed body; the better to establish their rights, they bring two cannon
with them fastened by ropes on a couple of carts; twenty-two companies
of the National Guard, each under its own banner, march beside them,
while all peaceable inhabitants are compelled to fall in "under penalty
of death," the municipal officers being at their head. This improvised
parliament promulgates a complete law in relation to grain, which, as
a matter of form, is sent for acceptance to the department, and to the
National Assembly; and one of its articles declares that all husbandmen
shall be forbidden "to sell their wheat elsewhere than on the
market-places." With no other outlet for it, wheat must be brought
to the corn markets (halles), and when these are full the price must
necessarily fall.
What a profound deception! Even in the granary of France wheat remains
dear, and costs about one-third more than would be necessary to secure
the sale of bread at two sous the pound, in conformity with the will of
the people. For instance,[3223] at Gonesse, Dourdan, Corbeil, Mennecy,
Brunoy, Limours, Brie-Comte-Robert, and especially at Étampes and
Montlhéry, the holders of grain are compelled almost weekly, through the
clamors and violence of the people, to reduce prices one-third and
more. It is impossible for the authorities to maintain, on their
corn-exchange, the freedom of buying and selling. The regular troops
have been sent off by the people beforehand. Whatever the tolerance or
connivance of the soldiers may be, the people have a vague sentiment
that they are not there to permit the ripping open of sacks of flour, or
the seizing of farmers by the throat. To get rid of all obstacles and of
being watched, they make use of the municipality itself, and force it
to effect its own disarmament. The municipal officers, besieged in the
town-hall, at times threatened with pistols and bayonets,[3224] dispatch
to the detachments they are expecting an order to turn back, and entreat
the Directory not to send any more troops, for, if any come, they have
been told that "they will be sorry for it." Nowhere are there regular
troops. At Étampes, the people repeat that "they are sent for and paid
by the flour-dealers;" at Montlhéry, that "they merely serve to arm
citizens against each other;" at Limours, that "they make grain dearer."
All pretexts seem good in this direction; the popular will is absolute,
and the authorities complacently meet its decrees half-way. At
Montlhéry, the municipal body orders the gendarmerie to remain at the
gates of the town, which gives full play to the insurrection.--The
administrators, however, are not relieved by leaving the people free to
act; they are obliged to sanction their exactions by ordinances. They
are taken out of the Hôtel-de-Ville, led to the marketplace, and there
forthwith, under the dictation of the uproar which establishes prices,
they, like simple clerks, proclaim the reduction. When, moreover, the
armed rabble of a village marches forth to tyrannize over a neighboring
market, it carries its mayor along with it in spite of himself, as an
official instrument which belongs to it.[3225] "There is no resistance
against force," writes the mayor of Vert-le-Petit; "we had to set forth
immediately."--" They assured me," says the Mayor of Fontenay, "that,
if I did not obey them, they would hang me."--On any municipal officer
hazarding a remonstrance, they tell him that "he is getting to be an
aristocrat." Aristocrat and hung, the argument is irresistible, and
all the more so because it is actually applied. At Corbeil, the
procureur-syndic who tries to enforce the law is almost beaten to
death, and three houses in which they try to find him are demolished. At
Montlhéry, a seed merchant, accused of mixing the flour of beans (twice
as dear) with wheaten flour, is massacred in his own house. At Étampes,
the mayor who promulgates the law is cudgeled to death. Mobs talk of
nothing but "burning and destroying," while the farmers, abused,
hooted at, forced to sell, threatened with death and robbed, run away,
declaring they will never return to the market again.
Such is the first effect of popular dictatorship. Like all unintelligent
forces, it operates in a direction the reverse of its intention: to
dearness it adds dearth, and empties, instead of replenishing, the
markets. That of Étampes often contained fifteen or sixteen hundred
sacks of flour; the week following this insurrection there were, at
most, sixty brought to it. At Montlhéry, where six thousand men had
collected together, each one obtains for his share only a small measure,
while the bakers of the town have none at all. This being the case, the
enraged National Guards tell the farmers that they are coming to see
them on their farms. And they really go.[3226] Drums roll constantly
on the roads around Montlhéry, Limours, and other large market-towns.
Columns of two, three, and four hundred men are seen passing under the
lead of their commandant and of the mayor whom they take along with
them. They enter each farm, mount into the granaries, estimate the
quantity of grain thrashed out, and force the proprietor to sign an
agreement to bring it to market the following week. Sometimes, as they
are hungry, they compel people to give them something to eat and drink
on the spot, and it will not do to enrage them,--a farmer and his wife
come near being hung in their own barn.
Their effort is useless: Wheat is impounded and hunted up in vain; it
takes to the earth or slips off like a frightened animal. In vain do
insurrections continue. In vain do armed mobs, in all the market-towns
of the department,[3227] subject grain to a forced reduction of price.
Wheat becomes scarcer and dearer from month to month, rising in price
from twenty-six francs to thirty-three. And because the outraged farmer
"brings now a very little," just "what is necessary to sacrifice
in order to avoid threats, he sells at home, or in the inns, to the
flour-dealers from Paris."--The people, in running after abundance, have
thus fallen deeper down into want: their brutality has aggravated their
misery, and it is to themselves that their starvation is owing. But
they are far from attributing all this to their own insubordination;
the magistrates are accused; these, in the eyes of the populace, are "in
league with the monopolists." On this incline no stoppage is possible.
Distress increases rage, and rage increases distress; and on this fatal
declivity men are precipitated from one outrage to another.
After the month of February, 1792, such outrages are innumerable; the
mobs which go in quest of grain or which cut down its price consist
of armies. One of six thousand men comes to control the market of
Montlhéry.[3228] There are seven to eight--thousand men who invade the
market-place of Verneuil, and there is an army of ten and another of
twenty-five thousand men, who remain organized for ten days near
Laon. One hundred and fifty parishes have sounded the tocsin, and the
insurrection spreads for ten leagues around. Five boats loaded with
grain are stopped, and, in spite of the orders of district, department,
minister, King, and National Assembly, they refuse to surrender them.
Their contents, in the meantime, are made the most of: "The municipal
officers of the different parishes, assembled together, pay themselves
their fees, to wit: one hundred sous per diem for the mayor, three
livres for the municipal officers, two livres ten sous for the guards,
two livres for the porters. They have ordered that these sums should
be paid in grain, and they reduce grain, it is said, fifteen livres the
sack. It is certain that they have divided it amongst themselves, and
that fourteen hundred sacks have been distributed." In vain do the
commissioners of the National Assembly make speeches to them three hours
in length. The discourse being finished, they deliberate, in presence of
the commissioners, whether the latter shall be hung, drowned, or cut
up, and their heads put on the five points of the middle of the abbey
railing. On being threatened with military force, they make their
dispositions accordingly. Nine hundred men who relieve each other watch
day and night on the ground, in a well chosen and permanent encampment,
while lookouts stationed in the belfries of the surrounding villages
have only to sound the alarm to bring together twenty-five thousand
men in a few hours.--So long as the Government remains on its feet it
carries on the combat as well as it can; but it grows weaker from month
to month, and, after the 10th of August, when it lies on the ground, the
mob takes its place and becomes the universal sovereign. From this time
forth not only is the law which protects provisioning powerless against
the disturbers of sale and circulation, but the Assembly actually
sanctions their acts, since it decrees[3229] the stoppage of all
proceedings commenced against them, remits sentences already passed,
and sets free all who are imprisoned or in irons. Behold every
administration, with merchants, proprietors, and farmers abandoned to
the famished, the furious, and to robbers; henceforth food supplies are
for those who are disposed and able to take them.
"You will be told," says a petition,[3230] "that we violate the law. We
reply to these perfidious insinuations that the salvation of the people
is the supreme law. We come in order to keep the markets supplied, and
to insure an uniform price for wheat throughout the Republic. For, there
is no doubt about it, the purest patriotism dies out (sic) when there is
no bread to be had. . . . Resistance to oppression--yes, resistance to
oppression is the most sacred of duties; is there any oppression more
terrible than that of wanting bread? Undoubtedly, no. . . . Join us
and 'Ça ira, ça ira!' We cannot end our petition better than with this
patriotic air."
This supplication was written on a drum, amidst a circle of firearms;
and with such accompaniments it is equivalent to a command.--They are
well aware of it, and of their own authority they often confer
upon themselves not only the right but also the title. In
Loire-et-Cher,[3231] a band of from four to five thousand men assume the
name of "Sovereign Power." They go from one market-town to another,
to Saint-Calais, Montdoubleau, Blois, Vendôme, reducing the cost of
provisions, their troop increasing like a snowball--for they threaten
"to burn the effects and set fire to the houses of all who are not as
courageous as themselves."
In this state of social disintegration, insurrection is a gangrene in
which the healthy are infected by the morbid parts. Mobs are everywhere
produced and re-produced, incessantly, large and small, like abscesses
which break out side by side, and painfully irritate each other and
finally combine. There are the towns against the rural districts and
rural districts against the towns. On the one hand "every farmer
who transports anything to the market passes (at home) for an
aristocrat,[3232] and becomes the horror of his fellow-citizens in the
village." On the other hand the National Guards of the towns spread
themselves through the rural districts and make raids to save themselves
from death by hunger.[3233] It is admitted in the rural districts that
each municipality has the right to isolate itself from the rest. It
is admitted in the towns that each town has the right to derive its
provisions from the country. It is admitted by the indigent of each
commune that the commune must provide bread gratis or at a cheap rate.
On the strength of this there is a shower of stones and a fusillade;
department against department, district against district, canton against
canton, all fight for food, and the strongest get it and keep it for
themselves.--I have simply described the North, where, for the past
three years, the crops are good. I have omitted the South, where trade
is interrupted on the canal of the Deux Mers, where the procureur-syndic
of Aude has lately been massacred for trying to secure the passage of
a convoy; where the harvest has been poor; where, in many places, bread
costs eight sous the pound; where, in almost every department, a bushel
of wheat is sold twice as dear as in the North!
Strange phenomenon! and the most instructive of all, for in it we see
down into the depths of humanity; for, as on a raft of shipwrecked
beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of nature. The
light tissue of habit and of rational ideas in which civilization has
enveloped man, is torn asunder and is floating in rags around him; the
bare arms of the savage show themselves, and they are striking out.
The only guide he has for his conduct is that of primitive days, the
startled instinct of a craving stomach. Henceforth that which rules in
him and through him is animal necessity with its train of violent
and narrow suggestions, sometimes sanguinary and sometimes grotesque.
Incompetent or savage, in all respects like a Negro monarch, his sole
political expedients are either the methods of a slaughter house or the
dreams of a carnival. Two commissioners whom Roland, Minister of the
Interior, sends to Lyons, are able to see within a few days the carnival
and the slaughter-house.[3234]--On the one hand the peasants, all along
the road, arrest everybody; the people regard every traveler as an
aristocrat who is running away--which is so much the worse for those who
fall into their hands. Near Autun, four priests who, to obey the law,
are betaking themselves to the frontier, are put in prison "for their
own protection;" they are taken out a quarter of an hour later, and,
in spite of thirty-two of the mounted police, are massacred. "Their
carriage was still burning as I passed, and the corpses were stretched
out not far off. Their driver was still in durance, and it was it vain
that I solicited his release."--On the other hand, at Lyons, the power
has fallen into the hands of the degraded women of the streets. "They
seized the central club, constituted themselves commissaries of police,
signed notices as such, and paid visits of inspection to store-houses;"
they drew up a tariff of provisions, "from bread and meat up to common
peaches, and peaches of fine quality." They announced that "whoever
dared to dispute it would be considered a traitor to the country,
an adherent of the civil list, and prosecuted as such." All this is
published, proclaimed and applied by "female commissaries of police,"
themselves the dregs of the lowest sinks of corruption. Respectable
housewives and workwomen had nothing to do with it, nor "working-people
of any class." The sole actors of this administrative parody are
"scamps, a few bullies of houses of ill-fame, and a portion of the dregs
of the female sex."--To this end comes the dictatorship of instinct,
yonder let loose on the highway in a massacre of priests, and here, in
the second city of France, in the government of strumpets.
III.--Egotism of the tax-payer.
Issoudun in 1790.--Rebellion against taxation.--Indirect
taxes in 1789 and 1790.--Abolition of the salt tax, excise,
and octrois.--Direct taxation in 1789 and 1790.--Delay and
insufficiency of the returns.--New levies in 1791 and 1792.
--Delays, partiality, and concealment in preparing the
rolls.--Insufficiency of, and the delay in, the returns.
--Payment in assignats.--The tax-payer relieves himself of
one-half.--Devastation of the forests.--Division of the
communal property.
The fear of starvation is only the sharper form of a more general
passion, which is the desire of possession and the determination not
to give anything up. No popular instinct, had been longer, more rudely,
more universally offended under the ancient régime; and there is none
which gushes out more readily under constraint, none which requires a
higher or broader public barrier, or one more entirely constructed of
solid blocks, to keep it in check. Hence it is that this passion from
the commencement breaks down or engulfs the slight and low boundaries,
the tottering embankments of crumbling earth between which the
Constitution pretends to confine it.--The first flood sweeps away the
pecuniary claims of the State, of the clergy, and of the noblesse. The
people regard them as abolished, or, at least, they consider their debts
discharged. Their idea, in relation to this, is formed and fixed; for
them it is that which constitutes the Revolution. The people have no
longer a creditor; they are determined to have none, they will pay
nobody, and first of all, they will make no further payment to the
State.
On the 14th of July, 1790, the day of the Federation, the population of
Issoudun, in Touraine, solemnly convoked for the purpose, had just taken
the solemn oath which was to ensure public peace, social harmony, and
respect for the law for evermore.[3235] Here, probably, as elsewhere,
arrangements had been made for an stirring ceremonial; there were young
girls dressed in white, and learned and impressionable magistrates were
to pronounce philosophical harangues. All at once they discover that the
people gathered on the public square are provided with clubs, scythes,
and axes, and that the National Guard will not prevent their use; on the
contrary, the Guard itself is composed almost wholly of wine growers and
others interested in the suppression of the duties on wine, of coopers,
innkeepers, workmen, carters of casks, and others of the same stamp,
all rough fellows who have their own way of interpreting the Social
Contract. The whole mass of decrees, acts, and rhetorical flourishes
which are dispatched to them from Paris, or which emanate from the new
authorities, are not worth a halfpenny tax maintained on each bottle
of wine. There are to be no more excise duties; they will only take the
civic oath on this express condition, and that very evening they hang,
in effigy, their two deputies, who "had not supported their interests"
in the National Assembly. A few months later, of all the National Guard
called upon to protect the clerks, only the commandant and two officers
respond to the summons. If a docile taxpayer happens to be found, he
is not allowed to pay the dues; this seems a defection and almost
treachery. An entry of three puncheons of wine having been made, they
are stove in with stones, a portion is drunk, and the rest taken to the
barracks to debauch the soldiers; M. de Sauzay, commandant of the "Royal
Roussillon," who was bold enough to save the clerks, is menaced, and for
this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself. When the municipal
body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that "for
so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the
citizens," and the regular troops sent to the Hôtel-de-Ville are ordered
by the people not to go except with the but-ends of their muskets in the
air. Five days after this the windows of the excise office are smashed,
and the public notices are torn down; the fermentation does not subside,
and M. de Sauzay writes that a regiment would be necessary to restrain
the town. At Saint-Amand the insurrection breaks out violently, and is
only put down by violence. At Saint-Étienne-en-Forez, Bertheas, a clerk
in the excise office, falsely accused of monopolizing grain,[3236]
is fruitlessly defended by the National Guard; he is put in prison,
according to the usual custom, to save his life, and, for greater
security, the crowd insist on his being fastened by an iron collar.
But, suddenly changing its mind, it breaks upon the door and drags him
outside, beating him till he is unconscious. Stretched on the ground,
his head still moves and he raises his hand to it, when a woman,
picking up a large stone, smashes his skull.--These are not isolated
occurrences. During the months of July and August, 1789, the tax offices
are burnt in almost every town in the kingdom. In vain does the National
Assembly order their reconstruction, insist on the maintenance of duties
and octrois, and explain to the people the public needs, pathetically
reminding them, moreover, that the Assembly has already given them
relief;--the people prefer to relieve themselves instantly and entirely.
Whatever is consumed must no longer be taxed, either for the benefit of
the State or for that of the towns. "Entrance dues on wine and cattle,"
writes the municipality of Saint-Etienne, "scarcely amount to anything,
and our powers are inadequate for their enforcement." At Cambrai, two
successive outbreaks compel the excise office and the magistracy of
the town[3237] to reduce the duties on beer one-half. But "the evil, at
first confined to one corner of the province, soon spreads;" the grands
baillis of Lille, Douai, and Orchies write that "we have hardly a bureau
which has not been molested, and in which the taxes are not wholly
subject to popular discretion." Those only pay who are disposed to do
so, and, consequently, "greater fraud could not exist." The taxpayers,
indeed, cunningly defend themselves, and find plenty of arguments or
quibbles to avoid paying their dues. At Cambrai they allege that, as
the privileged now pay as well as the rest, the Treasury must be
rich enough.[3238] At Noyon, Ham, and Chauny, and in the surrounding
parishes, the butchers, innkeepers, and publicans combined, who have
refused to pay excise duties, pick flaws in the special decree by which
the Assembly subjects them to the law, and a second special decree is
necessary to circumvent these new legal experts. The process at Lyons
is simpler. Here the thirty-two sections appoint commissioners; these
decide against the octroi, and request the municipal authorities to
abolish it. They must necessarily comply, for the people are at hand and
are furious. Without waiting, however, for any legal measures, they take
the authority on themselves, rush to the toll-houses and drive out the
clerks, while large quantities of provisions, which "through a singular
predestination" were waiting at the gates, come in free of duty.--The
Treasury defends itself as it best can against this universally bad
disposition of the tax-payer, against these irruptions and infiltrations
of fraud; it repairs the dike where it has been carried away, stops up
the fissures and again resumes collections. But how can these be regular
and complete in a State where the courts dare not condemn delinquents,
where public force dares not support the courts,[3239] where popular
favor protects the most notorious bandits and the worst vagabonds
against the tribunals and against the public powers? At Paris, where,
After eight months of impunity, proceedings are begun against the
pillagers who, on the 13th of August, 1789, set fire to the tax offices,
the officers of the election, "considering that their audiences
have become too tumultuous, that the thronging of the people excites
uneasiness, that threats have been uttered of a kind calculated to
create reasonable alarm," are constrained to suspend their sittings and
refer matters to the National Assembly, while the latter, considering
that "if prosecutions are authorized in Paris it will be necessary to
authorize them throughout the kingdom," decides that it is best "to veil
the statue of the Law."[3240]
Not only does the Assembly veil the statue of the Law, but it takes to
pieces, remakes, and mutilates it, according to the requirements of the
popular will; and, in the matter of indirect imposts all its decrees are
forced upon it. The outbreak against the salt impost was terrible from
the beginning; sixty thousand men in Anjou alone combined to destroy it,
and the price of salt had to be reduced from sixteen to six sous.[3241]
The people, however, are not satisfied with this. This monopoly has been
the cause of so much suffering that they are not disposed to put up with
any remains of it, and are always on the side of the smugglers against
the excise officers. In the month of January, 1790, at Béziers,
thirty-two employees, who had seized a quantity of contraband salt on
the persons of armed smugglers,[3242] are pursued by the crowd to the
Hôtel-de-Ville; the consuls decline to defend them and run away; the
troops defend them, but in vain. Five are tortured, horribly mutilated,
and then hung. In the month of March, 1790, Necker states that,
according to the returns of the past three months, the deficit in
the salt-tax amounts to more than four millions a month, which is
four-fifths of the ordinary revenue, while the tobacco monopoly is no
more respected than that of salt. At Tours,[3243] the bourgeois
militia refuse to give assistance to the employees, and "openly protect
smuggling," "and contraband tobacco is publicly sold at the fair, under
the eyes of the municipal authorities, who dare make no Opposition to
it." All receipts, consequently, diminish at the same time.[3244] From
the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790, the general collections
amount to 127 millions instead of 150 millions; the dues and excise
combined return only 31, instead of 50 millions. The streams which
filled the public exchequer are more and more obstructed by popular
resistance, and under the popular pressure, the Assembly ends by closing
them entirely. In the month of March, 1790,[3245] it abolishes salt
duties, internal customs-duties, taxes on leather, on oil, on starch,
and the stamp of iron. In February and March, 1791, it abolishes octrois
and entrance-dues in all the cities and boroughs of the kingdom, all the
excise duties and those connected with the excise, especially all taxes
which affect the manufacture, sale, or circulation of beverages. The
people have in the end prevailed, and on the 1st of May, 1791, the day
of the application of the decree, the National Guard of Paris parades
around the walls playing patriotic airs. The cannon of the Invalides and
those on the Pont-Neuf thunder out as if for an important victory.
There is an illumination in the evening, there is drinking all night, a
universal revel. Beer, indeed, is to be had at three sous the pot, and
wine at six sous a pint, which is a reduction of one-half; no conquest
could be more popular, since it brings intoxication within easy reach of
the thirsty.[3246]
The object, now, is to provide for the expenses which have been defrayed
by the suppressed octrois. In 1790, the octroi of Paris had produced
35,910,859 francs, of which 25,059,446 went to the State, and 10,851,413
went to the city. How is the city going to pay for its watch, the
lighting and cleaning of its streets, and the support of its hospitals?
What are the twelve hundred other cities and boroughs going to do which
are brought by the same stroke to the same situation? What will
the State do, which, in abolishing the general revenue from all
entrance-dues and excise, is suddenly deprived of two-fifths of its
revenue?--In the month of March, 1790, when the Assembly suppressed the
salt and other duties, it established in the place of these a tax of
fifty millions, to be divided between the direct imposts and dues on
entrance to the towns. Now, consequently, that the entrance-dues are
abolished, the new charge falls entirely upon the direct imposts.
Do returns come in, and will they come in?--In the face of so many
outbreaks, any indirect taxation (VAT) is, certainly, difficult to
collect. Nevertheless it is not so repulsive as the other because the
levies of the State disappear in the price of the article, the hand of
the Exchequer being hidden by the hand of the dealer. The Government
clerk formerly presented himself with his stamped paper and the seller
handed him the money without much grumbling, knowing that he would
soon be more than reimbursed by his customer: the indirect tax is thus
collected. Should any difficulty arise, it is between the dealer and the
taxpayer who comes to his shop to lay in his little store; the latter
grumbles, but it is at the high price which he feels, and possibly at
the seller who pockets his silver; he does not find fault with the clerk
of the Exchequer, whom he does not see and who is not then present
In the collection of the direct tax, on the contrary, it is the clerk
himself whom he sees before him, who abstracts the precious piece of
silver. This authorized robber, moreover, gives him nothing in exchange;
it is an entire loss. On leaving the dealer's shop he goes away with a
jug of wine, a pot of salt, or similar commodities; on leaving the tax
office he has nothing in hand but an acquittance, a miserable bit of
scribbled paper.--But now he is master in his own commune, an elector, a
National Guard, mayor, the sole authority in the use of armed force, and
charged with his own taxation. Come and ask him to unearth the buried
mite on which he has set all his heart and all his soul, the earthen pot
wherein he has deposited his cherished pieces of silver one by one, and
which he has laid by for so many years at the cost of so much misery and
fasting, in the very face of the bailiff in spite of the prosecutions of
the sub-delegate, commissioner, collector, and clerk!
From the 1st of May, 1789, to the 1st of May, 1790,[3247] the general
returns, the taille and its accessories, the poll-tax and "twentieths,"
instead of yielding 161.000,000 francs, yield but 28,000,000 francs in
the provinces which impose their own taxes (pays d'Etats); instead of
28,000,000 francs, the Treasury obtains but 6,000,000. On the patriotic
contribution which was to deduct one quarter of all incomes over four
hundred livres, and to levy two and a half per cent. on plate, jewels,
and whatever gold and silver each person has in reserve, the State
received 9.700,000 francs. As to patriotic gifts, their total,
comprising the silver buckles of the deputies, reaches only 361,587
francs; and the closer our examination into the particulars of these
figures, the more do we see the contributions of the villager, artisan,
and former subjects of the taille diminish.--Since the month of October,
1789, the privileged classes, in fact, appear in the tax-rolls, and they
certainly form the class which is best off, the most alive to general
ideas and the most truly patriotic. It is therefore probable that, of
the forty-three millions of returns from the direct imposts and from the
patriotic contribution, they have furnished the larger portion, perhaps
two thirds of it, or even three-quarters. If this be the case, the
peasant, the former tax-payer, gave nothing or almost nothing from his
pocket during the first year of the Revolution. For instance, in regard
to the patriotic contribution, the Assembly left it to the conscience of
each person to fix his own quota; at the end of six months, consciences
are found too elastic, and the Assembly is obliged to confer this right
on the municipalities. The result is[3248] that this or that individual
who taxed himself at forty-eight livres, is taxed at a hundred and
fifty; another, a cultivator, who had offered six livres, is judged to
be able to pay over one hundred. Every regiment contains a small number
of select brave men, and it is always these who are ready to advance
under fire. Every State contains a select few of honest men who advance
to meet the tax-collector. Some effective constraint is essential in the
regiment to supply those with courage who have but little, and in the
State to supply those with probity who do not possess it. Hence, during
the eight months which follow, from May 1st, 1790, to January 1st, 1791,
the patriotic contribution furnishes but 11,000,000 livres. Two years
later, on the 1st of February, 1793, out of the forty thousand communal
tax-rolls which should provide for it, there are seven thousand which
are not yet drawn up; out of 180,000,000 livres which it ought
to produce, there are 70,000,000 livres which are still due.--The
resistance of the tax-payer produces a similar deficit, and similar
delays in all branches of the national income.[3249] In the month of
June, 1790, a deputy declares in the tribune that "out of thirty-six
millions of imposts which ought to be returned each month only nine have
been received."[3250] In the month of November, 1791, a reporter on
the budget states that the receipts, which should amount to forty or
forty-eight millions a month, do not reach eleven millions and a half.
On February 1, 1793, there remains still due on the direct taxes of 1789
and 1790 one hundred and seventy-six millions. It is evident that
the people struggle with all their might against the old taxes, even
authorized and prolonged by the Constituent Assembly, and all that is
obtained from them is wrested from them.
Will the people be more docile under the new taxation? The Assembly
exhorts them to be so and shows them how, with the relief they have
gained and with the patriotism they ought to possess, they can and
should discharge their dues. The people are able to do it because,
having got rid of tithes, feudal dues, the salt-tax, octrois and excise
duties, they are in a comfortable position. They should do so, because
the taxation adopted is indispensable to the State, equitable, assessed
on all in proportion to their fortune, collected and expended under
rigid scrutiny, without perversion or waste, according to precise,
clear, periodical and audited accounts. No doubt exists that, after the
1st of January, 1791, the date when the new financial scheme comes into
operation, each tax-payer will gladly pay as a good citizen, and the
two hundred and forty millions of the new tax on real property, and
the sixty millions of that on personal property, leaving out the
rest--registries, license, and customs duties--will flow in regularly
and easily of their own accord.
