Nesta Webster, The French Revolution PREFACE ASTROLOGERS tell us that the history of the world moves in cycles ; that from time to time the same forces arise producing eras that strangely resemble one another. Between these eras a close affinity exists, and so it is that we, in looking back to the past from the world crisis of to-day, realize that periods which in times of peace have soothed or thrilled us have now lost their meaning, that the principles which inspired them have no place in our philosophy. The Renaissance is dead ; the Reformation is dead ; even the great wars of bygone days seem dwarfed by the immensity of the recent conflict. But whilst the roar of battle dies down another sound is heard—the angry murmur that arose in 1789 and that, though momentarily hushed, has never lost its force. Once more we are in the cycle of revolution. The French Revolution is no dead event ; in turning over the contemporary records of those tremendous days we feel that we are touching live things ; from the yellowed pages voices call to us, voices that still vibrate with the passions that stirred them more than a century ago—here the desperate appeal for liberty and justice, there the trumpet- call of “ King and Country ” ; now the story told with tears of death faced gloriously, http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_00.html (1 of 8)5.4.2006 10:39:25 Nesta Webster, The French Revolution now a maddened scream of rage against a fellow-man. When in all the history of the world until the present day has human nature shown itself so terrible and so sublime ? And is not the fascination that amazing epoch has ever since exercised over the minds of men owing to the fact that the problems it held are still unsolved, that the same movements which originated with it are still at work amongst us ? “ What we learn to- day from the study of the Great Revolution,” the anarchist Prince Kropotkin wrote in 1908, “ is that it was the source and origin of all the present communist, anarchist, and socialist conceptions.” Indeed Kropotkin goes so far as to declare that “ up till now, modern socialism has added absolutely nothing to the ideas that were circulating among the French people between 1789 and 1794, and which it was tried to put into practice in the year II. of the Republic (i.e. in the Reign of Terror). Modern socialism has only systematised those ideas and found arguments in their favour,” etc. Now since the French Revolution still remains the one and only occasion in the history of the world when those theories were put into practice on a large scale, and carried out to their logical conclusion—for the experiment in Russia is as yet unfinished—it is surely worth while to know the true facts about that first upheaval. So far, in England, the truth is not known ; we have not even been told what really happened. “ As to a real history of the French Revolution,” Lord Cromer wrote to me a few months before his death, “ no such thing exists in the English language, for Carlyle, besides being often very inaccurate and prejudiced, produced merely a philosophical rhapsody. It is well worth reading, but it is not history.” Yet it is undoubtedly on Carlyle’s rhapsody that our national conceptions of the Revolution are founded ; the great masterpiece of Dickens was built up on this mythological basis, whilst the old histories of Alison and Morse Stephens, and even the illuminating Essays of Croker, lack the power to rouse the popular imagination.[1] Thus the legend created by Carlyle has never been dispelled. During the last few years the French Revolution has become less a subject for historical research than the theme of the popular journalist who sees in that lurid period material to be written up with profit. This being so, accuracy plays no part in his scheme. For the art of successful journalism is not to illuminate the public mind but to reflect it, to tell it in even stronger terms what it thinks already, and therefore to confirm rather than to dispel popular delusions. But if the Revolution is to be regarded as the supreme experiment in democracy, if its principles are to be held up for our admiration and its methods advocated as an example to our own people, is it not time that some effort were made to counteract that “ conspiracy of history ” that in France also, as M. Gustave Bord points out, has hitherto concealed the real facts concerning it ? Shall we not at last cease from rhapsody and consider the matter calmly and scientifically in its effects on the people ? This, after all, http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_00.html (2 of 8)5.4.2006 10:39:25 Nesta Webster, The French Revolution is the main issue—how was the experiment a success from the people’s point of view ? Strangely enough, though it was in their cause that the Revolution was ostensibly made, the people are precisely the portion of the nation that by Royalist and Revolutionary writers alike have been most persistently overlooked—the Royalists occupying themselves mainly with the trials of the monarchy and aristocracy, the Revolutionaries losing themselves in panegyrics on the popular leaders. Thus Michelet was a Dantoniste, Louis Blanc a Robespierriste ; Lamartine was a Girondiste ; Thiers and Mignet were Orleanistes, not only as historians but as politicians, for their exoneration of the Duc d’Orleans was only a part of their policy for placing his son Louis Philippe on the throne of France,—and consequently to all these men the people were a matter only of secondary importance. So far no one has written the history of the movement from the point of view of the people themselves. In studying the Revolution as an experiment in democracy, we must clear our minds of all predilections for certain individuals. Just as the author of a treatise on the discovery of tuberculin or on the antidote to hydrophobia devotes no space to recording the sufferings of the unhappy guinea-pigs and rabbits sacrificed in the cause of science, or in dilating on the virtuous private life of Koch or Pasteur, but concerns himself solely with the exact process adopted and the symptoms exhibited by the subjects with a view to proving or disproving the efficacy of the serums employed, so, if we would examine the Revolution as a scientific experiment, King, noblesse, and revolutionary leaders alike must be considered only in their relation to the cause of democracy ; we must concern ourselves with the people only, with the ills from which they suffered, with the means employed for their relief, with the part they themselves played in the great movement, and finally the results that were achieved. By this means alone we shall do justice to that brave and brilliant people by whose side we have fought to-day ; we shall come to understand that they were not the blind unreasoning herd portrayed by Taine, the enraged “ hyenas ” of Horace Walpole, nor yet, as revolutionary writers would have us believe, a nation of slaves brought by long years of oppression to a pitch of exasperation that found a vent in the crimes and horrors of the Revolution. It is on this last theory that popular opinion in England on the Revolution is founded, and that might, I think, be epitomized thus : “ The French Revolution was in itself a purely beneficial movement, inspired by the desire for liberty and justice : unhappily it went too far and produced excesses which, though deplorable, were nevertheless the unavoidable accompaniment to the regeneration of the country.” Now this statement is as illogical as it is unjust ; how could a movement that was purely beneficial “ go too far ” ? How could the desire of the people for liberty and justice be carried to excess and produce cruelty and bloodshed such as the civilized world had never seen before ? If http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_00.html (3 of 8)5.4.2006 10:39:25 Nesta Webster, The French Revolution this were true, then the only opinion at which a thinking human being could arrive would be that the French Revolution was the reductio ad absurdum of the proposition of democracy, a proposition that, once worked out to its tragic and grotesque conclusion, should have proved for all time that to give power into the hands of the people is to create a tyranny more terrible than any despotism can produce. But it was not so ; it was not the desire of the people for liberty and justice that produced these horrors ; it was not the movement for reform that “ went too far ” ; the crimes and excesses of the Revolution sprang from totally distinct and extraneous causes that must be understood if justice is to be done to the people of France. It is by the revolutionary writers that the people have been most maligned, for since, as I have pointed out, these writers were not the advocates of the people but of certain revolutionary leaders, their method is to absolve their heroes from all blame and heap the whole responsibility upon the people. For this purpose a legend has been woven around all the great outbreaks of the Revolution and the role of the people persistently misrepresented. Now if we study carefully the course of the revolutionary movement we shall find that the role of the people is in the main passive ; only on these great days of tumult do they play an active part.