Unfortunately, before the tax-gatherer can collect the first two levies
these have to be assessed, and as there are complicated writings
and formalities, claims to settle amidst great resistance and local
ignorance, the operation is indefinitely prolonged. The personal and
land-tax schedule of 1791 is not transmitted to the departments by the
Assembly until June, 1791. The departments do not distribute it among
the districts until the months of July, August, and September, 1791. It
is not distributed by the districts among the communes before October,
November, and December, 1791. Thus in the last month of 1791 it is not
yet distributed to the tax-payers by the communes; from which it follows
that on the budget of 1791 and throughout that year, the tax-payer
has paid nothing.--At last, in 1792, everybody begins to receive this
assessment. It would require a volume to set forth the partiality and
dissimulation of these assessments. In the first place the office of
assessor is one of danger; the municipal authorities, whose duty it
is to assign the quotas, are not comfortable in their town quarters.
Already, in 1790,[3251] the municipal officers of Monbazon have been
threatened with death if they dared to tax industrial pursuits on the
tax-roll, and they escaped to Tours in the middle of the night. Even at
Tours, three or four hundred insurgents of the vicinity, dragging along
with them the municipal officers of three market-towns, come and declare
to the town authorities "that for all taxes they will not pay more than
forty-five sous per household." I have already narrated how, in 1792,
in the same department, "they kill, they assassinate the municipal
officers" who presume to publish the tax-rolls of personal property. In
Creuse, at Clugnac, the moment the clerk begins to read the document,
the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and "tear it up with
countless imprecations;" the municipal council is assailed, and two
hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his
head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.--When
the small tax-payer defends himself in this manner, it is a warning that
he must be humored. The assessment, accordingly, in the village councils
is made amongst a knot of cronies. Each relieves himself of the burden
by shoving it off on somebody else. "They tax the large proprietors,
whom they want to make pay the whole tax." The noble, the old seigneur,
is the most taxed, and to such an extent that in many places his
income does not suffice to pay his quota.--In the next place they make
themselves out poor, and falsify or elude the prescriptions of the law.
"In most of the municipalities, houses, tenements, and factories[3252]
are estimated according to the value of the area they cover, and
considered as land of the first class, which reduces the quota to
almost nothing." And this fraud is not practiced in the villages alone.
"Communes of eight or ten thousand souls might be cited which have
arranged matters so well amongst themselves in this respect that not
a house is to be found worth more than fifty sous."--Last expedient
of all, the commune defers as long as it can the preparation of its
tax-rolls. On the 30th of January, 1792, out of 40,211, there are only
2,560 which are complete; on the 5th of October, 1792, the schedules are
not made out in 4,800 municipalities, and it must be noted that all this
relates to a term of administration which has been finished for more
than nine months. At the same date, there are more than six thousand
communes which have not yet begun to collect the land-tax of 1791, and
more than fifteen thousand communes which have not yet begun to collect
the personal tax; the Treasury and the departments have not yet received
152,000,000 francs, there being still 222,000,000 to collect. On the 1st
February, 1793, there still remains due on the same period 161,000,000
francs, while of the 50,000,000 assessed in 1790, to replace the
salt-tax and other suppressed duties, only 2,000,000 have been
collected. Finally, at the same date, out of the two direct taxes of
1792, which should produce 300,000,000, less than 4,000,000 have been
received.--It is a maxim of the debtor that he must put off payment as
long as possible. Whoever the creditor may be, the State or a private
individual, a leg or a wing may be saved by dint of procrastination. The
maxim is true, and, on this occasion, success once more demonstrates
its soundness. During the year 1792, the peasant begins to discharge a
portion of his arrears, but it is with assignats. In January, February,
and March, 1792, the assignats diminish thirty-four, forty-four, and
forty-five per cent. in value; in January, February, and March,
1793, forty-seven and fifty percent.; in May, June, and July, 1793,
fifty-four, sixty, and sixty-seven per cent. Thus has the old credit
of the State melted away in its hands; those who have held on to their
crowns gain fifty per cent. and more. Again, the greater their delay the
more their debts diminish, and already, on the strength of this, the way
to release themselves at half-price is found.
Meanwhile, hands are laid on the badly defended landed property of this
feeble creditor.--It is always difficult for rude brains to form any
conception of the vague, invisible, abstract entity called the State,
to regard it as a veritable personage and a legitimate proprietor,
especially when they are persistently told that the State is everybody.
The property of all is the property of each, and as the forests belong
to the public, the first-comer has a right to profit by them. In the
month of December, 1789,[3253] bands of sixty men or more chop down the
trees in the Bois de Boulogne and at Vincennes. In April, 1790, in the
forest of Saint-Germain, "the patrols arrest all kinds of delinquents
day and night:" handed over to the National Guards and municipalities in
the vicinity, these are "almost immediately released, even with the
wood which they have cut down against the law." iii There is no means
of repressing "the reiterated threats and insults of the low class of
people." A mob of women, urged on by an old French guardsman, come and
pillage under the nose of the escort a load of faggots confiscated for
the benefit of a hospital; and in the forest itself, bands of marauders
fire upon the patrols.--At Chantilly, three game-keepers are mortally
wounded;[3254] both parks are devastated for eighteen consecutive days;
the game is all killed, transported to Paris and sold.--At Chambord the
lieutenant of the constabulary writes to announce his powerlessness; the
woods are ravaged and even burnt; the poachers are now masters of the
situation; breaches in the wall are made by them, and the water from
the pond is drawn off to enable them to catch the fish.--At Claix, in
Dauphiny, an officer of the jurisdiction of woods and forests, who has
secured an injunction against the inhabitants for cutting down trees on
leased ground, is seized, tortured during five hours, and then stoned
to death.--In vain does the National Assembly issue three decrees and
regulations, placing the forests under the supervision and protection of
administrative bodies,--he latter are too much afraid of their charge.
Between the central power, which is weak and remote, and the people,
present and strong, they always decide in favor of the latter. Not one
of the five municipalities surrounding Chantilly is disposed to assist
in the execution of the laws, while the directories of the district
and department respectively, sanction their inertia.--Similarly, near
Toulouse,[3255] where the magnificent forest of Larramet is devastated
in open day and by an armed force, where the wanton destruction by
the populace leaves nothing of the underwood and shrubbery but "a few
scattered trees and the remains of trunks cut at different heights,"
the municipalities of Toulouse and of Tournefeuille refuse all aid.
And worse still, in other provinces, as for instance in Alsace, "whole
municipalities, with their mayors at the head, cut down woods which
are confided to them, and carry them off."[3256] If some tribunal is
disposed to enforce the law, it is to no purpose; it takes the risk,
either of not being allowed to give judgment, or of being constrained
to reverse its decision. At Paris the judgment prepared against the
incendiaries of the tax-offices could not be given. At Montargis, the
sentence pronounced against the marauders who had stolen cartloads
of wood in the national forests had to be revised, and by the judges
themselves. The moment the tribunal announced the confiscation of the
carts and horses which had been seized, there arose a furious outcry
against it; the court was insulted by those present; the condemned
parties openly declared that they would have their carts and horses back
by force. Upon this "the judges withdrew into the council-chamber, and
when soon after they resumed their seats, that part of their decision
which related to the confiscation was canceled."
And yet this administration of justice, ludicrous and flouted as it
may be, is still a sort of barrier. When it falls, along with the
Government, everything is exposed to plunder, and there is no such thing
as public property.--After August 10, 1792, each commune or individual
appropriates whatever comes in its way, either products or the soil
itself. Some of the plunderers go so far as to say that, since the
Government no longer represses them, they act under its authority.[3257]
"They have destroyed even the recent plantation of young trees." "One of
the villages near Fontainebleau cleared off and divided an entire grove.
At Rambouillet, from August 10th to the end of October," the loss is
more than 100,000 crowns; the rural agitators demand with threats the
partition of the forest among the inhabitants. "The destruction is
enormous" everywhere, prolonged for entire months, and of such a kind,
says the minister, as to dry up this source of public revenue for a
long time to come.--Communal property is no more respected than
national property. In each commune, these bold and needy folk, the rural
populace, are privileged to enjoy and make the most of it. Not content
with enjoying it, they desire to acquire ownership of it, and, for days
after the King's fall, the Legislative Assembly, losing its footing in
the universal breaking up, empowers the indigent to put in force the
agrarian law. Henceforth it suffices in any commune for one-third of
its inhabitants of both sexes, servants, common laborers, shepherds,
farm-hands or cowherds, and even paupers, to demand a partition of the
communal possessions. All that the commune owns, save public edifices
and woods, is to be cut up into as many equal lots as there are heads,
the lots to be drawn for, and each individual to take possession of his
or her portion.[3258] The Operation is carried out, for "those who
are least well off are infinitely flattered by it." In the district of
Arcis-sur-Aube, there are not a dozen communes out of ninety in which
more than two-thirds of the voters had the good sense to pronounce
against it. From this time forth the commune ceases to be an
independent proprietor; it has nothing to fall back upon. In case of
distress it is obliged to lay on extra taxes and obtain, if it can, a
few additional sous. Its future revenue is at present in the
tightly buttoned pockets of the new proprietors.--The prevalence of
short-sighted views is once more due to the covetousness of individuals.
Whether national or communal, it is always public interest which
succumbs, and it succumbs always under the usurpations of indigent
minorities, at one time through the feebleness of public authority,
which dares not oppose their violence, and at another through the
complicity of public authority, which has conferred upon them the rights
of the majority.
IV.--Cupidity of tenants.
The third and fourth jacquerie.--Brittany and other
provinces in 1790 and 1791.--The burning of chateaux.
--Title-deeds destroyed.--Refusal of claims.--Destruction of
reservoirs.--Principal characteristics, prime motive and
ruling passion of the revolution
When there is a lack of public force for the protection of public
property, there is also a lack of it for the protection of private
property, for the same greed and the same needs attack both. Let a man
owe anything either to the State or to an individual, and the temptation
not to pay is equally the same. In both cases it suffices to find a
pretext for denying the debt; in finding this pretext the cupidity of
the tenant is as good as the selfishness of the tax-payer. Now that the
feudal system is abolished let nothing remain of it: let there be no
more seignorial claims. "If the Assembly has maintained some of them,
yonder in Paris, it did so inadvertently or through corruption: we
shall soon hear of all being suppressed. In the meantime we will relieve
ourselves, and burn the agreements in the places where they are kept."
Such being the argument, the jacquerie breaks out afresh: in truth,
it is permanent and universal. Just as in a body in which some of the
elements of its vital substance are affected by an organic disease, the
evil is apparent in the parts which seem to be sound: even where as yet
no outbreak has occurred, one is imminent; constant anxiety, a profound
restlessness, a low fever, denote its presence. Here, the debtor does
not pay, and the creditor is afraid to prosecute him. In other places
isolated eruptions occur. At Auxon,[3259] on an estate spared by the
great jacquerie of July, 1789, the woods are ravaged, and the peasants,
enraged at being denounced by the keepers, march to the chateau, which
is occupied by an old man and a child; everybody belonging to the
village is there, men and women; they hew down the barricaded door with
their axes, and fire on the neighbors who come to the assistance of
its inmates.--In other places, in the districts of Saint-Étienne and
Montbrison, "the trees belonging to the proprietors are carried
away with impunity, and the walls of their grounds and terraces are
demolished, the complainants being threatened with death or with
the sight of the destruction of their dwellings." Near Paris, around
Montargis, Nemours, and Fontainebleau, a number of parishes refuse
to pay the tithes and ground-rent (champart) which the Assembly has
a second time sanctioned; gibbets are erected and the collectors are
threatened with hanging, while, in the neighborhood of Tonnerre, a
mob of debtors fire upon the body of police which comes to enforce the
claims.--Near Amiens, the Comtesse de la Mire,[3260] on her estate of
Davencourt, is visited by the municipal authorities of the village, who
request her to renounce her right to ground-rent (champart) and thirds
(tiers). She refuses and they insist, and she refuses again, when they
inform her that "some misfortune will happen to her." In effect, two
of the municipal officers cause the tocsin to be rung, and the whole
village rushes to arms. One of the domestics has an arm broken by a
ball, and for three hours the countess and her two children are subject
to the grossest insults and to blows: she is forced to sign a paper
which she is not allowed to read, and, in warding off the stroke of
a saber, her arm is cleft from the elbow to the wrist; the chateau
is pillaged, and she owes her escape to the zeal of some of her
servants.--Large eruptions take place at the same time over entire
provinces; one succeeds the other almost without interruption, the fever
encroaching on parts which were supposed to be cured, and to such an
extent that the virulent ulcers finally combine and form one over the
whole surface of the social body.
By the end of December, 1789, the chronic fermentation comes to a head
in Brittany. Imagination, as usual, has forged a plot, and, as the
people say, if they make an attack it is in their own defense.--A report
spreads[3261] that M. de Goyon, near Lamballe, has assembled in his
chateau a number of gentlemen and six hundred soldiers. The mayor
and National Guard of Lamballe immediately depart in force; they find
everything tranquil there, and no company but two or three friends,
and no other arms than a few fowling-pieces.--The impulse, however, is
given, and, on the 15th of January, the great federation of Pontivy has
excited the wildest enthusiasm. The people drink, sing, and shout in
honor of the new decrees before armed peasants who do not comprehend the
French tongue, still less legal terms, and who, on their return home,
arguing with each other in bas-breton, interpret the law in a peculiar
way. "A decree of the Assembly, in their eyes, is a decree of arrest"
and as the principal decrees of the Assembly are issued against the
nobles, they are so many decrees of arrest against them.--Some days
after this, about the end of January, during the whole of February, and
down to the month of April, the execution of this theory is tumultuously
carried out by mobs of villagers and vagabonds around Nantes,
Auray, Redon, Dinan, Ploërmel, Rennes, Guingamp, and other villages.
Everywhere, writes the Mayor of Nantes,[3262] "the country-people
believe that in burning deeds and contracts they get rid of their debts;
the very best of them concur in this belief," or let things take
their course; the excesses are enormous, because many gratify "special
animosities, and all are heated with wine.--At Beuvres, "the peasants
and vassals of the manor, after burning title-deeds, establish
themselves in the chateau, and threaten to fire it if other papers,
which they allege are concealed there, are not surrendered." Near Redon
the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur is reduced to ashes. Redon is menaced, and
Ploërmel almost besieged. At the end of a month thirty-seven chateaux
are enumerated as attacked: twenty-five in which the title-deeds are
burnt, and twelve in which the proprietors are obliged to sign an
abandonment of their rights. Two chateaux which began to burn are saved
by the National Guard. That of Bois-au-Voyer is entirely consumed,
and several have been sacked. By way of addition, "more than fifteen
procureurs-fiscaux, clerks, notaries, and officers of seignorial courts
have been plundered or burnt," while proprietors take refuge in the
towns because the country is now uninhabitable for them.
A second tumor makes its appearance at the same time at another
point.[3263] It showed itself in Lower Limousin in the beginning of
January. From thence the purulent inflammation spreads to Quercy,
Upper Languedoc, Perigord, and Rouergue, and in February from Tulle to
Montauban, and from Agen to Périgueux and Cahors, extending over three
departments.--Then, also, expectancy is the creator, according to rule,
of its own object. By dint of longing for a law for the suppression
of all claims, it is imagined that it is passed, and the statement
is current that "the King and the National Assembly have ordered
deputations to set up the maypole[3264] and to 'light up' the
chateaux."--Moreover, and always in accordance with current practice,
bandits, people without occupation, take the lead of the furious crowd
and manage things their own way. As soon as a band is formed it arrests
all the peaceable people it can find on the roads, in the fields, and in
isolated farmhouses, and takes good care to put them in front in case
of blows.--These miscreants add terror to compulsion. They erect gibbets
for any one that pays casual duties or annual dues, while the parishes
of Quercy threaten their neighbors of Perigord with fire and sword in
a week's time if they do not do in Perigord as they have done in
Quercy.--The tocsin rings, the drums beat, and "the ceremony" is
performed from commune to commune. The keys of the church are forcibly
taken from the curé the seats are burned, and, frequently, the woodwork
marked with the seigneur's arms. They march to the seigneur's mansion,
tear down his weathercocks, and compel him to furnish his finest tree,
together with feathers and ribbons with which to deck it, without
omitting the three measures which he uses in the collection of his dues
in grain or flour. The maypole is planted in the village square, and the
weathercocks, ribbons, and feathers are attached to its top, together
with the three measures and this inscription, "By order of the King and
National Assembly, the final quittance for all rentals." When this
is done it is evident that the seigneur, who no longer possesses
weathercocks, or a seat in the church, or measures to rate his dues by,
is no longer a seigneur, and can no longer put forth claims of any kind.
Huzzahs and acclamations accordingly burst forth, and there is a revel
and an orgy on the public square. All who can pay--the seigneur, the
curé, and the rich--are put under contribution for the festival, while
the people eat and drink "without any interval of sobriety."--In this
condition, being armed, they strike, and when resistance is offered,
they burn. In Agénois, a chateau belonging to M. de Lameth, and another
of M. d'Aiguillon; in Upper Languedoc, that of M. de Bournazel, and in
Perigord that of M. de Bar, are burnt down:
M. de Bar is almost beaten to death, while six others are killed
in Quercy. A number of chateaux in the environs of Montauban and in
Limousin are assaulted with firearms, and several are pillaged.--Bands
of twelve hundred men swarm the country; "they have a spite against
every estate;" they redress wrongs; "they try over again cases
disposed of thirty years ago, and give judgments which they put into
execution."--If anybody fails to conform to the new code he is punished,
and to the advantage of the new sovereigns. In Agénois, a gentleman
having paid the rent which was associated with his fief the people take
his receipt from him, mulct him in a sum equal to that which he paid,
and come under his windows to spend the money on good cheer, in triumph
and with derision.
Many of the National Guards who still possess some degree of energy,
several of the municipalities which still preserve some love of order,
and a number of the resident gentry, employ their arms against these
excited swarms of brutal usurpers. Some of the ruffians, taken in the
act, are judged somewhat after the fashion of a drum-head court-martial,
and immediately executed as examples. Everybody in the country sees
that the peril to society is great and urgent, and that if such acts go
unpunished, there will be no such thing as law and property in
France. The Bordeaux parliament, moreover, insists upon prosecutions.
Eighty-three boroughs and cities sign addresses, and send a special
deputation to the National Assembly to urge on prosecutions already
commenced, the punishment of criminals under arrest, and, above all,
the maintenance of the prévôtés.[3265] In reply to this, the Assembly
inflicts upon the parliament of Bordeaux its disapprobation in the
rudest manner, and enters upon the demolition of every judicial
corporation.[3266] After this, the execution of all prévotal decisions
is adjourned. A few months later the Assembly will oblige the King to
declare that the proceedings begun against the jacquerie of Brittany
shall be regarded as null and void, and that the arrested insurgents
shall be set free. For repressive purposes, it dispatches a sentimental
exhortation to the French people, consisting of twelve pages of literary
insipidity, which Florian might have composed for his Estilles and
his Nemorins.[3267]--New conflagrations, as an inevitable consequence,
kindle around live coals which have been imperfectly extinguished. In
the district of Saintes,[3268] M. Dupaty, counselor of the parliament of
Bordeaux, after having exhausted mild resources, and having concluded
by issuing writs against those of his tenantry who would not pay their
rents, the parish of Saint-Thomas de Cosnac, combined with five or six
others, puts itself in motion and assails his two chateaux of Bois-Roche
and Saint-George-des-Agouts; these are plundered and then set on fire,
his son escaping through a volley of musket-balls. They visit Martin,
the notary and steward, in the same fashion; his furniture is pillaged
and his money is taken, and "his daughter undergoes the most frightful
outrages." Another detachment pushes on to the house of-the Marquis
de Cumont, and forces him, under the penalty of having his house burnt
down, to give a discharge for all the claims he has upon them. At the
head of these incendiaries are the municipal officers of Saint-Thomas,
except the mayor, who has taken to flight.
The electoral system organized by the Constituent Assembly is beginning
to take effect. "Almost everywhere," writes the royal commissioner, "the
large proprietors have been eliminated, and the offices have been filled
by men who strictly fulfill the conditions of eligibility. The result
is a sort of rage of the petty rich to annoy those who enjoy large
heritages."--Six months later, the National Guards and village
authorities in this same department at Aujean, Migron, and Varaise,
decide that no more tithes, agriers or champarts, nor any of the dues
which are retained, shall be paid. In vain does the department annul the
decision, and send its commissioners, gendarmes, and law-officers. The
commissioners are driven away, and the officers and gendarmes are fired
upon; the vice-president of the district, who was on his way to make his
report to the department, is seized on the road and forced to give in
his resignation. Seven parishes have coalesced with Aujean and ten
with Migron; Varaise has sounded the tocsin, and the villages for four
leagues round have risen; fifteen hundred men, armed with guns, scythes,
hatchets and pitchforks, lend their aid. The object is to set free
the principal leader at Varaise, one Planche, who was arrested, and
to punish the mayor of Varaise, Latierce, who is suspected of having
denounced Planche. Latierce is unmercifully beaten, and "forced to
undergo a thousand torments during thirty hours;" then they set out
with him to Saint-Jean-d'Angely, and demand the release of Planche. The
municipality at first refuses, but finally consents on the condition
that Latierce be given up in exchange for him. Planche, consequently, is
set at liberty and welcomed with shouts of triumph. Latierce, however,
is not given up; on the contrary, he is tormented for an hour and then
massacred, while the directory of the district, which is less submissive
than the municipal body, is forced to fly.--Symptoms of this kind are
not to be mistaken, and similar ones exist in Brittany. It is evident
that the minds of the people are permanently in revolt. Instead of the
social abscess being relieved by the discharge, it is always filling
up and getting more inflamed. It will burst a second time in the same
places; in 1791 as in 1790, the jacquerie spreads throughout Brittany as
it has spread over Limousin.
This is because the determination of the peasant is of another nature
than ours, his will being more firm and tenacious. When an idea obtains
a hold on him it takes root in an obscure and profound conviction upon
which neither discussion nor argument have any effect; once planted,
it vegetates according to his notions, not according to ours, and no
legislative text, no judicial verdict, no administrative remonstrance
can change in any respect the fruit it produces. This fruit, developed
during centuries, is the feeling of an excessive plunder, and,
consequently, the need of an absolute release. Too much having been
paid to everybody, the peasant now is not disposed to pay anything to
anybody, and this idea, vainly repressed, always rises up in the manner
of an instinct.--In the month of January, 1791,[3269] bands again
form in Brittany, owing to the proprietors of the ancient fiefs having
insisted on the payment of their rents. At first the coalesced parishes
refuse to pay the stewards, and after this the rustic National Guards
enter the chateaux to constrain the proprietors. Generally, it is the
commander of the National Guard, and sometimes the communal attorney,
who dictates to the lord of the manor the renunciation of his claims;
they oblige him, moreover, to sign notes for the benefit of the parish,
or for that of various private individuals. This is considered by them
to be compensation for damages; all feudal dues being abolished, he must
return what he received from them during the past year, and as they have
been put to inconvenience he must indemnify them by "paying them for
their time and journey." Such are the operations of two of the principal
bands, one of them numbering fifteen hundred men, around Dinan and St.
Malo; for greater security they burn title-deeds in the chateaux of
Saint-Tual, Besso, Beaumanoir, La Rivière, La Bellière, Chateauneuf,
Chenay, Chausavoir, Tourdelon, and Chalonge; and as a climax they set
fire to Chateauneuf just before the arrival of the regular troops.--In
the beginning, a dim conception of legal and social order seems to be
floating in their brains; at Saint-Tual, before taking 2,000 livres from
the steward, they oblige the mayor to give them his consent in writing;
at Yvignac, their chief, called upon to show the authority under which
he acted, declares that "he is authorized by the general will of the
populace of the nation."[3270]--But when, at the end of a month, they
are beaten by the regular troops, made furious by the blows given and
taken, and excited by the weakness of the municipal authorities who
release their prisoners, they then become bandits of the worst species.
During the night of the 22nd of February, the chateau of Villefranche,
three leagues from Malestroit, is attacked. Thirty-two rascals with
their faces masked, and led by a chief in the national uniform, break
open the door. The domestics are strangled. The proprietor, M. de la
Bourdonnaie, an old man, with his wife aged sixty, are half killed by
blows and tied fast to their bed, and after this a fire is applied to
their feet and they are warmed (chauffé). In the meantime the plate,
linen, stuffs, jewelry, two thousand francs in silver, and even watches,
buckles, and rings,--everything is pillaged, piled on the backs of
the eleven horses in the stables, and carried off.--When property is
concerned, one sort of outrage provokes another, the narrow cupidity
of the lease-holder being completed by the unlimited rapacity of the
brigand.
Meanwhile, in the south-western provinces, the same causes have produced
the same results; and towards the end of autumn, when the crops are
gathered in and the proprietors demand their dues in money or in
produce, the peasant, immovably fixed in his idea, again refuses.[3271]
In his eyes, any law that may be against him is not that of the
National Assembly, but of the so-called seigneurs, who have extorted or
manufactured it; and therefore it is null. The department and district
administrators may promulgate it as much as they please: it does not
concern him, and if the opportunity occurs, he knows how to make them
smart for it. The village National Guards, who are lease-holders like
himself, side with him, and instead of repressing him give him their
support. As a commencement, he replants the maypoles, as a sign of
emancipation, and erects the gibbet by way of a threat.--In the district
of Gourdon, the regulars and the police having been sent to put them
down, the tocsin is at once sounded: a crowd of peasants, amounting to
four or five thousand, arrives from every surrounding parish, armed with
scythes and guns; the soldiers, forming a body of one hundred, retire
into a church, where they capitulate after a siege of twenty-four hours,
being obliged to give the names of the proprietors who demanded their
intervention of the district, and who are Messrs. Hébray, de Fontange,
and many others. All their houses are destroyed from top to bottom,
and they effect their escape in order not to be hung. The chateaux of
Repaire and Salviat are burned. At the expiration of eight days Quercy
is in flames and thirty chateaux are destroyed.--The leader of a band
of rustic National Guards, Joseph Linard, at the head of a village
army, penetrates into Gourdon, installs himself in the Hôtel-de-Ville,
declares himself the people's protector against the directory of the
district, writes to the department in the name of his "companions in
arms," and vaunts his patriotism. Meanwhile he commands as a conqueror,
throws open the prisons, and promises that, if the regular troops
and police be sent off; he and his companions will withdraw in good
order.--This species of tumultuous authority, however, instituted by
acclamation for attack, is powerless for resistance. Scarcely has Linard
retired when savagery is let loose. "A price is set upon the heads
of the administrators; their houses are the first devastated; all the
houses of wealthy citizens are pillaged; and the same is the case
with all chateaux and country habitations which display any signs of
luxury."--Fifteen gentlemen, assembled together at the house of M.
d'Escayrac, in Castel, appeal to all good citizens to march to the
assistance of the proprietors who may be attacked in this jacquerie,
which is spreading everywhere;[3272] but there are too few proprietors
in the country, and none of the towns have too many of them for their
own protection. M. d'Escayrac, after a few skirmishes, abandoned by the
municipal officers of his village, and wounded, withdraws to the house
of the Comte de Clarac, a major-general, in Languedoc. Here, too, the
chateau, is surrounded,[3273] blockaded, and besieged by the local
National Guard. M. de Clarac descends and tries to hold a parley with
the attacking party, and is fired upon. He goes back inside and throws
money out of the window; the money is gathered up, and he is again fired
upon. The chateau is set on fire, and M. d'Escayrac receives five shots,
and is killed. M. de Clarac, with another person, having taken refuge in
a subterranean vault, are taken out almost stifled the next morning but
one by the National Guard of the vicinity, who conduct them to Toulouse,
where they are kept in prison and where the public prosecutor takes
proceedings against them. The chateau of Bagat, near Montouq, is
demolished at the same time. The abbey of Espagnac, near Figeac, is
assaulted with fire-arms; the abbess is forced to refund all rents she
has collected, and to restore four thousand livres for the expenses of a
trial which the convent had gained twenty years before.
After such successes, the extension of the revolt is inevitable; and
at the end of some weeks and months it becomes permanent in the three
neighboring departments.--In Creuse,[3274] the judges are threatened
with death if they order the payment of seignorial dues, and the same
fate awaits all proprietors who claim their rents. In many places, and
especially in the mountains, the peasants, "considering that they form
the nation, and that clerical possessions are national," want to have
these divided amongst themselves, instead of their being sold. Fifty
parishes around La Souterraine receive incendiary letters inviting them
to come in arms to the town, in order to secure by force, and by staking
their lives, the production of all titles to rentals. The peasants, in a
circle of eight leagues, are all stirred up by the sound of the tocsin,
and preceded by the municipal officers in their scarves; there are four
thousand of them, and they drag with them a wagon full of arms: this is
for the revision and re-constitution of the ownership of the soil.--In
Dordogne,[3275] self-appointed arbitrators interpose imperiously between
the proprietor and the small farmer, at the time of harvest, to prevent
the proprietor from claiming, and the farmer from paying, the tithes or
the réve;[3276] any agreement to this end is forbidden; whoever shall
transgress the new order of things, proprietor or farmer, shall be hung.
Accordingly, the rural militia in the districts of Bergerac, Excideuil,
Ribérac, Mucidan, Montignac, and Perigueux, led by the municipal
officers, go from commune to commune in order to force the proprietors
to sign an act of withdrawal; and these visits "are always accompanied
with robberies, outrages, and ill-treatment from which there is no
escape but in absolute submission." Moreover, "they demand the abolition
of every species of tax and the partition of the soil. "--It is
impossible for "proprietors moderately rich" to remain in the country;
on all sides they take refuge in Perigueux, and there, organizing in
companies, along with the gendarmerie and the National Guard of the
town, overrun the cantons to restore order. But there is no way of
persuading the peasantry that it is order which they wish to restore.
With that stubbornness of the imagination which no obstacle arrests,
and which, like a vigorous spring, always finds some outlet, the people
declare that "the gendarmes and National Guard" who come to restrain
them "are priests and gentlemen in disguise."--The new theories,
moreover, have struck down to the lowest depths; and nothing is easier
than to draw from them the abolition of debts, and even the agrarian
law. At Ribérac, which is invaded by the people of the neighboring
parishes, a village tailor, taking the catechism of the Constitution
from his pocket, argues with the procureur-syndic, and proves to him
that the insurgents are only exercising the rights of man. The book
states, in the first place, "that Frenchmen are equals and brethren,
and that they should give each other aid;" and that "the masters
should share with their fellows, especially this year, which is one of
scarcity." In the next place, it is written that "all property belongs
to the nation," and that is the reason why "it has taken the possessions
of the Church." Now, all Frenchmen compose the nation, and the
conclusion is clearly apparent. Since, in the eyes of the tailor, the
property of individual Frenchmen belongs to all the French, he, the
tailor, has a right to at least the quota which belongs to him.--One
travels fast and far on this downhill road, for every mob considers
that this means immediate enjoyment, and enjoyment according to its own
ideas. There is no care for neighbors or for consequences, even when
imminent and physical, and in twenty places the confiscated property
perishes in the hands of the usurpers.
This voluntary destruction of property can be best observed in the
third department, that of Corrèze.[3277] Not only have the peasants here
refused to pay rents from the beginning of the Revolution; not only have
they "planted maypoles, supplied with iron hooks, to hang the first
one that dared to claim or to pay them;" not only are violent acts of
every description committed "by entire communes," "the National Guards
of the small communes participating in them;" not only do the culprits,
whose arrest is ordered, remain at liberty, while "nothing is spoken
of but the hanging of the constables who serve writs," but farther,
together with the ownership of the water-sources, the power of
collecting, directing, and distributing the water is overthrown, and, in
a country of in a country of steep slopes, the consequences of such
an operation may be imagined. Three leagues from Tulle, in a forming a
semi-circle, a pond twenty feet in depth, and covering an area of three
hundred acres, was enclosed by a broad embankment on the side of a
very deep gorge, which was completely covered with houses, mills, and
cultivation. On the 17th of April, 1791, a troop of five hundred armed
men assembled by the beat of a drum, and collected from three villages
in the vicinity, set themselves to demolish the dike. The proprietor,
M. de Sedières, a substitute-deputy in the National Assembly, is not
advised of it until eleven o'clock in the evening. Mounting his horse,
along with his guests and domestics, he makes a charge on the insane
wretches, and, with the aid of pistol and gun shots, disperses them. It
was time, for the trench they had dug was already eight feet deep,
and the water was nearly on a level with it: a half-hour later and the
terrible rolling mass of waters would have poured out on the inhabitants
of the gorge.--But such vigorous strokes, which are rare and hardly ever
successful, are no defense against universal and continuous attacks.
The regular troops and the gendarmerie, both of which are in the way of
reorganization or of dissolution, are not trustworthy, or are too weak.
There are no more than thirty of the cavalry in Creuse, and as many in
Corrèze. The National Guards of the towns are knocked up by expeditions
into the country, and there is no money with which to provide for their
change of quarters. And finally, as the elections are in the hands of
the people, this brings into power men disposed to tolerate popular
excesses. At Tulle, the electors of the second class, almost all chosen
from among the cultivators, and, moreover, catechized by the club,
nominate for deputies and public prosecutor only the candidates who are
pledged against rentals and against water privileges.--Accordingly, the
general demolition of the dikes begins as the month of May approaches.
This operation continues unopposed on a vast pond, a league and a half
from the town, and lasts for a whole week; elsewhere, on the arrival of
the guards or of the gendarmerie, they are fired upon. Towards the end
of September, all the embankments in the department are broken down:
nothing is left in the place of the ponds but fetid marshes; the
mill-wheels no longer turn, and the fields are no longer watered. But
those who demolish them carry away baskets full of fish, and the soil of
the ponds again becomes communal.--Hatred is not the motive which impels
them, but the instinct of acquisition: all these violent outstretched
hands, which rigidly resist the law, are directed against property, but
not against the proprietor; they are more greedy than hostile. One of
the noblemen of Corrèze,[3278] M. de Saint-Victour, has been absent for
five years. From the beginning of the Revolution, although his feudal
dues constitute one-half of the income of his estate, he has given
orders that no rigorous measures shall be employed in their collection,
and the result is that, since 1789, none of them were collected.
Moreover, having a reserve stock of wheat on hand, he lent grain, to the
amount of four thousand francs, to those of his tenants who had none.
In short, he is liberal, and, in the neighboring town, at Ussel, he even
passes for a Jacobin. In spite of all this, he is treated just like the
rest. It is because the parishes in his domain are "clubbist," governed
by associations of moral and practical levelers; in one of them "the
brigands have organized themselves into a municipal body," and have
chosen their leader as procureur-syndic. Consequently, on the 22nd of
August, eighty armed peasants opened the dam of his large pond, at the
risk of submerging a village in the neighborhood, the inhabitants of
which came and closed it up. Five other ponds belonging to him are
demolished in the course of the two following weeks; fish to the value
of from four to five thousand francs are stolen, and the rest perish in
the weeds. In order to make this expropriation sure, an effort is made
to burn his title-deeds; his chateau, twice attacked in the night, is
saved only by the National Guard of Ussel. His farmers and domestics
hesitate, for the time being, whether or not to cultivate the ground,
and come and ask the steward if they could sow the seeds. There is no
recourse to the proper authorities: the administrators and judges, even
when their own property is concerned, "dare not openly show themselves,"
because "they do not find themselves protected by the shield of the law.
"--Popular will, traversing both the old and the new law, obstinately
persists in its work, and forcibly attains its ends. Thus, whatever the
grand terms of liberty, equality, and fraternity may be, with which the
Revolution graces itself, it is, in its essence, a transfer of property;
in this alone consists its chief support, its enduring energy,
its primary impulse and its historical significance.--Formerly, in
antiquity, similar movements were accomplished, debts were abolished or
lessened, the possessions of the rich were confiscated, and the public
lands were divided; but this operation was confined to a city and
limited to a small territory. For the first time it takes place on a
large scale and in a modern State.--Thus far, in these vast States, when
the deeper foundations have been disturbed, it has ever been on account
of foreign domination or on account of an oppression of conscience.
In France in the fifteenth century, in Holland in the sixteenth and in
England in the seventeenth century, the peasant, the mechanic, and the
laborer had taken up arms against an enemy or in behalf of their faith.
On religious or patriotic zeal has followed the craving for prosperity
and comfort, and the new motive is as powerful as the others; for in
our industrial, democratic, and utilitarian societies it is this which
governs almost all lives, and excites almost all efforts. Kept down for
centuries, the passion recovers itself by throwing off government
and privilege, the two great weights which have borne it down. At the
present time this passion launches itself impetuously with its whole
force, with brutal insensibility, athwart every kind of proprietorship
that is legal and legitimate, whether it be public or private. The
obstacles it encounters only render it the more destructive,
beyond property it attacks proprietors, and completes plunder with
proscriptions.
*****
[Footnote 3201: The expression is that of Jean Bon Saint-André to
Mathieu Dumas, sent to re-establish tranquillity in Montauban (1790):
"The day of vengeance, which we have been awaiting for a hundred years,
has come!"]
[Footnote 3202: De Dampmartin, I. 187 (an eye-witness).]
[Footnote 3203: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223 and 3216. Letters of
M. de Bouzols, major general, residing at Montpellier, May 21, 25, 28,
1790.]
[Footnote 3204: Mary Lafon, "Histoire d'une Ville Protestante ".(with
original documents derived from the archives of Montauban).]
[Footnote 3205: Archives Nationales," F7, 2216. Procés-verbal of the
Municipality of Nîmes and report of the Abbé de Belmont.--Report of the
Administrative commissioners, June 28, 1790.--Petition of the Catholics,
April 20.--Letters of the Municipality, the commissioners, and M.
de Nausel, on the events of May 2 and 3.--Letter of M. Rabaut
Saint-Etienne, May 12--Petition of the widow Gas, July 30.--Report
(printed) of M. Alquier, February 19, 1791.--Memoir (printed) of the
massacre of the Catholics at Nîmes, by Froment (1790).--New address
of the Municipality of Nîmes, presented by M. de Marguerite, mayor and
deputy (1790), printed. Mercure de France, February 23, 1791.]
[Footnote 3206: The petition is signed by 3,127 persons, besides
1560 who put a cross declaring that they could not write. The
counter-petition of the club is signed by 262 persons.]
[Footnote 3207: This last item, stated in M. Alquier's report, is denied
by the municipality. According to it, the red rosettes gathered around
the bishop's quarters had no guns.]
[Footnote 3208: An insurrection in the sixteenth century, when the
Protestants fired on the Catholics on St. Michael's Day.--320TR.]
[Footnote 3209: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3216. Letter of M. de Lespin,
Major at Nîmes, to the commandant of Provence, M de Perigord, July
27, 1790: "The plots and conspiracies which were attributed to the
vanquished party, and which, it was believed, would be discovered in the
depositions of the four hundred men in prison, vanish as the proceedings
advance. The veritable culprits are to be found among the informers."]
[Footnote 3210: Buchez and Roux, III. 240 (Memorandum of the Ministers,
October 28, 1789).--"Archives Nationales," D, XXIX. 3. Deliberation of
the Municipal council of Vernon (November 4, 1789)]
[Footnote 3211: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. correspondence of M. de
Thiard, November 4, 1789.--See similar occurrences, September 4, October
23, November 4 and 19, 1789, January 27 and March 27, 1790]
[Footnote 3212: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3257. Letter from Gex, May
29, 1790.--Buchez and Roux, VII. 198, 369 (September, October, 1790).]
[Footnote 3213: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. correspondence of M. de
Bercheny, Commandant of the four central provinces. Letters of May
25, June 11, 19, and 27, 1790.--" Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 4.
Deliberations of the district administrators of Bourbon-Lancy, May 26.]
[Footnote 3214: "Archives Nationales," H. 2453. Minutes of the meeting
of a dozen parishes in Nivernais, June 4. "White bread is to be 2 sous,
and brown bread 11/2 sous. Husbandmen are to have 30 sous, reapers 10
sous, wheelwrights 10 sous, bailiffs 6 sous per league. Butter is to
be at 8 sous, meat at 5 sous, pork at 8 sous, oil at 8 sous the pint, a
square foot of masonry-work 40 sous, a pair of large sabots 3 sous. All
rights of pasturage and of forests are to be surrendered. The roads
are to be free everywhere, as formerly. All seignorial rents are to be
suppressed. Millers are to take only one thirty-second of a bushel.
The seigneurs of our department are to give up all servile holidays and
ill-acquired property. The curé of Bièze is simply to say mass at nine
o'clock in the morning and vespers at two o'clock in the afternoon, in
summer and winter; he must marry and bury gratis, it being reserved to
us to pay him a salary. He is to be paid 6 sous for masses, and not to
leave his curé except to repeat his breviary and make proper calls on
the men and women of his parish. Hats must be had from 3 livres to 30
sous. Nails 3 livres the gross. Curés are to have none but circumspect
females of fifty for domestics. Curés are not to go to either fairs or
markets. All curés are to be on the same footing as the one at Bièze.
There must be no more wholesale dealers in wheat. Law officers who make
unjust seizures must return the money. Farm leases must expire on St.
Martin's Day. M. le Comte, although not there, M. de Tontenelle, and M.
de Commandant must sign this document without difficulty. M. de Mingot
is formally to resign his place in writing: he went away with his
servant-woman--he even missed his mass on the first Friday of the
Fête-Dieu, and it is supposed that he slept in the woods. Joiners' wages
shall be fixed at the same rate as wheelwrights'. Ox-straps are not
to cost over 40 sous, yokes 10 sous. Masters must pay one-half of the
tailles. Notaries are to take only the half of what they had formerly,
as well as comptrollers. The Commune claims the right of protest against
whatever it may have forgotten in the present article, in fact or in
law." (It is signed by about twenty persons, several of them being
mayors and municipal clerks.)]
[Footnote 3215: "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. The same correspondence,
May 29, June 11 and 17, September 15, 1790.--ibid, F7, 3257. Letter of
the municipal authorities of Marsigny, May 3; of the municipal officers
of Bourbon-Lancy, June 5. Extract from letters written to M. Amelot,
June 1st.]
[Footnote 3216: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3185, 3186. Letter of the
President of the Tribunal of the district of Laon, February 8, 1792.]
[Footnote 3217: "Archives Nationales F7, 3268. Procés-verbal and
observations of the two commissioners sent to Étampes September 22-25,
1791.]
[Footnote 3218: "Archives Nationales F7, 3265. The following document,
among many others, shows the expedients and conceptions of the popular
imagination. Petition of several inhabitants of the commune of Forges
(Seine Inférieure) "to the good and incorruptible Minister of the
Interior" (October 16, 1792). After three good crops in succession,
the famine still continues. Under the ancient régime wheat was
superabundant; hogs were fed with it, and calves were fattened with
bread. It is certain, therefore, that wheat is diverted by monopolists
and the enemies of the new regime. The farms are too large; let them
he divided. There is too much pasture-ground: sow it with wheat. Compel
each farmer and land-owner to give a statement of his crop: let the
quantity be published at the church service, and in case of falsehood
let the man be put to death or imprisoned, and his grain he confiscated.
Oblige all the cultivators of the neighborhood to sell their wheat at
Forges only, etc."]
[Footnote 3219: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Report of the
commissioners sent by the department, March 11, 1792 (apropos of the
insurrection of March 4).--Mortimer-Ternaux, I. 381.]
[Footnote 3220: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letters of several
mayors, district administrators, cultivators of Velizy, Villacoublay,
La celle-Saint-Cloud, Montigny, etc. November 12, 1791.--Letter of M.
de Narbonne, January 13, 1792; of M. Sureau, justice of the peace in the
canton of Étampes, September 17, 1791.--Letter of Bruyères-le-Châtel,
January 28, 1792.]
[Footnote 3221: A term applied to brigands at this epoch who demand
money and objects of value, and force their delivery by exposing the
soles of the feet of their victims to a fire.--32TR.]
[Footnote 3222: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3203. Letter of the Directory
of Cher, August 25, 1791.--F7, 3240. Letter of the Directory of Haute
Marne, November 6, 1791.--F7, 3248. Minutes of the meeting of the
members of the department of the Nord, March 18, 1791.--F7, 3250.
Minutes of the meeting of the municipal officers of Montreuil-sur-Mer,
October 16, 1791.--F7, 3265. Letter of the Directory of Seine Infereure,
July 22, 1791.--D, XXIX. 4. Remonstrances of the municipalities
assembled at Tostes, July 21, 1791.--Petition, of the municipal officers
of the districts of Dieppe, Cany, and Caudebec, July 22, 1791.]
[Footnote 3223: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.]
[Footnote 3224: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.
Deliberations of the Directory of Seine-et-Oise, September 20, 1791
(apropos of the insurrection. September 16, at Étampes).--Letter of
Charpentier, president of the district, September 19.--Report of the
Department Commissioners, March 11, 1792 (on the insurrection at Brunoy,
March 4.)--Report of the Department Commissioners, March 4, 1792 (on
the insurrection at Montlhéry, February 13 to 20).--Deliberation of the
Directory of Seine-et-Oise, September 16, 1791 (on the insurrection at
Corbeil).--Letters of the mayors of Limours, Lonjumeau, etc.]
[Footnote 3225: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269,
passim.--Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlhéry,
February 28, 1792: "We cannot enter into fuller details without exposing
ourselves to extremities which would be only disastrous to us."--Letter
of the justice of the peace of the canton, February 25: "Public outcry
teaches me that if I issue writs of arrest against those who massacred
Thibault, the people would rise."]
[Footnote 3226: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.
Reports of the gendarmerie, February 24, 1792, and the following
days.--Letter of the sergeant of Limours, March 2; of the manager of the
farm of Plessis-le-Comte, February 23.]
[Footnote 3227: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269,
passim.--Memorandum to the National Assembly by the citizens of
Rambouillet, September 17, 1792.]
[Footnote 3228: "Archives Nationales," F7 3268 and 3269, Passim.
Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlhéry, February
27, 1792.--Buchez and Roux, XIII. 421, (March, 1792); and XIII.,
317.--Mercure de France, February 25, 1792. (Letters of M. Dauchy,
President of the Directory of the Department; of M. de Gouy, messenger
sent by the minister, etc.)--Moniteur, sitting of February 15, 1792.]
[Footnote 3229: Decree of September 3, 1792.]
[Footnote 3230: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269. Petition of
the citizens of Montfort-l'Amaury, Saint-Léger, Gros-Rouvre, Gelin,
Laqueue, and Méré, to the citizens of Rambouillet.]
[Footnote 3231: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3230. Letter of an
administrator of the district of Vendôme, with the deliberation of the
commune of Vendôme, November 24, 1792.]
[Footnote 3232: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letter of the
administrators of the Department of Seine-Inférieure, Octobers 23,
1792.--Letters of the Special Committee of Rouen, October 22 and
23, 1792: "The more the zeal and patriotism of the cultivators is
stimulated, the more do they seem determined to avoid the market-places,
which are always in a State of absolute destitution."]
[Footnote 3233: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3265. Letter of David, a
cultivator, October 20, 1792.--Letter of the Department Administrators,
October 13, 1792, etc.--Letter (printed) of the minister to the
convention, November 4.--Proclamation of the Provisional Executive
council, October 31, 1792. (The setier of grain of two hundred and forty
pounds is sold at 60 francs in the south, and at half that sum in the
north.)]
[Footnote 3234: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letters of Bonnemant,
September 11, 1792; of Laussel, September 22, 1792.]
[Footnote 3235: "Archives Nationales," H, 1453. Correspondence of M.
de Bercheny, July 28, October 24 and 26, 1790.--The same disposition
lasted. An insurrection occurred in Issoudun after the three days of
July, 1830, against the combined imposts. Seven or eight thousand wine
growers burnt the archives and tax-offices and dragged an employee
through the streets, shouting out at each street-lamp, "Let him be
hung!" The general sent to repress the outbreak entered the town only
through a capitulation; the moment he reached the Hôtel-de-Ville a
man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-book around his neck,
exclaiming, "No more clerks where there is nothing to do!"]
[Footnote 3236: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3203. Letter of the Directory
of Cher, April 9, 1790.--Ibid, F7, 3255. Letter of August 4, 1790.
Verdict of the présidial, November 4, 1790.--Letter of the Municipality
of Saint-Etienne, August 5, 1790.]
[Footnote 3237: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248. Letter of M. Sénac de
Mejlhan, April 10, 1790.--Letter of the grands baillis, June 30, 1790.]
[Footnote 3238: Buchez and Roux, VI. 403. Report of Chabroud on the
insurrection at Lyons, July 9 and 10, 1790.--Duvergier, "Collection des
Décrets." Decrees of August 4 and 15, 1790.]
[Footnote 3239: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. Letter of the Minister,
July 2, 1790, to the Directory of Rhône-et-Loire. "The King is informed
that, throughout your department, and especially in the districts of
Saint-Etienne and Montbrison, license is carried to the extreme;
that the judges dare not prosecute; that in many places the municipal
officers are at the head of the disturbances; and that, in others, the
National Guard do not obey requisitions."--Letter of September 5, 1790.
"In the bourg of Thisy, brigands have invaded divers cotton-spinning
establishments and partially destroyed them and after having plundered
them, they have sold the goods by public auction."]
[Footnote 3240: Buchez and Roux, VI. 345. Report of M. Muguet, July 1,
1790.]
[Footnote 3241: Minutes of the meeting of the National Assembly.
(Sitting of October 24, 1789.)--Decree of September 27, 1789, applicable
the 1st of October. There are other alleviations applicable on the 1st
of January, 1790.]
[Footnote 3242: Mercure de France, February 27, 1790. (Memorandum of the
garde des sceaux, January 16.)--Observations of M. Necker on the report
made by the Financial committee, at the sitting of March 12, 1790.]
[Footnote 3243: "Archives Nationales," H, 1453. Correspondence of M. de
Bercheny, April 24, May 4 and 6, 1790: "It is much to be feared that the
tobacco-tax will share the fate of the salt-tax."]
[Footnote 3244: Mercure de France, July 31, 1790 (sitting of July 10.)
M. Lambert, Comptroller General of the Finances, informs the Assembly of
"the obstacles which continual outbreaks, brigandage, and the maxims of
anarchical freedom impose, from one end of France to the other, on the
collection of the taxes. On one side, the people are led to believe
that, if they stubbornly refuse a tax contrary to their rights, it
abolition will be secured. Elsewhere, smuggling is openly carried on
by force; the people favor it, while the National Guards refuse to act
against the nation. In other places hatred is excited, and divisions
between the troops and the overseers at the toll-houses: the latter
are massacred, the bureaus are pillaged, and the prisons are forced
open."--Memorandum from M. Necker to the National Assembly, July 21,
1790.]
[Footnote 3245: Decrees of March 21 and 22, 1790, applicable April 21
following.--Decrees of February 19 and March 2, 1791, applicable May 1
following.]
[Footnote 3246: De Goncourt, "La Societé Française pendant la
Révolution," 204.--Maxime Du Camp, "Paris, sa vie et ses organes," VI.
11.]
[Footnote 3247: "Compte des Revenus et Dépenses au 1er Mai,
1789."--Memorandum of M. Necker, July 21, 1790.--Memoranda presented by
M. de Montesquiou, September 9, 1791.--Comptes-rendus by the minister,
Clavières, October 5, 1792, February 1, 1792.--Report of Cambon,
February, 1793.]
[Footnote 3248: Boivin-Champeaux, 231.]
[Footnote 3249: Mercure de France, May 28, 1791. (Sitting of May
22.)--Speech of M. d'Allarde: "Burgundy has paid nothing belonging to
1790."]
[Footnote 3250: Moniteur, sitting of June 1, 1790. Speech by
M. Freteau.--Mercure de France. November 26, 1791. Report by
Lafont-Ladebat.]
[Footnote 3251: "Archives Nationales," H, 2453. correspondence of M.
de Bercheny, June 5, 1790, etc.--F7, 3226. Letters of Chenantin,
cultivator, November 7, 1792, also of the prosecuting attorney, November
6.--F7, 3269. Minutes of the meeting of the municipality of Clugnac,
August 5th, 1792.--F7, 3202. Letter of the Minister of Justice, Duport,
January 3, 1792. "The utter absence of public force in the district of
Montargis renders every operation of the Government and all execution of
the laws impossible. The arrears of taxes to be collected is here very
considerable, while all proceedings of constraint are dangerous and
impossible to execute, owing to the fears of the bailiffs, who dare not
perform their duties, and the violence of the tax-payers, on whom there
is no check."]
[Footnote 3252: Report of the Committee on Finances, by Ramel, 19th
Floréal, year II (The Constituent Assembly had fixed the real tax of a
house at one-sixth of its letting value.)]
[Footnote 3253: Mercure de France, December 12, 1789.--"Archives
Nationales," F7, 3268. Memorandum from the officers in command of
the detachment of the Paris National Guard stationed at
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (April, 1790). Certificate of the Municipal
Officers of Poissy, March 31.]
[Footnote 3254: Mercure de France, March 12 and 26, 1791.--"Archives
Nationales," H, 1453. Letter of the police-lieutenant of Blois, April
22, 1790.--Mercure de France, July 24, 1790. Two of the murderers
exclaimed to those who tried to save one of the keepers, "Hanging is
well done at Paris! Bah, you are aristocrats! We shall be talked about
in the gazettes of Paris." (Deposition of witnesses.)--Decrees and
proclamations regarding the protection of the forests, November 3 and
December 11, 1789.--Another in October, 1790.--Another June 29, 1791.]
[Footnote 3255: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letter of the bailli de
Virieu, January 26, 1792.]
[Footnote 3256: Mercure de France, December 3, 1791. (Letter from
Sarreluis, November 15, 1791.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letter
of the Municipal Officers of Montargis. January 8, 1792.]
[Footnote 3257: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letter of the overseer
of the national domains at Rambouillet, October 31, 1792.--Report of the
minister Clavières, February 1. 1793.]
[Footnote 3258: Decrees of August 14, 1792, June 10, 1793.--"Archives
Nationales," Missions des Représentants, D, § 7. (Deliberation of the
district of Troyes, 2 Ventose, an. III.)--At Thunelières, the drawing
took place on the 10th Fructidor, year II, and was done over again in
behalf of a servant of Billy, an influential municipal officer who
"was the soul of his colleagues."--Ibid. Abstract of operations in the
district of Arcis-sur-Aube, 30 Pluviose, year III. "Two-thirds of the
communes hold this kind of property. Most of them have voted on and
effected the partition, or are actually engaged on it."]
[Footnote 3259: Mercure de France, January 7, 1790. (Chateau of Auxon in
Haute-Saone.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3255. (Letter of the minister
to the Directory of Rhone-et-Loire, July 2, 1790.)--Mercure de France,
July 17, 1790. (Report of M. de Broglie, July 13, and decree of July
13-18.)--"Archives Nationales," H, 1453. (Correspondence of M. de
Bercheny, July 21, 1790.)]
[Footnote 3260: Mercure de France, March 19, 1790. Letter from Amien,
February 28. (Mallet du Pan publishes in the Mercure only letters which
are signed and authentic.)]
[Footnote 3261: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. (Correspondence of M.
de Thiard; letters of Chevalier de Bévy, December 26, 1789, and others
up to April 5, 1790.)--Moniteur, sitting of February 9, 1790.--Mercure
de France, February 6 and March 6, 1790 (list of chateaux).]
[Footnote 3262: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105. (correspondence of M.
de Thiard.) Letters of the Mayor of Nantes, February 16,!790, of the
Municipality of Redon, February 19, etc.]
[Footnote 3263: Mercure de France, February 6 and 27, 1790. (Speech of
M. de Foucault, sittings of February 2 and 5)--Moniteur (same dates).
(Report of Grégoire, February 9; speeches by MM. Sallé de Chaux and de
Noailles, February 9.)--Memorandum of the deputies of the town of Tulle,
drawn up by the Abbé Morellet (from the deliberations and addresses of
eighty-three boroughs and cities in the province).]
[Footnote 3264: In allusion to the feudal custom of paying seignorial
dues on the first of May around a maypole. See further on. 32TR]
[Footnote 3265: Criminal Courts without appeal.--32TR.]
[Footnote 3266: Moniteur, sitting of March 4, 1790.--Duvergier, decrees
of March 6, 1790, and August 6-10 1790]
[Footnote 3267: The address is dated February 11, 1793. This singularly
comic document would alone suffice to make the history of the Revolution
perfectly comprehensible.]
[Footnote 3268: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3203. (Letters of the royal
commissioner, April 30 and May 9, 1790.)--Letter of the Duc de Maillé,
May 6.--Report from the administrators of the department, November 12,
1790.--Moniteur VI. 515.]
[Footnote 3269: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the Directory
from Ille-et-Vilaine, January 30, 1791, and letter from Dinan, January
29--Mercure de France, April 2 and 16, 1791. Letters from Rennes, March
20th; from Redon, March 12.]
[Footnote 3270: So expressed in the minutes of the meeting.]
[Footnote 3271: Moniteur, sitting of December 15, 1790. (Address of the
department of Lot, December 7.)--Sitting of December 20 (Speech by M. de
Foucault.)--Mercure de France, December 18, 1790. (Letter from Belves,
in Perigord, December 7.)--Ibid., January 22, 29, 1791. (Letter from M.
de Clarac, January 18.)]
[Footnote 3272: December 17, 1790.]
[Footnote 3273: January 7, 1791.]
[Footnote 3274: Revolutionary archives of the department of Creuse,
by Duval. (Letter of the administrators of the department, March 31,
1791.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3209. (Deliberation of the
Directory of the Department, May 12, 1791--Minutes of the meeting of the
municipality of La Souterraine, August 23, 1791.)]
[Footnote 3275: "Archives Nationales", F7, 3269.--Order of the directory
of the district of Ribérac, August 5, 1791, and requisitions of the
prosecuting attorney of the department, August 24, and September
11.--Letter of the king's commissioner, August 22.]
[Footnote 3276: A sort of export duty.--32TR.]
[Footnote 3277: "Archives Nationales," P7, 3204.--Letter, from the
Directory of the Department, June 2, 1791; September 8 and 22.--Letter
from the Minister of Justice, May 15, 1791.--Letter from M. de
Lentilhac, September 2.--Letter from M. Melon-Padon, Royal Commissioner,
September.--Mercure de France, May 14, 1791. (Letter of an eye-witness,
M.de Loyac, April 25, 1791.)]
[Footnote 3278: "Archives Nationales," F7. 3204. Letters from M. de
Saint-Victour, September 25, October 2 and 10, 1791.--Letter from the
steward of his estate, September 18.]
CHAPTER III. Development of the ruling Passion.
I.--Attitude of the nobles. Their moderate resistance.
If popular passion ended in murder it was not because resistance was
great or violent. On the contrary, never did an aristocracy undergo
dispossession with so much patience, or employ less force in the defense
of its prerogatives, or even of its property. To speak with exactness,
the class in question receives blows without returning them, and when
it does take up arms, it is always with the bourgeois and the National
Guard, at the request of the magistrates, in conformity with the law,
and for the protection of persons and property. The nobles try to avoid
being either killed or robbed, nothing more: for nearly three years
they raise no political banner. In the towns where they exert the most
influence and which are denounced as rebellious, for ex-ample in Mende
and Arles, their opposition is limited to the suppression of riots, the
restraining of the common people, and ensuring respect for the law, It
is not the new order of things against which they conspire, but against
brutal disorder.--At Mende," says the municipal body,[3301] "we had
the honor of being the first to furnish the contributions of 1790. We
supplied the place of our bishop and installed his successor without
disturbance, and without the assistance of any foreign force . . . . We
dispersed the members of a cathedral body to which we were attached by
the ties of blood and friendship; we dismissed all, from the bishop down
to the children of the choir. We had but three communities of mendicant
monks, and all three have been suppressed. We have sold all national
possessions without exception."--The commander of their gendarmerie is,
in fact, an old member of the body-guard, while the superior officers of
the National Guard are gentlemen, or belong to the order of Saint-Louis.
It is very evident that, if they defend themselves against Jacobins,
they are not insurgent against the National Assembly.--In Arles,[3302]
which has put down its populace, which has armed itself, which has shut
its gates, and which passes for a focus of royalist conspiracy, the
commissioners sent by the King and by the National Assembly, men
of discretion and of consideration, find nothing, after a month's
investigation, but submission to the decrees and zeal for the public
welfare.
"Such," they say, "are the men who have been calumniated because,
cherishing the Constitution, they hold fanaticism, demagogues and
anarchy, in horror. If the citizens had not roused themselves when the
moment of danger arrived, they would have been slaughtered like their
neighbors (of Avignon). It is this insurrection against crime which the
brigands have slandered." If their gates were shut it was because "the
National Guard of Marseilles, the same which behaved so badly in the
Comtat, flocked there under the pretext of maintaining liberty and of
forestalling the counter-revolution, but, in reality, to village the
town."
Vive la Nation! Vive la Loi! Vive le Roi were the only cries heard at
the very quiet and orderly elections that had just taken place.
"The attachment of the citizens to the Constitution has been spoken
of. . . . Obedience to the laws, the readiest disposition to discharge
public contributions, were remarked by us among these pretended
counter-revolutionaries. Those who are subject to the license-tax came
in crowds to the Hôtel-de-Ville." Scarcely "was the bureau of receipts
opened when it was filled with respectable people; those on the contrary
who style themselves good patriots, republicans or anarchists, were not
conspicuous on this occasion; but a very small number among them have
made their submission. The rest are surprised at being called upon for
money; they had been given a quite different hope."
In short, during more than thirty months, and under a steady fire of
threats, outrages, and plunder, the nobles who remain in France neither
commit nor undertake any hostile act against the Government that
persecutes them. None of them, not even M. de Bouillé, attempts to carry
out any real plan of civil war; I find but one resolute man in their
ranks at this date, ready for action, and who labors to form one
militant party against another militant party: he is really a politician
and conspirator; he has an understanding with the Comte d'Artois; he
gets petitions signed for the freedom of the King and of the Church;
he organizes armed companies; he recruits the peasants; he prepares
a Vendée for Languedoc and Provence; and this person is a bourgeois,
Froment of Nîmes.[3303] But, at the moment of action, he finds only
three out of eighteen companies, supposed by him to be enlisted in
his cause, that are willing to march with him. Others remain in their
quarters until, Froment being overcome, they are found there and
slaughtered; the survivors, who escape to Jalès, find, not a stronghold,
but a temporary asylum, where they never succeed in transforming their
inclinations into determinations.[3304]--The nobles too, like other
Frenchmen, have been subject to the lasting pressure of monarchical
centralization. They no longer form one body; they have lost the
instinct of association. They no longer know how to act for themselves;
they are the puppets of administration awaiting an impulse from the
center, while at the center the King, their hereditary general, a
captive in the hands of the people, commands them to be resigned and to
do nothing.[3305] Moreover, like other Frenchmen, they have been
brought up in the philosophy of the eighteenth century. "Liberty is
so precious," wrote the Duc de Brissac,[3306] "that it may well be
purchased with some suffering; a destroyed feudalism will not prevent
the good and the true from being respected and loved."--They persist in
this illusion for a long time and remain optimists. As they feel kindly
towards the people, they cannot comprehend that the people should
entertain other sentiments toward them; they firmly believe that
the troubles are transient. Immediately on the proclamation of the
Constitution they return in crowds from Spain, Belgium, and Germany;
at Troyes there are not enough post-horses for many days to supply
the emigrants who are coming back.[3307] Thus they accept not only the
abolition of feudalism with civil equality, but also political equality
and numerical sovereignty.
Some consideration for them, some outward signs of respect, a few bows,
would, in all probability, have rallied them sincerely to democratic
institutions. They would soon consent to be confounded with the crowd,
to submit to the common level, and to live as private individuals. Had
they been treated like the bourgeois or the peasant, their neighbors,
had their property and persons been respected, they might have accepted
the new régime without any bitterness of feeling. That the leading
emigrant nobles and those forming a part of the old court carry on
intrigues at Coblentz or at Turin is natural, since they have lost
everything: authority, places, pensions, sinecures, pleasures, and
the rest. But, to the gentry and inferior nobles of the provinces,
chevaliers of Saint-Louis, subaltern officers and resident proprietors,
the loss is insignificant. The law has suppressed one-half of their
seignorial dues; but by virtue of the same law their lands are no longer
burdened with tithes. Popular elections will not provide them with
places, but they did not enjoy them under the arbitrary ministerial
rule. Little does it matter to them that power, whether ministerial or
popular, has changed hands: they are not accustomed to its favors, and
will pursue their ordinary avocations--the chase, promenading, reading,
visiting, and conversing--provided they, like the first-comer, the
grocer at the corner, or their farm-servant, find protection, safety,
and security on the public road and in their dwellings.[3308]
II.--Workings of the popular imagination with respect to them.
The monomania of suspicion.--The nobles distrusted and
treated as enemies.--Situation of a gentleman on his
domain.--M. de. Bussy
Popular passion, unfortunately, is a blind power, and, for lack of
enlightenment, suffers itself to be guided by spectral illusions.
Imaginary conceptions work, and work in conformity with the structure of
the excited brain which has given birth to them:
What if the Ancient Regime should return!
What if we were obliged to restore the property of the clergy!
What if we should be again forced to pay the salt tax, the excise,
the taille, and other dues which, thanks to the law, we no longer pay,
besides other taxes and dues that we do not pay in spite of the law!
What if all the nobles whose chateaux are burnt, and who have given rent
acquittances at the point of the sword, should find some way to avenge
themselves and recover their former privileges!
Undoubtedly they brood over these things, make agreements amongst each
other, and plot with the strangers; at the first opportunity they
will fall upon us: we must watch them, repress them, and, if needs be,
destroy them.--This instinctive process of reasoning prevailed from
the outset, and, in proportion as excesses increase, prevails to a
much greater extent. The noble is ever the past, present, and future
creditor, or, at the very least, a possible one, which means that he is
the worst and most odious of enemies. All his ways are suspicious, even
when he is doing nothing; whatever he may do it is with a view of arming
himself.
M. de Gilliers, who lives with his wife and sister one league out of
Romans in Dauphiny,[3309] amuses himself by planting trees and flowers;
a few steps from his house, on another domain, M. de Montchorel, an old
soldier, and M. Osmond, an old lawyer from Paris, with their wives and
children, occupy their leisure hours in somewhat the same manner. M.
de Gilliers having ordered and received wooden water-pipes, the report
spreads that they are cannon. His guest, M. Servan, receives an English
traveling-trunk, which is said to be full of pistols. When M. Osmond and
M. Servan stroll about the country with pencils and drawing-paper, it
is averred that they are preparing topographical plans for the Spaniards
and Savoyards. The four carriages belonging to the two families go to
Romans to fetch some guests: instead of four there are nineteen, and
they are sent for aristocrats who are coming to hide away in underground
passages. M. de Senneville, decorated with a cordon rouge (red ribbon),
pays a visit on his return from Algiers: the decoration becomes a blue
one, and the wearer is the Comte d'Artois[3310] in person. There is
certainly a plot brewing, and at five o'clock in the morning eighteen
communes (two thousand armed men) arrive before the doors of the two
houses; shouts and threats of death last for eight hours; a gun fired a
few paces off at the suspects misfires; a peasant who is aiming at them
says to his neighbor, "Give me a decent gun and I will plant both
my balls in their bodies!" Finally, M. de Gilliers, who was absent,
attending a baptism, returns with the Royal Chasseurs of Dauphiny and
the National Guard of Romans, and with their assistance delivers his
family.--It is only in the towns, that is, in a few towns, and for a
very short time, that an inoffensive noble who is attacked obtains any
aid; the phantoms which people create for themselves there are less
gross; a certain degree of enlightenment, and a remnant of common sense,
prevent the hatching of too absurd stories.--But in the dark recesses
of rustic brains nothing can arrest the monomania of suspicion. Fancies
multiply there like weeds in a dark hole: they take root and vegetate
until they become belief, conviction, and certainty; they produce the
fruit of hostility and hatred, homicidal and incendiary ideas. With eyes
constantly fixed on the chateau, the village regards it as a Bastille
which must be captured, and, instead of saluting the lord of the manor,
it thinks only of firing at him.
Let us take up one of these local histories in detail.[3311] In the
month of July, 1789, during the jacquerie in Mâçonnais, the parish of
Villiers appealed for assistance to its lord, M. de Bussy, a former
colonel of dragoons. He had returned home, treated the people of his
village to a dinner, and attempted to form them into a body of guards
to protect themselves against incendiaries and brigands; along with the
well-disposed men of the place "he patrolled every evening to restore
tranquillity to the parish." On a rumor spreading that "the wells were
poisoned," he placed sentinels alongside of all the wells except his
own, "to prove that he was acting for the parish and not for himself."
In short, he did all he could to conciliate the villagers, and to
interest them in the common safety.--But, by virtue of being a noble
and an officer he is distrusted, and it is Perron, the syndic of the
commune, to whom the commune now listens. Perron announces that the King
"having abjured his sworn word," no more confidence is to be placed in
him, and, consequently, neither in his officers nor in the gentry. On
M. de Bussy proposing to the National Guards that they should go to the
assistance of the chateau of Thil, which is in flames, Perron prevents
them, declaring that "these fires are kindled by the nobles and the
clergy." M. de Bussy insists, and entreats them to go, offering to
abandon "his terrier," that is to say all his seignorial dues, if they
will only accompany him and arrest this destruction. They refuse to do
so. He perseveres, and, on being informed that the chateau of Juillenas
is in peril, he collects, after great efforts, a body of one hundred
and fifty men of his parish, and, marching with them, arrives in time to
save the chateau, which a mob was about to set on fire. But the popular
excitement, which he had just succeeded in calming at Juillenas, has
gained the upper hand amongst his own troop: the brigands have seduced
his men, "which obliges him to lead them back, while, along the road,
they seem inclined to fire at him."--Having returned, he is followed
with threats even to his own house: a band comes to attack his chateau;
finding it on the defensive, they insist on being led to that of
Courcelles.--In the midst of all this violence M. de Bussy, with about
fifteen friends and tenants, succeeds in protecting himself and, by
dint of patience, energy, and cool blood, without killing or wounding a
single man, ends in bringing back security throughout the whole canton.
The jacquerie subsides, and it seems as if the newly restored order
would be maintained. He sends for Madame de Bussy to return, and some
months pass away.--The popular imagination, however, is poisoned, and
whatever a gentleman may do, he is no longer tolerated on his estate. A
few leagues from there, on April 29, 1790, M. de Bois-d'Aisy, deputy
to the National Assembly, had returned to his parish to vote at the
new elections.[3312] "Scarcely has he arrived," when the commune of
Bois-d'Aisy gives him notice through its mayor "that it will not regard
him as eligible." He attends the electoral meeting which is held in the
church there, a municipal officer in the pulpit inveighs against nobles
and priests, and declares that they must not take part in the elections.
All eyes turn upon M. de Boisd'Aisy, who is the only noble present.
Nevertheless, he takes the civic oath, which nearly costs him dear, for
murmurs arise around him, and the peasants say that he ought to have
been hanged like the lord of Sainte-Colombe, to prevent his taking the
oath. In fact, the evening before, the latter, M. de Vitteaux, an
old man of seventy-four years of age, was expelled from the primary
assembly, then torn out of the house in which he had sought refuge, half
killed with blows, and dragged through the streets to the open square;
his mouth was stuffed with manure, a stick was thrust into his ears,
and "he expired after a martyrdom of three hours." The same day, in the
church of the Capuchins, at Sémur, the rural parishes which met together
excluded their priests and gentry in the same fashion. M. de Damas
and M. de Sainte-Maure were beaten with clubs and stones; the curé
of Massigny died after six stabs with a knife, and M. de Virieu saved
himself as he best could.--With such examples before them it is probable
that many of the nobles will no longer exercise their right of suffrage.
M. de Bussy does not pretend to do it. He merely tries to prove that he
is loyal to the nation, and that he meditates no wrong to the National
Guard or to the people. He proposed, at the out-set, to the volunteers
of Mâçon to join them, along with his little troop; they refused to have
him and thus the fault is not on his side. On the 14th of July, 1790,
the day of the Federation on his domain, he sends all his people off to
Villiers, furnished with the tricolour cockade. He himself, with three
of his friends, attends the ceremony to take the oath, all four in
uniform, with the cockade on their hats, without any weapons but their
swords and a light cane in their hands. They salute the assembled
National Guards of the three neighboring parishes, and keep outside
the enclosure so as not to give offense. But they have not taken into
account the prejudices and animosities of the new municipal bodies.
Perron, the former syndic, is now mayor. A man named Bailly, who is the
village shoemaker, is another of the municipal officers; their councilor
is an old dragoon, one of those soldiers probably who have deserted or
been discharged, and who are the firebrands of almost every riot that
takes place. A squad of a dozen or fifteen men leave the ranks and
march up to the four gentlemen, who advance, hat in hand, to meet them.
Suddenly the men aim at them, and Bailly, with a furious air, demands:
"What the devil do you come here for?" M. de Bussy replies that, having
been informed of the Federation, he had come to take the oath like
the rest of the people. Bailly asks why he had come armed. M. de Bussy
remarks that "having been in the service, the sword was inseparable from
the uniform," and had they come there without that badge they would have
been at fault; besides, they must have observed that they had no other
arms. Bailly, still in a rage, and, moreover, exasperated by such good
reasons, turns round with his gun in his hand towards the leader of the
squad and asks him three times in succession, "Commander, must I fire?"
The commander not daring to take the responsibility of so gratuitous a
murder, remains silent, and finally orders M. de Bussy to "clear out;"
"which I did," says M. de Bussy.--Nevertheless, on reaching home, he
writes to the municipal authorities clearly setting forth the motive of
his coming, and demands an explanation of the treatment he had received.
Mayor Perron throws aside his letter without reading it, and, on the
following day, on leaving the mass, the National Guards come, by way of
menace, to load their guns in sight of M. de Bussy, round his garden.--A
few days after this, at the instigation of Bailly, two other proprietors
in the neighborhood are assassinated in their houses. Finally, on a
journey to Lyons, M. de Bussy learns "that the chateaux in Poitou
are again in flames, and that the work is to begin again
everywhere."--Alarmed at all these indications, "he resolves to form a
company of volunteers, which, taking up their quarters in his chateau,
can serve the whole canton on a legal requisition." He thinks that about
fifteen brave men will be sufficient. He has already six men with him
in the month of October, 1790; green coats are ordered for them, and
buttons are bought for the uniform. Seven or eight domestics may be
added to the number. In the way of arms and munitions the chateau
contains two kegs of gunpowder which were on hand before 1789, seven
blunderbusses, and five cavalry sabers, left there in passing by M.
de Bussy's old dragoons: to these must be added two double-barreled
fowling-pieces, three soldiers' muskets, five brace of pistols, two poor
common guns, two old swords, and a hunting-knife. Such is the garrison,
such the arsenal, and these are the preparations, so well justified and
so slight, which prejudice conjointly with gossip is about to transform
into a great conspiracy.
The chateau, in effect, was an object of suspicion in the village from
the very first day. All its visitors, whenever they went out or came
in, with all the details of their actions, were watched, denounced,
exaggerated, and misinterpreted. If through the awkwardness or
carelessness of so many inexperienced National Guards, a stray ball
reaches a farm-house one day in broad daylight, it comes from the
chateau; it is the aristocrats who have fired upon the peasants.--There
is the same state of suspicion in the neighboring towns. The municipal
body of Valence, hearing that two youths had ordered coats made "of a
color which seemed suspicious," send for the tailor; he confesses the
fact, and adds that "they intended to put the buttons on themselves."
Such a detail is alarming. An inquiry is set on foot and the alarm
increases; people in a strange uniform have been seen passing on their
way to the chateau of Villiers; from thence, on reaching the number of
two hundred, they will go and join the garrison of Besançon; they will
travel four at a time in order to avoid detection. At Besançon they are
to meet a corps of forty thousand men, commanded by M. Autichamp, which
corps is to march on to Paris to carry off the King, and break up the
National Assembly. The National Guards along the whole route are to
be forced into the lines. At a certain distance each man is to receive
1,200 francs, and, at the end of the expedition, is to be enrolled
in the Artois Guard, or sent home with a recompense of 12,000
francs.--Meanwhile, the Prince de Condé; with forty thousand men, will
come by the way of Pont Saint-Esprit in Languedoc, rally the disaffected
of Carpentras and of the Jalès camp to his standard, and occupy Cette
and the other seaports; and finally, the Comte d'Artois, on his side,
will enter by Pont-Beauvoisin with thirty thousand men.--A horrible
discovery! The municipal authorities of Valence immediately inform those
of Lyons, Besançon, Châlons, Maçon, and others beside. On the strength
of this the municipal body of Maçon, "considering that the enemies of
the Revolution are ever making the most strenuous efforts to annihilate
the Constitution which secures the happiness of this empire," and "that
it is highly important to frustrate their designs," sends two hundred
men of its National Guard to the chateau of Villiers," empowered to
employ armed force in case of resistance." For greater security,
this troop is joined by the National Guards of the three neighboring
parishes. M. de Bussy, on being told that they were climbing over the
wall into his garden, seizes a gun and takes aim, but does not fire, and
then, the requisition being legal, throws all open to them. There are
found in the house six green coats, seven dozens of large buttons, and
fifteen dozens of small ones. The proof is manifest. He explains what
his project was and states his motive--it is a mere pretext. He makes a
sign, as an order, to his valet--there is a positive complicity. M. de
Bussy, his six guests, and the valet, are arrested and transported to
Maçon. A trial takes place, with depositions and interrogatories, in
which the truth is elicited in spite of the most adverse testimony;
it is clear that M. de Bussy never intended to do more than defend
himself.--But prejudice is a blindfold to hostile eyes. It cannot be
admitted that, under a constitution which is perfect, an innocent man
could incur danger; the objection is made to him that "it is not natural
for an armed company to be formed to resist a massacre by which it is
not menaced;" they are convinced beforehand that he is guilty. On a
decree of the National Assembly the minister had ordered all accused
persons to be brought to Paris by the constabulary and hussars; the
National Guard of Maçon, "in the greatest state of agitation," declares
that, "as it had arrested M. de Bussy, it would not consent to his
transport by any other body. . . Undoubtedly, the object is to allow him
to escape on the way," but it will know how to keep its captive secure.
The guard, in fine, of its own authority, escorts M. de Bussy to Paris,
into the Abbaye prison, where he is kept confined for several months--so
long, indeed, that, after a new trial and investigation, the absurdity
of the accusation being too palpable, they are obliged to set him at
liberty.--Such is the situation of most of the gentry on their own
estates, and M. de Bussy, even acquitted and vindicated, will act wisely
in not returning home.
III.--Domiciliary visits.
The fifth jacquerie.--Burgundy and Lyonnais in 1791.--M. de
Chaponay and M. Guillin-Dumoutet
He would be nothing but a hostage there. Alone against thousands, sole
survivor and representative of an abolished régime which all detest,
it is the noble against whom everybody turns whenever a political shock
seems to shake the new régime. He is at least disarmed, as he might
be dangerous, and, in these popular executions, brutal instincts and
appetites break loose like a bull that dashes through a door and rages
through a dwelling-house. In the same department, some months later,
on the news arriving of the arrest of the King at Varennes, "all
nonjuring[3313] priests and ci-devant nobles are exposed to the horrors
of persecution." Bands forcibly enter houses to seize arms: Commarin,
Grosbois, Montculot, Chaudenay, Créancé, Toisy, Chatellenot, and other
houses are thus visited, and several are sacked. During the night
of June 26-27, 1791, at the chateau of Créancé "there is pillaging
throughout; the mirrors are broken, the pictures are torn up, and the
doors are broken down." The master of the house, "M. de Comeau-Créncé,
Knight of St. Louis, horribly maltreated, is dragged to the foot of the
stairs, where he lies as if dead:" previous to this, "he was forced to
give a considerable contribution, and to refund all penalties collected
by him before the Revolution as the local lord of the manor. "--Two
other proprietors in the neighborhood, both Knights of St. Louis, are
treated in the same way. "That is the way in which three old and brave
soldiers are rewarded for their services!" A fourth, a peaceable man,
escapes beforehand, leaving his keys in the locks and his gardener in
the house. Notwithstanding this, the doors and the clothes-presses were
broken open, the pillaging lasting five hours and a half; with
threats of setting the house on fire if the seigneur did not make his
appearance. Questions were asked "as to whether he attended the mass of
the new curé whether he had formerly exacted fines, and finally, whether
any of the inhabitants had any complaint to make against him." No
complaint is made; on the contrary, he is rather beloved.--But, in
tumults of this sort, a hundred madmen and fifty rogues prescribe the
law to the timid and the indifferent. These outlaws declared that "they
were acting under orders; they compelled the mayor and prosecuting
attorney to take part in their robberies; they likewise took the
precaution to force a few honest citizens, by using the severest
threats, to march along with them." These people come the next day to
apologize to the pillaged proprietor, while the municipal officers draw
up a statement of the violence practiced against them. The violence
nevertheless, is accomplished, and, as it will go unpunished, it is soon
to be repeated.
A beginning and an end are already made in the two neighboring
departments. There, especially in the south, nothing is more instructive
than to see how an outbreak stimulated by enthusiasm for the public good
immediately degenerates under the impulse of private interest, and ends
in crime.--Around Lyons,[3314] under the same pretext and at the same
date, similar mobs perform similar visitations, and, on all these
occasions, "the rent-rolls are burnt, and houses are pillaged and set on
fire. Municipal authority, organized for the security of property, is in
many hands but one facility more for its violation. The National
Guard seems to be armed merely for the protection of robbery and
disorder."--For more than thirty years, M. de Chaponay, the father of
six children of whom three are in the service, expended his vast income
on his estate of Beaulieu, giving occupation to a number of persons,
men, women, and children. After the hailstorm of 1761, which nearly
destroyed the village of Moranée, he rebuilt thirty-three houses,
furnished others with timber for the framework, supplied the commune
with wheat, and, for several years, obtained for the inhabitants a
diminution of their taxation. In 1790, he celebrated the Federation
Festival on a magnificent scale, giving two banquets, one of a hundred
and thirty seats, for the municipal bodies and officers of the National
Guards in the vicinity, and the other of a thousand seats for the
privates. If any of the gentry had reason to believe himself popular
and safe it was certainly this man.--On the 24th of June, 1791, the
municipal authorities of Moranée, Lucenay, and Chazelai, with their
mayors and National Guards, in all nearly two thousand men, arrive at
the chateau with drums beating and flags flying. M. de Chaponay goes out
to meet them, and begs to know to what he owes "the pleasure" of their
visit. They reply that they do not come to offend him, but to carry out
the orders of the district, which oblige them to take possession of the
chateau and to place in it a guard of sixty men: on the following day
the "district" and the National Guard of Villefranche are to come and
inspect it.--Be it noted that these orders are imaginary, for M. de
Chaponay asks in vain to see them; they cannot be produced. The cause of
their setting out, probably, is the false rumor that the National Guard
of Villefranche is coming to deprive them of a booty on which they had
calculated.--Nevertheless M. de Chaponay submits; he merely requests
the municipal officers to make the search themselves and in an orderly
manner. Upon this the commandant of the National Guard of Lucenay
exclaims, with some irritation, that "all are equal and all must go
in," and at the same moment all rush forward. "M. de Chaponay orders the
apartments to be opened; they immediately shut them up, purposely to
let the sappers break through the doors with their axes."--Everything is
pillaged, "plate, assignats, stocks of linen, laces and other articles;
the trees of the avenues are hacked and mutilated; the cellars are
emptied, the casks are rolled out on the terrace, the wine is suffered
to run out, and the chateau keep is demolished. . . . The officers urge
on those that are laggard." Towards nine o'clock in the evening M. de
Chaponay is informed by his servants that the municipal authorities have
determined upon forcing him to sign an abandonment of his feudal dues
and afterwards beheading him. He escapes with his wife through the only
door which is left unguarded, wanders about all night, exposed to the
gun-shots of the squads which are on his track, and reaches Lyons only
on the following day.--Meanwhile the pillagers send him notice that if
he does not abandon his rentals, they will cut down his forests and
burn up everything on his estate. The chateau, indeed, is fired three
distinct times, while, in the interval, the band sack another chateau at
Bayère, and, on again passing by that of M. de Chaponay, demolish a
dam which had cost 10,000 livres.--The public prosecutor, for his part,
remains quiet, notwithstanding the appeals to him: he doubtless says to
himself that a gentleman whose house has been searched is lucky to have
saved his life, and that others, like M. Guillin-Dumoutet, for example,
have not been as fortunate.
The latter gentleman, formerly captain of a vessel belonging to the
India Company, afterwards Commandant at Senegal, now retired from active
life, occupied his chateau of Poleymieux with his young wife and two
infant children, his sisters, nieces, and sister-in-law--in all, ten
women belonging to his family and domestic service--one Negro servant
and himself; an old man of sixty years of age; here is a haunt of
militant conspirators which must be disarmed as soon as possible.[3315]
Unfortunately, a brother of M. Guillin, accused of treason to the
nation, had been arrested ten months previously, which was quite
sufficient for the clubs in the neighborhood. In the month of December,
1790, the chateau had already been ransacked by the people of the
parishes in the vicinity: nothing was found, and the Department first
censured and afterwards interdicted these arbitrary searches. On this
occasion they will manage things better.--On the 26th of June, 1791, at
ten o'clock in the morning, the municipal body of Poleymicux, along with
two other bodies in their scarves, and three hundred National Guards,
are seen approaching, under the usual pretext of searching for arms.
Madame Guillin presents herself; reminds them of the interdict of the
Department, and demands the legal order under which they act. They
refuse to give it. M. Guillin descends in his turn and offers to open
his doors to them if they will produce the order. They have no order
to show him. During the colloquy a certain man named Rosier, a former
soldier who had deserted twice, and who is now in command of the
National Guard, seizes M. Guillin by the throat; the old captain defends
himself; presents a pistol at the man, which misses fire, and then,
throwing the fellow off, withdraws into the house, closing the door
behind him.--Soon after this, the tocsin sounds in the neighborhood,
thirty parishes start up, and two thousand men arrive. Madame Guillin,
by entreaties, succeeds in having delegates appointed, chosen by the
crowd, to inspect the chateau. These delegates examine the apartments,
and declare that they can find nothing but the arms ordinarily kept on
hand. This declaration is of no effect: the multitude, whose excitement
is increased by waiting, feel their strength, and have no idea of
returning empty-handed. A volley is fired, and the chateau windows
are riddled with balls. As a last effort Madame Guillin, with her two
children in her arms, comes out, and going to the municipal officers,
calls upon them to do their duty. Far from doing this they retain her
as a hostage, and place her in such a position that, if there is firing
from the chateau, she may receive the bullets. Meanwhile, the doors are
forced, the house is pillaged from top to bottom, and then set on fire;
M. Guillin, who seeks refuge in the keep, is almost reached by the
flames. At this moment, some of the assailants, less ferocious than
the rest, prevail upon him to descend, and they answer for his life.
Scarcely has he shown himself when others fall on him; they cry that he
must be killed, that he has a life-rent of 36,000 francs from the State,
and "this will be so much saved for the nation." "He is hacked to pieces
alive;" his head is cut off and borne upon a pike; his body is cut up,
and sent piece by piece to each parish; several wash their hands in his
blood, and besmear their faces with it. It seems as if tumult, clamor,
incendiarism, robbery, and murder had aroused in them not only the cruel
instincts of the savage, but the carnivorous appetites of the brute;
some of them, seized by the gendarmerie at Chasselay, had roasted the
dead man's arm and dined upon it.[3316]--Madame Guillin, who is saved
through the compassion of two of the inhabitants of the place, succeeds,
after encountering many dangers, in reaching Lyons; she and her children
lost everything, "the chateau, its dependencies, the crop of the
preceding year, wine, grain, furniture, plate, ready money, assignats,
notes, and contracts." Ten days later, the department gives notice to
the National Assembly that "similar projects are still being plotted and
arranged, and that there are (always) threats of burning chateaux and
rent-rolls;" that no doubt of this can possibly exist: "the inhabitants
of the country only await the opportunity, to renew these scenes of
horror."[3317]
IV.--The nobles obliged to leave the rural districts.
They take refuge in towns.--The dangers they incur.--The
eighty-two gentlemen of Caen
Amidst these multiplied and reviving Jacqueries there is nothing left
but flight, and the nobles, driven out of the rural districts, seek
refuge in the towns. But here also a jacquerie awaits them. As the
effects of the Constitution are developed, successive administrations
become feebler and more partial; the unbridled populace has become
more excitable and more violent; the enthroned club has become more
suspicious and more despotic. Henceforth the club, through or in
opposition to the administrative bodies, leads the populace, and the
nobles will find it as hostile as the peasants. All their reunions,
even when liberal, are closed like that in Paris, through the illegal
interference of mobs, or through the iniquitous action of the popular
magistrates. All their associations, even when legal and salutary, are
broken up by brute force or by municipal intolerance, They are punished
for having thought of defending themselves, and slaughtered because they
try to avoid assassination.--Three or four hundred gentlemen, who
were threatened on their estates, sought refuge with their families in
Caen;[3318] and they trusted to find one there, for, by three different
resolutions, the municipal body promised them aid and protection.
Unfortunately, the club thinks otherwise, and, on August 23, 1791,
prints and posts up a list of their names and residences, declaring that
since "their suspected opinions have compelled them to abandon the rural
districts," they are emigrants in the interior;" from which it follows
that "their conduct must be scrupulously watched," because "it may be
the effect of some dangerous plot against the country." Fifteen are
especially designated; among others "the former curé of Saint-Loup, the
great bloodhound of the aristocrats, and all of them very suspicious
persons, harboring the worst intentions."--Thus denounced and singled
out, it is evident that they can no longer sleep peacefully: moreover,
now that their addresses are published, they are openly threatened with
domiciliary visits and violence. As to the administrative authorities,
their intervention cannot be expected on; the department itself gives
notice to the minister that, as the law stands, it cannot put the
chateau in the hands of the regulars,[3319] as this would, it is said,
excite the National Guard. Besides, how without an army is this post to
be wrested from the hands which hold it? It is impossible with only the
resources which the Constitution affords us." Thus, in the defense of
the oppressed, the Constitution is a dead letter.--Hence it is that the
refugees, finding protection only in themselves, undertake to help
each other. No association can be more justifiable, more pacific, more
innocent. Its object is "to demand the execution of the laws constantly
violated, and to protect persons and property." In each quarter they
will try to bring together "all good citizens;" they will form a
committee of eight members, and, in each committee, there will always
be "an officer of justice or a member of the administrative body with
an officer or subaltern of the National Guard." Should any citizen be
attacked in person or property the association will draw up a petition
in his favor. Should any particular act of violence require the
employment of public force, the members of the district will assemble
under the orders of the officer of justice and of the National Guard
to enforce obedience. "In all possible cases" they "will avoid with the
greatest care any insult of individuals; they will consider that
the object of the meeting is solely to ensure public peace, and that
protection from the law to which every citizen is entitled."--In short,
they are volunteer constables. Turn the inquiry which way they will,
a hostile municipality and a prejudiced tribunal can put no other
construction upon it; they find nothing else. The only evidence against
one of the leaders is a letter in which he tries to prevent a gentleman
from going to Coblentz, striving to prove to him that he will be more
useful at Caen. The principal evidence against the association is that
of a townsman whom they wished to enroll, and of whom they demanded his
opinions. He had stated that he was in favor of the execution of the
laws; upon which they told him: "In this case you belong to us, and
are more of an aristocrat than you think you are. Their aristocracy, in
effect, consists wholly in the suppression of brigandage. No claim is
more unpalatable, because it interposes an obstacle to the arbitrary
acts of a party which thinks it has a right to do as it pleases. On
the 4th of October the regiment of Aunis left the town, and all good
citizens were handed over to the militia, "in uniform or not," they
alone being armed. That day, for the first time in a long period, M.
Bunel, the former curé of Saint-Jean, with the consent and assistance of
his sworn successor, officiates at the mass. There is a large gathering
of the orthodox, which causes uneasiness among the patriots. The
following day M. Bunel is to say mass again; whereupon, through the
municipal authorities, the patriots forbid him to officiate, to which he
submits. Nevertheless, for lack of due notice, a crowd of the faithful
have arrived and the church is filled. A dangerous mob! The patriots
and National Guards arrive "to preserve order," which has not been
disturbed, and which they alone disturb. Threatening words are exchanged
between the servants of the nobles and the National Guard. The latter
draw their swords, and a young man is hewn down and trampled on; M. de
Saffrey, who comes to his assistance unarmed, is himself cut down and
pierced with bayonets, and two others are wounded.--Meanwhile, in a
neighboring street, M. Achard de Vagogne, seeing a man maltreated by
armed men, approaches, in order to make peace. The man is shot down
and M. Achard is covered with saber and bayonet gashes: "there is not a
thread on him which is not dyed with the blood that ran down even into
his shoes." In this condition he is led to the chateau along with M. de
Saifrey. Others break down the door of the house of M. du Rosel, an old
officer of seventy-five years, of which fifty-nine have been passed in
the service, and pursue him even over the wall of his garden. A fourth
squad seizes M. d'Héricy, another venerable officer, who, like M. du
Rosel, was ignorant of all that was going on, and was quietly leaving
for his country seat.--The town is full of tumult, and, through the
orders of the municipal authorities, the general alarm is sounded.
The time for the special constables to act has come; about sixty
gentlemen, with a number of merchants and artisans, set out. According
to the rules of their association, and with significant scruple, they
beg an Officer of the National Guard, who happens to be passing, to put
himself at their head; they reach the Place Saint-Sauveur, encounter the
superior officer sent after them by the municipal authorities, and, at
his first command, follow him to the Hôtel-de-Ville. On reaching this,
without any resistance on their part, they are arrested, disarmed, and
searched. The rules and regulations of their league are found on their
persons; they are evidently hatching a counter-revolution. The uproar
against them is terrible. "To keep them safe," they are conducted to the
chateau, while many of them are cruelly treated on the way by the
crowd. Others, seized in their houses--M. Levaillant and a servant of M.
d'Héricy--are carried off bleeding and pierced with bayonets. Eighty-two
prisoners are thus collected, while fears are constantly entertained
that they may escape. "Their bread and meat are cut up into little
pieces, to see that nothing is concealed therein; the surgeons, who are
likewise treated as aristocrats, are denied access to them." Nocturnal
visits are, at the same time, paid to their houses; every stranger is
ordered to present himself at the Hôtel-de-Ville, to state why he comes
to the town to reside, and to give up his arms; every nonjuring priest
is forbidden to say mass. The Department, which is disposed to resist,
has its hands tied and confesses its powerlessness. "The people," it
writes, "know their strength: they know that we have no power; excited
by disreputable citizens, they permit whatever serves their passions or
their interests; they influence our deliberations, and force us to those
which, under other circumstances, we should carefully avoid."--Three
days after this the victors celebrate their triumph "with drums, music,
and lighted torches; the people are using hammers to destroy on the
mansions the coats-of-arms which had previously been covered over with
plaster;" the defeat of the aristocrats is accomplished.--And yet their
innocence is so clearly manifest that the Legislative Assembly itself
cannot help recognizing it. After eleven weeks of durance the order is
given to set them free, with the exception of two, a youth of less
than eighteen years and an old man, almost an octogenarian, on whom two
letters, misunderstood, still leave a shadow of suspicion.--But it is
not certain that the people are disposed to give them up. The National
Guard refuses to discharge them in open daylight and serve as their
escort. Even the evening before numerous groups of women, a few men
mingled with them, talk of murdering all those fellows the moment they
set foot outside the chateau." They have to be let out at two o'clock
in the morning, secretly, under a strong guard, and to leave the town
at once as six months before they left the rural districts.--Neither in
country nor in the town[3320] are they under the protection of civil
or religious law; a gentleman, who is not compromised in the affair,
remarks that their situation is worse than that of Protestants and
vagabonds during the worst years of the Ancient Régime of them and who
abuse the use of them? Why should one be on an equality for purposes of
payment, and distinguished?
"Does not the law allow (nonjuring) priests the liberty of saying mass?
Why then can we not listen to their mass except at the risk of our
lives? Does not the law command all citizens to preserve the public
peace? Why then are those whom the cry to arms has summoned forth to
maintain public order assailed as aristocrats? Why is the refuge of
citizens which the laws have declared sacred, violated without orders,
without accusation, without any appearance of wrong-doing? Why are all
prominent citizens and those who are well off disarmed in preference to
others? Are weapons exclusively made for those but lately deprived only
for purposes of annoyance and insult?"
He has spoken right. Those who now rule form an aristocracy in
an inverse sense, contrary to the law, and yet more contrary to
nature.[3321] For, by a violent inversion, the lower grades in the
graduated scale of civilization and culture now are found uppermost,
while the superior grades are found at the uniform. The Constitution
having suppressed inequality, this has again arisen in an inverse sense.
The populace, both of town and country, taxes, imprisons, pillages, and
slays more arbitrarily, more brutally, more unjustly than feudal barons,
and for its serfs or villains it has its ancient chieftains.
V.--Persecutions in private life.
Let us suppose that, in order not to excite suspicion, they are
content to be without arms, to form no more associations, not to attend
elections, to shut themselves up at home, to strictly confine themselves
within the harmless precincts of domestic life. The same distrust, the
same animosity, still pursues them there.--At Cahors,[3322] where
the municipal authorities, in spite of the law, had just expelled the
Carthusians who, under legal sanction, chose to remain and live
in common, two of the monks, before their departure, give to M. de
Beaumont, their friend and neighbor, four dwarf pear-trees and some
onions in blossom in their garden. On the strength of this, the
municipal body decree that
"the sieur Louis de Beaumont, formerly count, is guilty of having
audaciously and maliciously damaged national property," condemns him
to pay a fine of three hundred livres, and orders "that the four
pear-trees, pulled up in the so-called Carthusian garden, be brought on
the following day, Wednesday, to the door of the said sieur de Beaumont,
and there remain for four consecutive days, guarded, day and night, by
two fusiliers, at the expense of the said sieur de Beaumont; and upon
the said trees shall be placed the following inscription, to wit:
Louis de Beaumont, destroyer of the national property. And the judgment
herewith rendered shall be printed to the number of one thousand
copies, read, published, and posted at the expense of the said sieur
de Beaumont, and duly addressed throughout the department of Lot to the
districts and municipalities thereof, as well as to all societies of the
Friends of the Constitution and of Liberty."
Every line of this legal invective discloses the malignant envy of
the local recorder, who revenges himself for having formerly bowed too
low.--The following year, M. de Beaumont, having formally and under
notarial sanction bought a church which was sold by the district, along
with the ornaments and objects of worship it contained, the mayor and
municipal officers, followed by a lot of workmen, come and carry away
and destroy everything--confessionals, altars, and even the saint's
canonised body, which had been interred for one hundred and fifty years:
so that, after their departure, "the edifice resembled a vast barn
filled with ruins and rubbish."[3323] It must be noted that, at this
very time, M. de Beaumont is military commandant at Perigord. The
treatment he undergoes shows what is in reserve for ordinary nobles. I
do not recommend them to attend official sales of property.[3324]--Will
they even be free in their domestic enjoyments, and on entering a
drawing-room are they sure of quietly passing an evening there?--At
Paris, even, a number of persons of rank, among them the ambassadors
of Denmark and Venice, are listening to a concert in a mansion in the
Faubourg Saint-Honoré given by a foreign virtuoso, when a cart enters
the court loaded with fifty bundles of hay, the monthly supply for the
horses. A patriot, who sees the cart driven in, imagines that the King
is concealed underneath the hay, and that he has come there for the
purpose of plotting with the aristocrats about his flight. A mob
gathers, and the National Guard arrives, along with a commissioner,
while four grenadiers stand guard around the cart. The commissioner,
in the meantime, inspects the hotel; he sees music-stands, and the
arrangements for a supper; comes back, has the cart unloaded, and states
to the people that he has found nothing suspicious. The people do not
believe him, and demand a second inspection. This is made by twenty-four
delegates; the bundles of hay, moreover, are counted, and several of
them are unbound, but all in vain. Disappointed and irritated, having
anticipated a spectacle, the crowd insists that all the invited guests,
men and women, should leave the house on foot, and only get into
their carriages at the end of the street. "First comes a file of empty
carriages;" next, "all the guests in their evening attire, and the
ladies in full dress, trembling with fear, with downcast eyes, between
two rows of men, women, and children, who stare them in the face, and
overwhelm them with insults."[3325]
Suspected of holding secret meetings, and called to account in his own
house, has the noble at least the right to frequent a public saloon,
to eat in a restaurant, and to take the fresh air in a balcony?--The
Vicomte de Mirabeau, who has just dined in the Palais-Royal, stands at
the window to take the air, and is recognized; there is a
gathering, and the cry is soon heard, "Down with Mirabeau-Tonneau
(barrel-Mirabeau)!"[3326] "Gravel is flung at him from all sides, and
occasionally stones. One of the window-panes is broken by a stone.
Immediately picking up the stone, he shows it to the crowd, and, at
the same time, quietly places it on the sill of the window, in token of
moderation." There is a loud outcry; his friends force him to withdraw
inside, and Bailly, the mayor, comes in person to quiet the aggressors.
In this case there are good reasons for their hatred. The gentleman
whom they stone is a bon-vivant, large and fat, fond of rich epicurean
Suppers; and on this account the populace imagine him to be a monster,
and even worse, an ogre. With regard to these nobles, whose greatest
misfortune is to be over-polished and too worldly, the over-excited
imagination revives its old nursery tales.--M. de Montlosier, living in
the Rue Richelieu, finds that he is watched on his way to the National
Assembly. One woman especially, from thirty to thirty-two years of age,
who sold meat at a stall in the Passage Saint-Guillaume, "regarded him
with special attention. As soon as she saw him coming she took up a
long, broad knife which she sharpened before him, casting furious looks
at him." He asks his housekeeper what this means. Two children of that
quarter have disappeared, carried off by gipsies, and the report is
current that M. de Montlosier, the Marquis de Mirabeau, and other
deputies of the "right," meet together "to hold orgies in which they eat
little children."
In this state of public opinion there is no crime which is not imputed
to them, no insult which is not freely bestowed on them. "Traitors,
tyrants, conspirators, assassins," such is the current vocabulary of
the clubs and newspapers in relation to them. "Aristocrat" signifies
all this, and whoever dares to refute the calumny is himself an
aristocrat.--At the Palais-Royal, it is constantly repeated that M. de
Castries, in his last duel, made use of a poisoned sword, and an officer
of the navy who protests against this false report is himself accused,
tried on the spot, and condemned "to be shut up in the guard-house or
thrown into the fountain."[3327]--The nobles must beware of defending
their honor in the usual way and of meeting an insult with a challenge!
At Castelnau, near Cahors,[3328] one of those who, the preceding year,
marched against the incendiaries, M. de Bellud, Knight of Saint-Louis,
on coming down the public square with his brother, a guardsman, is
greeted with cries of "The aristocrat! to the lamp post!" His brother is
in a morning coat and slippers, and not wishing to get into trouble they
do not reply. A squad of the National Guard, passing by, repeats the
cry, but they still remain silent. The shout continues, and M. de
Bellud, after some time has elapsed, begs the captain to order his men
to be quiet. He refuses, and M. de Bellud demands satisfaction outside
the town. At these words the National Guards rush at M. de Bellud with
fixed bayonets. His brother receives a saber-cut on the neck, while he,
defending himself with his sword, slightly wounds the captain and one
of the men. The two brothers, alone against the whole body, fight on,
retreating to their house, in which they are blockaded. Towards seven
o'clock in the evening, two or three hundred National Guards from
Cahors arrive to reinforce the besiegers. The house is taken, and
the guardsman, escaping across the fields, sprains his ankle and is
captured. M. de Bellud, who has found his way into another house,
continues to defend himself there: the house is set on fire and burnt,
together with two others alongside of it. Taking refuge in a cellar he
still keeps on firing. Bundles of lighted straw are thrown in at the
air-holes. Almost suffocated, he springs out, kills his first assailant
with a shot from one pistol, and himself with another. His head is cut
off with that of his servant. The guardsman is made to kiss the two
heads, and, on his demanding a glass of water, they fill his mouth
with the blood which drops from the severed head of his brother. The
victorious gang then set out for Cahors, with the two heads stuck on
bayonets, and the guardsman in a cart. It comes to a halt before a house
in which a literary circle meets, suspected by the Jacobin club. The
wounded man is made to descend from the cart and is hung: his body is
riddled with balls, and everything the house contains is broken up,
"the furniture is thrown out of the windows, and the house pulled
down."--Every popular execution is of this character, at once prompt and
complete, similar to those of an Oriental monarch who, on the instant,
without inquiry or trial, avenges his offended majesty, and for
every offense, knows no other punishment than death. At Tulle, M. de
Massy,[3329] lieutenant of the "Royal Navarre," having struck a man that
insulted him, is seized in the house in which he took refuge, and, in
spite of the three administrative bodies, is at once massacred.--At
Brest, two anti-revolutionary caricatures having been drawn with
charcoal on the walls of the military coffee-house, the excited crowd
lay the blame of it on the officers; one of these, M. Patry, takes it
upon himself, and, on the point of being torn to pieces, attempts to
kill himself. He is disarmed, but, when the municipal authorities come
to his assistance, they find him "already dead through an infinite
number of wounds," and his head is borne about on the end of a
pike.[3330]--
VI.--Conduct of officers.
Their self-sacrifice.--Disposition of the soldiery.
--Military outbreaks.--Spread and increase of
insubordination.--Resignation of the officers.
Much better would it be to live under an Eastern king, for he is not
found everywhere, nor always furious and mad, like the populace. Nowhere
are the nobles safe, neither in public nor in private life, neither in
the country nor in the towns, neither associated together nor separate.
Popular hostility hangs over them like a dark and threatening cloud from
one end of the territory to the other, and the tempest bursts upon them
in a continuous storm of vexations, outrages, calumnies, robberies, and
acts of violence; here, there, and almost daily, bloody thunderbolts
fall haphazard on the most inoffensive heads, on an old man asleep, on a
Knight of Saint-Louis taking a walk, on a family at prayers in a church.
But, in this aristocracy, crushed down in some places and attacked
everywhere, the thunderbolt finds one predestined group which attracts
it and on which it constantly falls, and that is the corps of officers.
VI.--Conduct of the officers.
Their self-sacrifice.--Disposition of the soldiery.
--Military outbreaks.--Spread and increase of
insubordination.--Resignation of the officers.
With the exception of a few fops, frequenters of drawing-rooms, and the
court favorites who have reached a high rank through the intrigues of
the antechamber, it was in this group, especially in the medium ranks,
that true moral nobility was then found. Nowhere in France was there so
much tried, substantial merit. A man of genius, who associated with
them in his youth, rendered them this homage: many among them are
men possessing "the most amiable characters and minds of the highest
order."[3331] Indeed, for most of them, military service was not a
career of ambition, but an obligation of birth. It was the rule in each
noble family for the eldest son to enter the army, and advancement was
of but little consequence. He discharged the debt of his rank; this
sufficed for him, and, after twenty or thirty years of service, the
order of Saint-Louis, and sometimes a meager pension, were all he had
a right to expect. Amongst nine or ten thousand officers, the great
majority coming from the lower and poorer class of provincial nobles,
body-guards, lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant-colonels, and
even colonels, have no other pretension. Satisfied with favors[3332]
restricted to their subordinate rank, they leave the highest grades of
the service to the heirs of the great families, to the courtiers or to
the parvenus at Versailles, and content themselves with remaining the
guardians of public order, and the brave defenders of the State. Under
this system, when the heart is not depraved it becomes exalted; it is
made a point of honor to serve without compensation; there is nothing
but the public welfare in view, and all the more because, at this
moment, it is the absorbing topic of all minds and of all literature.
Nowhere has practical philosophy, that which consists in a spirit
of abnegation, more deeply penetrated than among this unrecognized
nobility. Under a polished, brilliant, and sometimes frivolous exterior,
they have a serious soul; the old sentiment of honor is converted
into one of patriotism. Set to execute the laws, with force in hand to
maintain peace through fear, they feel the importance of their mission,
and, for two years, fulfill its duties with extraordinary moderation,
gentleness, and patience, not only at the risk of their lives, but
amidst great and multiplied humiliations, through the sacrifice of their
authority and self-esteem, through the subjection of their intelligent
will to the dictation and incapacity of the masters imposed upon them.
For a noble officer to respond to the requisitions of an extemporized
bourgeois municipal body,[3333] to subordinate his competence, courage,
and prudence to the blunders and alarms of five or six inexperienced,
frightened, and timid attorneys, to place his energy and daring at the
service of their presumption, feebleness, and lack of decision,
even when their orders or refusal of orders are manifestly absurd or
injurious, even when they are opposed to the previous instructions of
his general or of his minister, even when they end in the plundering
of a market, the burning of a chateau, the assassination of an innocent
person, even when they impose upon him the obligation of witnessing
crime with his sword sheathed and arms folded,[3334]--this is a hard
task. It is hard for the noble officer to see independent, popular, and
bourgeois troops organized in the face of his own troops, rivals and
even hostile, in any case ten times as numerous and no less exacting
than sensitive--hard to be expected to show them deference and extend
civilities to them, to surrender to them posts, arsenals, and citadels,
to treat their chiefs as equals, however ignorant or unworthy, and
whatever they may be--here a lawyer, there a Capuchin, elsewhere a
brewer or a shoemaker, most generally some demagogue, and, in many a
town or village, some deserter or soldier drummed out of his regiment
for bad conduct, perhaps one of the noble's own men, a scamp whom he has
formerly discharged with the yellow cartridge, telling him to go and
be hung elsewhere. It is hard for the noble officer to be publicly and
daily calumniated on account of his rank and title, to be characterized
as a traitor at the club and in the newspapers, to be designated by
name as an object of popular suspicion and fury, to be hooted at in the
streets and in the theater, to submit to the disobedience of his men, to
be denounced, insulted, arrested, fleeced, hunted down and slaughtered
by them and by the populace, to see before him a cruel, ignoble, and
unavenged death--that of M. de Launay, murdered at Paris--that of M.
de Belzunce, murdered at Caen--that of M. de Beausset, murdered at
Marseilles--that of M. de Voisins, murdered at Valence--that of M. de
Rully, murdered at Bastia, or that of M. de Rochetailler, murdered at
Port-au-Prince.[3335] All this is endured by the officers among the
nobles. Not one of the municipalities, even Jacobin, can find any
pretext which will warrant the charge of disobeying orders. Through tact
and deference they avoid all conflict with the National Guards. Never
do they give provocation, and, even when insulted, rarely defend
themselves. Their gravest faults consist of imprudent conversations,
vivacious expressions and witticisms. Like good watch-dogs amongst a
frightened herd which trample them under foot, or pierce them with
their horns, they allow themselves to be pierced and trampled on without
biting, and would remain at their post to the end were they not driven
away from it.
All to no purpose: doubly suspicious as members of a proscribed class,
and as heads of the army, it is against them that public distrust
excites the most frequent explosions, and so much the more as the
instrument they handle is singularly explosive. Recruited by volunteer
enlistment "amongst a passionate, turbulent, and somewhat debauched
people," the army is composed of "all that are most fiery, most
turbulent, and most debauched in the nation."[3336] Add to these the
sweepings of the alms-houses, and you find a good many blackguards
in uniform! When we consider that the pay is small, the food bad,
discipline severe, no promotion, and desertion endemic, we are no longer
surprised at the general disorder: license, to such men, is too powerful
a temptation. With wine, women, and money they have from the first
been made turncoats, and from Paris the contagion has spread to
the provinces. In Brittany,[3337] the grenadiers and chasseurs of
Ile-de-France "sell their coats, their guns, and their shoes, exacting
advances in order to consume it in the tavern;" fifty-six soldiers of
Penthièvre "wanted to murder their officers," and it is foreseen that,
left to themselves, they will soon, for lack of pay, "betake themselves
to the highways, to rob and assassinate." In Euree-et-Loir, the
dragoons,[3338] with saber and pistols in hand, visit the farmers'
houses and take bread and money, while the foot soldiers of the
"Royal-Comtois" and the dragoons of the "Colonel-Général" desert in
bands in order to go to Paris, where amusement is to be had. The main
thing with them is "to have a jolly time." In fact, the extensive
military insurrections of the earliest date, those of Paris, Versailles,
Besançon, and Strasbourg, began or ended with a revel.--Out of these
depths of gross desires there has sprung up natural or legitimate
ambitions. A number of soldiers, for twenty years past, have learned how
to read, and think themselves qualified to be officers. One quarter of
those enlisted, moreover, are young men born in good circumstances, and
whom a caprice has thrown into the army. They choke in this narrow, low,
dark, confined passage where the privileged by birth close up the issue,
and they will march over their chiefs to secure advancement. These are
the discontented, the disputants, the orators of the mess-room, and
between these barrack politicians and the politicians of the street an
alliance is at once formed.--Starting from the same point they march on
to the same end, and the imagination which has labored to blacken the
Government in the minds of the people, blackens the officers in the
minds of the soldiers.
The Treasury is empty and there are arrears of pay. The towns, burdened
with debt, no longer furnish their quotas of supplies; and at Orleans,
with the distress of the municipality before them, the Swiss of
Chateauvieux were obliged to impose on themselves a stoppage of one sou
per day and per man to have wood in winter.[3339] Grain is scarce, the
flour is spoilt, and the army bread, which was bad, has become worse.
The administration, worm-eaten by old abuses, is deranged through the
new disorder, the soldiers suffering as well through its dissolution
as through their extravagance.--They think themselves robbed and
they complain, at first with moderation; and justice is done to their
well-founded claims. Soon they exact accounts, and these are made out
for them. At Strasbourg, on these being verified before Kellermann and
a commissioner of the National Assembly, it is proved that they have not
been wronged out of a sou; nevertheless a gratification of six francs a
head is given to them, and they cry out that they are content and have
nothing more to ask for. A few months after this fresh complaints arise,
and there is a new verification: an ensign, accused of embezzlement and
whom they wished to hang, is tried in their presence; his accounting is
tidy; none of them can cite against him a proven charge, and, once more,
they remain silent. On other occasions, after hearing the reading of
registers for several hours, they yawn, cease to listen, and go outside
to get something to drink.--But the figures of their demands, as these
have been summed up by their mess-room calculators, remain implanted in
their brains; they have taken root there, and are constantly springing
up without any account or refutation being able to extirpate them. No
more writings nor speeches--what they want is money: 11,000 livres for
the Beaune regiment, 39,500 livres for that of Forez, 44,000 livres for
that of Salm, 200,000 livres for that of Chateauvieux, and similarly for
the rest. So much the worse for the officers if the money-chest does not
suffice for them; let them assess each other, or borrow on their note
of hand from the municipality, or from the rich men of the town.--For
greater security, in divers places, the soldiers take possession of the
military chest and mount guard around it: it belongs to them, since they
form the regiment, and, in any case, it is better that it should be in
their hands than in suspected hands.--Already, on the 4th of June, 1790,
the Minister of War announces to the Assembly that "the military body
threatens to fall into a perfect state of anarchy." His report shows
"the most incredible pretensions put forth in the most plain-spoken
way--orders without force, chiefs without authority, the military chest
and flags carried away, the orders of the King himself openly defied,
the officers condemned, insulted, threatened, driven off; some of them
even captive amidst their own troops, leading a precarious life in
the midst of disgust and humiliations, and, as the climax of horror,
commanders having their throat cut under the eyes and almost in the arms
of their own soldiers."
It is much worse after the July Federation. Entertained, flattered,
and indoctrinated at the clubs, their delegates, inferior officers and
privates, return to the regiment Jacobins; and henceforth correspond
with the Jacobins of Paris, "receiving their instructions and reporting
to them,"[3340]--Three weeks later, the Minister of War gives notice to
the National Assembly that there is no limit to the license in the army.
"Couriers, the bearers of fresh complaints, are arriving constantly."
In one place "a statement of the fund is demanded, and it is proposed to
divide it." Elsewhere, a garrison, with drums beating, leaves the town,
deposes its officers, and comes back sword in hand. Each regiment is
governed by a committee of soldiers. "It is in this committee that the
detention of the lieutenant-colonel of Poitou has been twice arranged;
here it is that 'Royal-Champagne' conceived the insurrection" by which
it refused to recognize a sub-lieutenant sent to it. "Every day
the minister's cabinet is filled with soldiers who are sent as
representatives to him, and who proudly come and intimate to him the
will of their constituents." Finally, at Strasbourg, seven regiments,
each represented by three delegates, formed a military congress.
The same month, the terrible insurrection of Nancy breaks out--three
regiments in revolt, the populace with them, the arsenal pillaged, three
hours of furious fighting in the streets, the insurgents firing from the
windows of the houses and from the cellar openings, five hundred
dead among the victors, and three thousand among the vanquished.--The
following month, and for six weeks,[3341] there is another insurrection,
less bloody, but more extensive, better arranged and more obstinate,
that of the whole squadron at Brest, a mutiny of twenty thousand men,
at first against their admiral and their officers, then against the new
penal code and against the National Assembly itself. The latter,
after remonstrating in vain, is obliged not only not to take rigorous
measures, but again to revise its laws.[3342]
From this time forth, I cannot enumerate the constant outbreaks in the
fleet and in the army.--Authorized by the minister, the soldier goes
to the club, where he is repeatedly told that his officers, being
aristocrats, are traitors. At Dunkirk, he is additionally taught how to
get rid of them. Clamors, denunciations, insults, musket-shots--these
are the natural means, and they are put in practice: but there is
another, recently discovered, by which an energetic officer of whom they
are afraid may be driven away. Some patriotic bully is found who comes
and insults him. If the officer fights and is not killed, the municipal
authorities have him arraigned, and his chiefs send him off along with
his seconds "in order not to disturb the harmony between the soldier and
the citizen." If he declines the proposed duel, the contempt of his men
obliges him to quit the regiment. In either case he is got out of the
way.[3343]--They have no scruples in relation to him. Present or absent,
a noble officer must certainly be plotting with his emigrant companions;
and on this a story is concocted. Formerly, to prove that sacks of flour
were being thrown into the river, the soldiers alleged that these sacks
were tied with blue cords (cordons bleus). Now, to confirm the belief
that an officer is conspiring with Coblentz, it suffices to state that
he rides a white horse; a certain captain, at Strasbourg, barely escapes
being cut to pieces for this crime; "the devil could not get it out of
their heads that he was acting as a spy, and that the little grey-hound"
which accompanies him on his rides "is used to make signals. "--One year
after, at the time when the National Assembly completes its work, M.
de Lameth, M. Fréteau, and M. Alquier state before it that Luckner,
Rochambeau, and the most popular generals, "no longer are responsible
for anything." The Auvergne regiment has driven away its officers and
forms a separate society, which obeys no one. The second battalion of
Beaune is on the point of setting fire to Arras. It is almost necessary
to lay siege to Phalsbourg, whose garrison has mutinied. Here,
"disobedience to the general's orders is formal." There "are soldiers
who have to be urged to stand sentinel; whom they dare not put in
confinement for discipline; who threaten to fire on their officers; who
stray off the road, pillage everything, and take aim at the corporal who
tries to bring them back." At Blois, a part of the regiment "has just
arrived without either clothes or arms, the soldiers having sold all on
the road to provide for their debauchery." One among them, delegated by
his companions, proposes to the Jacobins at Paris to "de-aristocratise"
the army by cashiering all the nobles. Another declares, with the
applause of the club, that "seeing how the palisades of Givet are
constructed, he is going to denounce the Minister of War at the tribunal
of the sixth arrondissement of Paris."
It is manifest that, for noble officers, the situation is no longer
tenable. After waiting patiently for twenty-three months, many of them
left through conscientiousness, when the National Assembly, forcing a
third oath upon them, struck out of the formula the name of the King,
their born general.[3344]--Others depart at the end of the Constituent
Assembly, "because they risk being hung." A large number resign at the
end of 1791 and during the first months of 1792, in proportion as
the new code and the new recruiting system for the army develop their
results.[3345] In fact, on the one hand, through the soldiers and
inferior officers having a voice in the election of their chiefs and
a seat in the military courts, "there is no longer the shadow of
discipline; verdicts are given from pure caprice; the soldier contracts
the habit of despising his superiors, of whose punishments he has no
fear, and from whom he expects no reward; the officers are paralyzed
to such a degree as to become entirely superfluous personages." On the
other hand, the majority of the National Volunteers are composed of "men
bought by the communes" and administrative bodies, worthless characters
of the street-corners, rustic vagabonds forced to march by lot or
bribery,"[3346] and along with them, enthusiasts and fanatics to such an
extent that, from March, 1792, from the spot of their enlistment to
the frontier, their track is everywhere marked by pillage, robbery,
devastation, and assassinations. Naturally, on the road and at the
frontier, they denounce, drive away, imprison, or murder their officers,
and especially the nobles. 3/4 And yet, in this extremity, numbers of
noble officers, especially in the artillery and engineer corps, persist
in remaining at their posts, some through liberal ideas, and others out
of respect for their instructions; even after the 10th of August, even
after the 2nd of September, even after the 21st of January, like their
generals Biron, Custine, de Flers, de Broglie, and de Montesquiou, with
the constant perspective of the guillotine that awaits them on leaving
the battlefield and even in the ministerial offices of Carnot.
VII.--Emigration and its causes.
The first laws against the emigrants.
It is, accordingly, necessary that the officers and nobles should go
away, should go abroad; and not only they, but also their families.
"Gentlemen who have scarcely six hundred livres income set out on
foot,"[3347] and there is no doubt as to the motive of their departure.
"Whoever will impartially consider the sole and veritable causes of
the emigration," says an honest man, "will find them in anarchy. If the
liberty of the individual had not been daily threatened, if;" in the
civil as in the military order of things, "the senseless dogma, preached
by the factions, that crimes committed by the mob are the judgments of
heaven, had not been put in practice, France would have preserved three
fourths of her fugitives. Exposed for two years to ignominious dangers,
to every species of outrage, to innumerable persecutions, to the steel
of the assassin, to the firebrands of incendiaries, to the most
infamous charges, 'to the denouncement of' their corrupted domestics,
to domiciliary visits" prompted by the commonest street rumor, "to
arbitrary imprisonment by the Committee of Inquiry," deprived of their
civil rights, driven out of primary meetings, "they are held accountable
for their murmurs, and punished for a sensibility which would touch the
heart in a suffering criminal."--" Resistance is nowhere seen; from
the prince's throne to the parsonage of the priest, the tempest has
prostrated all malcontents in resignation." Abandoned "to the restless
fury of the clubs, to informers, to intimidated officials, they find
executioners on all sides where prudence and the safety of the State
have enjoined them not even to see enemies. . . . Whoever has detested
the enormities of fanaticism and of public ferocity, whoever has
awarded pity to the victims heaped together under the ruins of so many
legitimate rights and odious abuses, whoever, finally, has dared to
raise a doubt or a complaint, has been proclaimed an enemy of
the nation. After this representation of malcontents as so many
conspirators, every crime committed against them has been legitimated in
public opinion.[3348] The public conscience, formed by the factions
and by that band of political corsairs who would be the disgrace of a
barbarous nation, have considered attacks against property and towns
simply as national justice, while, more than once, the news of the
murder of an innocent person, or of a sentence which threatened him
with death, has been welcomed with shouts of joy Two systems of natural
right, two orders of justice, two standards of morality were accordingly
established; by one of these it was allowable to do against one's
fellow-creature, a reputed aristocrat, that which would be criminal if
he were a patriot. . . . Was it foreseen that, at the end of two
years, France, teeming with laws, with magistrates, with courts, with
citizen-guards, bound by solemn oaths in the defense of order and the
public safety, would still and continually be an arena in which wild
beasts would devour unarmed men "--With all, even with old men, widows
and children, it is a crime to escape from their clutches. Without
distinguishing between those who fly to avoid becoming a prey, and
those who arm to attack the frontier, the Constituent and Legislative
Assemblies alike condemn all absentees. The Constituent Assembly[3349]
trebled their real and personal taxes, and prescribed that there should
be a triple lien on their rents and dues. The Legislative Assembly
sequestrates, confiscates, and puts into the market their possessions,
real and personal, amounting to nearly fifteen hundred millions of cash
value. Let them return and place themselves under the knives of the
populace; otherwise they and their posterity shall all be beggars.--At
this stroke indignation overflows, and a bourgeois who is liberal and
a foreigner, Mallet du Pan, exclaims,[3350] "What! twenty thousand
families absolutely ignorant of the Coblentz plans and of its
assemblies, twenty thousand families dispersed over the soil of Europe
by the fury of clubs, by the crimes of brigands, by constant lack of
security, by the stupid and cowardly inertia of petrified authorities,
by the pillage of estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants
without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the
base servility of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary
scourges,--what' these twenty thousand desolate families, women and old
men, must see their inheritances become the prey of national robbery!
What! Madame Guillin, who was obliged to fly with horror from the
land where monsters have burnt her dwelling, slaughtered and eaten
her husband, and who live with impunity by the side of her home--shall
Madame Guillin see her fortune confiscated for the benefit of the
communities to which she owes her dreadful misfortunes! Shall M. de
Clarac, under penalty of the same punishment, go and restore the ruins
of his chateau, where an army of scoundrels failed to smother him!"--So
much the worse for them if they dare not come back! They are to undergo
civil death, perpetual banishment, and, in case the ban be violated,
they will be given up to the guillotine. In the same case with them
are others who, with still greater innocence, have left the territory,
magistrates, ordinary rich people, burgesses, or peasants, Catholics,
and particularly one entire class, the nonjuring clergy, from the
cardinal archbishop down to the simple village vicar, all prosecuted,
then despoiled, then crushed by the same popular oppression and by the
same legislative oppression, each of these two persecutions exciting and
aggravating the other to such an extent that, at last, the populace and
the law, one the accomplice of the other, no longer leave a roof nor
a piece of bread, nor an hour's safety to a gentleman or to a
priest.[3351]
VIII.--Attitude of the non-juring priests.
How they become distrusted.--Illegal arrests by local
administrations.--Violence or complicity of the National
Guards.--Outrages by the populace.--Executive power in the
south.--The sixth jacquerie.--Its two causes.--Isolated
outbreaks in the north, east, and west,--General eruption in
the south and in the center.
The ruling passion flings itself on all obstacles, even those placed by
itself across its own track. Through a vast usurpation the minority
of non-believers, indifferent or lukewarm, has striven to impose its
ecclesiastical forms on the Catholic majority, and the situation
thereby created for the Catholic priest is such that unless he becomes
schismatic, he cannot fail to appear as an enemy. In vain has he obeyed!
He has allowed his property to be taken, he has left his parsonage, he
has given the keys of the church to his successor, he has kept aloof;
he does not transgress, either by omission or commission, any article of
any decree. In vain does he avail himself of his legal right to abstain
from taking an oath repugnant to his conscience. This alone makes him
appear to refuse the civic oath in which the ecclesiastical oath is
included, to reject the constitution which he accepts in full minus a
parasite chapter, to conspire against the new social and political order
of things which he often approves of; and to which he almost always
submits.[3352] In vain does he confine himself to his special and
recognized domain, the spiritual direction of things. Through this
alone he resists the new legislators who pretend to furnish a spiritual
guidance, for, by virtue of being orthodox, he must believe that the
priest whom they elect is excommunicated, that his sacraments are vain;
and, in his office as pastor, he must prevent his sheep from going to
drink at an impure source. In vain might he preach to them moderation
and respect. Through the mere fact that the schism is effected, its
consequences unfold them selves, and the peasants will not always remain
as patient as their pastor. They have known him for twenty years; he has
baptized them and married them; they believe that his is the only true
mass; they are not satisfied to be obliged to attend another two or
three leagues away, and to leave the church, their church which their
ancestors built, and where from father to son they have prayed for
centuries, in the hands of a stranger, an intruder and heretic, who
officiates before almost empty benches, and whom gendarmes, with guns in
their hands, have installed. Assuredly, as he passes through the street,
they will look upon him askance: it is not surprising that the women and
children soon hoot at him, that stones are thrown at night through his
windows, that in the strongly Catholic departments, Upper and Lower
Rhine, Doubs and Jura, Lozère, Deux-Sêvres and Vendée, Finistère,
Morbihan, and Côtes-du-Nord, he is greeted with universal desertion,
and then expelled through public ill-will. It is not surprising that
his mass is interrupted and that his person is threatened;[3353] that
disaffection which thus far had only reached the upper class, descends
to the popular strata; that, from one end of France to the other, a
sullen hostility prevails against the new institutions; for now the
political and social constitution is joined to the ecclesiastical
constitution like an edifice to its spire, and, through this sharp
pinnacle, seeks the storm even within the darkening clouds of heaven.
The evil all springs out of this unskillful, gratuitous, compulsory
fusion, and, consequently, from those who effected it.
But never will a victorious party admit that it has made a mistake.
In its eyes the nonjuring priests are alone culpable; it is irritated
against their factious conscience; and, to crush the rebellion even in
the inaccessible sanctuary of personal conviction, there is no legal or
brutal act of violence which it will not allow itself to commit.
Behold, accordingly, a new sport thrown open; and the game is immensely
plentiful. For it comprises not only the black or gray robes, more than
forty thousand priests, over thirty thousand nuns, and several thousand
monks, but also the devoted orthodox, that is to say the women of the
low or middle class, and, without counting provincial nobles, a majority
of the serious, steady bourgeoisie, a majority of the peasantry-almost
the whole population of several provinces, east, west, and in the south.
A name is bestowed on them, as lately on the nobles; it is that of
fanatic, which is equivalent to aristocrat, for it also designates
public enemies likewise placed by it beyond the pale of the law.
Little does it matter whether the law favors them, for it is interpreted
against them, arbitrarily construed and openly violated by the partial
or intimidated administrative bodies which the Constitution has
withdrawn from the control of the central authority and subjected to
the authority of popular gatherings. From the first months of 1791,
the hounding begins; the municipalities, districts, and departments
themselves often take the lead in beating up the game. Six months later,
the Legislative Assembly, by its decree of November 29,[3354] sounds the
tally-ho, and, in spite of the King's veto, the hounds on all sides dash
forward. During the month of April, 1792, forty-two departments pass
against nonjuring priests "acts which are neither prescribed nor
authorized by the Constitution," and, before the end of the Legislative
Assembly, forty-three others will have followed in their train.--Through
this series of illegal acts, without offense, without trial, non-jurors
are everywhere in France expelled from their parishes, relegated to the
principal town of the department or district, in some places imprisoned,
put on the same footing with the emigrants, and despoiled of their
property, real and personal.[3355] Nothing more is wanting against them
but the general decree of deportation which is to come as soon as the
Assembly can get rid of the King.
In the meantime, the National Guards, who have extorted the laws,
endeavor to aggravate them in their application; and there is nothing
strange in their animosity. Commerce is at a standstill, industry
languishes, the artisan and shopkeeper suffer, and, in order to account
for the universal discontent, it is attributed to the insubordination
of the priest. Were it not for his stubbornness all would go well, since
the Constitution is perfect, and he is the only one who does not accept
it. But, in not accepting it, he attacks it. He, therefore, is the last
obstacle in the way of public happiness; he is the scapegoat, let us
drive the obnoxious creature away! And the urban militia, sometimes
on its own authority, sometimes instigated by the municipal body its
accomplice; is seen disturbing public worship, dispersing congregations,
seizing priests by the collar, pushing them by the shoulders out of
the town, and threatening them with hanging if they dare to return.
At Douay,[3356] with guns in hand, they force the directory of the
department to order the closing of all the oratories and chapels in
hospitals and convents. At Caen, with loaded guns and with a cannon,
they march forth against the neighboring parish of Verson, break into
houses, gather up fifteen persons suspected of orthodoxy--canons,
merchants, artisans, workmen, women, girls, old men, and the infirm--cut
off their hair, strike them with the but-ends of their muskets, and lead
them back to Caen fastened to the breach of the cannon; and all this
because a nonjuring priest still officiated at Verson, and many pious
persons from Caen attended his mass: Verson, consequently, is a focal
center of counter-revolutionary gatherings. Moreover, in the houses
which were broken into, the furniture was smashed, casks stove in, and
the linen, money, and plate stolen, the rabble of Caen having joined
the expedition.--Here, and everywhere, there is nothing to do but to
let this rabble have its own way; and as it operates against the
possessions, the liberty; the life, and the sense of propriety of
dangerous persons, the National Militia is careful not to interfere
with it. Consequently, the orthodox, both priests and believers, men and
women, are now at its mercy, and, thanks to the connivance of the armed
force, which refuses to interpose, the rabble satisfy on the proscribed
class its customary instincts of cruelty, pillage, wantonness, and
destructiveness.
Whether public or private, the order of the day is always to hinder
worship, while the means employed are worthy of those who carry them
out.--Here, a nonjuring priest having had the boldness to minister to
a sick person, the house which he has just entered is taken by assault,
and the door and windows of a house occupied by another priest are
smashed.[3357] There, the lodgings of two workmen, who are accused of
having had their infants baptized by a refractory priest, are sacked and
nearly demolished. Elsewhere, a mob refuses to allow the body of an
old curé, who had died without taking the oath, to enter the cemetery.
Farther on, a church is assaulted during vespers, and everything is
broken to pieces: on the following day it is the turn of a neighboring
church, and, in addition, a convent of Ursuline nuns is devastated.--At
Lyons, on Easter-day, 1791, as the people are leaving the six o'clock
mass, a troop, armed with whips, falls upon the women.[3358] Stripped,
bruised, prostrated, with their heads in the dirt, they are not left
until they are bleeding and half-dead; one young girl is actually at the
point of death; and this sort of outrage occurs so frequently that even
ladies attending the orthodox mass in Paris dare not go out
without sewing up their garments around them in the shape of
drawers.--Naturally, to make the most of the prey offered to them,
hunting associations are formed. These exist in Montpellier, Arles,
Uzès, Alais, Nîmes, Carpentras, and in most of the towns or burgs of
Gard, Vaucluse, and l'Hérault, in greater or less number according to
the population of the city: some counting from ten to twelve, and others
from two to three hundred determined men, of every description: among
them are found "strike-hards" (tape-dur), former brigands, and escaped
convicts with the brand still on their backs. Some of them oblige their
members to wear a medal as a visible mark of recognition; all assume
the title of executive power, and declare that they act of their own
authority, and that it is necessary to "quicken the law."[3359] Their
pretext is the protection of sworn priests; and for twenty months,
beginning with April, 1791, they operate to this effect with heavy
knotted dubs garnished with iron points," without counting sabers and
bayonets. Generally, their expeditions are nocturnal. Suddenly, the
houses of "citizens suspected of a want of patriotism," of nonjuring
ecclesiastics, of the monks of the Christian school, are invaded;
everything is broken or stolen, and the owner is ordered to leave the
place in twenty-four hours: sometimes, doubtless through an excess of
precaution, he is beaten to death on the spot. Besides this, the band
also works by day in the streets, lashes the women, enters the churches
saber in hand, and drives the nonjuring priest from the altar. All of
this is done with the connivance and in the sight of the paralyzed
or complaisant authorities, by a sort of occult and complementary
government, which not only supplies what is missing in the
ecclesiastical law, but also searches the pockets of private
individuals.--At Nîmes, under the leadership of a patriotic
dancing-master, not content with "decreeing proscriptions, killing,
scourging, and often murdering," these new champions of the Gallican
Church undertake to reanimate the zeal of those liable to contribution.
A subscription having been proposed for the support of the families of
the volunteers about to depart, the executive power takes upon itself
to revise the list of offerings: it arbitrarily taxes those who have not
given, or who, in its opinion, have given too little some "poor workmen
fifty livres, others two hundred, three hundred, nine hundred, and
a thousand, under penalty of wrecked houses and severe treatment."
Elsewhere, the volunteers of Baux and other communes near Tarascon help
themselves freely, and, "under the pretext that they are to march for
the defense of the country, levy enormous contributions on proprietors,"
on one four thousand, and on another five thousand livres. In default of
payment, they carry away all the grain on one farm, even to the reserve
seed, threatening to make havoc with everything, and even to burn, in
case of complaint, so that the owners dare not say a word, while the
attorney-general of the neighboring department, afraid on his own
account, begs that his denunciation may be kept secret.--From the slums
of the towns the jacquerie has spread into the rural districts. This is
the sixth and the most extensive seen for three years.[3360]
Two spurs impel the peasant on.--On the one hand he is frightened by
the clash of arms, and the repeated announcements of an approaching
invasion. The clubs and the newspapers since the declaration of Pilnitz,
and the Orators in the Legislative Assembly for four months past, have
kept him alarmed with their trumpet-blasts, and he urges on his oxen in
the furrow with cries of "Woa, Prussia!" to one, and to the other, "Gee
up, Austria!" Austria and Prussia, foreign kings and nobles in league
with the emigrant nobles, are going to return in force to re-establish
the salt-tax, the excise, feudal-dues, tithes, and to retake national
property already sold and re-sold, with the aid of the gentry who have
not left, or who have returned, and the connivance of non-juring
priests who declare the sale sacrilegious and refuse to absolve the
purchasers.--On the other hand, Holy Week is drawing near, and for the
past year qualms of conscience have disturbed the purchasers. Up to
March 24, 1791, the sales of national property had amounted to only 180
millions; but, the Assembly having prolonged the date of payment and
facilitated further sales in detail, the temptation proves too strong
for the peasant; stockings and buried pots are all emptied of their
savings. In seven months the peasant has bought to the amount of 1,346
millions,[3361] and finally possesses in full and complete ownership the
morsel of land which he has coveted for so many years, and sometimes an
unexpected plot, a wood, a mill, or a meadow. At the present time he has
to settle accounts with the church, and, if the pecuniary settlement is
postponed, the Catholic settlement comes on the appointed day.
According to immemorial tradition he is obliged to take the communion
at Easter,[3362] his wife also, and likewise his mother; and if he,
exceptionally, does not think this of consequence, they do. Moreover, he
requires the sacraments for his old sick father, his new-born child, and
for his other child of an age to be confirmed. Now, communion, baptism,
confession, all the sacraments, to be of good quality, must proceed from
a safe source, just as is the case with flour and coin; there is only
too much counterfeit money now in the world, and the sworn priests are
daily losing credit, like the assignats. There is no other course to
pursue, consequently, but to resort to the non-juror, who is the only
one able to give valid absolutions. And it so happens that he not only
refuses this, but he is said to be inimical to the whole new order of
things.--In this dilemma the peasant falls back upon his usual resource,
the strength of his arms; he seizes the priest by the throat, as
formerly his lord, and extorts an acquittance for his sins as formerly
for his feudal dues. At the very least he strives to constrain the
non-jurors to swear, to close their separatist churches, and bring the
entire canton to the same uniform faith.--Occasionally also he avenges
himself against the partisans of the non-jurors, against chateaux
and houses of the opulent, against the nobles and the rich, against
proprietors of every class. Occasionally, likewise, as, since the
amnesty of September, 1791, the prisons have been emptied, as one-half
of the courts are not yet installed,[3363] as there has been no police
for thirty months, the common robbers, bandits, and vagrants, who swarm
about without repression or surveillance, join the mob and fill their
pockets.
Here, in Pas-de-Calais,[3364] three hundred villagers, headed by a
drummer, burst open the doors of a Carthusian convent, steal everything,
eatables, beverages, linen, furniture, and effects, whilst, in the
neighboring parish, another band operates in the same fashion in the
houses of the mayor and of the old curé, threatening "to kill and
burn all," and promising to return on the following Sunday.--There,
in Bas-Rhin, near Fort Louis, twenty houses of the aristocrats are
pillaged.--Elsewhere in Ile-et-Vilaine, bodies of rural militia,
combined, go from parish to parish, and, increasing in numbers in
consequence of their very violence until they form bands of two thousand
men. They close churches, drive away nonjuring priests, remove clappers
from the bells, eat and drink what they please at the expense of the
inhabitants, and often, in the houses of the mayor or tax-registrar,
indulge in the pleasure of breaking everything to pieces. Should any
public officer remonstrate with them they shout, "At the aristocrat!"
One of these unlucky counselors is struck on the back with the but-end
of a musket, and two others have guns aimed at them; the chiefs of the
expedition are in no better predicament, and, according to their own
admission, if they are at the head of the mob it is to make sure they
themselves will not be pillaged or hung. The same spectacle presents
itself in Mayenne, in Orne, in Moselle, and in the Landes.[3365]--These,
however, are but isolated irruptions, and very mild; in the south and
in the center, the plague is apparent in an immense leprous spot, which
extending from Avignon to Perigueux, and from Aurillac to Toulouse,
suddenly covers, nearly without with any discontinuity, ten departments,
Vaucluse, Ardèche, Gard, Cantal, Corrèze, Lot, Dordogne, Gers,
Haute-Garonne, and Hérault. Vast rural masses are set in motion at the
same time, on all sides and owing to the same causes: the approach of
war and the coming of Easter.--In Cantal, at the assembly of the canton
held at Aurillac for the recruitment of the army,[3366] the commander
of a village National Guard demands vengeance "against those who are not
patriots," and the report is spread that an order has come from Paris to
destroy the chateaux. Moreover, the insurgents allege that the priests,
through their refusal to take the oath, are bringing the nation into
civil war: "we are tired of not having peace on their account; let them
become good citizens, so that everybody may go to mass." On the strength
of this, the insurgents enter houses, put the inhabitants to ransom,
not only priests and former nobles, "but also those who are suspected
of being their partisans, those who do not attend the mass of the
constitutional priest," and even poor people, artisans and tillers of
the ground, whom they tax five, ten, twenty, and forty francs, and
whose cellars and bread-bins they empty. Eighteen chateaux are pillaged,
burnt, or demolished, and among others, those of several gentlemen and
ladies who have not left the country. One of these, M. d'Humières, is an
old officer of eighty years; Madame de Peyronenc saves her son only by
disguising him as a peasant; Madame de Beauclerc, who flies across the
mountain, sees her sick child die in her arms. At Aurillac, gibbets are
set up before the principal houses; M. de Niossel, a former lieutenant
of a criminal court, put in prison for his safety, is dragged out, and
his severed head is thrown on a dunghill; M. Collinet, just arrived
from Malta, and suspected of being an aristocrat, is ripped open, cut
to pieces, and his head is carried about on the end of a pike. Finally,
when the municipal officers, judges, and royal commissioner commence
proceedings against the assassins, they find themselves in such great
danger that they are obliged to resign or to run away. In like manner,
in Haute-Garonne,[3367] it is also "against non-jurors and their
followers" that the insurrection has begun. This is promoted by the fact
that in various parishes the constitutional curé belongs to the
club, and demands the riddance of his adversaries. One of them at
Saint-Jean-Lorne, "mounted on a cart, preaches pillage to a mob of
eight hundred persons." Each band, consequently, begins by expelling
refractory priests, and by forcing their supporters to attend the mass
of the sworn priest.--But such success, wholly abstract and barren, is
of little advantage, and peasants in a state of revolt are not satisfied
so easily. When parishes march forth by the dozen and devote their day
to the service of the public, they must have some compensation in wood,
wheat, wine, or money,[3368] and the expense of the expedition may be
defrayed by the aristocrats. Not merely the upholders of non-jurors
are aristocrats, as, for example, an old lady here and there, "very
fanatical, and who for forty years has devoted all her income to acts of
philanthropy," "but well-to-do persons, peasants or gentlemen;" for, "by
keeping their wine and grain unsold in their cellars and barns, and by
not undertaking more work than they need, so as to deprive workmen in
the country of their means of subsistence," they design "to starve out"
the poor folk. Thus, the greater the pillage, the greater the service
to the public. According to the insurgents, it is important "to diminish
revenues enjoyed by the enemies of the nation, in order that they
may not send their revenues to Coblentz and other places out of the
kingdom." Consequently, bands of six or eight hundred or a thousand men
overrun the districts of Toulouse and Castelsarrasin. All proprietors,
aristocrats, and patriots are put under contribution. Here, in the
house of "the philanthropic but fanatical old maid, they break open
everything, destroy the furniture, taking away eighty-two bushels of
wheat and sixteen hogsheads of wine." Elsewhere, at Roqueferrière,
feudal title-deeds are burnt, and a chateau is pillaged. Farther on, at
Lasserre, thirty thousand francs are exacted and the ready money is
all carried off. Almost everywhere the municipal officers, willingly or
unwillingly, authorize pillaging. Moreover, "they cut down provisions to
a price in assignats very much less than their current rate in silver,"
and they double the price of a day's work. In the meantime, other bands
devastate the national forests, and the gendarmes, in order not to be
called aristocrats, have no idea but of paying court to the pillagers.
After all this, it is manifest that property no longer exists for
anybody except for paupers and robbers.--In effect, in Dordogne,[3369]
under the pretext of driving away nonjuring priests, frequently mobs
gather to pillage and rob whatever comes in their way. . . . All the
grain that is found in houses with weathercocks is sequestrated."
The rustics exploit, as communal property, all the forests, all the
possessions of the emigrants; and this operation is radical; for
example, a band, on finding a new barn of which the materials strike
them as good, demolish it so as to share with each other the tiles and
timber.--In Corrèze, fifteen thousand armed peasants, who have come to
Tulle to disarm and drive off the supporters of the non-jurors, break
everything in suspected houses, and a good deal of difficulty is found
in sending them off empty-handed. As soon as they get back home, they
sack the chateaux of Saint-Gal, Seilhac, Gourdon, Saint-Basile, and La
Rochette, besides a number of country-houses, even of absent plebeians.
They have found a quarry, and never was the removal of property more
complete. They carefully carry off, says an official statement, all that
can be carried--furniture, curtains, mirrors, clothes-presses, pictures,
wines, provisions, even floors and wooden panels, "down to the smallest
fragments of iron and wood-work," smashing the rest, so that nothing
"remains of the house but its four walls, the roof and the staircase."
In Lot, where for two years the insurrection is permanent, the damage
is much greater. During the night between the 30th and 31st of January,
"all the best houses in Souillac" are broken open, "sacked and pillaged
from top to bottom,"[3370] their owners being obliged to fly, and so
many outbreaks occur in the department, that the directory has no time
to render an account of them to the minister. Entire districts are
in revolt; as, "in each commune all the inhabitants are accomplices,
witnesses cannot be had to support a criminal prosecution, and crime
remains unpunished." In the canton of Cabrerets, the restitution of
rents formerly collected is exacted, and the reimbursement of charges
paid during twenty years past. The small town of Lauzerte is invaded by
surrounding bodies of militia, and its disarmed inhabitants are at
the mercy of the Jacobin suburbs. For three months, in the district of
Figeac, "all the mansions of former nobles are sacked and burnt;" next
the pigeon-cots are attacked, "and all country-houses which have a good
appearance." Barefooted gangs "enter the houses of well-to-do people,
physicians, lawyers, merchants, burst open the doors of cellars, drink
the wine," and riot like drunken victors. In several communes these
expeditions have become a custom; "a large number of individuals are
found in them who live on rapine alone," and the club sets them the
example. For six months, in the principal town, a coterie of the
National Guard, called the Black Band, expel all persons who are
displeasing to them, "pillaging houses at will, beating to death,
wounding or mutilating by saber-strokes, all who have been proscribed in
their assemblies," and no official or advocate dares lodge a complaint.
Brigandage, borrowing the mask of patriotism, and patriotism borrowing
the methods of brigandage, have combined against property at the same
time as against the ancient régime, and, to free themselves from all
that inspires them with fear, they seize all which can provide them with
booty.
And yet this is merely the outskirts of the storm; the center is
elsewhere, around Nîmes, Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles, in a country
where, for a long time, the conflict between cities and the conflict
between religions have kindled and accumulated malignant passions.[3371]
Looking at the three departments of Gard, Bouches-de-Rhône and Vaucluse,
one would imagine one's self in the midst of a war with savages.
In fact, it is a Jacobin and plebeian invasion, and, consequently,
conquest, dispossession, and extermination,--in Gard, a swarm of
National Guards copy the jacquerie: the dregs of the Comtat come to the
surface and cover Vaucluse with its scum; an army of six thousand from
Marseilles sweeps down on Arles.--In the districts of Nîmes, Sommières,
Uzès, Alais, Jalais, and Saint-Hippolyte, title-deeds are burnt,
proprietors put to ransom, and municipal officers threatened with death
if they try to interpose; twenty chateaux and forty country-houses are
sacked, burnt, and demolished.--The same month, Arles and Avignon,[3372]
given up to the bands of Marseilles and of the Comtat, see confiscation
and massacres approaching.--Around the commandant, who has received the
order to evacuate Aries,[3373] "the inhabitants of all parties" gather
as suppliants, "clasping his hands, entreating him with tears in their
eyes not to abandon them; women and children cling to his boots," so
that he does not know how to free himself without hurting them; on his
departure twelve hundred families emigrate. After the entrance of the
Marseilles band we see eighteen hundred electors proscribed, their
country-houses on the two banks of the Rhone pillaged, "as in the times
of Saracen pirates," a tax of 1,400,000 livres levied on all people in
good circumstances, absent or present, women and girls promenaded
about half-naked on donkeys and publicly whipped." "A saber committee"
disposes of lives, proscribes and executes: it is the reign of sailors,
porters, and the dregs of the populace.--At Avignon,[3374] it is that of
simple brigands, incendiaries and assassins, who, six months previously,
converted the Glacière[3375] into a charnel-house. They return in
triumph and state that "this time the Glacière will be full." Five
hundred families had already sought asylum in France before the first
massacre; now, the entire remainder of the honest bourgeoisie, twelve
hundred persons, take to flight, and the terror is so great that the
small neighboring towns dare not receive emigrants. In fact, from this
time forth, both departments throughout Vaucluse and Bouches-de-Rhône
are a prey: Bands of two thousand armed men, with women, children, and
other volunteer followers, travel from commune to commune to live as
they please at the expense of "fanatics." The well-bred people are not
the only ones they despoil. Plain cultivators, taxed at 10,000 livres,
have sixty men billeted on them; their cattle are slain and eaten before
their eyes, and everything in their houses is broken up; they are driven
out of their lodgings and wander as fugitives in the reed-swamps of the
Rhone, awaiting a moment of respite to cross the river and take refuge
in the neighboring department.[3376] Thus, from the spring of 1792,
if any citizen is suspected of unfriendliness or even of indifference
towards the ruling faction, if, through but one opinion conscientiously
held, he risks the vague possibility of mistrust or of suspicion, he
undergoes popular hostility, pillage, exile, and worse besides; no
matter how loyal his conduct may be, nor how loyal he may be at heart,
no matter that he is disarmed and inoffensive; it is all the same
whether it be a noble, bourgeois, peasant, aged priest, or woman; and
this while public peril is yet neither great, present, nor visible,
since France is at peace with Europe, and the government still subsists
in its entirety.
IX.--General state of opinion.
The three convoys of non-juring priests on the Seine.--
Psychological aspects of the Revolution.
What will it be, then, now when the peril, already become palpable and
serious, is daily increasing, now when war has begun, when Lafayette's
army is falling back in confusion, when the Assembly declares the
country in danger, when the King is overthrown, when Lafayette defects
and goes abroad, when the soil of France is invaded, when the frontier
fortresses surrender without resistance, when the Prussians are entering
Champagne, when the insurrection in La Vendée adds the lacerations of
civil war to the threats of a foreign war, and when the cry of treachery
arises on all sides?--Already, on the 14th of May, at Metz,[3377] M.
de Fiquelmont, a former canon, seen chatting with a hussar on the Place
Saint-Jacques, was charged with tampering with people on behalf of the
princes, carried off in spite of a triple line of guards, and beaten,
pierced, and slashed with sticks, bayonets, and sabers, while the mad
crowd around the murderers uttered cries of rage: and from month to
month, in proportion as popular fears increase, popular imagination
becomes more heated and its delirium grows.--You can see this yourself
by one example. On the 31st of August, 1792,[3378] eight thousand
non-juring priests, driven out of their parishes, are at Rouen, a town
less intolerant than the others, and, in conformity with the decree
which banishes them, are preparing to leave France. Two vessels have
just carried away about a hundred of them; one hundred and twenty others
are embarking for Ostend in a larger vessel. They take nothing with them
except a little money, some clothes, and one or at most two portions of
their breviary, because they intend to return soon. Each has a regular
passport, and, just at the moment of leaving, the National Guard have
made a thorough inspection so as not to let a suspected person escape.
It makes no difference. On reaching Quilleboeuf the first two convoys
are stopped. A report has spread, indeed, that the priests are going to
join the enemy and enlist, and the people living round about jump
into their boats and surround the vessels. The priests are obliged to
disembark amidst a tempests of "yells, blasphemies, insults, and abuse:"
one of them, a white-headed old man, having fallen into the mud, the
cries and shouts redouble; if he is drowned so much the better, there
will be one less! On landing all are put in prison, on bare stones,
without straw or bread, and word is sent to Paris to know what must be
done with so many cassocks. In the meantime the third vessel, short of
provisions, has sent two priests to Quilleboeuf and to Pont-Audemer to
have twelve hundred pounds of bread baked: pointed out by the village
militia, they are chased out like wild beasts, pass the night in a wood,
and find their way back with difficulty empty-handed. The vessel itself
being signaled, is besieged. "In all the municipalities on the banks of
the river drums beat incessantly to warn the population to be on their
guard. The appearance of an Algerian or Tripolitan corsair on the shores
of the Adriatic would cause less excitement. One of the seamen of the
vessel published a statement that the trunks of the priests transported
were full of every kind of arms." and the country people constantly
imagine that they are going to fall upon them sword and pistol in hand.
For several long days the famished convoy remains moored in the stream,
are carefully watched. Boats filled with volunteers and peasants row
around it uttering insults and threats: in the neighboring meadows the
National Guards form themselves in line of battle. Finally, a decision
is arrived at. The bravest, well armed get into skiffs, approach the
vessel cautiously, choose the most favorable time and spot, rush on
board, and take possession; and are perfectly astonished to find neither
enemies nor arms.--Nevertheless, the priests are confined on board, and
their deputies, must make their appearance before the mayor. The latter,
a former usher and good Jacobin, being the most frightened, is the most
violent. He refuses to stamp the passports, and, seeing two priests
approach, one provided with a sword-cane and the other with an
iron-pointed stick, thinks that there is to be a sudden attack. "Here
are two more of them," he exclaims with terror; "they are all going to
land. My friends, the town is in danger!"--On hearing this the crowd
becomes alarmed, and threatens the deputies; the cry of "To the lamp
post!" is heard, and, to save them, National Guards are obliged to
conduct them to prison in the center of a circle of bayonets.--It must
be noted that these madmen are "at bottom the kindest people in the
world." After the boarding of the ship, one of the most ferocious,
by profession a barber, seeing the long beards of these poor priests,
instantly cools down, draws forth his tools, and good-naturedly sets
to work, spending several hours in shaving them. In ordinary times
ecclesiastics received nothing but salutations; three years previously
they were "respected as fathers and guides." But at the present moment
the rustic, the man of the lower class, is out of his bearings. Forcibly
and against nature, he has been made a theologian, a politician, a
police captain, a local independent sovereign; and in such a position
his head is turned. Among these people who seem to have lost their
senses, only one, an officer of the National Guard, remains cool; he is,
besides, very polite, well-behaved, and an agreeable talker; he comes
in the evening to comfort the prisoners and to take tea with them
in prison; in fact, he is accustomed to tragedies and, thanks to his
profession, his nerves are in repose--this person is the executioner.
The others, "whom one would take for tigers," are bewildered sheep; but
they are not the less dangerous; for, carried away by their delirium,
they bear down with their mass on whatever gives them umbrage.--On
the road from Paris to Lyons[3379] Roland's commissioners witness this
terrible fright. "The people are constantly asking what our generals
and armies are doing; they have vengeful expressions frequently on their
lips. Yes, they say, we will set out, but we must (at first) purge the
interior."
Something appalling is in preparation. The seventh jacquerie is drawing
near, this one universal and final--at first brutal, and then legal
and systematic, undertaken and carried out on the strength of abstract
principles by leaders worthy of the means they employ. Nothing like it
ever occurred in history; for the first time we see brutes gone mad,
operating on a grand scale and for a long time, under the leadership of
blockheads who have become insane.
There is a certain strange malady commonly encountered in the quarters
of the poor. A workman, over-taxed with work, in misery and badly fed,
takes to drink; he drinks more and more every day, and liquors of the
strongest kind. After a few years his nervous system, already weakened
by spare diet, becomes over-excited and out of balance. An hour comes
when the brain, under a sudden stroke, ceases to direct the machine; in
vain does it command, for it is no longer obeyed; each limb, each
joint, each muscle, acting separately and for itself starts convulsively
through discordant impulses. Meanwhile the man is gay; he thinks himself
a millionaire, a king, loved and admired by everybody; he is not aware
of the mischief he is doing to himself he does not comprehend the advice
given him, he refuses the remedies offered to him, he sings and shouts
for entire days, and, above all, drinks more than ever.--At last his
face grows dark and his eyes become blood-shot. Radiant visions give way
to black and monstrous phantoms; he sees nothing around him hut menacing
figures, traitors in ambush, ready to fall upon him unawares, murderers
with upraised arms ready to cut his throat, executioners preparing
torments for him; and he seems to be wading in a pool of blood. So he
precipitates, and, in order that he himself may not be killed, he
kills. No one is more to be dreaded, for his delirium sustains him;
his strength is prodigious, his movements unforeseen, and he endures,
without heeding them, suffering and wounds under which a healthy man
would succumb.--France, like such a madman, exhausted by fasting under
the monarchy, drunk by the unhealthy drug of the Social-Contract, and by
countless other adulterated or fiery beverages, is suddenly struck with
paralysis of the brain; at once she is convulsed in every limb through
the incoherent play and contradictory twitching of her discordant
organs. At this time she has traversed the period of joyous madness, and
is about to enter upon the period of somber delirium: behold her capable
of daring, suffering, and doing all, capable of incredible exploits and
abominable barbarities, the moment her guides, as erratic as herself,
indicate an enemy or an obstacle to her fury.
THE END.
*****
[Footnote 3301: Moniteur, XI. 763. (Sitting of March 28,
1792.)--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3235. (Deliberation of the Directory
of the Department, November 29, 1791, and January 27, 1792.--Petition
of the Municipality of Mende and of forty-three others, November 30,
1791.)]
[Footnote 3302: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Minutes of the meeting
of the municipal officers of Arles, September 2, 1791.--Letters of the
Royal Commissioners and of the National Assembly, October 24, November
6, 14, 17, 21, and December 21, 1791.--The Commissioners, to be
impartial, attend in turn a mass by a nonjuring priest and one by a
priest of the opposite side. "The church is full" with the former and
always empty with the latter.]
[Footnote 3303: "Mémoire" of M. Mérilhon, for Froment, passim.--Report
of M. Alquier, p. 54.--De Dampmartin, I. 208.]
[Footnote 3304:--De Dampmartin, I. 208.They would exclaim to the
catholic peasants: "Allons, mes enfants, Vive le Roi!" (shouts of
enthusiasm): "those wretches of democrats, let us make an example of
them, and restore the sacred rights of the throne and the altar!"--"As
you please," replied the rustics in their patois, "but we must hold
fast to the Revolution, for there are some good things about it."--They
remain calm, refuse to march to the assistance of Uzès, and withdraw
into their mountains on the first sign of the approach of the National
Guard.]
[Footnote 3305: This is what the author Soljenitsyne observed about
his Russian countrymen in an interview with M. Pivot in the French
television in 1998. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3306: Dauban, "La Demagogie à Paris," p.598; Letter of M. de
Brissac, August 25, 1789.]
[Footnote 3307: Moniteur, X. 339. (Journal de Troyes, and a letter from
Perpignan, November, 1791.)]
[Footnote 3308: Mercure de France, No. for September 3, 1791. "Let
Liberty be presented to us, and all France will kneel before her;
but noble and proud hearts will eternally resist the oppression which
assumes her sacred mask. They will invoke liberty, but liberty without
crime, the liberty which is maintained without dungeons, without
inquisitors, without incendiaries, without brigands, without forced
oaths, without illegal coalitions, without mob outrages; that liberty,
finally, which allows no oppressor to go unpunished, and which does
not crush peaceable citizens beneath the weight of the chains it has
broken."]
[Footnote 3309: Rivarol, "Mémoires," p.367. (Letter of M. Servan,
published in the "Actes des Apôtres.")]
[Footnote 3310: The King's brother, later to become King of France under
the name of Louis XVIII. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3311: "Archives Nationa1es," F7. 3257. Official reports,
investigations, and correspondence in relation with the affair of M.
Bussy (October, 1790).]
[Footnote 3312: Mercure de France, May 15, 1790. (Letter of Baron de
Bois-d'Aisy, April 29, read in the National Assembly.)--Moniteur, IV.
302. Sitting of May 6. (Official statement of the Justice of the Peace
of Vitteaux, April 28.)]
[Footnote 3313: "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 4. Letter of M.
Belin-Chatellenot (near Asnay-le-Duc) to the President of the National
Assembly, July 1, 1791. "In the realm of liberty we live under the most
cruel tyranny, and in a state of the most complete anarchy, while the
administrative bodies and the police, still in their infancy, seem to
act only in fear and trembling. . . . So far, in all crimes, they
are more concerned with extenuating the facts, than in punishing the
offense. The result is that the guilty have had no other restraint on
them than a few gentle phrases like this: Dear brothers and friends,
you are in the wrong, be careful," etc.--Ibid. , F7, 3229. Letter of the
Directory of the Department of Marne, July 13, 1791. (Searches by the
National Guard in chateaux and the disarming of formerly privileged
persons.) "None of our injunctions were obeyed." For example, there is
breakage and violence in the residence of M. Guinaumont at Merry, the
gun, shot and powder of the game-keeper even are carried off. "M. de
Guinaumont is without the means of defending himself against a mad dog
or any other savage brute that might come into his woods or into
his courtyard." The Mayor of Merry, with the National Guard, under
compulsion, tells them in vain that they are breaking the law.--Petition
of Madame d'Ambly, wife of the deputy, June 28, 1791. Not having the
guns which she had already given up, she is made to pay 150 francs.]
[Footnote 3314: "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 4. Letters of the
Administrators of the Department of Rhône-et-Loire, July 6, 1791. (M.
Vilet is one of the signers.)--Mercure de France, October 8, 1791.]
[Footnote 3315: Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by
Mallet du Pan. "The details of the picture I have just sketched were
all furnished me by Madame Dumoutet herself." I am "authorized by her
signature to guarantee the accuracy of this narrative."]
[Footnote 3316: Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by
Mallet du Pan. "The proceedings instituted at Lyons confirmed this
banquet of cannibals."]
[Footnote 3317: The letter of the Department ends with this either naïve
or ironical expression: "You have now only one conquest to make, that of
making the people obey and submit to the law."]
[Footnote 3318: "Archives Nationales," P7, 3,200. See documents relating
to the affair of November 5, 1792, and the events which preceded it
or followed it, and among others "Lettres du Directoire et du
Procureur-syndic du Departement;" "Pétition et Mémoire pour les
Déténus;" "Lettres d'un Témoin," M. de Morant.--Moniteur, X. 356.
"Minutes of the meeting de la Municipalité de Caen" and of the
"Directoire du Departement," XI.1264, 206. "Rapport de Guadet," and
documents of the trial.--"Archives Nationales," ibid. .--"Lettres de
M. Cahier," Minister of the Interior, January 26, 1792, of M. C. D.
de Pontécoulant, President of the Department Directory, February 3,
1792.--Proclamation by the Directory.]
[Footnote 3319: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of September
26, 1791.--Letter found on one of the arrested gentlemen. "A cowardly
bourgeoisie, directors in cellars, a clubbist (Jacobin) municipality,
waging the most illegal war against us."]
[Footnote 3320: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the
Attorney-General of Bayeux, May 14, 1792, and of the Directory of
Bayeux, May 21, 1792.--At Bayeux, likewise; the refugees are denounced
and in peril. According to their verified statements they scarcely
amounted to one hundred. "Several nonjuring priests, indeed, are found
among them. (But) the rest, for the most part, consist of the heads of
families who are known to reside habitually in neighboring districts,
and who have been forced to leave their homes after having been, or
fearing to become, victims of religious intolerance or of the threats of
factions and of brigands."]
[Footnote 3321: Lenin has probably read this during his studies in Paris
and maybe been confirmed in his plan to create a new elite, an elite he
eventually began to make use of from 1917 and onwards, an elite which
continues to rule Russia and a great part of the world today. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3322: Mercure de France, June 4, 1790 (letter from Cahors, May
17, and an Act of the Municipality, May 10, 1790).]
[Footnote 3323: "Archives Nationales," F7, 1223. Letter of count Louis
de Beaumont, November 9, 1791. His letter, in a very moderate tone,
thus end: "You must admit, sir, that it is very disagreeable and even
incredible, that the Municipal Officers should be the originators of the
disorders which occur in this town."]
[Footnote 3324: Mercure de France, January 7, 1792. M. Granchier de Riom
petitions the Directory of his Department in relation to the purchase of
the cemetery, where his father had been interred four years before; his
object is to prevent it from being dug up, which was decreed, and to
preserve the family vault. He at the same time wishes to buy the church
of Saint-Paul, in order to insure the continuance of the masses in
behalf of his father's soul. The Directory replies (December 5, 1791):
"considering that the motives which have determined the petitioner in
his declaration are a pretense of good feeling under which there is
hidden an illusion powerless to pervert a sound mind, the Directory
decides that the application of the sieur Granchier cannot be granted."]
[Footnote 3325: De Ferrières, II. 268 (April 19, 1791).]
[Footnote 3326: De Montlosier, II. 307, 309, 312.]
[Footnote 3327: Moniteur, VI. 556. Letter of M d'Aymar, commodore,
November 18, 1790.]
[Footnote 3328: Mercure de France, May 28, and June 16, 1791 (letters
from Cahors and Castelnau, May 18).]
[Footnote 3329: Mercure de France, number of May 28, 1791. At the
festival of the Federation, M. de Massy would not order his cavalry to
put their chapeaux on the points of their swords, which was a difficult
maneuver. He was accused of treason to the nation on account of this,
and obliged to leave Tulle for several months.--"Archives Nationales,"
F7, 3204. Extract from the minutes of the tribunal of Tulle, May 10,
1791.]
[Footnote 3330: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, "Minutes of the meeting
des Officiers Municipaux de Brest," June 23, 1791.]
[Footnote 3331: "Mémoires de Cuvier" ("Eloges Historiques," by
Flourens), I, 177. Cuvier, who was then in Havre (1788), had pursued the
higher studies in a German administrative school. "M. de Surville," he
says, an officer in the Artuis regiment, "has one of the must refined
minds and most amiable characters I ever encountered. There were a good
many of this sort among his comrades, and I am always astonished how
such men could vegetate in the obscure ranks of an infantry regiment."]
[Footnote 3332: De Dampmartin, I. 133. At the beginning of the year
1790, "inferior officers said: 'We ought to demand something, for
we have at least as many grievances as our troopers,' "--M. de la
Rochejacquelein, after his great success in La Vendée, said: "I hope
that the King, when once he is restored, will give me a
regiment." He aspired to nothing more ("Mémoires de Madame de la
Rochejacquelein").--Cf. "Un Officier royaliste au Service de la
Republique," by M. de Bezancenet, in the letters and biography of
General de Dommartin killed in the expedition to Egypt.]
[Footnote 3333: Correspondence of MM. de Thiard, de Caraman, de Miran,
de Bercheny, etc., above cited, passim.--Correspondence of M. de Thiard,
May 5, 1780: "The town of Vannes has an authoritative style which begins
to displease me. It wants the King to furnish drum-sticks. The first log
of wood would provide these, with greater ease and promptness."]
[Footnote 3334: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248, March 16, 1791.
At Douai, Nicolon, a grain-dealer, is hung because the municipal
authorities did not care to proclaim martial law. The commandant, M. de
la Noue, had not the right of ordering his men to move, and the murder
took place before his eyes.]
[Footnote 3335: The last named, especially, died with heroic meekness
(Mercure de France, June 18, 1791).--Sitting of June 9, speeches by two
officers of the regiment of Port-au-Prince, one of them an eye-witness.]
[Footnote 3336: "De Dampmartin," II. 214. Desertion is very great, even
in ordinary times, supplying foreign armies with "a fourth of their
effective men."--Towards the end of 1789, Dubois de Crancé, an old
musketeer and one of the future "men of the mountain," stated to the
National Assembly that the old system of recruiting supplied the army
with "men without home or occupation, who often became soldiers to
avoid civil penalties" (Moniteur, II. 376, 381, sitting of December 12,
1789).]
[Footnote 3337: "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M.
de Thiard, September 4 and 7, 1789, November 20, 1789, April 28, and May
29, 1790. "The spirit of insubordination which begins to show itself
in the Bassigny regiment is an epidemic disease which is insensibly
spreading among all the troops. . . . The troops are all in a state of
gangrene, while all the municipalities oppose the orders they receive
concerning the movements of troops."]
[Footnote 3338: "Archives Nationales," H,1453. Correspondence of M. de
Bercheny, July 12, 1790.]
[Footnote 3339: "Mémoire Justificatif" (by Grégoire), on behalf of two
soldiers, Emery and Delisle.--De Bouillé, "Mémoires."--De Dampmartin,
I.128, 144.--"Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M. de
Thiard, July 2 and 9, 1790.--Moniteur, sittings of September 3 and June
4, 1790.]
[Footnote 3340: De Bouillé, p. 127.--Moniteur, sitting of August 6,
1790, and that of May 27, 1790.--Full details in authentic documents of
the affair at Nancy, passim.--Report of M. Emmery, August 16, 1790, and
other documents in Buchez and Roux, VII. 59-162.--De Bezancenet, p.35.
Letters of M. de Dommartin (Metz, August 4, 1790). "The Federation
there passed off quietly, only, a short time after, some soldiers of a
regiment took it into their heads to divide the (military) fund, and at
once placed sentinels at the door of the officer having charge of the
chest, compelling him to open it (désacquer). Another regiment has since
put all its officers under arrest. A third has mutinied, and wanted to
take all its horses to the market-place and sell them.. . . Everywhere
the soldiers are heard to say that if they want money they know where to
find it."]
[Footnote 3341: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, letters of the Royal
Commissioners, September 27, October 1, 4, 8, 11, 1790. the commencement
of the Revolution, had most to do with the insurrections in the
interior. "What means can four commissioners employ to convince 20,000
men, most of whom are seduced by the real enemies of the public welfare?
In consequence of the replacing of the men the crews are, for the most
part, composed of those who are almost ignorant of the sea, who know
nothing of the rules of subordination, and who, at the commencement of
the Revolution, had most to do with the insurrections in the interior."]
[Footnote 3342: Mercure de France. October 2, 1790. Letter of the
Admiral, M. d'Albert de Rioms, September 16. The soldiers of the
Majestueux have refused to drill, and the sailors of the Patriote to
obey.--"I wished to ascertain beforehand if they had any complaint to
make against their captain?--No.--If they complained of myself?--No.--If
they had any complaints to make against their officers?--No.--It is the
revolt of one class against another class; their sole cry is 'Vive la
Nation et les Aristocrates à la lanterne!' The mob have set up a gibbet
before the house of M. de Marigny, major-general of marines; he has
handed in his resignation. M. d'Albert tenders his resignation."--Ibid,
June 18, 1791 (letter from Dunkirk, June 3).]
[Footnote 3343: De Dampmartin, I. 222, 219. Mercure de France, September
3, 1791. (Sitting of August 23.)--Cf. Moniteur (same date). "The Ancient
Régime," p.377.]
[Footnote 3344: Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires," I. 24. "The sentiment I
entertained for the person of the King is difficult to define. . .
(It was) a sentiment of devotion of an almost religious character, a
profound respect as if due to a being of a superior order. At this time
the word king possessed a magic power in all pure and upright hearts
which nothing had changed. This delicate sentiment. . . still existed
in the mass of the nation, especially among the well-born, who,
sufficiently remote from power, were rather impressed by its brilliancy
than by its imperfections." De Bezancenet, 27. Letter of M. de
Dommartin, August 24, 1790. "We have just renewed our oath. I hardly
know what it all means. I, a soldier, know only my King; in reality I
obey two masters, who, we are told, will secure my happiness and that of
my brethren, if they agree together."]
[Footnote 3345: De Dampmartin, I. 179. See the details of his
resignation (III. 185) after June 20, 1792.--Mercure de France, April
14, 1792. Letter from the officers of the battalion of the Royal
chasseurs of Provence (March 9). They are confined to their barracks by
their soldiers, who refuse to obey their orders, and they declare that,
on this account, they abandon the service and leave France.]
[Footnote 3346: Rousset, "Les Volontaires de 1791 à 1794", p. 106. Letter
of M. de Biron to the minister (August, 1792); p.225, letter of Vezu,
commander of the 3rd battalion of Paris, to the army of the north (July
24, 1793).--"A Residence in France from 1792 to 1795" (September,
1792. Arras). See notes at the end of vol. II. for the details of these
violent proceedings.]
[Footnote 3347: Mercure de France, March 5, June 4, September 3, October
22, 1791. (Articles by Mallet du Pan.--Ibid., April 14, 1792). More than
six hundred naval officers resigned after the mutiny of the squadron
at Brest. "Twenty-two grave revolts in the ports on shipboard remained
unpunished, and several of them through the decisions of the naval
jury." "There is no instance of any insurrection, in the ports or on
shipboard, or any outrage upon a naval officer, having been punished.
. . . It is not necessary to seek elsewhere for the causes of the
abandonment of the service by naval officers. According to their letters
all offer their lives to France, but refuse to command those who will
not obey."]
[Footnote 3348: This was done by Hitler against the Jews and by the
Communists against their "enemy" the bourgeois. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3349: Duvergier, "Decrees of August 1-6, 1791; February 9-11,
1792; March 30 to April 8, 1792; July 24-28, 1792; March 28 to April 5,
1793."--Report by Roland, January 6, 1793. He estimates this property
at 4,800 millions, of which 1,800 millions must be deducted for the
creditors of the emigrants; 3,000 millions remain. Now, at this date,
the assignats are at a discount of 55 per cent. from their nominal
figure.]
[Footnote 3350: Mercure de France,, February 18, 1792.]
[Footnote 3351: Already Tacitus noted some 2000 years ago that, "It is
part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt." (SR.)]
[Footnote 3352: Cf. on this general attitude of the clergy, Sauzay, V.
I. and the whole of V. II.--Mercure de France, September 10, 1791: "No
impartial man will fail to see that, in the midst of this oppression,
amidst so many fanatical charges of which the reproach of fanaticism and
revolt is the pretext, not one act of resistance has yet been manifest.
Informers and municipal bodies, governed by clubs, have caused a large
number of non-jurors to be cast into dungeons. All have come out of
them, or groan there untried, and no tribunal has found any of them
guilty."--Report of M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior, February
18, 1792. He declares that "he had no knowledge of any priest being
convicted by the courts as a disturber of the public peace, although
several had been accused."--Moniteur May 6, 1792. (Report of Français de
Nantes) "Not one has been punished for thirty months."]
[Footnote 3353: On these spontaneous brutal acts of the Catholic
peasants, cf. "Archives Nationales," F7, 3236 (Lozère, July-November,
1791). Deliberation of the district of Florac, July 6, 1791, and
the official statement of the commissioner of the department on the
disturbances in Espagnac. On the 5th of July, Richard, a constitutional
curé, calls upon the municipality to proceed to his installation. "The
ceremony could not take place, owing to the hooting, of the women and
children, and the threats of various persons who exclaimed: 'Kill him!
strangle him, he is a Protestant, is married, and has children;' and
owing to the impossibility of entering the church, the doors of which
were obstructed by the large number of women standing in front of
them:"--On the 6th of July, he is installed, but with difficulty.
"Inside the church a crowd of women uttered loud cries and bemoaned the
removal of their old curé On returning, in the streets, a large number
of women, unsettled by the sight of the constitutional cure, turned
their faces aside. . . and contented themselves with uttering disjointed
words.--without doing anything more than cover their faces with their
bonnets, casting themselves on the ground."--July 15. The clerk will
no longer serve at the mass nor ring the bells; the curé, Richard,
attempting to ring them himself, the people threaten him with
ill-treatment if he runs the risk.--September 8, 1791. Letter from the
curé of Fau, district of Saint-Chély. "That night I was on the brink
of death through a troop of bandits who took my parsonage away from
me, after having broken in the doors and windows."--December 30, 1791.
Another curé who goes to take possession of his parsonage is assailed
with stones by sixty women, and thus pursued beyond the limits of the
parish.--August 5, 1791. Petition of the constitutional bishop of Mende
and his four vicars. "Not a day passes that we are not insulted in the
performance of our duties. We cannot take a step without encountering
hooting. If we go out we are threatened with cowardly assassination,
and with being beaten with clubs."--F7, 3235 (Bas-Rhin, letter from
the Directory of the Department, April 9, 1792): "Ten out of eleven, at
least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize sworn priests."]
[Footnote 3354: Duvergier, decrees (not sanctioned) of November 29
and May 27, 1792.--Decree of August 26, 1792, after the fall of the
throne.--Moniteur, XII. 200 (sitting of April 23, 1793). Report of the
Minister of the Interior.]
[Footnote 3355: Lallier, "Le District de Machecoul," p.261,
263.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. Demand of the prosecuting
attorney of the commune of Tonneins (December 21, 1791) for the arrest
or expulsion of eight priests "at the slightest act of internal or
external hostility."--Ibid., F7, 3264. Act of the Council-general
of Corrèze (July 16, 17, 18, 1792) to place in arrest all nonjuring
priests.--Between these two dates, act, of various kinds and of
increasing severity are found in nearly all the departments against the
non-jurors.]
[Footnote 3356: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Official statement by
the directory of the department, March 18, 1791, with all the documents
in relation thereto.--F7, 3200. Letter of the Directory of Calvados,
June 13, 1792, with the interrogations. The damages are estimated at
15,000 livres.]
[Footnote 3357: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. An Act of the Directory
of Lot, February 24, 1792, on the disturbances at Marmande.--F7, 3239,
official statement of the municipal body of Rheims, November 5, 6, 7,
1791. The two workmen are a harness-maker and a wool-carder. The priest
who administered the baptism is put in prison as a disturber of the
public peace.--F7, 3219. Letter of the royal commissioner at the
tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 5, 1792.--F7, 3203. Letter of the
directory of the district of La Rochelle, June 1, 1792. "The armed
force, a witness of these crimes and summoned to arrest these persons in
the act, refused to obey."]
[Footnote 3358: Memorandum by Camille Jourdan (Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries
du Lundi," XII. 250). The guard refuses to give any assistance, coming
too late and merely "to witness the disorder, never to repress it."]
[Footnote 3359: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letters of the curé
of Uzès, January 29, 1792; of the curé of Alais, April 5, 1792; of the
administrators of Gard, July 28, 1792; of the prosecuting attorney, M.
Griolet, July 2, 1792; of Castanet, former gendarme, August 25, 1792;
of M. Griolet, September 28, 1792.--Ibid. , F7, 3223. Petition by M.M.
Thueri and Devès in the name of the oppressed of Montpellier, November
17, 1791; letter of the same to the minister, October 28, 1791; letter of
M. Dupin, prosecuting attorney, August 23, 1791; Act of the Department,
August 9, 1791; Petition of the inhabitants of Courmonterral, August 25,
1791]
[Footnote 3360: Moniteur, XII. 16, sitting of April 1, 1792. Speech by
M. Laureau. "Behold the provinces in flames, insurrection in nineteen
departments, and revolt everywhere declaring itself. . . The only
liberty is that of brigandage; we have no taxation, no order, no
government." Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. "More than twenty
departments are now participating in the horrors of anarchy and in a
more or less destructive insurrection."]
[Footnote 3361: Moniteur, XII. 30. Speech by M. Caillasson. The total
amount of property sold up to November 1, 1791, is 1,526 millions; the
remainder for sale amounts to 669 millions.]
[Footnote 3362: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the Directory
of Ille-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792. "The National Guards of the district
purposely expel all nonjuring priests, who have not been replaced, under
the pretext of the trouble they would not fail to cause at Easter."]
[Footnote 3363: Moniteur, XI. 420. (Sitting of February 18, 1792.)
Report by M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior.]
[Footnote 3364: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Deposition of the
municipal officers of Gosnay and Hesdiguel (district of Béthune), May
18, 1792. Six parishes took part in this expedition; the mayor's wife
had a rope around her neck, and came near being hung.--Moniteur, XII,
154, April 15, 1792.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the
Directory of Ile-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792, and official statement
of the commissioners for the district of Vitré; letter of the same
directory, April 21, 1792, and report of the commissioners sent to
Acigné, April 6.]
[Footnote 3365: Moniteur, XII. 200. Report of M. Cahier, April 23, 1792.
The directories of these four departments refuse to cancel their illegal
acts, alleging that "their armed National Guards pursue refractory
priests."]
[Footnote 3366: Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. Letters written from
Aurillac.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3202.--Letter of the directory
of the district of Aurillac, March 27, 1792 (with seven official
statements); of the directory of the district of Saint-Flour, March 19
(with the report of its commissioners); of M. Duranthon, minister
of justice, April 22; petition of M. Lorus, municipal officer of
Aurillac.--Letter of M. Duranthon, June 9, 1792. "I am just informed by
the royal commissioner of the district of Saint-Flour that, since the
departure of the troops, the magistrates dare no longer exercise their
functions in the midst of the brigands who surround them."]
[Footnote 3367: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3219. Letters of M. Niel,
administrator of the department of Haute-Garonne, February 27, 1792; of
M. Sainfal, March 4; of the directory of the department, March 1; of the
royal commissioner, tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 13.]
[Footnote 3368: The following are some examples of these rustic desires:
At Lunel, 4000 peasants and village National Guards strive to enter,
to hang the aristocrats. Their wives are along with them, leading their
donkeys with "baskets which they hope to carry away full." ("Archives
Nationales," F7, 3523. Letter of the municipal body of Lunel, November
4, 1791.) At Uzès it is with great difficulty that they can rid
themselves of the peasants who came in to drive out the Catholic
royalists. In vain "were they given plenty to eat and to drink;" they go
away "in bad humor, especially the women who led the mules and asses to
carry away the booty, and who had not anticipated returning home with
empty hands." (De Dampmartin, I. 195.) In relation to the siege of
Nantes by the Vendéans: "An old woman said to me, 'Oh, yes, I was there,
at the siege. My sister and myself had brought along our sacks. We
counted on entering at least as far as the Rue de la Casserie'" (the
street of jeweler's shops). (Michelet, V 211.)]
[Footnote 3369: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3209. Letters of the royal
commissioner at the tribunal of Mucidan, March 7, 1792; of the public
prosecutor of the district of Sarlat, January. 1792.--Ibid. , F7, 3204.
Letters of the administrators of the district of Tulle, April 15, 1792;
of the directory of the department, April 18; petition of Jacques Labruc
and his wife, with official statement of the justice of the peace, April
24. "All these acts of violence were committed under the eyes of the
municipal authorities. They took no steps to prevent them, although they
had notice given them in time."]
[Footnote 3370: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3223. Letters of M. Brisson,
commissioner of the naval classes of Souillac, February 2, 1792; of the
directory of the department, March 14, 1792.--Petition of the brothers
Barrié (with supporting documents), October 11, 1791.--Letter of the
prosecuting attorney of the department, April 4, 1792. Report of the
commissioners sent to the district of Figeac, January 5, 1792. Letter of
the administrators of the department, May 27, 1792.]
[Footnote 3371: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Official reports of the
commissioners of the department of Gard, April 1, 2, 3, and 6, 1792, and
letter of April 6. One land-owner is taxed 100,000 francs.--Ibid., F7,
3223. Letter of M Dupin, prosecuting attorney of l'Hérault, February 17
and 26, 1792. "At the chateau of Pignan, Madame de Lostanges has not
one complete piece of furniture left. The cause of these disturbances
is religious passion. Five or six nonjuring priests had retreated to
the chateau,"--Moniteur, sitting of April 16, 1792. Letter from the
directory of the department of Gard.--De Dampmartin, II, 85. At Uzès,
fifty or sixty men in masks invade the ducal chateau at ten o'clock in
the evening, set fire to the archives, and the chateau is burnt.]
[Footnote 3372: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Official statements
of Augier and Fabre, administrators of the Bouches-de-Rhône, sent to
Avignon, May 11, 1792. (The reappearance of Jourdan, Mainvielle, and the
assassins of La Glacière took place April 29.)]
[Footnote 3373: De Dampmartin, II. 63. Portalis, "Il est temps de
parler" (pamphlet), passim. "Archives Nationales," F7, 7090. Memorandum
of the commissioners of the municipal administration of Arles, year IV.,
Nivôse 22.]
[Footnote 3374: Mercure de France, May 19, 1792. (Sitting of May 4.).
Petition of forty inhabitants of Avignon at the bar of the Legislative
Assembly.--"Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the royal
commissioners at the tribunal of Apt, March 15, 1792; official report
of the municipality, March 22; Letters of the Directory of Apt, March 23
and 28, 1792.]
[Footnote 3375: Large cellar where the ice collected during the winter
was kept for later use. (SR.)]
[Footnote 3376: "Archives Nationales," ibid. Letter of Amiel, president
of the bureau of conciliation at Avignon, October 28, 1792, and other
letters to the minister Roland.--F7, 3217, Letter of the Justice of the
Peace at Roque-Maure, October 31, 1792.]
[Footnote 3377: "Archives Nationales," F7, 3246. Official report of the
municipality of Metz (with supporting documents), May 15, 1792.]
[Footnote 3378: "Mémoires de l'Abbé Baton," one of the priests of the
third convoy (a bishop is appointed from Séez), p. 233.]
[Footnote 3379: "Archives Nationales" F7, 3225. Letter of citizen
Bonnemant, commissioner to minister Roland, September 11, 1792.]
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